Pakistan has had patchy progress toward building effective state-society relations and an effective state

  Pakistan has had patchy progress toward building effective state-society relations and an effective state with periods of good progress between many failures, declines, and crises. Throughout its political development, many problems have accumulated, such as poverty, inequality and the rise of extremism and terrorism. 

These serious challenges have taken a life of their own and adversely affected the state's governing capacity and the national development process. Roughly four decades back, Pakistan was structurally in a much better shape and was well-positioned to take the following steps of its evolution via the translation of its founding ethos into a social contract delineating the relationship between the state and citizens and between the federation and the constituent provinces and regions. As we know, social contracts are about rights and obligations. In the context of post-colonial states, the compacts encompassed transitioning from an alien, foreign character to a natural national one to realize the aspirations of the citizens. They correspondingly gave a broader legitimate base to the state. 

Owing to the painful partition process and rationale for a particular country, the Pakistani state was intended to have a democratic and responsive political system. These had been some of the embedded aspirations for the independence movement and were envisioned as requirements for integrating ethnically diverse people and regions into a new nation. While during the creation of Pakistan, Muslim nationalism had briefly overpowered feelings and affiliations of ethnicity, a strong subscript of ethnic nationalism had existed throughout. 

Only a constitutional regime guaranteeing rights, justice, representation, and equal opportunities for growth to all would have adequately addressed widespread expectations about regional/ethnic freedom. Unfortunately, the ruling groups of the new state of Pakistan lost the vision, that is, the democratic track, and even some basic ideas of governance in individual, institutional, and regional power struggles. Pakistan's post-independence politics could never represent the ideas, vision, and aspirations that had defined the independence movement and nationalism in South Asia.

 The missteps and setbacks of the formative phase gravely affected not only the institutional balance between the military and civilians but also among the constituent regions—which has been an enduring dilemma and challenge for Pakistan. In subsequent decades, Pakistan has confronted more traumatizing political setbacks via repeated military takeovers, internal insurgencies, and during the past fifteen years, the rise of radical Islam and terrorism. 

Pakistan’s progress in different fields of national life has, at best, been patchy. Overall, as explained in the following sections, Pakistan has experienced political turmoil and disorder more than stability that has damaged the legitimacy and governing capacity of the state to a great extent. The link between the moral and legal degeneration of political authority in Pakistan and the rise of militant Islam remains unexplored. It attempts to explain it have been, at best superficial and journalistic. In our view, the rise of ethnic and religious militancy in Pakistan is a consequence of the deterioration and decay of state capacities, both administrative and political.

 The ruling classes of Pakistan have been able to weave a clever narrative that shifts the causes of radical Islam away from their severe political failings to internal characteristics of the Islamist militant groups, such as the role of Islamic educational institutions, intolerant religious culture, and sectarian mindset manipulated by external forces. While these characteristics of radical Islam are not off the mark, and its steady rise and violent expression have been aided by multiple national, regional, and international factors, significant failings of the Pakistani state have been the primary reason for the rise of radical Islam. The Pakistani state has had failings in terms of the constitution of its ruling groups and its choice regarding security policies. 

Both civilian and military leaders, often collaborating, have made strategic choices, primarily about Afghanistan and India, which have produced disastrous internal consequences about religious extremism and militancy. From being on the frontline of jihad in Afghanistan against the former Soviet Union to supporting similar groups in the Indian-administered part of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region, the ruling groups of Pakistan have bolstered the radical constituency. Pakistan’s Afghan policy, from the anti-Soviet war to supporting the Taliban in their rise and conquest of the country before they were evicted from power by the international coalition forces, has proven to be shorted-sighted. 

The rise of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan has influenced the rise of similar internal movements such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which The State in Decline 95 Pakistan has been directly combating, since launching a major military operation named “Black Thunder,” in April 2009 to retake several districts in the Swat region that the regional chapter of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan had occupied.1 Pakistan’s alignment with Islamist groups to protect and advance national security interests has significantly contributed to the rise of jihadist militant Islam. To pursue its ambitious regional security policy, Pakistan’s choice of non-state actors as allies has contributed to weakening its security rather than strengthening it. Pakistan presents a glaring example of a fragile state struggling to reverse its downward spiral by re-examining some of its significant domestic and regional policies. There is an apparent desire on the part of the security establishment and the civilian government to chart a new course to revive and rebuild a “new Pakistan.” 

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who floated a Sharia Bill in the parliament in 1998 when his party had a two-thirds majority, has shown a new inclination in his current term to make Pakistan a “liberal country.” 3 Even though he is neither consistent nor ideologically committed to the liberal Pakistan project, he has taken a lot of flank from the religious parties for even making a muted reference to liberal Pakistan. 4 The challenges Pakistan confronts are mainly domestic and have been born out of decades of wrong policies, misplaced priorities, and manipulation of state institutions for material greed and power. These challenges include political violence, weak governance, systematic corruption of ruling groups, and weakened institutions. 

On account of weak democratic structures, these problems have grown complex over the past few decades and continue to pose a threat to social order. Internal security, terrorism, and insurgencies have consumed a considerable amount of Pakistan’s political and social energies, inflicted large-scale costs in terms of natural resources, and lost opportunities for social development and economic growth. 5 The rise of Islamic militancy is just one threat that has arisen due to misplaced national priorities, political disorder, and the rapaciousness of the ruling oligarchies. The willful weakening of governing institutions and procedures by ruling groups to expropriate public resources for private ends is another reason for the state’s decline. It is not surprising to see that this nuclear-powered state is stressed today and finds it hard to perform vital tasks such as internal security, governance, and development. State institutions' decline has continued unabated under civilian and military rulers without any consistent effort to check it. 

Erratic and half-hearted reform measures in many areas of national life have given birth to few sustainable effects in protecting citizens and maintaining order in society. Failure to deliver justice on an equitable basis or create economic opportunities for the growing population, which has a heavy youth bulge, has created conditions for the rise of extremist groups. 96 Chapter 5 For almost two decades, under both civilian and military regimes, we have seen continued erosion of the state's power in Pakistan across all primary functional areas. Thousands of ghost schools, absentee instructors in public colleges and universities, filthy government hospitals with inadequate numbers of qualified doctors and widespread corruption in government departments have been visible signs of the Pakistani state’s heavy tilt toward decline.6 The country has witnessed frequent outbursts of instability due to a regular pattern of political confrontation among the major political parties controlled and run by dynastic political oligarchs. The dynastic elites' political behaviour and disrespect for legal and constitutional norms have further contributed to Pakistan’s multiple crises.

 A silver lining, however, is that the decline of the state has not been uniform across all places, regions, and provinces. The same applies to the central governing institutions, among which the military has remained the most robust and effective and has sustained public trust and respect. Among the regions and provinces, Punjab has managed itself far better than others. 8 There are signs of resilience and some rays of hope in the form of conscientious teachers, government doctors, and government employees in different layers of bureaucracy holding on to principles of fairness, neutrality, and good work ethic. But their numbers have declined, and so has the writ and credibility of the state. 

As discussed in the last chapter, the rise of free media, civil society, and democracy-oriented social movements offers some hope for reviving Pakistan. However, to control the threat of radical Islam, the Pakistani political class, the powerful security establishment, and the fledging civil society will have to take bold steps to address the Pakistani state's structural problems. Religiously motivated violence may further disorient the state, the control of which will require public resources to be devoted from security toward social development to secure the state and society as opposed to just fighting the symptoms. Historically, there has been an imbalance between expenditure on security and development, which has created another enduring imbalance in military-civilian powers and prevented the political system from developing and maturing along democratic lines. 

This imbalance impacts state-society relations and relations between the federation and the provinces, which view national priorities differently. The country's constituent regions and various centres of power require reaching a common ground on developmental issues and security. Continuing with old policies may produce even graver consequences, especially in the troubling climate of regional jihad and militancy, with several connecting points from Syria to Afghanistan. Any regional conflict that affects Pakistan’s internal stability and political order may have consequences far beyond the region because of its size and the eagerness of its jihadist constituencies to join regional conflicts on all sides.