The News, May 10, 2006
FP ‘storyline’ doesn’t square with reality
Nasim Zehra
Last December, speaking at a seminar at the Harvard University on US Foreign Policy, former US undersecretary of defence turned professor, Joseph Nye, made a keen observation when he said that in the information age the winner will be the one whose story wins.
He was discussing the extent to which the US war would suffer a moral blow from the stories of excesses in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Gharaib. He unequivocally condemned the crimes committed by the US army. He believed it was morally wrong, and also strategically detrimental, because when the ‘storyline’ about you is negative, it doesn’t matter what the reality of your ‘cause’ is.
Coming from Pakistan, it was easy for me to relate to Nye’s point about the storyline. Often Pakistan’s many problems are compounded by the fact that in the global marketplace of information, the media often only gives it a negative storyline. The reasons have been numerous: the continuing regional and, to some extent, global fallout of the anti-Soviet Afghan policy, the rise of sectarianism within, the AQ Khan fiasco and finally Pakistan’s democratic deficit. Often the co-collaborators or the provokers of faulty policies went scot free and a stark lesson confronted Pakistan; the extent to which the global system tolerates your follies is almost entirely linked to your own strength or, very seldom, to the strength accrued to you from a genuine alliance relationship. Such is the nature of global politics.
The Pakistani State has imbibed these lessons. Its policies have altered and so has the ideological orientation of the Pakistani State. But it is a complex reform and reorientation process. It is still ‘work-in-progress’. But the changing ground realities of Pakistan are not necessarily reflected in the general discourse.
Interestingly, even an ‘objective’ study by the Carnegie Endowment’s Foreign Policy magazine to produce a failed state index showed both bias and incompetence in analysing Pakistan. Significantly, in a global ranking of the weak and failing states the FP declared Pakistan to be the 9th most vulnerable state on the index, of the 148 that were surveyed.
It would take a major stretch of imagination, sheer ignorance or prejudice to declare a state in the process of reforming itself, however problematically, as a failure. The Pakistani stats is one that is extending its writ over new areas, reclaiming public space for civil society that it itself ceded to armed groups decades ago. It is better managing the economy, attracting foreign investment, and billions of dollars of remittances from overseas Pakistanis.
Clearly the major problems remain; the most serious being the absence of a credible democratic system, high poverty levels and extremely poor social indicators. New and renewed challenges in the tribal areas and in Balochistan have emerged. The government has vacillated from a dialogue-led policy to a force-led policy, from a proactive one to a reactive one. Complicated problems of insurgency and militant activity require exceptional skill and patience. There are multiple other macro-level power and resource sharing issues involving the centre and the provinces. Also, the Pakistani state and the political class have been in power contests. The tasks are humongous and the approach may often be questionable, but the state’s capacity to deal with many of these issues is rising.
There are other improvements Pakistan can boast of. In relative terms, the judiciary and the police are functioning better than before. The independent press is a great national asset. Hence a country of 165 million people sitting as a pivotal point connecting three key regions South Asia, South West Asia and Central Asia and China, is moving towards becoming a functioning state, one better able to handle the affairs of the state.
Pakistan is the largest contributor of troops to the UN peacekeeping force, it’s a key partner in the global non-proliferation efforts, it enjoys the most clout, and it has the maximum number of women in the parliaments and in the local government system. Given all these facts, to describe Pakistan as the world’s 9th most vulnerable state on the brink of collapse is most unconvincing. There are obvious analytical flaws here, in assessing Pakistan. For example, to not discount negative scores caused by natural disasters in the overall conclusion on Pakistan shows either a flawed methodology or sheer inertia. Clearly, Pakistan should not have been slotted at all in view of the natural disaster that struck it, or it should have been reported as a ‘special case’ in the Index.
In fact Pakistan’s rating as a state should have gone up in view of the way it handled the October tragedy. Notwithstanding the criticism regarding the state’s inefficiency there is a basic acknowledgement by national and international agencies that the people and the state together handled the aftermath in an admirable fashion. Hence the handling of the earthquake situation should have qualified as a ‘pocket of efficiency’ in contrast with the ‘pocket of problem’ category created to underscore the Bush administration’s gross mishandling of Hurricane Katrina.
In assessing Pakistan the FP does not hold good on its own assertion that improved functioning of the police and the judiciary is the key to an efficiently run state. While the police and the judiciary have a long way to go before becoming efficient and genuinely de-linked from the power centres, there are indications of some improvement. For example the suo motto actions taken by the chief justice in many environment and public interest cases indicates some marginal improvement.
Similarly, in its commentary on Pakistan the FP takes the position that the Pakistan army and the religious groups have the same approach, that in reality the army-religious nexus over Taliban and in the Waziristan area is intact and that it would be activated during the elections. This was based on opinion and not on facts which would incontestably establish the nature of the government operations in Waziristan. The facts should have covered the number of military operations conducted in Waziristan, the number of foreign militants nabbed in the areas, the number of army and civilian casualties, the elaborate Pakistan-US infrastructure set up for collaborating and the regular intelligence sharing between Pakistan and the US army. Instead the study appears to have banked on press commentaries on these operations.
On Pakistan’s Taliban policy and its tribal area operations often it is opinion, suspicion and impatience that inform analysis. The facts, the ground reality and appreciation of the complexity of the problems are missing as is the ability to view the context within which these challenges arise in totality. The external dimensions which create new challenges or complicate the existing ones are completely ignored. Pakistan’s problems do not make Pakistan a failing state. The methodology applied to Pakistan was obviously flawed. The FP should withdraw its conclusions on Pakistan and redo the ranking.
The writer is an Islamabad-based security analyst and adjunct professor at SAIS Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC email: nasimzehra@hotmail.com
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