DURING his recent visit to London, President Pervez Musharraf did not drop by the office of the Economist to rebuke its editorial team for terming Pakistan as ‘the world’s most dangerous place’. Nor did he unleash his wrath on the Newsweek for casting Pakistan in the same light a couple of months ago.

But when a London-based veteran Pakistani journalist questioned the government’s track record, the president lost his cool and advised expatriate Pakistanis to give him a ‘sound beating’ (do teen tika bhi do) to such journalists.

The Economist is wrong in characterising Pakistan as the most dangerous place and Musharraf must understand that Pakistan is splashed on glossy covers of international magazines because of his botched handling of Pakistan’s political problems.

Upbraiding a respected journalist of the country is hitting the wrong target.

Pakistan, in most respects, is as good or bad as most of its neighbours none of which is branded as dangerous. Where Pakistan is a cut above the rest is in the ineptness and self-righteousness of its military rulers whose policies have contributed to making the country’s political system volatile and violent.

When it comes to being ‘dangerous’ or ‘risky’ or ‘unpredictable’, it has more to do with political aspects of things rather than the economic and social side.

Let us take a little comparative tour of the region in terms of economic and social indicators.

Pakistan is placed 76th in the list of 178 countries ranked by the World Bank on the issue of ‘ease of doing business’. Not that great a ranking but certainly not indicative of the most dangerous place on earth, especially when you compare that number with how India fares on that ranking. It is number 121.

According to the Asian Development Bank, Pakistan’s economy is ‘robust’ and experiencing ‘broad-based growth’. It has a healthy growth rate of about 6.5 per cent with double-digit growth rates in private investment in areas of communications, finance, trade, construction and manufacturing.

And these are figures for FY2007 which has been a relatively bad year. Average growth rate in the past four years has been 7.5 per cent. This places Pakistan ahead of Bangladesh.

In terms of human development indicators, Pakistan ranks 136 out of 177 countries not lagging too far behind India’s 128th slot.

Much is made about the loss of writ of the Pakistani state in areas rife with militancy of one kind or another. So much so that ordinary westerners equate the law and order situation in Pakistan with the one prevailing in North Waziristan or Swat. Even in this respect, Pakistan is much like other regional countries.

Imagine what the situation would be like for the Indian government if the United States thought Osama bin Laden and his associates were hiding in areas controlled by Naxalite forces.

There are more than four dozen districts in India where Naxalites hardly let Indian law enforcement forces set foot. India would be expected to bomb much larger swathes of its territory just to prove the writ of the state.

What if Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding in that part of Sri Lanka where Tamil rebels have been running a de facto state for approximately a quarter of a century? Maoists controlled more territory than the Nepalese government did until their historic power-sharing deal in 2006 but it never got the title of ‘the most dangerous place’.

Even in terms of violence in the name of religious or political retribution, Pakistani society does not merit being branded ‘the most dangerous place’. Only six years ago, more than 2,000 Muslims were butchered in Gujarat, a state in India which boasts to be the destination of choice for investors. Compare that with the reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

There is no evidence of systematic targeting of any particular community in spite of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q’s failed bid to fan ethnic embers through newspaper advertisements.

When people are convinced they are living in ‘the most dangerous place’, they would try to flee the country. Pakistan shares borders with four countries and the Arabian Sea is an added exit route. None of these four have seen large-scale exodus of Pakistanis. Compare today with 1971 when millions of East Pakistanis took refuge in India.

So why is Pakistan perceived to be more dangerous by the western media than other countries of the region beset with similar problems? There is not much to be gained by blaming ‘hidden foreign hands’ or Pervez Musharraf’s considering Pakistani media people as troublemakers.

The fact is that the present strongman’s tenure, like that of his other uniformed predecessors, has yet again proved that a political set-up lacking popular consensus on the form of governance is ill-equipped to cope with the plethora of problems facing Pakistani society.

Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto may have been ‘lousy’ prime ministers — to borrow the term used by the Economist for them — but denying them a say in the political system meant effectively disenfranchising a majority of Pakistanis who have bothered to cast their ballot in the last five elections.

Aitzaz Ahsan may not be someone Pervez Musharraf would like to have over for dinner with his family, but he has effectively become the voice of a significant number of Pakistanis who want a rule-based rather than a reward-based political system. Converting his home into a jail is symbolic muffling of the voices of peaceful dissent.

Pakistan currently suffers from chronic political instability which, in large measure, is the inevitable result of prolonged direct and indirect military rule. Rather than scolding esteemed voices in Pakistani journalism, Musharraf should expend his energies in building bridges with political forces which are no less patriotic than men in uniform or the Chaudhries of Gujrat.

With the global spotlight now on Pakistan in an age bordering on Islamophobia, the solution to counter such charges lies in creating a politically robust and inclusive system.

One doesn’t detect this political will in Mr Musharraf’s approach. If he stays the current course, Pakistan will continue to be plagued by political instability.

hnizamani@hotmail.com

BENAZIR Bhutto’s elimination from the scene has made an enormous political difference in that we no longer know quite what to expect of the PPP.

Asif Ali Zardari took his initial unfaltering steps unexceptionably; nevertheless he is an unknown factor as co-chairman of a party where his and Benazir’s son functions as chairman and is likely to be no more than emblematic for years to come. Presently, the party officially describes its leadership as collegial but what the college denotes is too plastic for comfort.

The reality is that voters are going to the polls without any firm understanding of the intentions and inclinations of major contesting parties in terms of their post-electoral posture. It is a dead certainty that the parties will protest if they lose, but what will they do if they win? It is anyone’s guess what the principle guiding the ruling coalition will be should the latter be required for the formation of a government. Any party may feasibly combine with any to any effect. Even if they all come together in a national government, exactly what would the national government have in mind for the nation? It is not yet clear to what extent the various parties intend to underwrite or perpetuate the Musharraf era.

Mian Nawaz Sharif, though he is mocked for flip-flopping, is the only one to be unequivocal, and this boldness may well leave those elected on the PML-N ticket outside a carefully contrived post-electoral national/consensual paradigm (admittedly alongside their leader and other elements with considerable gravitas in civil society). Such is the grand mess President Musharraf’s incursion into politics over the last seven years has created that though virtually everyone feels elections should not be postponed the most representative voices might be those that get drowned in the electoral process!

People want the military to vacate civil political space and they want vindication of the judiciary that safeguards the public rather than truant regimes. Emblematically that means a restoration of the deposed judges. Which Mr Asif Zardari (to say nothing of sundry ‘influentials’ embedded in various brands of the PPP, PML and MQM) as well as eminences and minions in the military and bureaucracy would view with trepidation. This is to be expected given the NRO factor, May 12 hearings, privatisation proceedings, missing persons issue and more such.

The treasonable offence of subverting the Constitution is something the masses silently learnt to live with. But they are more vocal about demanding relief from the lesser indignities of dictatorial rule. They are not asking for presidential heads but they would like it demonstrated and recognised that a former army chief and his cohorts are in greater need of pardon than any political party chief and his/her cohorts. In some ways, this election is even more about devising and ensuring a non-traumatic exit strategy for President Musharraf than it is about transitional democracy.Actually, the latter devolves on the former. The president’s recent international ramblings make it ubiquitously plain that even as a mere civilian he is convinced he has a monopoly on Pakistan’s font of common wisdom and is justified in quashing that which challenges his judgment of the supreme national interest.

Pakistanis will sooner or later demand a government that is accountable to them and where they are also acknowledged as judges of the supreme national interest which is perhaps what democratic governments, as distinct from democratic elections, are all about. Only the latter can yield the former; but alas democratic governments do not always follow in the wake of the electoral process.

Mr Bhutto, who it is no longer politically correct to critique, was perhaps Pakistan’s most outstanding example of such democratic delinquency. Should the new democratic government repeat the mistakes of the post-Zia and with-Musharraf regimes, people will feel cheated. Riots against blasphemous Danish cartoons and the rampaging in the post-Benazir’s assassination days have shown how destructive outbursts of public wrath have become.

The state and its citizens cannot take that kind of disruption and paralysis any more. Whatever the crowds’ political affiliations — whether clandestinely organised goons, common criminals or saboteurs — the parties are also culpable. The ordinary law-abiding citizen will seek the implementation of the foundational principle of any social contract: namely, law and security.

It would be a tragic irony if the electoral process results in a situation where people themselves are pleading for troops and are ready to welcome another coup.

Left to themselves, Pakistanis show remarkable civic responsibility. However, the official agencies’ meddling in domestic politics — whether in accord with Pakistan’s COAS, chief executive or president — is a matter of historical record. So murky is the existing civil and military political backyard that speculation abounds. Where once a countercoup was innovated, an auto-coup may now be fabricated. This surmise seems tortuous but not paranoiac.

For politicians on whom the people depend for a slow journey back to a democratic form as well as substance, it is vital to avoid pitfalls. Mian Nawaz Sharif has shown some public humility at his misuse of his heavy mandate but the PPP is veering towards an alarming cultism in its electoral run-up.

Undoubtedly, the assassinated Benazir Bhutto’s PPP has a committed core vote bank in all the provinces. But to say that only the PPP and her ‘legacy’ can save the federation is tantamount to weakening it. The sad truth is that though any one element can impair federalism only a totality of collective effort can strengthen the Pakistan common Pakistanis know and love — despite all their selfish provincialism and apparent callousness to suffering in the ‘other’ fellow’s spot — be it a ravaged Dera Bugti or a decimated Fata picket.

Will the president who refuses to see beyond his nose, the military with its conditioned reflexes, civil leaders of the like of Mian Nawaz Sharif and now Asif Zardari, and over-familiar king-making pawns have the strength and large-heartedness to accept the diminution of their separate bids for self-advancement and power in the supreme national interest? The elections and the way they trade horses in midstream will tell us.

SOMETIMES reality is more fascinating than fiction. For instance, it is fascinating to know that till the end of the 1960s, there were administrative staff colleges in Pakistan where members of the South Korean bureaucracy were being trained.

Later, the Korean bureaucracy, unlike that of Pakistan, established and successfully carried out one of the best industrial policies in the developing world since the 1960s. We became the laggards and they the tigers.

It is also fascinating to learn of a startling achievement gap between a now-developed and a less-developed country. Comparing the GDP per capita of the UK and Pakistan, one finds it intriguing that the figures were broadly similar: $1,642 for Pakistan in 1992 as opposed to $1,756 for the UK in 1820.

These facts indicate that Pakistan stands years behind the others and remains a backward economy in a relative sense. Its institutions have also underperformed and applying the reverse gear have become backbenchers from front-runners.

There can be many reasons for Pakistan still remaining a less-developed economy. However, a particular body of knowledge called neo-liberalism is predominantly employed to elucidate the possible causes of the economy failing to take off during the sixties and the seventies. According to this brand of economic analysis, the causes include an overextended state, trade protection, and support subsidies which were ‘bad policies’ and needed revision.

Therefore, at least since the 1980s, Pakistan has pursued most policy prescriptions embedded in the Washington Consensus while progressively drifting away from the Keynesian Consensus approach. Such policies and prescriptions as the structural adjustment programmes advocated the ‘primacy of markets’ and a ‘minimalist state’ agenda. These policies brought a shift in the ownership of enterprises through privatisation while advocating global integration in terms of trade openness. In short, we were told that times have changed. Today, global institutional arrangements, both private and public, are more important than a national government in shaping the agenda for economic growth and industrial development. This trend continues.

According to many economists, these prescriptions perch on a very narrow range of possible capitalist institutions prescribing the free market and free trade as a panacea for our economic malaise. In essence, a lopsided history of economic development and industrialisation is narrated to make people believe that Anglo-American and East Asian economic growth is a story of free markets and free trade. Apart from this, neo-liberals also claim that the so-called free market and free trade model is the only natural and replicable model which can bring about economic growth. Nothing can be further from the truth than this ‘official history of capitalism’.

