Recently, the army chief addressed parliament after the Jaffar Express train attack in Balochistan. He said Pakistan had to become a “hard state” to fight militancy and asked how long would countless lives be sacrificed in a soft state, and how long would governance gaps be filled by the blood of soldiers and martyrs.
The global community also condemned the incident as an act of terror. Nevertheless, human acts, including criminal acts, have context and cause which need to be understood to ensure they are not repeated. This has never happened in Balochistan. Since independence, it has been overtly and/or covertly ruled by the centre. Protests against all kinds of exploitation and denial of human and political rights are equated with disloyalty, and when in desperation they lead to insurgencies they are mercilessly crushed as acts of rebellion, treason, and terror.
The number of Baloch killed, Baloch crippled and wounded, Baloch tortured, Baloch missing, Baloch families forever traumatised, and the Baloch intelligentsia almost irretrievably alienated has, over the decades, added up to maybe millions. Akhtar Mengal, former chief minister of Balochistan who is a political moderate and son of the revered Baloch leader, Ataullah Mengal, has warned the situation in Balochistan today is the biggest threat to Pakistan. Moreover, Baloch alienation has linked up with increasing Pakhtun alienation. This enlarges the problem beyond any military solution. Accordingly, continued military action will only provide neighbours with increased opportunities and incentives to interfere which would eventually render the situation beyond control.
What is absolutely required is a Nelson Mandela-like initiative to help heal the country.
Cynical politicians in Punjab used to say “Balochistan yahan se nahin dikhta” (Balochistan is not seen from here.) With this attitude the problem has metastasized, and today the whole of Pakistan has become Balochistan while Pakistan is being transformed into ‘Greater Punjab’. The last time a ‘Greater Punjab’ was attempted in the form of One Unit it led to the breakup of Pakistan. Accordingly, our national decision-makers need to be aware that ill-considered policies may have short-term gains but far more severe and irreparable longer-term consequences. Unfortunately, as a country, we never learn or are never permitted to learn from our many disasters.
The concept of a “soft state” was coined by Swedish economist and sociologist, Gunnar Myrdal, who wrote his famous Asian Drama in 1968. The concept has now evolved into that of a “failing state”. Myrdal defined a soft state as one “characterised by weak governance, a lack of effective law enforcement, and a general societal and political indiscipline”. This almost exactly describes the political state of Pakistan today. Reliance on the use of force to resolve complex political challenges is not an indication of a strong or hard state. It is, on the contrary, a demonstration of a weak soft state shying away from seriously addressing such issues with an irrelevant show of state power against its own citizens.
Myrdal notes that in South Asian countries, despite talk about the need for social and economic revolutions, policymakers “tread most warily in order not to disrupt the traditional social order”. As a result, “they remain soft states that cannot accomplish what they need to.” What is true of society and the economy applies also to nation building. A military ‘unity of command’ approach can never resolve complex historical, identity, class conflict, resource sharing, sociopolitical, and institutional challenges. The pretence that it can is actually symptomatic of a soft ‘no can do’ state pretending to be a hard ‘can do’ state. Sixty years later, India is the only South Asian state to have substantially emerged — if neither completely nor irreversibly — from this soft state syndrome. Tragically, Pakistan remains stuck in it.
In 2011, Prof Anatol Lieven published his book Pakistan: A Hard Country.“ Interestingly, he considered ‘Requiem for a Country’ as an alternative title. His description of Pakistan still applies, ie, “divided, disorganised, economically backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often savagely oppressive towards the poor and women, and home to extremely dangerous forms of extremism and terrorism”. While Pakistan’s participation in America’s ‘war on terror’ alleviated the immediate threat of terrorism, it addressed none of its deeper causes. As a result, we are where we are.
According to Lieven, while the state of Pakistan is soft, its society is hard and enduring. It is resistant to radical change. He suggests it is stuck in some kind of low-level equilibrium and oddly enough this low-level resilience ensures Pakistan’s survival rather than anything the state attempts to do. One might ask whether this is a blessing or a curse. It reminds one of the Chinese saying “May you live in interesting times!” And in Pakistan we are indeed living in interesting but treacherous times.
The interconnected challenges facing the world today, as listed in the annual reports of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, include climate heating and its consequences; the threat of nuclear war; pandemics waiting to happen; unregulated artificial intelligence development; democratic deficits widening as a result of fascist, racist and far-right takeovers in the US and Europe; genocidal policies unleashed on the Middle East by Israel, and threatened in South Asia by India according to two ‘genocide alerts’ by Genocide Watch; etc. A failing state, whether caused by a weak state or a hard society, or the reverse, has almost no chance of longer-term survival.
What is absolutely required is a Nelson Mandela-like initiative to help heal the country and bring about a national reconciliation. The emphasis would be on putting our tragic past behind us and holding people accountable, but not on prosecuting responsible individuals for their past crimes. This may be unacceptable to many victims, but it should remove any fear of redressing the deep wrong done to the nation on Feb 8, 2024, and begin the process of restoring the image of the military without compromising on civilian supremacy, judicial and parliamentary independence, essential socioeconomic reforms, and undiluted constitutional and democratic governance. There need not be any losers on this road to Pakistan’s liberation.
The writer is a former ambassador to the US, India and China, and head of UN missions in Iraq and Sudan.
Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2025
Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1900186/hard-state-soft-state