IS PEACE WITH PAKISTAN A MIRAGE?

It is palpably wrong to trust at best superficial overtures by Pakistan to resolve differences with India for better relations. Over the years, Pakistan deteriorating security environment riddled with several terrorist organization has turned the country as a rogue state or even the most dangerous place in the world. The flamboyant French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy called Pakistan “the most delinquent of nations”. It represents everything… a religious fundamentalism, terrorism, possessing weapons of mass destruction in a failing state, a military dictatorship that masquerades behind a pale democratic façade. And that is crux of the problem as a neighbor.

Among many fears, it is asked: would Pakistan dissolve slowly or collapse in a sudden cataclysm? Or would it become an outlaw and threat to the entire world, acting as a base for international terrorism and perhaps sharing nuclear weapons technology with other problematic states and terrorist groups? The big question: can Pakistan become a normal state at peace with its neighbors and itself?

Pakistan has had many spells of direct or indirect military rule and several failed coup attempts. To date it oscillates between unstable democracy and benign authoritarianism. The military bureaucracy governs the state and impose its own vision of a Pakistan nation. Symptoms of a failed state and a catastrophe in making that poses a highly visible and serious problem for the world: spread of nuclear weapons, missiles and Islamic radicalism to name the few.

After many failed peace treaties, the issue of Kashmir remains unresolved. It is because of two power structures that rule Pakistan. One the politicians and the other the military. The politicians confront: how do they come to power and hold on to it given the army’s historic role as ruler or power broker. Army practices a policy of divide and rule when it comes to dealing with political parties. It shifts it’s support among and between the “mainstream” and religious parties, and between the national parties and those whose power base is confined to one province. Thus even when it believes it has the army’s support, a party in power is insecure since this support can be withdrawn at a moment’s notice. The proof is many coup since country’s inception.

Given the army’s deep trust of the politicians, the latter have pursued several survival strategies. They have attempted to accommodate the army, to divide it, and to supplant it. These dynamics of the civil-military relationships remain central to Pakistan’s future.

Another problem facing Pakistan’s politicians is how to practice their craft in the face of resistance, and even hostilities, from Pakistan’s myriad ethnic and linguistic groups, religious factions, business and labor, and of course the army.

In my opinion, India/Pakistan equation surmounts tremendous difficulties. Peaceful co-existence remains a challenge. Question to ask: is Pakistan at a critical juncture? If so, it will not be the first time for a state that has had three wars and many minor military clashes with India, four coups, and a collapsed economy several times. Yet each time Pakistan has been declared a “failed state” it has come back from the grave-albeit with a weakened economy, a more-fragmented political order, less security in relation to powerful India, and disturbing demographic and educational trends.

The bomb, seen as providing leverage over India, may deter an all-out war but also complicates Pakistan’s identity problem, not to mention its debilitating rivalry with New Delhi. Today it is confronted with population explosion, the rise of Islamic radicalism, and economic stagnation. The costs of a prolonged, indefinite rivalry with a rising India are also clear to them. However, few members of Pakistan’s Establishment dare group these together to challenge an adaptive status quo-policy.

Although many Pakistani civilian elites nominally favor democracy, they are uncomfortable with the idea of mass democratic politics. In Pakistan, democracy is still an avocation, more of a civic obligation than a career. To have a real democracy Pakistan must have real political parties — not affinity groups of the rich and famous. A full-blown democracy, in which the armed forces come under firm civilian control, will be impossible until Pakistan’s strategic environment alters in such a way that the army retreats from its role as a guardian of the state. Domestic politics in Pakistan is hostage to India-Pakistan relations; normalization with India is a necessary but insufficient condition for Pakistan’s re-democratization.