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Thursday March 28, 2024

Rough waters ahead

By Mosharraf Zaidi
May 24, 2016

The writer is an analyst and
commentator.

After two months of meaningless but deeply bitter and divisive public displays of contempt over the Panama Papers, Pakistanis begin this week wondering (once again) why their country is spoken of by so many around the world as an international basket case.

This may or may not be the price of having drone operators from the US military regularly visit destruction upon targets in your country and, more often than not, end up killing internationally reviled terrorists, like the case of the most recent assassination target, Mullah Mansoor Akhtar. But it is definitely the price of having a Ministry of Foreign Affairs that religiously follows up each drone attack of significance with a press release that decries a “violation of sovereignty”. Every time. This is an institutionalised version of “ibkay maar” – at the national level. As a Pakistani Mohajir, it makes me particularly nauseous. It is beyond embarrassing.

For months now, Americans have been complaining to Pakistan about the consistent disappointment they feel at Pakistan’s failure to speed up a reconciliation process that is supposedly entirely in Pakistan’s control. The Americans have never quite known what they are doing in Afghanistan. They landed in the country in a fit of post-9/11 rage and have not had the honesty, or self-confidence to pack up and leave – knowing that a country that eats up and vomits out the British and the Soviets at their respective heights isn’t about to be tamed by an empire so self-conscious about 21st century process, and Twitter trends, that it had to fire the general leading the mission after a Rolling Stone profile that would have been the pride of any military just a few decades ago.

So the US mission in Afghanistan meanders along. A raging and wounded bull that has been searching for a way to make the nightmare of governing Afghanistan simply go away. It won’t go away: there ain’t enough Ambien in the world.

Afghanistan – no matter what dark prognosis you read of parachute experts from Western news agencies, or retired Pakistani uncles with partisan leanings – may be a nightmare to govern. But it also happens to be a place of untapped and nearly unlimited potential, as a country, as a society and as an economy.

Quite unwittingly, a decade and a half of massive, inorganic infusions of development aid, and military-related aid, has created a young, entrepreneurial urban Afghan discourse that is sophisticated, hungry and suffering from a near-delusional disconnect from its own country’s harsh realities. In this way, young suit-wearing Afghans are no different from young suit-wearing Indians, Bangladeshis, and even Pakistanis. A little disconnect from the harshness of the worst parts of your country goes a long way toward building alternative, and more hopeful narratives.

One of these narratives was the emergence of an honest, intellectual giant of a man, as national leader. Ashraf Ghani is a living, breathing testament to the power of persistence, luck and intellect. When he was sworn in as leader of a coalition on September 29, 2014, he was given a few weeks to survive. Here we are approaching his second anniversary in office. As an international leader, he represents a broken and dysfunctional country, but has more personal credibility than many of the leaders of much bigger nations in his immediate neighbourhood.

How has he managed to survive all this time? Largely because he is methodical and persistent. Even his legendary temper tantrums seem to have disappeared as he has settled into his job as president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. When Afghanistan bleeds, he is the face and voice of his country.

This narrative of a youthful, hopeful, positive Afghanistan has some enemies. Some of them are obvious. The Taliban, both Generation 1.0 and NextGen, are outsiders in the Wild West of aid money in Kabul. Some residual funds find their way to commanders along the important truck routes, but for the most part Afghans that join the Taliban do so because wearing a suit and being on a flight to Dubai for business is a dream too far removed for them. Picking up a gun is less devastating – and easier. The elder Talibs, including those that may have recall of fighting for Mazar-e- Sharif now make up a tiny share of the foot soldiers of the insurgency. Most fighters are NextGen Taliban, young men who were probably not even born when the battle for Mazar was raging in 1997.

Other enemies of this youthful, hopeful, positive Afghanistan include those non-Afghans that are too jaded, old or cynical to be able to see light at the end of this longest of tunnels. Too many of these people happen to be influential Pakistanis – in the media, among our punditry, and most dangerously of all, within our civil and military bureaucracies. Realists scoff at this presentation of Afghanistan – as a country more victimised by the cynicism of its neighbours and world powers than by its own limitations. But maybe the realists, especially in Islamabad, and Rawalpindi (and certainly in Washington DC, Langley, and Tampa Bay) should look in the mirror.

For a short period, between the summer of 2014 and the end of 2015, it seemed Pakistan was beginning to find its legs for a run at a decent future. The conventional wisdom attributed this optimism to two factors: improved security and a stronger economy. Conventional wisdom was not entirely wrong, but it tends to miss a major part of the story.

The muscular national security approach that replaced the laissez faire surrender to the TTP, LeJ and their affiliates that seemed to be taking place prior to the attack on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi on June 8, 2014 was displaced by Operation Zarb-e-Azb, launched in the summer of 2014, and the wholesale crackdown on Pakistan-targeting terrorists after the December 16, 2014 atrocities at APS Peshawar.

Similarly, while Pakistani policemen, Rangers, soldiers, pilots and spies were mostly busy taking the boot to terrorists, something quite wonderful was happening outside Pakistan that would only add to the steady stream of good news. Crude oil prices began to tumble around the same time as TTP terrorists were attacking Karachi airport. In June of 2014, crude oil was going for over $100 a barrel. By February of 2015, it had fallen to less than $45 a barrel. This sixty percent drop was so precipitous that it triggered a savings of over $4 billion for Pakistan. That four billion US dollars (along with Ishaq Dar’s prudent but deeply conservative fiscal and monetary policy) is the cushion that has allowed Pakistan to be a solvent and seemingly healthy economy over the last two years.

I would argue that as much as we may want to credit General Raheel Sharif for everything that has gone right with national security, and as much as we may want to deny credit to Finance Minister Ishaq Dar for all the things that didn’t go wrong with the economy, the real substance of improved national confidence was not rooted exclusively in improved national security or much better fiscal and monetary policy.

In democracies, national confidence is built by elected national leaders. Raheel Sharif might possibly be the greatest fighting general we have ever witnessed in Pakistan Army khakis, and Ishaq Dar could be among the best accountants to ever work for the government of Pakistan – but neither of these wonderful men is an elected national leader. They are agents of the state. Excellent ones. They can execute a clear vision. But they cannot construct a path forward for this country. At the heart of everything that went right between 2014 and 2016 were Pakistan’s national leaders, specifically Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, but also those that forced him to pay attention to his job: particularly Imran Khan.

As Pakistan stumbles into a new era of tensions with the US, there is no escaping the absence of that national leadership at this critical moment. Extreme danger lurks in the continued negligence of Pakistan’s Afghanistan-Iran-India and US policy. Pretending that Operation Zarb-e-Azb, high forex reserves and the CPEC can replace clear-headed and proactive national leadership represents a mortal threat to Pakistan’s long-term economic and national security interests. A somnambulant prime minister and a popular opposition leader prone to constant manipulation do not inspire confidence. The job begins with dictating clearly to the members of the QCG what Pakistan can and cannot do. Leaving it to the military has placed us in the bind we are in. It is time for leaders to lead.