Thank you Ambassador Milam

Daily Times, May 17, 2006
COMMENT: Joining the club of top failed states? — William B Milam
Some temptations are irresistible. As I read all the foofaraw about Pakistan being ranked as the ninth most vulnerable state, I can’t resist dredging up Groucho Marx’s famous dictum: “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.”

There has been a lot of hyperbole about this ranking, and much misunderstanding. The headlines screamed that Pakistan had been designated as one of the top ten “failed states”. A closer reading of the stories, however, brought out that the list of 146 countries compiled by Foreign Policy magazine and the think-tank, Fund for Peace, purports to rank countries by their viability. The ten least viable, i.e. most vulnerable, is the category that Pakistan has, according to this poll, fallen into. However, a close look at the other nine is instructive; they are either failed, failing, or recovering failed states.

There are plenty of reasons why these nine countries would want Pakistan as a member of their exclusive club. Primarily, it would make them look good. Somalia, for example, hasn’t had a government in years. Ivory Coast has not one government, but two. Sudan has a government, which is believed by many to be committing genocide. DR Congo, Iraq, Chad, and Afghanistan have central governments that have little or no writ outside the capital city, and various power centres outside the capital that might qualify as competing governments.

Those of you who know something of my background will realise that I know a failed state when I see one. I spent three years in Liberia prior to coming to Pakistan in 1998 and worked a lot on Afghanistan when I was there and after I left. (Interestingly enough, Liberia is no longer in the top ten.)

Pakistan was not a failed state when I was there, though it came close to a form of economic failure when international insolvency threatened in the summer of 1998. When I visited Pakistan in March of this year, I found some worrisome things, which I recorded in my previous article (The uncertainty principle in Pakistani politics, Daily Times, May 3), but nothing that would justify it being dropped from 34th to 9th place on the viability index, into the club of the failed, failing, or previously failed.

I wonder whether the club’s membership committee has applied criteria in some formulaic manner that takes no notice of real conditions on the ground. The 12 criteria that I saw listed in the news stories were: mounting demographic pressures; massive movement of refugees and internally displaced peoples; legacy of violence — groups seeking grievance; chronic and sustained human flight; uneven economic development along group lines; sharp and/or severe economic decline; criminalisation and de-legitimisation of the state; progressive deterioration of public services; widespread violation of human rights; security apparatus as “state within a state”; a rise of factionalised elites; and the intervention of other states or external actors.

Clearly Pakistan does not score well on some of the criteria (e.g. demographic pressures, uneven economic development, sectarian violence, human rights), but there has been no massive deterioration in those criteria over the past year — or several years. In at least one of the criteria, economic growth, Pakistan has definitely strengthened. For most of the rest, there is not much change; things are no worse or no better than last year — or the last several years. As far as I can make out, the only criterion that showed significant change since 2005 was the large, and ostensibly temporary, displacement of people after the earthquake.

On its face, this ranking is ludicrous. However, that does not make the message it sends any less ominous. It should not be ignored or dismissed. This message is that the uncertainty inside Pakistan that I wrote about in my previous article also dominates the evaluations of those outside Pakistan — be they friend or foe.

This is why the other countries that suffered grave natural disasters in the same timeframe, and experienced massive displacements of people because of these disasters, were not thrown into the “most vulnerable” club. It is not that they handled the disaster and the temporary migrations any better (some, in fact, handled them worse). It is that there is more confidence in their long-term future.

What distinguishes Pakistan from those countries is not how it scored on the 12 criteria, but the widespread doubt in the rest of the world about its future. Will it slide inexorably towards a scripturalist, retrogressive society that cannot compete in the increasingly globalised world of the 21st century? Will the bonds of authoritarianism tighten as the military digs deeper into power? Will the fissiparous tendencies strengthen as the state continues to deny political solutions to regional differences?

Most fundamentally, will Pakistan ever agree on a coherent national identity, and what will it be — the inclusive, modern vision of Jinnah or one that will bring on internal or regional conflict?

Pakistan is perceived by much of the outside world as moving, albeit slowly and erratically, in the wrong direction. Human rights do not seem to improve despite the valiant efforts of Pakistani human rights advocates and a (sometimes) sympathetic government. The Islamist agenda appears to advance incrementally despite all the government rhetoric about “enlightened moderation”. The hudood laws and the blasphemy law are still on the books, and tribal custom continues to trump the rule of law in many areas.

Education remains a stepchild of the budgetary process, and the madrassas continue unreformed. The tribal areas are still beyond central government writ, and Talibanisation is spreading from them — and from Balochistan, in which there is still insurgency — to other parts of Pakistan. Finally, the military government seems likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

What is the counterpoint to all this dreary news — the good news? Well, the economy is much better (except, that is, for income distribution). There has been success in the struggle against terrorism, especially the capture or killing of many Al Qaeda operatives. And there is a potential rapprochement with India; relations between the two countries are very calm at present and there is occasional progress in the normalisation process.

These are not inconsiderable achievements, but whether the ledger is a net positive depends on where you sit. There are many, inside and outside Pakistan, who think it isn’t, and who worry that the country is ignoring Groucho’s admonition and drifting almost aimlessly into a club that it should avoid at all cost. Since I have, perhaps unwisely, agreed to write one article each fortnight for Daily Times, instead of one a month as before, I will have much more to say on these subjects in the coming months.

William Milam is a former US ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh. He is currently at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC