PAKISTAN: THE HOPE OF WISER MORNINGS

F. S. Aijazuddin

Book Review of The Future of Pakistan, By Stephen P. Cohen and Others, Brookings Institution Press, 2012).  Published in The Political Quarterly, London, Vol. 83, Issue 4, Oct.- Dec.- 2012.

It is a truism that there are more people who want to write about Pakistan than are prepared to run it. Every recent book on this hapless country is a quasi-requiem predicting if not an actual demise, then a prolonged terminal illness, or a debilitating social malaise with an equally painful period of convalescence. It is not as if the disease that afflicts Pakistan is not known. It is just that no-one can persuade the patient to take the prescribed medicine.

Over the years Stephen Cohen—described in Bruce Riedel’s Foreword as ‘the dean of Pakistan scholars in America’—has assumed the role of a family doctor who uses the Brookings Institution in Washington as his clinic. In this latest volume of his diagnosis of Pakistan, Professor Cohen has brought in a number of other specialists to provide their opinions. Some are American, others Indian, a number Pakistani, two retired ambassadors (one to and another from Pakistan), and there is even a touch of khaki with an articulate former Brigadier.

Inevitably with so many different voices, some overlap, some discordance in the opinions expressed, some repetition of themes is to be expected. Whatever may be the direction of their individual approach, though, the contributors share a common objective: to bring primarily Western academics and analysts up-to-date with events in the region of their specialty. Books such as The Future of Pakistan are written less for a local Pakistani readership than for a foreign one. A Pakistani reader, however, who has lived through those events, looks in such a volume for different things: obviously accuracy, a topical relevance and levels of objectivity. If that reader wants to cast an eye beyond the present, he or she will also expect predictions to have a shelf-life beyond say the next year or so.

The contributors to this book know Pakistan too well and in one or two cases not well enough to hazard making such predictions, beyond a generic forecast that Pakistan as a state will ‘muddle along’. Some like Professor Cohen in his magisterial overview lay down specific conditions for Pakistan’s continuity. ‘Internal social and economic decay is one factor,’ he writes, and identifies others as ‘the incoherence of the Pakistani political establishment; the political establishment’s relations with the military, especially the army; and the role of friendly and hostile military outside powers’.

Those who have dealt with Pakistan’s relations with those friendly and hostile outside powers have three particularly in mind: the United States, China and, of course, India. William Milam as a former United States Ambassador to Pakistan (1998–2001) writes from unimpeachable experience. He admits that the United States–Pakistan relationship at present is ‘fragile, and perhaps synthetic’. He wants the former to convince Pakistanis that the United States is ‘a stable, reliable, transparent ally’, and to support this endeavour with ‘a huge reservoir of patience, pragmatic flexibility, and willingness to experiment’. Within Pakistan, Milam calls for a regimen that would emphasise to the Pakistani voter the virtues of economic stability and growth, universal education and hence tolerance. Such a narrative would, in his view, counteract the increasingly pervasive and fundamentally negative religious narrative.

Ambassador Tariq Fatemi (a retired Pakistani diplomat) is more positive than Milam. ‘There is every reason to believe,’ Fatemi asserts, ‘that in another ten years, the parliamentary system will have taken root and become more durable, ensuring a stable and prosperous Pakistan.’ And just in case anyone dares to remind him in 2022 of this prediction, he clips to it a caveat that emphasises the conditionalities of correcting the demographic imbalance, meeting energy shortages, avoiding water scarcity, controlling urbanisation, etc., etc.

Shuja Nawaz, a former bureaucrat and now a Washington-based analyst, is the younger brother of the former Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Asif Nawaz. He shares all of Fatemi’s concerns. Interestingly, he sees a rapprochement taking place between India and Pakistan not so much through bilateral talks or even back-door diplomacy, but through links ‘between military and business interests’. In Nawaz’s mind, the propellant will be ‘an increasingly urban military officer corps’ which he believes can and will use military power ‘as a deciding factor in negotiations’. He appears convinced that once an equilibrium has been established between the two distant neighbours (to use Kuldip Nayar’s still durable description) through an interdependent trade and an open border policy, that will lead automatically to a resolution of other fractious disputes—in particular those related to water. If only the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad and the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi could see the same future through Shuja Nawaz’s prism.

While discussing the catalytic role that the military can play in commercial reunions, Nawaz neglects to comment on the Army’s own commercial interests. Today, the Pakistan Army is as much an efficient fighting force as it is an aggressive, competitive and profitable business conglomerate, about which Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha has written in her daring expose Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (Pluto Press, 2007). Some cynics have gone so far as to say that if General Jekyll did fight again, it would be to protect Mr Hyde’s business interests.