A growing body of knowledge which is called the heterodox school of economic thinking, as opposed to neo-liberal orthodoxy, presents the history of industrial development in East Asia, Europe and the US in a different light. The proponents claim that the now-developed economies, at the time of catching up, used the ladder of an activist state, a diverse range of state-led support institutions, subsidies and tariff protection for growth and industrial success. They, in fact, invented and implemented the famous infant industry theory.

However, under present conditions, in the words of Ha-Joon Chang, the now-developed countries are ‘kicking away the ladder’ which they themselves used while climbing up the heights of industrial development at comparable levels of development vis-à-vis the developing countries of today.

This sense of historicity as compared to predominant neo-liberal orthodoxy generates arguments for an industrial policy. Such a policy can help countries develop economically and gain from domestic and international trade, it is being argued.

Interestingly, in this context, if one looks at the recent trade policy review of Pakistan at the WTO, it seems that the country needs to seriously think about revising its economic growth and development strategy though not exactly in line with WTO recommendations. In essence, the country needs to think beyond the proposed export-led growth strategy bringing in the perspective of selective and strategic industrial policy. Such a perspective of economic governance focuses on managing the cost of doing business and improving competitiveness with product and destination diversification in a different way.

In short, instead of neo-liberal market-fundamentalism, industrial policy can prove to be a good guide for revisiting regulatory governance and price adjustment mechanisms so that industrialisation is made central to growth strategies.

Experts say that while revising the growth strategy, Pakistan needs to take account of East Asian models of strategic industrial policies which designed a strong role for the state in industrial development and the working of factor markets. In fact, the argument is to reclaim the growth strategy from the Washington Consensus which has systematically robbed the Pakistani state of its functions of governing the markets in a way which creates equity and protects the local manufacturers by shouldering notorious adjustment costs.

While ‘reclaiming development’, it must be noted that as in other now-developed economies, East Asia pursued the industrialisation of agriculture and the manufacturing sector with a comprehensive industrial development strategy and support institutions. This strategy, amongst other things, included creating a sufficiently honest and efficient national bureaucracy. This type of bureaucracy ultimately created a competitive edge for local industry, with efficient information-processing and investment coordination in close association with selected private industrial concerns.

In essence, an autonomous East Asian bureaucracy could ‘govern the markets and help industrialise’ while adjusting price-wages of goods and services according to the needs of the industrial development strategy.

With such strategies, the East Asian governments could guide and govern the cost of doing business, manage accumulation (of financial, technological, and human capital) and utilise industrial capacity with productive investments in selected sectors. Pakistan, on the other hand, thinks of economic and trade liberalisation as increasing productivity and competitiveness leading to export-led growth. The country needs export-oriented industrialisation to climb up the ladder of industrial development from the level of a primary commodity producer to secondary and tertiary levels for meaningful gains from export markets.

To conclude, it suffices to say that the trade policy review of Pakistan in WTO should not be seen as a trade-related document and comment. This is a comment, by implication, on the processes of industrialisation which Pakistan is following. This is a comment on the levels of technological capability, human capital formation, industrial capacity utilisation and upgrading.

Above all, it is a comment on the state’s institutional structures and their performance which can generate innovative solutions for managing the cost of doing business and increase in global competitiveness with product, process, and skill upgradation. It must be remembered that it is not trade openness per se which has the seeds of export-led growth. Rather, it is industrial policy design and governance which can ensure success in both foreign and domestic trade.

WITHIN a span of a mere eight days, January 2008 witnessed bomb blasts in three provincial capitals: Lahore on Jan 10, Karachi on Jan 14 and Peshawar on Jan 17. The cumulative casualties were estimated at 45 dead and 150 injured.

The violence continues apace as demonstrated by the recurring incidents in the tribal areas and Swat. All this is chillingly reminiscent of 2007.

The Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies reported that in 2007 the country experienced 1,503 incidents of violence involving terrorist attacks as well as political and sectarian clashes. These resulted in 3,448 deaths and 5,353 injuries, and represent an increase of 128 and 491.7 per cent over the 2006 and 2005 figures respectively. There were 60 suicide attacks causing 770 deaths and 1,574 injuries. The casualty figure from 12 political clashes stood at 64 killed and an equal number injured.

