Great flood

The Indus River is Pakistan’s lifeline. When it turned into the country’s nightmare last year, President Asif Ali Zardari happened to be on a trip to Europe. Pakistan’s head of state saw no reason to change his plans and go back to his country that was at that time being submerged in part by floods caused by torrential rain. The flood became the worst natural disaster since Pakistan was founded in 1947. The water started slowly engulfing cities and villages in the northern province of Khyber Pakthunkhwa before heading south towards the Arabian Sea, and destroying just about everything in its path.

At least 2,000 people died and almost two million houses were destroyed. Schools, bridges and streets were washed away like toys. According to UN figures, around 16 million people are still dependent upon disaster relief aid in Pakistan and some 500,000 remain homeless. The poor peasant population was hit hardest. The question on many an onlooker’s mind is: Why don’t the people in Pakistan do something about the incompetent bureaucracy and corrupt politicians standing in the way of the country’s reconstruction?

'At war with itself'

Farzana Shaikh, an expert on Pakistan at the Chatham House think tank in London believes Pakistan is still in a state of emergency. "It has endured catastrophe after catastrophe and indeed, at this point in time, the country is in dire straights. But Pakistan also has to be understood as a country run a little bit like an oligarchy and this oligarchy is strong enough to prevent the country from completely collapsing under the weight of the series of serious catastrophes," says Shaikh. But some experts fear it might just be a matter of time before the country does finally collapse.

Farzana Shaikh paints a dark picture in her interview with Deutsche Welle. She believes the country is "becoming more and more susceptible to various forms of militant Islam in a way that it was perhaps not in the 1960s. The question is: Are there any forces in Pakistan trying to arrest the development of militant Islam? I think it is going to be a very, very difficult battle, I think I wouldn’t be the only one to say that at this point in time Pakistan is above all caught up in a war against itself."

Oversimplifications

Now, in the summer of 2011, Pakistan is a weak country whose situation has been exacerbated by the biggest flood in its history. On the political front, it is dealing with an on-going war against terrorism. The country is governed by a chaotic government whose priority it is to stay in power. Behind the scenes it is run by an almighty military complex which promotes rivalry with India and thus also supports radical Islamists.

This disastrous combination of political factors became apparent during the flood when the army and aid organizations of Islamist parties took the lead in disaster relief because the elected government and the country’s National Disaster Management Authority failed to address the situation properly.

Dietrich Reetz of Berlin’s research center for modern oriental studies, Zentrum Moderner Orient, cautions against painting pictures of Pakistan that are too simplistic. "There is the official Pakistan with more or less functioning institutions and then there is the unofficial Pakistan, which is the more dominant."

In the unofficial Pakistan, the rich elites don’t pay taxes and have giant networks of minions and dependents. Political and economic power is dominated by a few families. They decide what happens in Pakistan. They control the army and the large parties like the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN).

Reetz also points out that compared with other countries in which the Arab Spring washed away ruling autocrats and elites, Pakistanis enjoy more freedoms. The press has more freedom, people enjoy freedom of assembly, and there is more political freedom in elections.

In Pakistan people are allowed to express anger and frustration with the system. But that alone has not been able to change the general state of the country very much. Last year’s flood has deepened the divide between the rich and the poor. Food and fuel prices have exploded, the economy is staggering; Pakistan is dependent on international money sources. Many policymakers are considered to be untrustworthy. Rebuilding the affected areas will take years. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have estimated that the flood has caused over six billion euros worth of damage.

Close to India

"Yet Pakistan has great potential," says Reetz, comparing Pakistan with India. He says both countries have adopted new internet and mobile phone technologies relatively simultaneously. "Pakistani society is definitely able to face new challenges in society and the economy. But the solutions they find might not necessarily be able to please everyone."

Farzana Shaikh says the many divides in Pakistani society make it more complex – the ethnic and religious divides and political divides. Pakistan’s founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah created an Islamic country on the Indian Subcontinent, yet "since the creation of the state, Pakistan has suffered from the absence of any coherent national vision – the lack of a coherent national purpose." Shaikh explains that is the reason that "to this day there are very great questions about what precisely it means to be Pakistani."

State without a nation?

Despite the complexities, Shaikh emphasizes that "Pakistan is not a failed state" though there are "severe structural weaknesses in the Pakistani state which make failure a distinct possibility. Having said that, one perhaps needs to also recognize that Pakistan is in a position, particularly as a nuclear weapons state, where there are many in the international community who feel that Pakistan cannot be allowed to fail because the risks of Pakistan failing would be very great – not just to Pakistan and its immediate neighbors and the region, but also to the wider international community."

The West has a great interest in Pakistan as a strong and stable state. Peace in Afghanistan would be unthinkable without Pakistan. But a power vacuum in Islamabad would not only harm the region but also the entire international community. A failed nuclear power controlled by rival radical powers could quickly turn into a global nightmare.

Shaikh emphasizes the responsibility Pakistan has in shaping its own destiny. Reetz believes history has played a role in shaping Pakistan’s present situation. The prolonged intervention of South Asian states and great support from Western governments after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 "caused lasting damage to the Islamic system and to the region." Not least because the radicals who were armed to fight the Soviet attackers "were never disarmed and continue to exist in underground structures."

These structures are responsible for a lot of violence and uncertainty in Pakistani society today. More and more people who could offer a counterbalance to the radicals are staying silent whereas radical voices seem to be getting more vocal.

Author: Sandra Petersmann / sb
Editor: Grahame Lucas