Is Pakistan a Failed-State?
By Dr. Ghulam M. Haniff
Sydney , Australia
By most social indicators Pakistan is considered to be a failed-state, a designation repeatedly used by scholars and journalists to describe political and social conditions inside the Islamic Republic. Citizens of the country have been well aware of the failure of the governmental mechanism in their daily lives and have suffered through one dictatorial regime after another for decades.
A failed-state is a country that barely works to fulfill the needs of the people. The citizens are left on their own and some flee the country to make a living elsewhere. Those on the top thrive by gouging others and find the paralysis in the political process to be to their advantage.
The failure of the political mechanism has brought considerable notoriety to Pakistan. It placed the country at the bottom in standards of international comparison as the most corrupt nation, as one of the least schooled, as one of the lowest in per capita income and now in the top five percent on the characteristics of a failed-state.
According to one prominent journal of world affairs, which recently published a study on this topic, Pakistan is one of the top ten nations on all the attributes of a failed-state. It scored 104 points while Somalia at the very top obtained 114. The variables together measure the levels of instability as well.
Higher points indicate greater conditions of failure or instability, and range from 18 at the low end of the scale to 114 at the high end. Norway is listed at the bottom as the least failed-state, or the most stable nation.
The data gathered by researchers puts Pakistan with seven sub-Saharan African countries in the top-ten category. The other three in that category are Asian and include Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the literature on political and economic development eight of the ten in the top category have traditionally been classified “the Fourth World” nations, having the least prospects for development.
While Pakistanis may be proud of the nuclear weapons, and the international media constantly harps on that theme, the country actually is very bad-off out of the 177 nations studied. Only nine other nations are worse-off than Pakistan in every aspect of political, economic and social life.
No serious student should be surprised that 80% of the top-ten failed-states are Islamic ones. Muslim political behavior is seen to be strongly associated with state failure to function adequately. The logical question one may pose is: Does the behavior of the Muslims in the political arena lead to conditions that produce failed-states or higher levels of instability?
Since their early history Muslims have failed to produce political institutions that would result in functioning states. The task began by the Prophet in Medina were rudely interrupted and eventually resulted in monarchical regimes which have persisted on to the present time.
The prime examples of these governments range from the countries of Morocco to Saudi Arabia to Oman, among others. Until the heyday of colonialism virtually all the Muslims lived under such regimes.
When Mohammed Ali Jinnah sought to create Pakistan he hoped for a state where the primacy of law would be paramount. Unfortunately, that has not happened even after sixty-two years of statehood. If the present condition of the country were known to Jinnah, he would roll over in his grave.
The failure of Pakistan is clearly to be seen in the internal conditions of the country. They range from feudalism, a social structure left-over from the medieval times, to tribalism, even more ancient type of social hierarchy, to the degradation of women, reminiscent of the jahaliyya period (the age of ignorance), to the disregard of individual rights, as though no one has ever read the Qur’an, and the failure to institute modern education without which nothing is possible in the contemporary world. (Islam began with the word “iqra” meaning “to read” but the leaders pretend as though they have never heard of the word).
It is sad that no leader has chosen Jinnah to be his role-model or aspired to pursue his political agenda. Unlike Mahatma Gandhi, who remains a reverential figure in his native India, the founder of Pakistan is increasingly being forgotten by the succeeding generations.
Nevertheless, those who control levers of government never miss an opportunity to invoke Jinnah’s name whenever they perceive an imminent political advantage. Living under the rule of law remains an empty dream for the citizens of Pakistan while the creation of a modern democratic state remains an elusive goal.
When Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, outranks Pakistan as more stable, one knows the Islamic Republic has hit the rock bottom.
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