Pakistan: Failure all around

We Pakistanis – even those of us who have become cynical and bitter – tend to bristle when the words ‘failed’ and ‘state’ are placed within the proximity of the word ‘Pakistan’. We froth at the mouth and mutter something about Afghanistan, Somalia, Ethiopia, etc. Yet here we are. United States Special Forces on board US military helicopters entered Pakistani territory and flew to the outskirts of Abbottabad, where they entered a 3 story building housed in a high-walled compound near the Pakistan Military Academy and killed Osama Bin Laden, before taking his body on board one of their helicopters and leaving. All this is supposed to have happened in approximately one hour and forty minutes. Apparently, Mr. Bin Laden had been living right under our noses for years.

Then, barely a few weeks later, armed militants entered PNS Mehran – home to the Pakistan Navy’s aviation wing – in Karachi where they destroyed two state of the art aircraft and then hunkered down in the base for more than fifteen hours fighting off Pakistani military security. About a year and a half ago (October 2009) there was a brazen attack on the General Head Quarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, the command center of the Pakistan Army.

There is something about these incidents that is shockingly scary and crushingly numbing at the same time. This reaction is difficult to explain. It is the reaction of someone who has been in denial. I do not mean the denial that our electronic media and their paisa-an-opinion pundits suffer from. The hyperactive reaction coupled with a threadbare grasp on reality from that pillar of our democracy has been true to type. Their conspiracy theories about ‘foreign hands’ and complains regarding compromised sovereignty are missing the point.

No, the reaction that I am experiencing is more complex. I have always believed that the civilian-military relationship in Pakistan has been lopsided; that the development of civilian institutions is hampered by the significant presence of the military in almost all aspects of the state and the economy and that a correction of this imbalance is necessary for the further development of Pakistan.

There is a set of assumptions implicit in such a view. It assumes that the institution that is Pakistan’s security establishment is politically and economically stronger than civilian institutions. But further, deeper down is the assumption that this is because the security establishment is more professional, more organized, with clear goals, more strengths, fewer weaknesses, less fragmented, with clearer chains of command and greater loyalty to the institution. While civilian institutions display none of these properties.

I have no evidence other than the apparent strength of the military to base such perceptions on. But the mind looks for logical reasons for why things are the way they are. Surely an institution that has run a large proportion of the state’s policy mix since 1956 must possess all the qualities one associates with successful organizations. This must explain why civilian institutions have displayed stunted growth, with institutional fragmentation plaguing them, while the military has displayed ever-increasing strength.

Essentially, it is the civilian-democracy apologist’s answer to the question: “so, how come Pakistanis don’t protest in the street when the Army takes over after a decade of civilian rule?”

“Well, the civilians don’t really get full control of the state when they return to power, and they have fragmented interests, and then there is the infighting, and they haven’t really had time and space to develop their institutions … ummm … and the Army is a really strong institution, and they have all this discipline, and a huge budget, and training, and … because of this when the civilians don’t deliver, the public is almost relieved to have the Army back …” Or something to that effect.

For those who dream of complete civilian control over the state (with the military being a proud but subservient arm of that state) this kind of thinking is laced with envy. There is an “if only” sort of melancholy that sits uncomfortably somewhere in the stomach when we are defending blatantly corrupt and inept politicians in arguments with those who think that Pakistan is a bed of roses when a man in khaki occupies the presidency. We choke inwardly when we present these moth-eaten political parties – devoid of thinking and vision, patched together on whim and personal interest – as alternatives. We ask ourselves, “is this the best we can do?”

The increasing frequency of attacks on our military (I mourn for those who lost their lives) and the intelligence failure or complicity that Bin Laden’s death in Abbottabad represents has now made it clear that, as Cyril Almeida put it in these pages recently, the Emperor has no clothes. That institutional strength, the organization, the loyalty to the institution, that chain of command, it is all for naught. Maybe there was a time when the military was a lean and well oiled machine. But the one we’ve seen recently is fat, ponderous and confused. The response to the Bin Laden incident last month and the PNS Mehran attacks recently have been akin to a deer caught in headlights.

Maybe this is because a decade of disproportionate salary increases, plot allotments and BMWs for service chiefs has made the officers of our armed forces too comfortable. Perhaps it is because of the ideological stretch required for rank and filers – raised on Islamic nationalism – having to wage war against Jihadis who they see more as brothers than enemies has caused the institution to snap. Either way, the professionalism and preparedness of our much vaunted military has been tested and found severely lacking.

And this realization has left me queasy. For all my criticism of the military’s pernicious role in politics, I did not wish to ever discover that there was rot within. The ill feeling gets worse when we look around and see institutions and individuals failing to do what they are meant to do and doing things they’re not supposed to. Not only have our civilian institutions failed (whether out of neglect, corruption or incompetence) the military has also failed. It has even failed at achieving the bare minimum that could be expected from them: defending themselves.

A failed state, indeed!

A version of this article was published in Dawn on June 8, 2011. It was written after the PNS Mehran attacks and before the murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad.