Beyond The Crisis State

Dr Maleeha Lodhi

Pakistan is at the crossroads of its political destiny. It can either remain trapped in a quagmire of weak governance, politics-as-usual, economic stagnation and crumbling public faith in state institutions; or it can take advantage of social changes underway to chart a new course.

How can this moment of opportunity be described?

Is this a democratic moment? An opportunity to consolidate a process that has remained vulnerable to repeated disruption and derailment?

Or is this a transformational opportunity when challenges to traditional politics hold out possibilities for change?

Representational and electoral politics have remained stuck in an old mode and increasingly lagged behind the social and economic changes that have been altering the country’s political landscape.

The economic centre of gravity has been shifting but politics has yet to catch up with its implications.

Already members of a growing and politically assertive urban middle class are using the opportunities created by globalisation and technological change to demand better governance and a greater voice in the country’s politics.

Although estimates of the size of Pakistan’s middle class vary depending on the criterion employed, if Purchasing Power Parity is used as the yardstick it can be put at around thirty million people.

This includes educated, professional groups as well as middle-income employees in state and business enterprises.

This raises the question: is a middle-class moment approaching? Can their rise in numbers and activism lead to a shift in the centres and instruments of power and influence?

Can the increasing mismatch between a more empowered middle class and family or clan-dominated politics unleash dynamics that can ultimately yield an accountable and functional system of governance?

Or are recent changes too limited to pose any real threat to the entrenched position of a narrow and oligarchic power elite-drawn from the landowning and mercantile elites and the civilian and military bureaucracy?

Answers must necessarily be tentative. While Pakistan is in the throes of change, its nature and direction is still unfolding. It is also unclear how the traditional elite will respond to the rising pressures on their power and authority.

But governance challenges are multiplying. These include daunting problems of security, solvency, mounting energy and water shortages, and an increasing youth bulge-representing a mass of unfulfilled expectations-in an environment of economic weakness.

Catastrophic floods that swept the country in the summer of 2010 compounded the country’s woes. They sharpened questions of whether Pakistan’s political and governance structures-and the quality of leadership-are capable of addressing and surmounting the gravest challenges ever faced. Can Pakistan acquire the means to govern itself better?

The historical record is not encouraging on two related counts. One, establishing a viable political order and a predictable environment to solve the country’s problems; two, evolving a political consensus on priorities and how to address them in a context of stable civil-military relations.

Complicating the quest to resolve these problems is the impact of external developments on the country’s fate and fortunes.

The external and internal have been so intertwined in Pakistan’s history-as they are today-as to compound political challenges. The country’s ability to weather the storms of global geo-politics has been repeatedly tested.

Struggling to deal with this from a position of domestic fragility has ended up emaciating and exhausting Pakistan. Its much-celebrated geo-strategic location has been more of a challenge than an asset. Successive governments believed geography translated into power whereas it actually drained the country’s power.

The issues of security, economy and governance have intersected in mutually compounding ways, which makes it difficult to establish the source and direction of causation. Has the security preoccupation hobbled political development, pre-empted resources and been the main source of economic problems?

Have dysfunctional politics been at the root of Pakistan’s governance deficit and economic misfortunes? What is certain is that these issues have become so intermeshed that the systemic crisis can now only be resolved by tackling them together and not in isolation from one another.

The Burden of History

The sweep of Pakistan’s tangled history reveals an unedifying record of governance failures and missed opportunities.

Political instability has been endemic, as the country has shuttled between ineffectual civilian government and military rule in an unbroken cycle punctuated by outbreaks of public protests demanding change and better governance.

Half of its existence has been spent under military rule and half under civilian or quasi-civilian governments. Pakistan’s turbulent history has also been tragic.

The early death of its founder so soon after partition meant that the mantle of a towering figure was inherited by a succession of squabbling political lightweights.

As several members of this ruling elite came from the Muslim-majority areas of India they increasingly sought the support of the civil-military bureaucracy to prop them up against indigenous political groups. When politicians bickered over issues of identity, provincial autonomy and the role of religion in the state, constitution-making was hobbled.

This created a political vacuum that encouraged the military’s creeping entry and eventual control of the political system.

The dictates of the early chaotic years resulted in the postponement of crucial reforms that could have set Pakistan on a different course.

Opportunities were missed to recast colonial instruments of control into those serving the needs of economic development and a participatory democracy.

As order, not representative government, was seen as the overwhelming priority, the need for reforms was ignored.

No significant land reforms were instituted that could have broken the political and economic stranglehold of the feudal or landed elite that dominated the country’s politics for decades to come, and frustrated economic modernisation.

Elections were repeatedly postponed. Only in 1970 did Pakistan hold its first free and fair election-twenty-three years after its birth.

Postponed reforms also meant that the symbiotic nexus forged between the powerful civil-military bureaucracy and feudal clans thwarted the country’s democratic evolution. Pakistan’s revolving-door democracy neither yielded stability nor realised the country’s economic potential.

