PAKISTAN IN A FREE FALL, ALBEIT IN SLOW MOTION

By

Sushant Sareen

    For a people who consider themselves as the true legatees of the Mughal empire, the only apt historical parallel to describe the state of Pakistan today is the atrophying Mughal empire after the death of Pakistan's favourite Great Mughal, Aurangzeb. Just as Aurangzeb sought to cement the empire by using fundamentalist Islam, but ended up spawning a million mutinies which sapped the vitality of the realm and ultimately destroyed the empire, so too in the case of Pakistan which promoted a virulent version of Islam to fuse the nation but which is now threatening to devour the Pakistani state.

During the last days of the Mughal empire, court intrigues to become emperor or wazir or a noble were the order of the day, and this despite the fact that the empire, or what was left of it, was surviving on the sufferance of either adventurers or emerging powers like the Marathas and the Afghans. Just as the last Mughals used to depend on external intervention to secure their positions in the court, Pakistani leaders today are more than willing to invite intervention by outside powers – USA, UK, Saudi Arabia, China – for gaining or retaining political power. Even when hostile armies were on the borders and the very survival of the throne and empire was at stake, the later Mughals made no effort to forge unity to confront the invaders and marauders. Instead, all energy was focused on the getting one up on rivals. No one was willing to give any quarter to his rivals, or desist from brinkmanship, or even put one's own self-interest on the back-burner until the peril of invasion was tackled and the authority of the empire re-established. So it is in today's Pakistan.

There is a very serious danger of the state falling under the influence of the Taliban. Large swathes of territory are either not under the control of the state or under only a very fragile and nominal control of the state. Even the so-called safe areas are extremely vulnerable and have frequently come under attack. The law enforcement agencies, when not trying to protect themselves from being attacked by the forces of Jihad, are busy in either protecting the privileged or indulging in rapine and loot. Hardly anyone, including the Pakistan army, really wants to confront the Taliban. Instead of forging a strategy to effectively combat the onslaught of the Islamists, the military top brass is concentrating more on protecting its privileges and its properties and hobbling, if not ensnaring, civilian governments to snuff out any possible challenge to their political dominance. And this in spite of the fact that a couple of thousand soldiers have already lost their lives in the full-blown Islamist insurgency and terrorism that has been wrecking havoc in the country.

Even as the conflagration in the Pashtun belt is flaring out of control, the province of Balochistan is spiralling out of control. Baloch nationalism has taken a violent form and targeted killings of security force officials and pro-government people, ambushes of military convoys, blowing up of economic infrastructure (gas pipelines, electricity pylons, telephone exchanges, railway tracks etc.) has become the order of the day. The government's brutal crackdown against political activists associated with the Baloch nationalist movement has only added to the already overflowing reservoir of alienation among the ordinary Baloch. If anything, today the political face of Baloch nationalism (who only demanded autonomy within Pakistan) has receded into the background and the extremists (who wish to carve out an independent Balochistan) are calling the shots.

With both Balochistan and the Pashtun areas in flames, the Pakistani state has all but lost control over more than half of the country's territory. The situation in the remaining part is hardly anything to write home about. Sindh is seething with resentment and anti-Punjab feelings. Karachi, which is in the throes of an ethnic civil war in which hundreds of people have been killed in politically motivated target killings, is a powder keg waiting to explode. In Punjab, the southern part has already fallen under the influence of the 'Punjabi Taliban'. Important cities in Central and North Punjab like Faisalabad, Chakwal and Gujranwala, to name a just a few, have a strong presence of Islamic terror groups.

The economy meanwhile is in a tailspin and shows no sign of coming out of the ICU. For now, the drip of foreign assistance is keeping it alive. But even the aid infusion won't be enough unless the 'white cells' (or if you will the good guys) start the fight back to bring the body back to health. Unfortunately, the white cell count is so precariously low that the disease of Islamism is consuming the body politic and with it the economy at an alarmingly fast rate.

Under these circumstances, it would normally be expected that the people who have the most to lose from the deteriorating situation – the educated and elite classes, the military-bureaucratic establishment, the judiciary and civil society, the political class, the traders and industrialists – would put their heads together to forge some sort of a consensus on how to combat the dangers that confront their own interests. But no, nothing of the sort is happening. Instead those who have the most to lose are busy trading blame as to who and what is responsible for the abysmal state of affairs. What is worse, there is both a denial of the seriousness of the problems that face the country as well as an attitude of nonchalance as though what is happening is of no concern to them and is someone else's problem.

