The wrath of Khan

In its three-quarters of a century of existence, Pakistan has experienced wars, popular uprisings, coups, assassinations, refugee flows, natural disasters, and a myriad of social and economic challenges that veer between looming distress and acute and imminent crisis. Against that history, the latest turn of events that have seen Imran Khan removed from power may not even seem as anything particularly dramatic.

A government loses its majority in the parliament and eventually voters get to decide -- in a sense, this is how mature democracies are supposed to be (something Bangladesh has never experienced, one should note). As for what the voters will decide, well, that’s hard to predict these days even in countries with credible pollsters. And this being Pakistan, things are more complicated than might seem at first.

I have no idea how things will work out for Mr Khan in the coming days, let alone in the eventual election. Instead, let me observe a few things that the typical assessment of Pakistan or its latest prime minister misses. This 30,000-feet-view, however, suggests that regardless of Imran Khan’s future, stability is likely to elude Pakistan.

A typical commentary on Pakistan will bemoan its elite for being venal, corrupt, and self-serving. The more sophisticated analysts will note the extraordinary role the country’s armed forces play in setting the strategic, and ultimately economic and social, policy direction. These assessments may not always be wrong. But any analysis that doesn’t delve deeper into explaining Pakistan’s establishment is likely to be incomplete in its understanding of the country.

A deeper analysis of the Pakistani establishment would begin with the observation that collectively, the elite Pakistanis -- not just the generals, but also the judges, scions of the landed gentry and chieftains, professionals, and business tycoons -- think of themselves as the heir to the Indo-Muslim civilization of the Mughals and the Sultans before them. To them, this entire civilization faced an existential threat, necessitating the creation of Pakistan. Further, this threat has not abetted, and therefore Pakistan must remain on war footing.

This weltanschauung has led to the elite consensus that the defense of Pakistan is paramount -- development, democracy, and everything else can follow eventually when Pakistan is secure. Seen from this perspective, a high defense budget is not a bug that is distorting Pakistan’s economy; it is very much the feature of the country’s political economy.

Of course, there is a far better way that hasn’t been tried by the Pakistani elite. Faced with an existential threat, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore focussed on modernizing their labour force, industrializing their economy, and becoming technologically advanced countries that could afford to spend more on defense. While Ayub Khan introduced “the politics of development” to the political lexicon in our part of the world, none of his followers have tried to emulate the East Asian growth model, possibly because there is no constituency for it in Pakistan.

Instead, through trial and error, the Pakistani elite has settled onto a political system where the military determines the strategic policy, and through its control over the purse-strings, sets the parameter for other policies. Within the constraints of the military’s paramountcy, an independent judiciary and a thriving civil society prevents elected politicians from embarking on any Bonapartist misadventure, such as ZA Bhutto’s decision to rig an election that he might have won anyway.

Seen from a certain point of view, then, the apparent political instability of Imran Khan’s failure to finish his term is perhaps a democratic achievement of sorts. Khan has lost the numbers in the House, but will soon have his day with the voters. The thing is, this democracy-of-sorts may not survive a resurgent Khan.

The more astute assessments of Imran Khan conclude that as a card-carrying member of the Pakistani elite, he imbues the same worldview as his class. That is, he shared the military establishment’s strategic policies. This didn’t necessarily make him a puppet of the military establishment -- if a sexagenarian alpha male could be made into anyone’s puppet -- as many a superficial assessment might suggest. Of course, now he stands against the very establishment. And therein lies the rub.

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Over the decades, Khan has shown remarkable tenacity when it comes to doing the hard work politics -- not just the physically demanding street marches and campaigns, but also the grubby, boring, unsexy work of, well, politicking. It is an open question whether he sincerely believes in the populist rhetoric of “Islamic welfarism” or the fiery anti-West tirades. His government, it must be noted, showed little interest in promoting investment and growth, and his economic policy followed the populist playbook of subsidies and handouts that are seldom sustainable.

That is, while he did not create Pakistan’s economic problems, Khan was and remains unlikely to be able to resolve it. But now he is out of power. And whoever runs the show in the coming months has the unenviable task of economic stabilization whereby things get worse before they get better.

If Mr Khan is a cynical charlatan, he would surely blame the corrupt, venal, conniving bunch that replaced him for the misery faced by Pakistanis. And if he sincerely believes in his rhetoric, he will double down on that line! If he is successful, the establishment will face its most significant challenge since 1970.

That is, the Pakistani voters have a choice between gambling on a Naya Pakistan of existential crises from decades ago, or a Purana Pakistan -- a hard country, sure, but one that has survived many a crisis. Unfortunately, no one is offering genuine reforms that would reduce the risks of crises.

But at least the Pakistani people can still choose.

Jyoti Rahman’s writings are available at: https://jrahman.substack.com.