Jihad as the centrepiece of State policy does not augur well for a nation’s economy. Unless one has oil. Pakistan doesn’t.
Even the Arab world is realising that as the oil economy weakens and fades — as it inevitably will with new technology and newer forms of energy — Islamist instincts need to be curbed.
Mohammed bin Salman has launched a slew of economic and social reforms in Saudi Arabia, the capital of Sunni Islam and the leader of oil producing countries. Men and women have started mingling freely, bans on women driving or leaving home unescorted have been lifted, cinemas and concerts have opened, MBS has said hijab or abaya in public is not necessary.
Prodded by Donald Trump, the UAE made its historic reconciliation with Israel in 2020 under the Abraham Accords. Flights started. Bahrain and Morocco joined the accord. Even Sudan, got off the ‘State sponsor of terrorism’ list and got a $1.2 billion economic bailout after agreeing to kiss and make up with Israel and sign the accord.
Strategic and economic ties between Egypt and Israel today are the warmest in history. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak with each other quite often, mainly on economy, counterterrorism, and fighting the Islamist threat in the Sinai Peninsula.
But as the rich and smart parts of the Islamic world move away from fundamentalism as State policy, Pakistan kept pushing extremism within and across its border through its alliance of three Ms — Military, Mullah, and Mujahideen. The sheer reason of its birth perhaps leaves it with no choice, no room to reform.
Pakistan is a nation not born out of unity of race, language, ethnicity, or cultural oneness. It was born out of bigotry, rejection, and fear of the ‘other’, that is Hindus, partitioned from unbroken India.
Under the disguise of a democracy, it really chose theocracy, with the three Ms appointing themselves as the chief power brokers in Allah’s dominion. They have also been covering for one other not just in matters of state-sponsored terrorism, sectarian murders, rapes and forcible conversions of minorities, but also gross corruption and economic indiscretions.
The generals run an entire parallel economy.
“Milbus, or the military’s ‘internal economy’, is military capital that is used for the personal benefit of military personnel, especially officers, but is neither recorded nor a part of the defence budget. Its most significant component is entrepreneurial activities that are not subject to state accountability procedures,” journalist Ayesha Siddiqa writes in her book, Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy. “There is also a high financial and opportunity cost in building and sustaining the military’s influence in power politics. Evidence shows that military businesses are not run more efficiently than others. Some of the military’s larger businesses and subsidiaries have required financial bailout from the government. Further, the companies use government resources, which distorts the market.”
While in 2007 Siddiqa estimated the 100 seniormost military officials to be worth UK pound 3.5 billion, today the Pakistan Army does not have money to feed its troops two meals a day. The International Monetary Fund is apparently insisting on a second massive defence budget cut in a year.
The government has no money for salaries of its employees. With forex reserves down to $4 billion or just enough for two weeks, it has outlawed all bonuses to staff.
While no reasonable human will wish such misery on the citizenry of even an enemy nation, for a moment imagine what would happen to India and the rest of the subcontinent if Pakistan were to become an economically strong nation with its core political ideology of radical Islam and jihad as a State tool intact.
It would embolden the radicals in the community across the subcontinent to look up to its model, militate against their host nations, and try to overthrow governments and replace democracies with Islamist rule. An economically strong and politically radical Pakistan would export radicalisation and terror with much more money and might.
It would have been much easier for jihad handlers to market Pakistan and its ideology to an Indian or Sri Lankan Muslim youth as the beacon. It is Pakistan’s and to an extent Bangladesh’s failure to mature as democracies and flourish as economies that quietly tell the Muslim youth of the region that there is no Sharia alternative to a secular democracy.
Contrary to what Left or ‘liberal’ political and economic experts have been telling us, a stable and prosperous Pakistan would not be good for India and its other neighbours.
But that hypothesis itself is flawed. Pakistan was not born out of the love for Islam as much as its hatred and fear of India and Hindus. If you take out that loathing and paranoia, what remains of its identity?
Islam? Perhaps not. Because blinding Sunni supremacy ensures regular killing and persecution of not just non-Muslims but also Shias, Sufis, Ahmediyas and Ismailis.
To run that kind of a hate machine, you need to put in motion certain imaginary god’s laws instead of man-made regulations needed to run a society, polity, and economy.
Running real factories is totally antithetical to running a massive Islamist terror factory. For the former, you need to establish transparency, rule of law, economic fundamentals, and trust in the system. To run the latter, you need to obfuscate, operate in secrecy, nurture the corrupt, bribe citizens with doles, channelise funds into the state’s dark arts.
To do business, you need fewer enemies. To run a bigoted State, you have to have enemies.
For your economy to prosper, you need friends who embrace your honesty and openness. To run a terror state, you need allies like China or Turkey who can benefit from your dark enterprises and eventually throw you out when the job is done.
To claw out of the deep economic ditch, Pakistan needs to scrape off its jihadi DNA and hatred of the other.
Can it?
That leads us to the bigger question.
If it gives up its Islamist instincts, will it still be Pakistan?
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