The public debate and discourse in Pakistan is so partisan, distorted and also so far removed from the ground reality, that there is now a total disconnect between the crises that confront Pakistan and the reasons and solutions that even ostensible sober and sensible people give for these crises. It is almost as though the Pakistani intelligentsia has lost the ability to think things through. For instance, a standard formulation in Pakistan today is that the war being waged in the Pashtun tribal belt between the Pakistan army and the radical Islamists (read Taliban and al Qaeda) is a mercenary war, a war that Pakistan is waging not for itself but for America. Hence, the solution that is forwarded is equally nonsensical: the authorities should engage the Taliban in a dialogue or that the Pakistani army should simply walk out of the tribal areas. The logic is that if Pakistan does not act against the Islamic radicals, they too will not retaliate against the Pakistani army. In other words, "leave them alone and they will not bother us" is the solution! None of the proponents of this solution are able to even comprehend that unless the Taliban threat is ruthlessly eliminated, it will only grow and will spread like wild-fire in rest of Pakistan, ultimately taking over the Pakistani state. They are also in denial about the intentions and objectives of the radical Islamists, which is to talibanise Pakistan by imposing their version of puritanical Islam in the country.

The inability of the Pakistani people to distinguish friend from foe stems from a totally warped national mindset which revels in bizarre conspiracy theories and suffers from paranoia of imagined enemies lurking everywhere out to destroy the country or at the very least deprive it of its 'strategic assets'. In a sense, the term 'strategic' is probably the biggest bane of Pakistan. Take for instance, the famed 'strategic assets' a.k.a. nuclear weapons. Today, it is not the nukes that protect Pakistan but Pakistan that protects its nukes! Then there are the other 'strategic assets' a.k.a. 'good Taliban' which Pakistan wants to retain to gain 'strategic depth' in Afghanistan to confront the 'strategic enemy' a.k.a. India and which makes it imperative for the Pakistani establishment to get into the mode of 'strategic defiance' of the US. That this sort of 'strategic vision' (purblindness, really) has pushed Pakistan over the brink has of course never really been part of the 'strategic calculus' of the Pakistan's real rulers – the Pakistan army.

Pakistan is not so much a victim of terrorism as it is a victim of the stupendous success of the demonical indoctrination programme which has replaced the innate pragmatism of the people with insane Islamism that doubles up as Islamic nationalism (an oxymoron, if ever there was one) and validates substantially, if not entirely, with the concept of Islamofascism. It is this phenomenon that leads a newspaper owner who is an ideal candidate for a lunatic asylum but in today's Pakistan is a leading flag bearer of the 'ideology of Pakistan' to demand a nuclear strike on India because after a nuclear exchange Pakistan will be able to progress like Japan did after Hiroshima! It is this thinking that leads a top general under Musharraf, and a man who at one point of time was touted as a possible successor to Musharraf to advocate firing "a nuclear warning shot in the Bay of Bengal, across India, demonstrating our circular range capacity" in order to send the message that "you don't mess with a nuclear power and get away with it". It is this thinking that makes a former information minister declare that "Pakistan has made nuclear weapons not to keep them in the cupboard but to use them against its enemies (read India and now more than ever the Western world, particularly USA)." It is this mindset that makes the so-called 'civil society' – news anchors, lawyers, activists – defend the action of the assassin of the former Punjab governor, Salman Taseer. And it is precisely this mindset that prevents the Pakistan army (its ranks filled with that other oxymoron, 'moderate Taliban') from ending its double-game in the war on terror.

This then is the terrible reality of Pakistan. Unfortunately, just as the Pakistanis are in denial, so too are the Indians, or at least the Indian establishment, about the ground reality in Pakistan. India's Pakistan policy (if at all there is such a thing) is predicated on interactions with what is a fringe group of liberal, moderate, modern, and sensible Pakistanis who are excellent advocates of their country but whose words don't count for anything in terms of setting their country's policy or direction. This is a class which doesn't number more than a couple of thousand and probably qualifies to be registered as an endangered species under the UN Biodiversity Convention.

Despite the tendency for many in India to take vicarious pleasure over Pakistan's impending implosion, the fact is that Pakistan's collapse will be an unmitigated disaster for India, not only because it is utterly unprepared to handle the cataclysmic fallout of a 'failed' Pakistan but also because no matter what preparations it makes, there is no way India can insulate itself completely from the great tumult that will result when a country of 180 million people either descends into chaos or goes belly up on India's border. Forget about the nukes, they are the least of India's worries. The bigger danger is that the entire Partition arrangement that gave India relative peace for over 60 years will be blown to smithereens when millions of people start streaming into India either as refugees or as jihadists.

