Institutional overextension

What happens when multiple crises converge at the same time and place? We are watching and learning in real time. Every day brings more unbelievable news. Even the most stoic may be moved to tears watching the tragicomedic Pakistani elite stumble over itself trying to find its way around the blast sites. The country is experiencing at least half a dozen major crises at the same time – and there is no end in sight to any of them.

Nearly one out of every six Pakistanis is knee deep in the catastrophic impacts of the 2022 superfloods, but the next extreme weather event won’t wait for an election or debt rescheduling. The ozone layer doesn’t have a Twitter account, and does not, sadly, bleed green.

No Pakistani has been spared the battering ram of an historic inflationary spiral – with little hope for any respite. The one finance minister with a spinal cord and backbone fully intact that Pakistan finally found isn’t good enough for the Ishaq Dar-Javed Latif-Abid Sher Ali wing of the ruling party. How sad for the otherwise almost-one-tenth-as-popular-as-Imran-Khan wing of the King’s Current Party. If only Miftah Ismail had maintained that subsidy and Pakistan had defaulted. Our expat leaders have strange aspirations.

The actually as-popular-as-Imran-Khan, leader of the country, Imran Khan himself, of course can see through all this. His vision extends quite far. Almost as far as the length of his nose. Toxic sycophants like Shaukat Tareen see him, know him, and work him. The plan to sabotage an IMF deal has already been forgotten and forgiven. Standing atop this steaming pile of unspeakable dysfunction endures the victorious and incorrigible Khan. What will he do next? No one knows. Not even Khan. But it will leave him stronger and more popular. A poisonous juggernaut.

There is an all-out battle royale within the superior judiciary. Even with all the special powers available to our chief justices, the appeal of leading the headlines every day, and being seen as the saviours of an abandoned people is too much to resist. A vicious cycle.

Much the same can be said about the top military role in the country. There is constant speculation that an indefensible service extension for the army chief may be on the cards. One would be delighted to believe the substantial number of denials of any such plans. But even Pakistanis born yesterday can remember at least three extensions. Diplomacy, economics, disaster risk reduction, public health – there isn’t anything our military wouldn’t do to save Pakistan. And yet the country is drowning, literally and metaphorically. An extended role for the institution and extensions for its top bosses – it all hasn’t really worked very well thus far.

The state seems to be struggling to fathom exactly how to chew what its employees have conjured to have bitten off in 2022. Government at all levels is under attack, not only from the opposition and from citizens that are fed up with the instability and economic pain of 2022, but also from within itself. From senior civil servants to leaders within the ruling party, a self-derisive and defeatist tone dominates those that actually are supposed to have the power to stop these crises from metastasizing.

In a world where all the incentives are for sharp clarity and binary precision in discerning good from evil, corrupt from honest, and effective from incompetent – Pakistanis are increasingly willing to forgive the least terrible option. For more and more and more Pakistanis: this is the voice that gives colour and character to just how sick and tired we are and should be of this malignant cacophony of crisis upon crisis upon crisis. The loudest and angriest voices in these pages, on YouTube, and across your TV screens are the ones that feel what we feel. Damn all the reason and balance to hell. We want blood. And we know we can’t have it – so let’s at least go down with a throat full of righteous rage.

That is certainly the easier and fully defensible way to go. But it isn’t going to help secure an exit from these cycles of crisis. We have to be able to find our way around the blast site to figure out who lit the fuse on all this, and why.

No matter which approach or which route one takes, the end destination is the same: it is Pindi.

Is the PDM coalition made up of an array of remorseless political careerists with no new ideas and no real integrity that use ‘democracy’ and ‘the people’s will’ as keywords to manipulate people and secure power? Yes.

Is Imran Khan a toxic and dangerous populist whose increasing appeal is the most obvious signal of the institutional and civil rights nightmare that awaits a PTI-run Pakistan in 2023 and beyond? Without question.

Do politicians, bureaucrats, and judges willingly tolerate wide-scale, far-reaching and transaction-reducing corruption as part and parcel of everyday governance? Yes.

Are journalists exactly as vulnerable, and in some cases, even more vulnerable than ordinary people to biases and skewed narratives? 100 per cent.

Are the gaps in preparedness for climate change and extreme weather events accurate reflections of the incompetence of the overall governance system in the country? Yes, they are.

But for Pakistanis to be forced to have these conversations in the absence of a conversation about the all-pervasive presence of the military superstructure across the breadth and width of each and every crisis in the country is exactly the kind of negligent and selective outrage that perpetuates Pakistani vulnerability.

Neither the PDM government today, nor the PTI government of 2018 exist without the explicit and extra-constitutional engagement of the military.

The crisis in the judiciary is a correlate of institutional isomorphic mimicry. What is isomorphic mimicry? It is when one organism seeks to gain something by copying the behaviour of another – notwithstanding the absence of actual similarities between the organisms. Why is the judiciary acting the way it is? Because the exemplar, the institutional Pakistani North Star, does it too.

Military sensitivities about fifth generation warfare and the impact of enemy information operations are perfectly legitimate. But there needs to be a wider set of conversations in Pakistan about information warfare within the country. About the disappearance of journalists and activists. About the blackouts on certain topics and certain groups. About the vast majority of such blackouts having little to do with enemy countries, and having much to do with the inalienable and constitutional rights that Allah and parliament have afforded Pakistanis. If journalists, or news groups become partisan in such an environment, out of principle or out of hunger for revenue, then these contaminations too, are as much a Pindi-driven phenomenon as any of the others.

In such circumstances, there are two things, above all, that Pakistan’s military leadership needs to ensure in the coming weeks and months. The first is an orderly and hiccup-free transition from the current leadership to the new leadership group at the stipulated end of the current chief’s term in November. The second is a steady and irreversible withdrawal of the military from civilian life across the country.

The cost will be high. Many special interests will feel the pinch when their shortcuts disappear overnight. In some cases, the general public may even experience more difficulty in getting things done. Political parties will not suddenly learn how to behave with each other – a role often dumped on the military. But through all such challenges, the military needs to persevere and not change course on what seems to be a growing unspoken consensus in Pindi and Aabpara: the overexposure of the military to politics is a clear and present threat to Pakistan’s national security.

Pakistan’s people have already paid a very heavy price for Pakistani vulnerability. The defenders of the people need to resist the temptation to be drawn in further and further into these metastasizing crises. It may not be clear how Pakistan will recover from the current imbroglio, but it is clear how it will remain stuck in it: by the continued overextension of the military in politics and civilian affairs.

The writer is an analyst and commentator.