The most traumatic failure came in 1971 when the stubborn resistance by the ruling political and military elite to accommodate Bengali aspirations led to the breakup of Pakistan after a humiliating military defeat inflicted by India which intervened militarily to mid-wife the creation of Bangladesh.

This military debacle gave way to democracy.

But Pakistan’s first popularly elected and charismatic leader, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s ill-focussed attempt at ‘socialist’ reform entailed sweeping nationalisation as well as concentration and personalisation of power.

This not only set back economic development but also descended into autocratic rule. While Bhutto made powerful enemies he managed to retain the loyalty of his populist base. But his failure to institutionalise his party meant that his vote-bank could not be mobilised to save either his government or his life.

The Army seized power to usher in Pakistan’s longest spell of military dictatorship under General Zia-ul-Haq who was to leave the most toxic and enduring legacy. His use of Islam to legitimise his rule stoked sectarian tensions and encouraged extremist tendencies in Pakistani society.

Added to this volatile mix was Pakistan’s long engagement in the last of the Cold War conflicts aimed at ejecting Soviet occupation forces from Afghanistan.

This earned Zia enthusiastic Western support. But it brought the country a witches’ brew of problems: induction of Islamic militancy, proliferation of weapons, spread of narcotics, exponential growth in madrasahs, growing violence and a large Afghan refugee population (over three million at the peak, close to two million today).

Pakistan’s intimate involvement in the war of unintended consequences came at an extraordinary cost: the country’s own stability. This established a pattern of behaviour that was to resonate throughout its history.

While its rulers played geo-political games that sought to enhance Pakistan’s regional influence, the neglect of pressing domestic problems exacted a heavy price.

Eleven disastrous years under General Zia left the country reeling in economic, political and institutional chaos. They also marked a missed economic opportunity. Just when Western concessional assistance was forthcoming, inflows of remittances from overseas Pakistani workers also peaked.

Between 1975 and 1985 Pakistan received over $25 billion in remittances. Failure to direct this into investment in productive sectors meant a unique set of fortuitous factors was squandered.

Lack of investment in the physical infrastructure-a policy blunder later repeated in the Musharraf years-sowed the seeds of the crippling shortages in power and essential public services that challenge Pakistan today and blight its economic future.

It was during the lost decade of the 1980s that the prevailing budgetary resource crisis emerged as a chronic threat to Pakistan’s financial stability. Fiscal indiscipline was not new but 1985 marked a sharp break in Pakistan’s budgetary history, when revenue no longer matched even the government’s current expenditure.

Successive governments borrowed heavily to finance not only development but also consumption for the next decade. In the process the country accumulated unsustainable debt both by borrowing abroad and at home. This burden continues to cripple the economy today.

The air crash that killed General Zia and his top military colleagues yielded democracy. But the decade of the 1990s produced disappointingly feeble civilian rule and fractious politics. Governments changed in rapid succession with the country’s two principal parties led by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif alternating in power.

Both took turns to undermine the other in bouts of confrontational politics that became fatal distractions from improving governance.

Civilian leaders gave little thought to the omnipresent danger that their endless feuds would open space for the military’s return to the political stage. When neither of the two parties lived up to the test of effective governance it was only a matter of time before the Army was sucked in. Pakistan’s fourth coup led by General Pervez Musharraf ushered in another decade of military rule.

Much of the Musharraf period was dominated by Pakistan’s involvement in the US-led ‘War on Terror’ waged in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. This placed Pakistan at the frontlines of international attention.

It saw the war in Afghanistan spill over in to the country’s borderlands to gravely jeopardise its stability. The repercussions for Pakistan of a confused and flawed US strategy in Afghanistan were far reaching: spread of radicalisation, intensification of violence and the further undermining of a febrile economy.

The twin and connected crises of security and solvency that Pakistan is struggling with today are in part the fallout of the protracted conflicts in Afghanistan. They were also a consequence of the lack of policy foresight and divisive politics pursued by the Musharraf government like its military predecessors.

In another important way the Musharraf years resembled the Ayub Khan era.

Despite their flawed politics and lack of longer term economic policies both ushered in a period of accelerated economic growth that led to a significant rise in per capita incomes and a more urbanised society.

This produced a dramatic expansion in Pakistan’s middle class, generating a new political dynamic that ultimately contained the seeds of the military government’s own demise.

Unlike Ayub and Zia, President Musharraf allowed an unprecedented opening of the country’s media. Powerful new fora of public expression combined with the dynamics of a newly empowered middle class to pose a challenge to a regime whose political vehicle (the ruling Muslim League) failed to represent public aspirations or erode the support base of its rival League faction led by Sharif and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

The general elections in February 2008 confirmed the hold on voters of the two major political parties, the PPP of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League. But tragedy intervened to deprive the nation of a national leader at a pivotal moment in its democratic transition.

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in an election rally in December 2007 left the country in shock and disarray.

The leadership of the PPP controversially passed to her spouse Asif Ali Zardari, who became known as the country’s accidental leader.

After Musharraf was forced from office in August 2008 Zardari became President of the Islamic Republic. But his corruption-tainted past denuded him of credibility or popular appeal, and raised questions about the political future of the PPP as both a government and party.