A Journey Through Pakistan
Nasik Elahi
Pakistan is a country that defies ordinary explanations. After spending six weeks I am still confused with an equal measure of negative and positive sentiments.
A good measure of a country is in its traffic. In Pakistan traffic is a state of functional chaos: congestion compounded by disregard of the basics of courtesy and rules. The structure of roads and traffic lights is basically overwhelmed in most urban centers. Police traffic control is virtually nil; the few police present are routinely ignored and even issuing traffic summons can make cops lose their jobs.
Law enforcement is the vital aspect of national life that is teetering on the edge. Crime is rampant, police corruption is endemic and many police stations are better described as torture chambers where few citizens dare to enter. The professionalism in police ranks is best described as pathetic. Nearly sixty percent of the force is employed as security guards for the VIPs and their extended families while the ranks of the officers are politicized to answer to their political overlords rather than perform as professionals.
A good example of such dysfunction is the forensic program in the country. The government of Punjab has spent nearly $30 million to establish an unfunctional program, most of which was spent on a kickback scheme involving Cleveland; the Cleveland connection was jailed by the local US authorities but the Pakistani players continue with no threat of accountability. I had specifically warned against such developments in my capacity as a national consultant on forensic programs some six years ago. My advice was ignored by Punjab and other provincial and central authorities and they continued to develop their schemes. There exist a paltry forensic program at the national level and provinces like KPK, Baluchistan, Karachi and Sindh have made little progress over the past six years.
As a result, policing cannot address the challenges of either crime or terrorism. The forensic evidence is nonexistent and cases are so badly prepared that they fail the basic standards of acceptability. The court system is equally politicized into a state of ineptitude where few cases are adjudicated; there also exist functional disparities between the lower and higher judiciary that is similar to the police ranks.
The economy of Pakistan is a mystery to many experts. The country is faced with a chronic shortage of energy that makes both the industrial and social sectors underperform. The government has become an employment agency; both bureaucracy and state owned institutions have become unwieldy because of the bloat imposed by successive governments. The spotty energy supplies have forced people to resort to highly expensive alternatives; those who can afford it have generators others use lead acid batteries that is a public health disaster. The country is kept afloat by billions of dollars in reparations by overseas Pakistanis, loans and grants from US and other countries. Pakistan has the distinction of one of the lowest ratios of tax paying citizens in the world.
Despite the underperformance of the economy and government the most striking feature is the wealth gap and the conspicuous consumption of the haves. The country is full of malls with imported luxury products and restaurants teeming with customers. Another arena of excess is to be found in the marriage halls where people expend beyond their means on clothing, accessories and food. The main source of such wealth is crony capitalism. corruption that siphons off resources from the national enterprise, underground economy, drugs and smuggling. A lot of such wealth is parked in places like Dubai and is also used to spark real estate booms in virtually every city in the country.
Speculative and unplanned developments are placing huge strains upon the poor infrastructure. Rampant corruption further saps the creative energies and cost overruns that stall rather than further projects. The catalog of such misadventures, from setting up energy plants to the airport in Islamabad, keeps growing and yet there exists no accountability of either the government or officials. The power elite are oblivious to the larger national interests and have managed to profit without being responsible as leaders.
Ironically, Pakistan has a thriving media. The content is mostly entertainment with little public service. There is a lot of one-sided commentary about what is wrong but there is no effort to build either consensus or hold people responsible. The Imran Khan wedding got more coverage than Peshawar school massacre or the army campaign in the tribal area combined.
The Pakistan army is a behemoth the country cannot afford in its current form. It is equal parts economic and fighting force. It has the choicest real estate and industrial holdings in the country that provides significant benefits to its ranking officers. Strategically, it is fighting on too many fronts and losing them all and yet continues to guide foreign and domestic policies. The campaign against the militants in the tribal belt has been ramped up but the gains and strategy remain a mystery because they are among the taboo subjects that cannot be discussed in public forums. The army remains focused on India as its main theater in most conflicts ranging from Afghanistan to the insurgent movements in Sindh and Balochistan and look with considerable concern at the actions of the Modi government and its increasingly close relations with the US after the Obama trip to India.
Politically, Pakistan is at the cross roads. The conventional makeup of political parties like Muslim League, PPP and MQM with their entrenched familial leaderships are being challenged by Imran Khan and his dharnas. His movement has eroded some of their influence but since he offers no comprehensive national program beyond his civil disobedience, the canny politicians have come together to ride out the dissident. The next episode to the political drama has yet to develop.
The country is also faced with a highly tenuous situation between state rights and central authority; Baluch and Sindhi issues are being ignored by the Punjab centric central government. A long simmering near civil war between intelligence agencies, militants, criminal and political forces that range from nationalists, waderas, radicals and Indian agent has gone on for years. The political parties are vested only in their areas and pay little heed to coherent national interests or policies; PPP runs Sindhi government while Karachi is controlled by MQM with other areas under the control of the religious militants. Such dysfunction feeds into the violence that has divided the nerve center of Karachi into battle zones that exact a daily toll of dead bodies and businesses.
People are benumbed by the challenges. They are tuned off to the daily catalog of calamities as a trial by God. They find solace in an obsessive exercise of religion while dispensing with the ethics or morality associated with it. Self righteousness by sect and belief is the norm; those who disagree are deemed guilty of blasphemy and a fate prescribed for nonbelievers. Since the problems are all deemed as divinely guided individual responsibility is notably absent at all levels of society. The sense of innocent helplessness is further explained by conspiracy theories for major events as manipulation by some foreign foe; India and US head the list.
Education in Pakistan has undergone a prolonged period of degradation. It started with the Bhutto nationalization program in the seventies and continued with the increased defunding during the Zia era. The existing centers of education for the middle class became hollow shells while the education of the poor masses shifted to madrassas funded largely by Saudi and ultraorthodox sources. The Musharaf era denationalized education but turned every college into a university and further loosened the standards. Today sham universities registered through paper affiliations hand out degrees in various parts of the country. The more expensive teaching institutions are extended employment schemes for teachers who augment their incomes as after hour tutors rather than teach during regular classes. As I have discovered in working to establish a genuine teaching institution for forensic and law enforcement you are encouraged to take shortcuts instead of establishing the appropriate standards. Despite these profound shortcomings a fair proportion of bright students still come through. Imagine the results if the system were to be streamlined with better standards.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Pakistan is that despite all the problems the country is mired in it is still intact. The country has the necessary human capital to move forward but it is being constantly hampered by its existing political, social and religious leadership. The dharna disobedience is giving rise to a challenge to the existing order. It can either provide a way to remove the abusive excesses in the system towards better governance or it can open the floodgates to even sharper conflicts. The future of Pakistan remains to be decided.
