Terrorism is not the threat

Let me just repeat that. Terrorism is not the threat — as in an existential threat that might overthrow the state and established order. Moreover it never has been, and not even close. Not even in 2009 when there were trumpeting headlines that the Taliban were 60 miles from Islamabad and closing in fast. Fooey. They were in Buner and there were fears that they might be able to interdict the Islamabad — Peshawar motorway. Never happened. The closest the Taliban have got to giving the state a nudge was their occupation of the Swat valley. And they lost that once the military rolled up its sleeves. Today there are effective — if selective — ongoing operations against terrorist and extremist groups and there is not the faintest sign that an existential threat to the Land of the Pure is about to become a reality.

All that said it is also a reality that this is a state where extremism and radicalism have become embedded, with no thought-through countervailing moves by any government. They have become what amounts to a status quo and that is likely to be the case for years to come. In that sense some may argue that the terrorists have already won, but that is not the case. The state is stable despite the doomsayers, a ramshackle democracy totters along, not as frail as some might like us to think, and the economy is in as good a shape as it may be given the mediocrity of its management now and in the past.

Terrorist acts have reduced significantly everywhere in the last 18 months. The military are on a roll, and led by a man who clearly relishes leadership — from the front. A new-ish prime minister may actually be coming to work with his head on the right way up and switched on. People…a lot of people…are differently poor. Not quite as poor as they were but not feeling that good about it either.

So terrorism — extremism even and mass public sympathy for a radical mindset that is Medieval — is not the threat. Yet the state of Pakistan is in mortal danger and may have a couple of generations, three at most, before it falls into utter chaos. And it is nothing to do with terrorism.

As a state Pakistan is dying of babies. It is a death both foretold and confirmed by the recent data released after the census. There is a credible projection that by the year 2100 there could be 364 million of us, up from the 207 million of today. The population remains umbilically connected to Malthusian growth and showering it with condoms on a nightly basis is not going to fix that. The nut to crack if population is to be brought under control is achieving a substantial rise in the standard of living for everybody, such that they want to have fewer children and smaller families become normative.

Currently the population is rising faster than the state can raise living standards. Yes the country is becoming more productive but greater productivity links to higher incomes which means that healthier children now survive to go on and have healthier children of their own. I am sure you can see where this is going — there comes a point where the numbers exceed the capacity of the state to sustain. Perversely, guaranteeing the survival of children by raising standards adds to the problem unless the mindset that says ‘all babies good’ can get short-circuited. On current form the chances of that happening can be expressed as a minus number.

Factor in a galloping water crisis that is only going to get worse and not better, a rise in temperatures that will — not may — eventually render swathes of the country uninhabitable and you begin to see the outline of the perfect storm that really is a threat to the very existence of the state. The state is in mortal danger of breeding itself into extinction less than a century hence, and children born on the very day this is published will live to see starvation and social breakdown on an unimaginable scale. Terrorism? No problem. Babies? Run for your lives as they are coming to get you.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2017.

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