A Sharif decade?

Legal eye

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

Nawaz Sharif has shown more spunk on India than any other contemporary leader. The decision to kick-start the comprehensive dialogue wouldn’t have come through had Sharif not exhibited dogged determination to make peace.

Sharif has continued to walk a very fine line: he hasn’t pushed things hard enough to get the khakis riled up; he hasn’t let the mood in Pakistan get sullied despite India’s rebukes; and he continued to give Modi the benefit of the doubt, evincing the inevitability of India-Pakistan talks.

When Sharif went for Modi’s inauguration, our honour brigade was rattled. When India cancelled talks over our high commissioner’s tea invitation to Kashmiri leaders, Sharif quietly absorbed the setback. In Ufa, Sharif bent over backward to keep working with Modi even with our honour brigade up in arms calling him a sell-out. When India heated up the border, Pakistan responded militarily but without engaging in political sabre-rattling. At the UN, Sharif spoke forcefully about Kashmir but as an extension of Pakistan’s desire to make peace with India.

Agreement over structured India-Pakistan peace talks is a breakthrough, given India’s position since Mumbai that there can be no talks with Pakistan on all outstanding issues until the Mumbai trial reaches its logical conclusion. But taking the process forward won’t be easy. Peace and reconciliation will require compromises and that will attract charges of pusillanimity for the leaders making them. While hawks on both sides of the divide are insufferable, ours seem particularly divorced from global power realities as they stand today.

Hawks will claim that any move towards peace is in fact a garage sale of our national interest (with retired diplomats leading the chorus convinced that Pakistan and its future generations must remain stuck in the unpleasant past to which they belong). In a security state that has used a combative ideology to nourish its poor populace instead of giving it a decent life and the hope of a better tomorrow, it is easy to refresh bitter memories of Partition and wars to stir up nonsensical notions of honour and grandeur to scuttle peace initiatives.

Sharif and Modi, if they are serious about lifting the future of this region and its teeming millions living in poverty and misery, will need to encash their political capital to make peace. The real challenge for Sharif is to be able to help Pakistan and its civil-military leaders imagine an alternative worldview. The time for accession of territory or a forced change in territorial boundaries is gone, unless you are a global superpower and can get away with it. Pakistan isn’t one and isn’t expected to become one anytime soon.

Use of non-state actors as a national security strategy is also dying. The disastrous consequences for states, including ours, that employed such strategies are bare before us. In the 21st century non-state actors have replaced states as the main threat to state stability in troubled regions. And with them refusing to acquiesce to the nation-state system, motivated by their zeal to establish Islamic emirates and implement imagined prophecies, it is weak Muslim states that are prime targets. It is thus in Pakistan’s interest to establish peace in this region.

Democracy’s problem with populism and short-termism partly stems from limited tenures and the perceived need to pursue policies and projects that will produce results before the next election cycle. 2013 gave the PML-N a clear majority to form governments in the centre and Punjab. If results of local bodies contests and by-elections are indicators, the PPP is dead in Punjab, the PTI is in a regressive mode (in both Punjab and Sindh) with weak organisational structure and no policy direction, and independents not part of the PML-N bandwagon have nowhere to go.

If the PML-N doesn’t shoot itself in the foot by locking its horns with the khakis or otherwise, and the PTI doesn’t pull some unforeseeable miracle, the 2018 general election might not produce results very different from those in 2013. By 2018, the PML-N would also control the Senate. Thus if the history of military-led political instability doesn’t repeat itself, it isn’t preposterous to suggest, on the basis of today’s facts, that Sharif might be running Pakistan till 2023. By then he would have run the centre for 10 years and Punjab for 15 years straight.

The apology for nonperforming civilian governments has been that are never allowed time to get things done. If Sharif is voted back in power in 2018 and continues till 2023, he will have ruled Pakistan for a period longer than anyone else in our history, including military dictators. If we shift focus from 2018 to 2023, metros, bridges, highways and even energy issues pale into insignificance. In 2023 someone will need to explain what was done to deal with water scarcity, food security, and uneducated and unemployed millions in a swollen population.

Talking about water, food security, education and population might be unsexy today. But it won’t be in a few years. And the PML-N, already in charge of 60 percent of the country for the last eight years, will have no one else to blame come 2023. While you can strike deals to import LNG from foreign states and set up power plants in a hurry, it takes years to build water reservoirs. As a water-stressed country with insufficient storage capacity, we might face water and consequent food shortage even before 2023. And importing food and water for over 200 billion won’t be an option.

Building peace in the region and addressing water scarcity, population growth, education and unemployment are not disconnected issues. In a world where the definition of an honourable and purposeful life is to be able to control Kabul, conquer Kashmir or else go on fighting till we obliterate our enemies or our future generations, what value can one attach to the dignity of being able to provide for family, of taking care of the ill and elderly, of educating the youth such that they help with humanity’s progress while pursuing their own professional and social mobility and dreams?

The narrative that we need to defeat terror and rabid extremism in Pakistan cannot be about preaching one thing when it comes to us and another when it comes to our neighbours. If terrorism is evil, it is evil if practised in Peshawar or Mumbai. If the Taliban’s worldview and religious ideology is regressive, it cannot be regressive for Pakistan but suitable for Afghanistan. Our counterterror narrative will need to redefine purposeful life for the citizen, how it will provide for him and bring him happiness in the larger context of how Pakistan will interact with the rest of the world.

The challenge for Pakistan is to strike the right balance between conservancy and change. Conserving cultural wisdom and traditions and being comfortable in one’s skin is one thing and justifying oppressive or unjust social practices or carrying the deadweight of a bitter past quite another. The cycle of life is about change. We will do our coming generations no favour by stubbornly feeding them the same bitterness that has kept Pakistan and India at daggers drawn for the last 69 years, and this region in a state of turmoil.

Peace with India or facilitation of stability in Afghanistan will have limited success if pursued in a vacuum. These goals must form part of a coherent worldview wherein material and mental wellbeing of citizens is the defining mark of progression, and the state harbours no secret ambition of acquiring the ability to punch above its weight. The credit for getting the comprehensive dialogue going goes squarely to PM Sharif. Does he see the opportunity that lies before him or feel the weight of the responsibility that comes along?

Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu