View from Pakistan: If civilians run Pakistan

Karachi: The idea may seem heretical: how would Pakistan do if civilians had full control? Civilians rule today but the ‘ministries’ of foreign/security policies reside in Pindi. But foreign policy is the mother of war. If the daughter is unsafe with generals, so is mother.

But an odd logic rules Pakistan. For long, even overall governance was deemed too serious for civilians. Major losses to Pakistan and the Army image under the military’s rule slowly imposed humility in Pindi that governance suits civilians. Yet, there is the residual belief that foreign/security policies are too serious for civilians.

Civilians surely have some flaws. These flaws emerge from deep societal structures and disappear slowly as society changes, however much we may huff and puff in angst. Should civilians never run these domains? But inept civilians do run them in many states, better than generals.

The stark decision before us is this: we should give these domains to them even if inept civilians rule us for long. Military minds suffer from tunnel vision focused on war. Leave such domains to them and they militarise relations with estranged states. Forty years of militarised foreign policy under Zia, Musharraf and others has hurt us even more than sleaze. Trump’s new policy deserves much critique. But so does our Pindi-devised Afghan-India one. Many worry civilians may sell our foreign policy for personal gains. But the three rulers who did so the most were Zia, Musharraf and Ayub. The one who didn’t was Bhutto.

Pakistanis crave for short cuts to progress and usually see ending sleaze as a low-hanging fruit to gain such aims. But to adapt a famous saying, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (quickly), the courage to change those I can (quickly), and the wisdom to know the difference. Pakistanis fail this saying badly for it is ending civ-mil imbalance and not sleaze which is more of a low-hanging fruit.

China, India and many others have grown fast despite high sleaze. But no state adopting a dodgy foreign policy under its army’s hold has. No state has ended sleaze rapidly, as we dream about doing. However, Indonesia, Brazil, Chile, etc. ended civ-mil imbalances quickly. This is because sleaze emerges from society’s depth. So, if we generate the same ire against civ-mil imbalance as against sleaze, we may see progress.

But how do we put back in the bottle the genie which knows so many tricks to upend civilians? Ultimately, civilians must get the courage to confront the Pindi boys. This is tough for power-hungry politicians who want to curry favour with them in order to gain power. Only a powerful but not power-seeking politician can. Nawaz fits this role involuntarily. I hope he gets roasted in National Accountability Bureau cases fairly and barred from formal politics. But being our strongest politician, he should then focus informally on civ-mil balancing.

This role for a crooked politician may provoke howls of protest from our “pious” lot. Third World societies produce deeply flawed institutions and public personalities, whether in politics, bureaucracy, military, business, media or civil society. Changes there mainly come from the clash among these flawed entities, as they all target the negatives of others for their own gain. These clashes of the flawed produce more stalemates and reversals in some states, causing stagnation or collapse, but marginally more gains and hence slow progress in others like Pakistan. This realistically is our best bet: the snail’s crawl, bullock’s plod and tusker’s lumber under democracy. Elected rule often harms us but its absence always devastates us. Do we have the wisdom to see this?

By arrangement with Dawn