Security personnel were specifically targeted in several terrorist attacks killing 232 soldiers, 163 para-militias and 71 policemen. The Lal Masjid operation was carried out in July and in that month 15 suicide attacks were known to have occurred in the NWFP, Islamabad and Punjab in which 191 persons lost their lives and another 366 were injured.

Do these statistics justify the branding of Pakistan as ‘the world’s most dangerous country’? The answer is not in these gruesome figures or in the appalling economic, political and social imbalances afflicting contemporary Pakistan, but in the ability of the country’s post-election leadership to bring about and implement genuine reform. This, in turn, will depend on the political permutations and combinations that will define the future government.

Whatever the outcome of the Feb 18 elections, the inescapable implication of the continuing terrorist incidents and extremist violence is the erosion of the writ of the state. Ironically, none other than the government is largely to blame. Its policies have veered from stern military action in the tribal areas to concluding peace deals with the militants. This further facilitated the latter in consolidating their control of the territory, implementing laws which they touted as Islamic and enforcing their own administration and revenue collection systems.

The same cancer spread to some of the settled areas in the NWFP, notably Swat, while the previous JUI-dominated provincial government tacitly encouraged the spread of obscurantist ideology in the province. Even worse, the caretaker NWFP government has drafted so-called Islamic laws to replace the existing legal system in Dir, Chitral and Swat. There is no legal or moral justification for an unelected interim administration to even try to enact and implement such fundamental laws.

Unbridled appeasement of extremist forces, whether religious or secular, never pays. Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler resulted in the Second World War. Closer to our times, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s appeasement of the religious right culminated in his ouster and subsequent death on the gallows.

Benazir Bhutto had convincingly declared that only an elected civilian government that had the support of the people could defeat extremist violence and usher in an era of peace and security that the country hungered for. Most of the other political parties adopted a similar approach. The foremost question in the minds of the people, however, is whether the postponed elections will really yield the kind of a popular dispensation so desperately required to combat terrorism.

Political analysts have described the 1970 elections as the only free and fair polls in Pakistan. However, even here there is an element of cynicism as Gen Yahya Khan believed that the elections would yield a hung parliament which he could manipulate and coerce to prolong his rule. The country’s brief history has demonstrated all too often that its leaders, whether civilian or military, are addicted to power. Pious pre-election pronouncements about democracy, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution evaporate like dew on a terrestrial hell of political ambitions and an insatiable thirst for self-aggrandisement.

Power addiction seems to be at play again amid calls for the establishment of a national government which would necessarily entail a postponement of the elections. Shorn of sophistry, this tantamounts to the imposition of an unelected dispensation on the country for which there is no constitutional justification. Yet all parties alike claim to be struggling for democracy. Their clamour for democratic norms rings hollow as is evident from the manner in which they have run their respective political parties. There are no internal elections; therefore, these parties are dominated by the elite, by rags to riches tycoons and by dynasties who lead their respective organisations almost as if by divine right.

The same feudal class, the rich and the privileged who controlled former parliaments, are now set to be elected to the future legislatures. Only the Jamaat-i-Islami and the MQM are dominated by the middle class. The former holds party elections but emphasises its own interpretation of Islamic doctrine; the latter is dominated by a controversial London-based individual whose track record is dubious.

The leadership of these parties have failed the country in the past. Is there any genuine remorse for the bleeding wounds that they have inflicted on the nation? Have they reformed? Or is a new force, yet incipient, emerging that can put the country on the track of political, economic and social equilibrium so desperately needed to fight the forces of extremist and terrorist violence?

The massive popular outpouring prompted by the March 9, 2007, presidential reference against the Chief Justice led to his reinstatement on July 20. The political parties were mere bystanders in this countrywide lawyer-led upsurge. Could this be the first sign of the wakening of civil society from its slumber? Can it be galvanised into a popular political force?

In a television interview some months earlier, Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim observed with the precision for which he is so rightly acclaimed: “The people of this country may be illiterate, but they are not uneducated.”

The writer is editor-in-chief of ‘Criterion Quarterly’.