All forms of government destroy themselves by carrying their basic principle to excess.
[Will Durant].
Fatal cycle of political evolution known to us through Plato: monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchic exploitation, democracy, revolutionary chaos & dictatorship; allows us to view the current state of affairs in Pakistan in an objective manner. Providing us with some structure to predict its direction. While shades of each may seem to contribute, the dominant pattern appears to be an overlap between the last three stages. Its subjective interpretations ostensibly suggest this impasse is secondary to the whim of one person or an edict of a narrow class. Pompey the Roman general (circa ~ 100-50 BCE) when questioned about the legality of his military actions in Sicily, in his reply said “do not quote laws to us to we hold the swords”. True then as now. And suffice it to say that, in a systole & diastole of a nation’s life, the age of freedom seems to be ending & the age of discipline has begun.
Democracy is a luxury of disseminated intelligence, security and peace. They who claim the electoral rules of democracy must prevail overlook the reality that Pakistan does not satisfy any of these democratic essentials. The State of Pakistan is merely yet a carved out geographic treaty with its neighbors. It lacks the homogeneity needed for a true Westphalian Nation State. And geography has historically smiled at such unstable treaties. Safeguarding this geography of the carved out state thus remains the basic principle of our political elites. So be it, and do away with it, might democracy try to come in the way of this basic principle.
A Philosopher might argue Man is never free. And freedom is a myth. But we continuously observe that Man has chosen by fighting wars time & again, to pay the asking price for this myth. Relations between States (Int’l Relations) politely depart from the philosophers and take freedom a priori for the states to exercise their will. International Relation’s theory of Realism posits the absence of a supranational governing structure. States, thus operate in anarchy. Those States which have the free will to exercise their foreign policy suited to their national interests are therefore considered free. This is what Azadi actually is…i.e. the earned luxury to exercise the free will domestically & abroad. Which in turn is a function commensurate with a State’s strength. Measured in GDP, military strength, population size, literacy & cohesiveness, and to some extent to which civilization the State traces its roots back to. Now, this is interesting; Pakistan lies at the center of where four out of the five remaining major (Indic, Sinic, Orthodox, Muslim & Western) civilizations meet. However, it has remained unable to garner a defendable & dependable social or political alignment with any of them. Sinic in its northeast and Orthodox in its northwest are a nonstarter. Between the remaining Indic to its east & the Muslim swathes to its west its relations with them too have remained frictional. As a result it stands all alone. With no one in the neighborhood to politically fall back onto.
Evolutionary time required for a geographical area such as Pakistan, trying to morph into a nation, is generational in order. And often painfully slow. It requires statesmen who are strategists; artists who have the freedom to express; philosophers who are well fed to think & a common faith chipping in with its multiplier role to help maintain social order. But most important of all; it requires a willing coalition of like-minded narrow group of elites. Those who perpetually and intelligently remain busy in formation of an ever evolving strategy suited to their advantage. Pakistan has had at its helm its army as that elite group for over half of its national life. With their training primarily being tactical they find themselves hamstrung when the job overnight requires them to bring out from within a strategist. This unease then becomes evident to the detriment of the state when & wherever the military comes to power.
I was recently listening to a commentary by one analyst whom I admire. Where he sees a systemic defect in the Pakistan army not the way I see it. He points out the problem at the top. Which is the lack of accountability of the COAS. Practically being above the law so to speak. Hence he argues to truncate his status. I don’t agree with that. I argue, Man by nature is inclined to do inhuman things. Before one is civilized one is primarily more passionate than rational. Hobbesian commonwealth with Machiavellian tactics came a century before Rousseau’s social contract. A State to maintain its social order has to owe its freedom & defense to a mortal god under the immortal God, making him/her the sovereign of the commonwealth. His/her power therefore has to be absolute. We are not an island nation. Our geography does not allow us the luxury of a revolt nor does our inhomogeneous population nor does a prying neighborhood. Our obsession for a revolt has a prohibitive cost of dismemberment. Case in point Bangladesh 52 years ago. It is not therefore the systemic fault of the Pakistan army how it assigns sovereignty to its leader which is to be blamed for every ill. It has more to do what that leader does with that assigned sovereignty.
Monarchies were the dominant form of political governance for known history. We see no reason for this system not to work. The reason our army leadership has struggled to deliver dividends is inherently everything to do with their training grounded in tactics (short term objectives). Strategy (long term objectives) on the other hand is the work of a philosopher who is versed in everything. The geo-economic constraints they have to perpetually operate in remain the same or probably get worse with their time in office. Undertrained for statecraft & overtasked for public office, army personnel as a result resort to domestic political outsourcing and a quid pro quo appeasement internationally.
