Historical context for Pakistan’s current crisis

New Delhi should ensure that Afghanistan will not become a geographic area over which Pakistan-India will duel.

We should, perhaps, understand better what the current government has inherited from the past before reaching the conclusion — as some have begun to do — that the new rulers are not up to the task for which they were elected a few months ago. During the almost seven decades of its existence as an independent state, Pakistan has had to deal with about a dozen serious crises. They arrived at the rate of two a decade. Sometimes their depth and extent seemed to pose an existential threat to the country. One of them destroyed the original Pakistan, fracturing it into two parts: the present-day Pakistan and the independent state of Bangladesh. Another took the form of the march of a group of militants who, having taken over the district of Swat, headed towards Islamabad, the country’s capital. The crisis that the current government faces has both similarities and differences from those that shook the country and the citizenry so many times in the past.

The one at present is a composite crisis, a number of events coming together, each piling on top of another to produce a perfect storm. That said, the history of crisis in Pakistan does have lessons to teach. They should be looked at not only to devise a strategy to steer the country out of the present situation but history can also help break the cycle of crises whose constant recurrence has already done so much damage to the country’s political and economic system.

Looking at the causes of the crises in the past, we can see some that stayed in place and, under the surface, waited to re-emerge whenever the time was right. About a quarter of the crises resulted from poor relations with India, Pakistan’s sister state. It took time for India to accept the idea of Pakistan: the notion that one part of the subcontinent can break away from what most of the established leadership regarded as a single political, social and economic identity. This happened because two competing ideas came to be advanced and sold to the populace at the same time and with an equal amount of vigour and acumen. The ‘idea of India’ was put forward to suggest that political, social and economic orders could be manufactured that would satisfy the aspirations of the diverse people that inhabited the vast expanse of the land called ‘India’. The ‘idea of Pakistan’ went in exactly the opposite direction. Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s ‘two nation’ theory advocated a separate homeland for Indian Muslims. Jinnah was able to persuade British India and ultimately, the Congress Party that for peace to prevail in the subcontinent, two independent states had to be created. Looking back at the two ideas, the one about India worked better than the one about Pakistan. East Pakistan’s separation and emergence of the independent state of Bangladesh was ample proof that religion alone could not be a unifying force for the creation of a state. At times ethnicity and language can prove to be more powerful forces for building a nation.

Given this history, it is important for Pakistan and India to make a serious effort to prepare for creating harmony in the South Asian region. Judging by the recent pronouncements of the two countries it appears that Pakistan is prepared to walk more than half the way towards India to create a framework within which the two countries can work. Manmohan Singh’s sharp response, in the New York meeting with his Pakistani counterpart is evidence of this. Singh’s tone came as a complete surprise especially to those who know him well. That posture may be a part of the electoral politics in the country as the Indian nation prepared for another general election in the spring of 2014. The surge in the popularity of the communal-minded Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s chief minister, who is the candidate of the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party for the job of prime minster may have motivated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Afghanistan is the source of at least three of the dozen crises. Here, again, the India factor weighs heavily but the unresolved issue of the role of Islam has also played a role. Pakistan and India should develop common ground, developing a regional approach towards taking Afghanistan towards peace. Both New Delhi and India should ensure that Afghanistan will not become a geographic area over which the two countries will duel. Afghanistan must not become another Kashmir. They should work together to find a regional solution involving the countries of the areas that have a deep interest in Afghanistan’s future.

The remaining crises resulted from the underdeveloped natures of the political and economic systems. On the political front, Pakistan has struggled with the problem of bringing in the military as a player but not as the dominant force. From the very beginning of the country the more literate and urban classes wanted a representative form of government. They were, however, not able to work out the shape the system should take. The political space that this unending debate created was occupied by the military. The military’s domination was not the result of a conspiracy between it and the mullah as Hussein Haqqani has suggested in an earlier book. The military’s long presence on the political stage, however, retarded political progress and prevented the country from developing a political order that would serve the most economic segments of society.

In this broad overview, I have not talked about the crises of governance and economic sustainability. These are in my list of the dozen crises through which the country has passed at various times but their resolution will result from movements in the three areas I have identified as being the main causes of repeated upheavals in the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th, 2013.

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