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    <1885 Words>                    25^th May, 2011

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PROFITING FROM TRADE

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

Eating grass and denying people prosperity for the sake of national dignity and honour is the prerogative not of the elite who make these statements but of the ordinary people who suffer the consequences of the bloody minded policies of the ruling class which never ever gets to eat grass and is always prosperous. It is precisely this attitude that has denied the people of India and Pakistan the fruits of mutually beneficial trade and closer economic cooperation. Cutting your nose to spite your neighbours face seems to be a congenital problem in the ruling classes of South Asia, particularly in India and Pakistan. While most other countries of South Asia have understood the benefit of regional trade and transit agreements – Bangladesh's pitch for becoming the transit hub for India, Nepal and Bhutan is a shining example of the changing attitude in other countries of the region – a sort of beggar-thy-neighbour policy continues to dictate the economic relationship between the two largest countries in South Asia.

It was no surprise then that despite the buzz surrounding the latest meeting between the commerce secretaries of India and Pakistan, there was no real breakthrough in promoting trade and economic interaction between the two countries. All that was achieved was some incremental progress and a lot of assurances that will probably never be fulfilled because of the greatest non-tariff barrier (NTB) – troubled political relations. In a sense, this NTB is a bit of a chicken-and-egg sort of conundrum: will improved political relations pave the way for trade between India and Pakistan or will lifting the trade barriers create a constituency for peace that will help in settling the political ties between them.

Clearly, trade and politics don't make for a good cocktail. But the problem is that it is not easy to separate trade and politics. Ideally, trade should not be seen as a political concession, much less a pressure point for achieving political objectives. Trade has its own intrinsic value and should be left to businessmen, who will trade not out of altruism but because there is profit to be made. And profit is generally a two way street, or to put it differently, mutually beneficial. Otherwise there is no incentive to trade. This truism is however often lost on bureaucrats, and even more on generals. In the statist model of trade, babus and not businessmen decide what trade is profitable and what is prohibited, which is why we have a positive list of tradable items. What instead needs to be done is to create an enabling environment in which businessmen of the two countries can decide what they want to buy and sell to each other.

The scepticism among many bureaucrats, and even some economists, on the potential of trade between India and Pakistan because many of the product lines of both countries are quite similar, doesn't really stand to scrutiny when we look at examples from other parts of the world. Take for instance the EU. Most European countries manufacture similar products and yet intra-EU trade outscores EU's trade with its other trading partners. Why can't the same happen in South Asia? If barriers to trade are lifted, comparative and competitive advantage will determine the direction and composition of trade and not some SRO or administrative fiat. What is more, the lifting of trade barriers will enable cheaper sourcing of raw material from the natural hinterlands that were rent asunder in 1947. Add to it the availability of markets and the benefits of trade are an absolute no-brainer.

To be sure, there is a need to harmonise tariffs, rules and regulations and standards in South Asia. This lack of harmonisation is often considered (one daresay wrongly) as a major non-tariff barrier. When goods manufactured in one country do not conform to standards laid down in another country, trade will obviously not be possible. But before such differential standards are called NTB's two things need to be checked: one, are these standards country specific or are they applied to all countries equally; and two, are not similar standards also imposed in other countries. For instance, how is it that the same standard when imposed in the US or EU is not considered a NTB but becomes a NTB when imposed by India?

While these so-called NTB's which include trading facilities or the lack of them on the borders are more easily tackled, there are some real barriers to trade which are again more a function of the state of bilateral relationship than anything else. For example, the difficulties faced by businessmen in obtaining visas. In the current climate of distrust, visas are a major problem area. But to use this as an excuse to not move forward with trade is silly because this can be easily worked around by meeting in third countries. Yes, this increases the cost of doing business but if routing goods through a third country is profitable with all the additional expenses it entails, then surely business meetings won't add so much to the transaction cost as to make trade unprofitable. Of course, this is not an ideal situation, but it is better than not doing any business. A similar tactic can be followed on issues of goods inspection. Third party inspectors can be hired in each country to inspect the goods before they are despatched. In fact many western companies are already hiring such third party inspectors to do this sort of work. The point is that many of the imagined barriers can be easily worked around if there is no major penalty imposed on direct buying or selling between the two countries. And if relations improve, then many of these barriers will automatically get lifted. In the meantime, the business can continue to profit themselves, their consumers and their country.

Alongside trade, there is enormous potential for opening up investment and tourism travel between the two countries. It might be a controversial thing to say, but Pakistan stands to gain far more than India if it were to open itself to Indian investments, tourism and allow India transit rights to Afghanistan and Central Asia. The spin-offs of these three things for the Pakistani economy will be quite impressive and will allow Pakistan to cash in on its strategic location as a bridge between South Asia and Central Asia. But guess what, since we revel in cutting our noses to spite the other person, the protectors of sovereignty and ideological frontiers will never allow this to happen. After all, isn't honour and dignity more important than prosperity especially when you are not the one paying the price. But a more fundamental question is whether there honour and dignity in mutually beneficial trade (even if it is with an adversary) or is it in the begging bowl (even if it is spread before a friend)?