Unwise choices and decisions have been made but so have some useful ones been too. A nuclear deterrent in my opinion in this anarchical world order was quite strategic. I don’t think there has been an ulterior motive all along. Their grasp on power and unwillingness to share it was simply rooted in an existential fear. Some may argue it was fabricated or hyped up. I think the Pakistan army has always felt that relinquishing sovereignty to the parliament was a risk not commensurate with the benefit. Contrary to what Quaid had advised, they remained afraid to trust the popular mandate. During intervals of civil rule, dynastic political proxies were propped & staged. This power sharing structure precluded any entity or person taking full ownership and full accountability for anything. States typically get rich first and then become militarily strong. The paranoid Pakistani state somewhere along its journey went about turn.
Imran Khan used the same power structure for his parliamentary (premiership) introduction. Some of his objectives ended up being at odds locally and others at odds internationally. He is no less a Hobbesian to demand the buck stop at him, kind of an authority. He rightly believes there should only be one leader calling the shots. And then be solely accountable for that. During his time in office he first assumed and later demanded this absolutism. However, the army was simply not willing to part with it that quickly. He miscalculated the fragility of our democracy and over relied on his perceived mandate.
His Anti Ghulami (enslavement) & Pro Azadi (being free) narrative in an Islamic garb seems to resonate with everyone who follows the Muslim tradition. A Muslim ought to beg in freedom rather than decay in bonds is exactly what Islam is all about. If you’re a Muslim then the choice is simple. Nevertheless, in an anarchical Nation State structure, all the international movers & shakers do not quite subscribe to this tradition. To them the crown & the clergy are separate. They do not accept our subscription of the sovereignty to Allah. They place that in the State. This ideological dissonance in my opinion is the fundamental conflict of any poor Muslim state that has to operate in current loosely rule based international liberal world order. We make a whole lot of enemies if we go against it and that was the second reason behind his ousting.
Admittedly he fought back and surprised many. He is now The populist leader of Pakistan. By calling out Pakistani elite establishment an extractive intuition he has however landed himself in a Thucydides Trap. His rise will mean the downfall of the army. Imperialists, tyrants, abrogator of the constitution are a few adjectives he has repeatedly ascribed to them. He might have come to power initially on borrowed legs of the army, he has now become a force to recon with. And if it is played by the book i.e. normally accepted rules of democracy, he is expected to win the office by a landslide majority. Pakistanis have felt disenfranchised for such a long time, that in him they now see the mythical union of a philosopher and a saint, producing the sage.
But then what to do with our domestic Papal States. I draw this analogy very thoughtfully. After the fall of the Roman Empire (circa ~ century 5th AD) it was the Catholic Church (and its Papal Pontiffs & States in the Italian peninsula) that held the Western civilization together for over a thousand years. Pakistan Army feels they have done the same and they just can’t simply be asked to resign from their political role and retire and return to their barracks. Their earlier hybrid power sharing experience with him did not go well. Khan’s pan-Islamism was proving very costly to the secular leaning façade of the Pakistan Army. They were losing old anchors. Had they not taken him out constitutionally they would have soon found themselves adrift in uncharted and rough international seas. However, this recapture of the post at the helm has come at an immense cost to every Pakistani. Military & civilian alike. Stagflation is an equal opportunity offender.
One can assume with considerable certainty that Pakistanis have en-masse subscribed to Imran’s counter narrative to the decades old narrative that the Pakistan army had. A common man & woman sees in him a messiah who would take them to the Promised Land i.e. a prosperous & peaceful Pakistan. Instead of hearing a counter-counter narrative coming from the army, what is now being witnessed internationally and experienced locally is something quite alarming. A paranoid heavy handed ruthless short sighted tyrannical above the law authoritarian demon. This is what Pakistanis see now, in their own…once so beloved an army. This army-Imran zero sum game is a loss to every Pakistani. Army like Imran & Imran like army is not a panacea. Between the two of them if they are able to overcome the mutual exclusivity they can have additive or multiplicative benefits. Disappointingly, it is so polarized now, that both are suicidally immune to advice.
Alienating their own people shall cost the army dearly in the medium to long term. Economic prosperity needs peace and happiness & incentivized industry. India was blessed with forty years of peace between 1980 and 2020. Whereas we remained embroiled or employed in three major wars. During those decades India was able to educate two generations & open its economy to the world. Were these just wars thrust upon us or were these wars of our choosing; labelling Pakistan a rental state, is beyond the scope of this humble writing. Point is, we have to catch up on a lot and a lot faster and we must stop digging ourselves into a deeper hole.
