‘Expect them to rise, if you keep on falling’

Reports on Pakistan discuss bad living conditions, security issues.

ISLAMABAD:

Failure of its institutions and few expectations from the ruling elite might result in a mass uprising in the next five to ten years, or even sooner. This has been predicted in one of the two reports launched by Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) on Wednesday.

In its abstract, quoting a group of political and defence analysts, who held a roundtable discussion in January this year, the report “Pakistan’s Security Challenges” said that the common man will one day “definitely explode” if the forces of status quo continued to refuse and resist change.

The group of analysts agreed on the nexus between rising poverty and militancy, extremism and terrorism, and the need to tackle them together on an urgent basis. Absolute poverty in Pakistan is now measured at 51 per cent (Oxford Poverty Research), while up to 74 per cent of the country’s population survives on less than two dollars a day, said one of the participants at the roundtable discussion.

The group of opinion-makers who were carrying out the roundtable discussion warned that to prevent implosion, the country will have to be transformed from the current National Security State to a Human Security State where entire security establishment serves honestly and transparently.

Speaking at the occasion of the launch of these reports, Imtiaz Gul, the Executive Director of CRSS, said that the report analyses three most critical security problems that Pakistan is faced with including the issue of Balochistan and the ever-deteriorating situation of law and order in Karachi.

He said the report divides Pakistan’s security challenges into two categories, structural and trigger causes of instability.

Among the structural causes, CRSS analysed the situation of civil-military relations, the absence of good governance, inter-provincial disharmony, socio-economic disparity and army’s predominance in Pakistan’s foreign policy.

In the trigger causes, soviet invasion, war on terror and military operations, natural calamities and conduct of the political parties were the most important.

The report also lists the status of Fata, feudalism, bureaucratic lethargy and political expedience to have created internal and external security challenges for Pakistan.

The report strongly emphasised on the federation to find a political and agreeable solution to the situation in Balochistan along with maintaining peace in Karachi.

Appreciating the recent parliamentary hearing on the issue of Osama’s death, he said that this could be the beginning of better parliamentary days because this was the first time the top military elite stood for eleven hours before the elected representatives.

He also remarked that military’s predominance in many policy and strategic issues has created many problems for Pakistan and its people.

The second report launched at the occasion titled “Afghan Jihad and Emergence of Transnational Networks” analysed the emergence of transnational networks. These associations assumed the role of informal financial and assistance lines initially to “mujahideen” and later to terrorists after September 11 attacks.

Carefully analysing the history of the emergence of such networks, the report cites the process and functionality of these networks across the Muslim world, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In addition, the report lists the organizations based in Pakistan that are influenced, directly or indirectly, by the ideology of Al Qaeda.

Gul stressed on the need for finding coherence in Pakistan’s domestic and diplomatic policies in trying to carving out a vision of peaceful Pakistan. “Pakistani people need economic and political strength and this desire cannot be fulfilled without addressing the structural causes of instability that Pakistan is suffering,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 19^th, 2011.