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    <1150 Words>                        12^th May, 2011

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A GAME CHANGER

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

Just as 9/11 changed the world, the elimination of Osama bin Laden (OBL) is going to be another game changer in the war on terror. While the Afpak region will bear the brunt of the strategic decisions made by the major players in the post OBL era, India will not be left untouched by the tumult that is likely to unfold in its neighbourhood. Unfortunately, instead of engaging in some serious analysis and scenario building on the likely changes in the regional strategic calculus of the major players, India is engrossed in a rather facile debate on whether or not it should emulate the US in taking out terrorist targets in Pakistan, conveniently ignoring the fact that India is nowhere close to America in terms of military superiority, economic clout and diplomatic influence.

For India to take vicarious pleasure from Pakistan's predicament is entirely understandable. But this cannot be a substitute for a well-thought out policy to handle the post OBL situation, especially since the US hasn't quite given up on Pakistan just yet and has left some wriggle room for the Pakistani establishment to rehabilitate itself. That Pakistan is going to come under enormous pressure to clean up its act and end its double-game in the war on terror by severing all links with Islamist terror groups is a bit of a no-brainer. But what is not clear is how Pakistan will respond to this pressure. Will it play ball or will it dig in its heels and adopt the course of 'strategic defiance'? To a great extent, Pakistan's response will be a function of the domestic political repercussions of Operation Geronimo and how these are balanced with the international compulsions confronting the country.

With Pakistan's public demanding answers, it will be interesting to see who carries the can for the national humiliation caused by US choppers breaching Pakistani defences and putting boots on ground right under the noses of the much vaunted 'defenders of territorial and ideological frontiers of Pakistan' i.e. Pakistan Army. Making the weak and discredited civilian government the fall guy is easy but will be a big mistake because next time there won't be any civilian buffer to bail out the army from charges of either complicity or incompetence. Therefore, unless the pressure for heads to roll becomes unbearable, chances are that the politicians and the military will stick together to ride out the storm.

The problem for Pakistan is that regardless of whether it now complies with US diktats or defies them, it will be confronted with a lot of turmoil. Towing the American line will mean having to move against Islamists all over the country – from Waziristan to Muridke. Not only will this be an unpopular thing to do, it will almost certainly lead to a backlash by terror organisations which will create a civil war like situation inside the country. On the other hand, 'strategic defiance' holds the prospect of international isolation, economic bankruptcy and the terrible unrest that will result from economic deprivation. Worse, once the gloves come off, then the possibility of international powers supporting freedom movements inside Pakistan – Sindh, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan – cannot be ruled out.

There are dangers for India in both these cases. In the former case, while there is little chance of another 26/11 attack (the first one could have never taken place without the active support of the Pakistani state and we are assuming that post OBL a reformed Pakistani state will desist from sponsoring another such attack), there is nevertheless a very high possibility of the unrest in Pakistan spilling over into India. In the latter case, a disintegrating Pakistan could be tempted to take India down with it. The former army chief of Pakistan, Mirza Aslam Beg, is on record that it is the policy of the Pakistan army that even if Pakistan comes under attack from a third country, it will launch a nuclear strike on India. Even if nothing so drastic happens, India must still factor in the possibility of the Pakistani military establishment ratcheting up tension with India to rally it supporters. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what this will do to the half-baked and ill-conceived Indo-Pak 'peace process'.

There are two other possibilities that India needs to ponder over. The first is that having got OBL, the Americans could be tempted to declare victory and abandon Afghanistan. With the OBL obstacle out of the way, the path to 'reconciliation' with the Taliban in Afghanistan has cleared, or so the Americans, and more than them the Pakistanis, will think. But to be able to bring the Taliban on the table, the US will need Pakistan to make the Islamist combatants more amenable to a political settlement. While this will give Pakistan a pivotal role in the deciding the future dispensation in Afghanistan (which by definition will have deep antipathy for India), the Americans will be able to extricate themselves from the Afghan quagmire leaving India out in the cold.

The other possibility holds more promise. The manner in which the US eliminated OBL could end up demoralising and disheartening large sections of the jihadists. The disillusionment that is likely to set in will open a window of opportunity to counter the attraction of jihadist ideology among young Muslims, including in India. Of course, a new idiom and narrative will have to be devised to wean away people inspired by the Islamist propaganda. The absence of such a counter narrative has been one of the biggest failings in the war on terror and OBL's despatch to hell would have been in vain if it cannot be effectively exploited to convince people of the hopelessness of the jihadist cause. But is anyone in India even thinking about this?

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    <962 Words>                        7^th May, 2011

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