Arrests of our intellectuals arrests us intellectually…Pakistanis are in a state of shock & awe. So demoralized; one can akin them to medieval Jews in Christian or foreign lands. After all who on earth kills the goose that lays the golden egg i.e. morale of your people! Without domestically generated money neither army nor political Pakistan can prevail. This has been the recurring theme in history of how states whither.
I admire Imran Khan and so should Pakistan Army, for showing strategic understanding by saying, I quote “Pakistan Army is more important for Pakistan than Imran Khan”. I believe he really wants to work with them and the latter should not arm twist him to work for them. Nations like individuals have an unconscious. Called the collective unconscious. It follows the similar path to transformation as it does in individuals (individuation). Making its way through the same alchemical stages of Nigredo, Rubedo and lastly Albedo. If stunted in any of these individuation stages a nation falls prey to its own darkest shadows. Most don’t come out of it unscathed. Most don’t even come out of it at all! Just as an individual is then unable to live his or her life to the fullest, nations too, have to endure a generational trauma. Ego(s) that would not allow a nation’s collective unconscious to individuate would result in a complexed nation. Neither self-assured nor proud of itself; pushed onto a certain path of decay.
Now I want to ask my readers a few questions. Late seventies was a different epoch. The USA fully supported us during the Cold War. It saw in us a proxy to fight a Jihad against the communist infidels. Two decades back came global terrorism and it again found in us a willing partner. We are irrelevant now. Let’s ask ourselves something: Is the USA going to put its weight behind the army as it once was able to? With the revisionist Russia & China challenging, does it have the bandwidth? What would interest them in us now? Has that interest paid off in the past forty years? And lastly what use to a superpower is an army of a nearly bankrupt country with no popular support at their disposal?
I think, instead of convenient attribution to a possible conspiracy without, we should theorize this impasse as a foolishness within. Current standoff is a risk to our national cohesion. Pakistan can implode (khakam ba dehan). The results will be irreversible and terrifying. The North will be the first to first break off and then will be redistributed between India, China and the Pashtun-Afghanistan region. PDM engaged in a dangerous dalliance with a wily friend/foe will land softly in a Punjabi merger with India becoming its client state. Charging transit money for revenue for access to the ocean and trade routes in a manner (earlier Pakistan) was doing for Afghanistan. Baluch insurgency will be bought out by the highest bidder and so would be Gawadar. Sindh and its business community will totally assimilate into India and flourish. Egos would’ve then ruled and ruined like kings. Pakistan killed to pieces. Job complete!
While buying in on Imran’s narrative we must also fairly and critically examine as to why this non-inferiority comes so much easier to him. A handsome blessed bloke rubbing shoulders with the international elites at a personal level may see the West as his equal somewhat easily. Most Pakistanis do not. To them food comes first & then morality, pride or any other higher purpose. Baggage of the colonial past and recent loss of Muslim civilization to the Western civilization is met with a mortifying fear in taking on the West so boldly. The heat stricken people of South Asia do not revolt like peoples of the north do. They find solace in going back to their individual faiths. One Allah in our case. Concept of Ummah though available, is as yet alien to most Pakistanis.
Mr. Khan your job is half baked and not complete. Coming to power with a landslide majority still will not pay a common man dividends. Do not cave in or bargain if your heart tells you otherwise. But punt this fight off for another day-August perhaps. You will soon be labeled as a seditious pariah then what? What a waste. There is a lot of life left in you. You (the idea) mustn’t die, you must play your part and leave some for the public. You can’t make a whole crowd cross the finishing line all by yourself. You don’t lead an army. They must creep & crawl if they aren’t yet brave enough to rise above the parapet and walk or run. You mustn’t push them further or you will be pushed and punished so farther that their hopes will die with you for lord knows how many generations more.
Towards the end Mr. Khan, you have three themes to choose from. The choice from the classical Greek period, the Socratic way of dying as you too have “poisoned” the youth. Or the Mohammedan Hijra; Fatah e Mecca might follow in due course. Your population is too meek and you’re one man too weak yet wise, for the too dull of a foe who is a bull right now in a china shop. Or…you go all in and call their bluff.
Your presence might idealistically be appreciated now, but your absence and strategic retreat will be pragmatically remembered for decades. Life is nothing but trade-offs and peace is sweeter than freedom.
/MQ…
This (part-a) will be followed by a complementary writing (part-b). Covering possible challenges and outcomes of yet another indirect or direct rule by Pakistan Army of State of Pakistan.