No survey such as this aggregation of essays would be complete without a commentary on the relations between the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People’s Republic of China. Mohan Guruswamy’s paper concentrates almost exclusively on this aspect of Pakistan’s foreign policy. To many observers one of the miracles of modern diplomacy is how two nations—unequal in size, poles apart in ideology, linguistically incompatible, their economies travelling on different trajectories—should have been able to sustain an unbroken relationship for so long. It says much for the sagacity of Chinese leadership since the days of Mao Zedong, and less for the persistent luck of Pakistan’s leadership. Guruswamy begins with a customary survey of Pakistan–China relations and continues without taking its eye off the political ties that developed between the countries (at the expense of India) during the 1960s and then to the profit of Pakistan during the 1970s after it facilitated United States–China dialogue. Guruswamy would have us believe that over the past twenty years, China’s economic support to Pakistan has been primarily in military and weaponry. What is ignored is the fact, in the 1960s, many decades before China invested in Gwadar Port (that overlooks the Straits of Hormuz), for ‘strategic’ reasons, as compelling then as now, it assisted Pakistan in building the Heavy Mechanical Complex Ltd and corollary facilities at Taxila, near Islamabad. As long as the Karakorum Highway remains in use (and the Chinese do not intend to abandon that in a hurry), it will remain China’s portal to the subcontinent, just as the Khyber Pass once provided an access to invaders from the northwest. Alexander and the Mughals had to cross on horseback. Only history will tell whether the next batch of visitors comes through the Karakorum Highway by motor vehicle or by train. A suggestion proffered by Guruswamy is that Pakistan receives such massive infusions of Chinese capital because China is ‘awash with foreign cash’. Investment in Gwadar is ‘much better than dumping money in an American bank where it would earn next to nothing’. One hopes that Chinese economic planners are less simplistic when they appraise their investment alternatives.

Of the three foreign countries whose policies contort Pakistan’s own decision-making processes—the United States, China and India—it is India that in the end matters most. One can run out of antitheses when describing India–Pakistan relations, but if one had to choose one that encapsulated them, it must be that India is the neighbour Pakistan cannot live with, or without. It is not surprising perhaps that the one essay devoted to India–Pakistan relations should have been by a retired Indian bureaucrat—Rahukutumbi Raman. Raman does not agree with those who believe that Pakistan has been irreversibly radicalised. In his view, there many have been ‘radicalization of sizeable sections of the population’, but like the curate’s egg, there are parts of Pakistan that are still good. To him, the Army—not a radical institution in the ‘religious sense’—will be the dependable safeguard, ensuring by its presence and (if need be) intervention that there is no ‘danger of radicalisation of Pakistan as a state or as a nation in the short and medium term’.  Raman deals at length with the pervasive influence of jihadi forces, ignoring the latent reality that these movements are not confined to one country. They have learned to operate across borders, like transnationals, armed Coca Colas or McDonalds, corporations without a conscience. Today, they may be in Pakistan or Afghanistan, tomorrow the world. Complacency does not guarantee immunity. He recognises that the threat confronts India as much as it does the international community and suggests that the insecurity will continue for ‘at least another ten to fifteen years’. Raman’s solution: ‘Better education, better medical care, better infrastructure, better governance.’ Otherwise, better watch out, everyone!

Two contributors avoid the ‘If only…’ trap. Anita Weiss’ paper peels the onion of population growth, urbanization and female literacy, and Moeed Yusuf writes on youth and the future. Who would knowingly disagree with Ms Weiss when she argues that female education will bring in its wake planned motherhood, fewer children and therefore more to be ‘shared by few’. She deplores the ‘nuclearisation’ of the extended family structure, and fears that smaller family units will lead to social insubordination and insularisation as urban neighbours lose interest in each other. Her final remark invites a rejoinder. She ends her essay on female empowerment with a quotation by United States Congresswoman Bella Abzug: ‘Women will change the nature of power, rather than power changing the nature of women.’ Did Ms Abzug have Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi or Golda Meir in mind? Moeed Yusuf comes closest to a pedagogical approach to his subject. His conclusion from various survey data is that while the youth in Pakistan has ‘mixed’ feelings about the current political system (one has to remember that Yusuf was writing before Imran Khan youth-energised tsunami), society as a whole remains ‘traditional to its core’. Will Pakistani society have changed by the year 2025? Yusuf does not think so. Its identity at its core will remain religion, its values traditional tempered at its edges by education.

The last word—as was the first—is provided by Stephen Cohen. It contains a reference to a study conducted in 2004 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. What is of interest is that during the study, a simulation exercise was conducted that explored two postulates: General Musharraf slowly rebuilt Pakistan, and political turmoil overtook his regime. No-one at the CSIS had thought of suggesting a third: Musharraf’s incompetence rather than the ambitions of someone else would drive him from Islamabad.

Does Pakistan have a future? After reading the eighteen essays, one would yield a grudging ‘yes’, if only because it had a past. Will that future be better than its past? Every contributor hopes so, if only because how else would they remain in business? Will Pakistan collapse under the weight of its own incompetence? Unlikely, if only because countries the size and strategic relevance of Pakistan do not disintegrate like leaves pressed between the pages of history books. Pakistan is too vibrant, too restless, too active a state to commit suicide. And for any Pakistani reader, books such as this one provide a helpline to informed reality.

(c) F.S. Aijazuddin, 2012