Pakistan’s Swot analysis

Let’s start with the strengths. There is a new government under a new administration. As always, there are supporters and detractors – as there should be in a healthy democracy. But between change and the status quo, change is always preferred – especially if the status quo is problematic and the country is Pakistan.

Six months in and we have positive developments on the foreign policy front. First, we have a foreign minister – a development that doesn’t quite deserve a burst of applause until you realise we had none in the previous government. Shah Mehmood Qureshi is sharp, classy and effective, and is making the right moves. Our relationship with the Chinese continues to become sweeter than honey and higher than mountains and so on.

CPEC promises domestic investment and development. Relations with the royals and Emirates look promising – as aid packages blow air into our sinking life boat, one after the other. Even with India, there was an initial attempt at dialogue, rebuffed later by PM Modi (friendship with Pakistan is not an election winner in ‘Hindutva land’), sending a crisp message to the world: Pakistan wants peace, India doesn’t.

The opening of the Kartarpur Corridor threw things into sharper contrast: this is a Pakistan that desires peace and outreach. Finally, there are serious talks of the US withdrawing from Afghanistan along with ongoing negotiations with the Taliban who, despite 17 long years of US occupation, still control 50 percent of the country. Almost a decade ago, Imran Khan proposed the same solution – for which his detractors called him ‘Taliban Khan’. Today, even someone like Lindsey Graham – a man you’d never accuse of having secret affection for Pakistan – agrees with Khan’s 10-year-old diagnosis. It seems like America is learning the lessons that it should have learnt from Vietnam 50 years too late.

Earlier, Khan and Trump exchanged fire on Twitter. Trump was at it again, using Twitter for his schoolyard antics, but Khan responded with facts and figures. Some felt that Khan was brash and blunt. But a few days later, statements emerged from a much more reconciliatory White House that Pakistan is a key ally in Afghan reconciliation efforts. The message seems clear: Pakistan has regional leverage, quite far from a country with its back to the wall.

On the economic front: the debt crisis, a ball that the Nawaz government dropped, has been averted courtesy aid packages from ‘friends’ of Pakistan. A mini-budget was recently presented to boost commerce and business – via tax exemptions and cuts for SMEs and the agricultural/industrial sector. In other words, the government is committed to course-correction – a tall order considering just how far off the course things stand today. And the notorious civ-mil imbalance seems refreshingly contained.

Now the weaknesses: first, it is true, Khan’s campaign agenda was justice and accountability, and the country desperately needs to set standards for fair trade and ethics. But this is no time for NAB to prowl the land as the grand inquisitor. The system, weak and recovering, requires surgery and shouldn’t be bludgeoned with a spiked club. Accusations of selective accountability will hurt the current administration and make any effort at progress painful.

Second, the economy is not out of danger. Debt-servicing and the military budget continue to eat away our budget. We ran up our debt when the rupee was over-valued and now we must pay it back on a devalued rupee. And no, there seems no method to the madness; it is just madness through and through.

Furthermore, we have the circular debt crisis. Short of an overhauling of the power sector – inefficient DISCOS, line losses, and private IPPs charging the government at pre-determined rates – this will remain a noose around the country’s neck and it will only tighten from here on.

Third, there are curbs and controls on the media. The moment a state drops the axe on free speech, it blows life into pockets of resistance, which can tear it from within. In Pakistan, free speech is not merely about gender preferences or the views on the role of the state; it runs much deeper. However, while you can silence journalists, de-platform student activists, and crush incipient resistance movements, you cannot murder ideas. Ideas catch fire and birth revolutions along the way.

Fourth, it is good that the state arrested Khadim Rizvi, but what also needs to be arrested is the mindset that created him and several others like him. Proscribed actors are still at large. Pakistan can no longer afford to be on the wrong side of history. We need religious education, not deadly indoctrination; we need critical thinking, not creedal conformance; and we need educated theologians, not merchants of death.

As for opportunities and threats, there is enough overlap between the two to confound a generation of thinkers and reformers. Our youth bulge is at once our greatest opportunity and greatest threat. A young, productive workforce could elevate this country to the highest levels of prosperity while an uneducated, unproductive one could drag the country to the depths of despair. An ascendant China could be the giant wave that lifts all boats; it equally could be the tsunami that mercilessly inundates.

Our looming water crisis could mark the moment when we fundamentally redefine how we irrigate our lands, conserve our water, and refine laws and regulations around water ownership. Or, we might let the shortage devastate sentient life on our land, generation after generation.

Given this context, it is not unreasonable to imagine that a huge mountain stands erected on the actions and will of those in power – a mountain of responsibility that will determine whether we rise to the apex or remain crushed under its load.

The writer is a freelance contributor.