About two years ago Pakistan was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and doom. The debts it had acquired, it did not have the capacity to repay. These debts were primarily the result of a policy hammered out between PPP and PMLN under the euphemistically named Charter of Democracy. The unwritten part of this Charter, which was its real core, was simple i.e each party will allow the other to strip Pakistan of its assets without let or hindrance under an overarching legal architecture of complete immunity. In short THEFT became national policy.
And it was no longer to be theft by stealth. That was the old system. After Zardari became president the modalities of theft changed to daylight highway robbery at the point of a gun. Every institution which could have stood in its way was destroyed. So much so that even the constitution was changed, so that plunder was made provincial matter, and the center could not take cognizance of it.
There is no more dire threat to national security than a country being taken to the cleaners to the point where it is economically bankrupted.
This is what happened to Pakistan. Most tragically, the ultimate minders of our national security, the army, saw what was happening, and treated it with benign neglect. And so glaringly benign was this neglect, that it merited being put at par with abetment! For example one would like to know who vetted and approved Hussain Haqqani’s appointment as our ambassador to the U.S; and let Zardari get by and be President?
Thus the willful blindness of the Army high command was important in facilitating the adoption of “theft as national policy” by the government. What was also blown away in the wake of this policy were the last tenuous wisps of a dying value system. Integrity lost the sanctity which is associated with it, and material wealth, irrespective of its sources, became the measure of respectability. Nearly all political leaders, most bureaucrats, many judges and generals, and almost the entire business elite indulged brazenly in theft and stood sullied by it. Pride in patriotism and things like honour became a thing of the past and betrayal of national interest became acceptable.
The decade in power shared by Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, all but destroyed Pakistan. They could not have done a better job of it, had this been their primary goal with looted wealth being just an icing on the cake!
But it is quite clear that along the way something happened to change one of Gen Bajwa’s core beliefs. I believe this was the Panama Case and its fallout which led the General to take a deeper look at Pakistan’s finances. I feel this led him to conclude that Pakistan’s national security situation had become way more precarious than could be suspected.; and that this was related directly to the plunder of state assets which had led to national bankruptcy in all but in name.
Thus, when Imran Khan became P.M, Pakistan was virtually teetering on the edge of a precipice. That was two years ago. The question agitating most of us today is whether Pakistan’s lot has been retrieved sufficiently for us to be feel marginally secure?
The sad truth is that this is not so. Pakistan is indeed taken much more seriously in foreign capitals today than it was in the days of Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, and both Imran and Bajwa have contributed to this new perception of Pakistan. Plunder at the very highest levels seems to have received a temporary check, but a little lower down it is business as usual. Governance, and dispensation of justice are at least as poor as they were. Hopes that soared, have mostly fallen flat. Their place has been taken by frustration and fear that Pakistan is literally just a heartbeat away from the time when the talons of the recently neutralized vultures will again be around our throats.
When power was transferred from Nawaz Sharif to Imran Khan and all the eggs had been counted, the situation was dire, to say the least. Never before did the situation of the country cry out for rule by emergency. Not only was this not done, but those who had brought the country to its sorry pass were not even disarmed. They were left with their coffers flush with plundered national wealth….wealth which would soon be redeployed to bring destabilize the state. Instead of bringing them to the book and divesting them of their ill-gotten gains, every effort was made, especially by the army High Command, not to look in that direction.
Thus, the lot of Pakistan has not been sufficiently retrieved in the last two years to the point where one can feel secure. Only the slide seems to have been slowed down. But with the passage of time even this feels like a temporary check. Yet this could be reversed once more at the drop of a hat.
Security will come to us only when this temporary slowdown will change into a halt and then a turnaround. This turnaround will begin only when the vicious malaise that has taken us down is first identified, and then defanged.
This malaise is the evil of all-pervading corruption, unchecked by conscience or the institutions built to check it, and the progressive dismantling of the rule of law.
Only when the rule of law is reinstituted to a point where the thought of crime is met by the fear of the law, can the turnaround begin. This fear will be engendered only when the fate of those who have gutted Pakistan is there for all to see. And this fate is such that seeing it, no one would look forward to it.