Islamabad talks: Pakistan’s role as peacemaker won’t help it overcome its military-jihadi complex

Not only does the continuation of the war mean economic disaster, there is a real chance that Pakistani armed forces can be summoned to a war that they do not want to fight. Saudi Arabia has already invoked their mutual defence pact to station 13,000 troops and a squadron of combat aircraft on its soil.

If these forces are deployed in combat, Iran could decide to attack targets in Pakistan, as it has done across the Persian Gulf. That would add one more conflict to the two—with Afghanistan and India—that Pakistan is already engaged in.

It’s a bad situation to be in, but Pakistan’s military and civilian leadership has invested serious political capital in meeting the challenge head on. As ironic as it is to see the Pakistani army attempt a regional peace initiative, we should hope it succeeds.

A quick end to this war is categorically in India’s interests. We need not be churlish in giving credit where it is due and appreciating the current Pakistani diplomatic endeavour.

Beyond that, the question for us in India is what will Pakistan do with the international goodwill that it is receiving thanks to its newfound role as a peacemaker?

Now miracles are possible in a complex world and the Pakistani establishment could discover that being a responsible actor is far better than being an international troublemaker and decide to turn over a new leaf. It would, however, be foolhardy to count on such an outcome.

It is far more likely that Pakistan’s trajectory will follow a pattern that has been recurring since its creation. That goes something like this: Global politics creates an opportunity for Pakistan, relieving the immediate economic crisis; the military establishment then corners the lion’s share of the benefits and the economy gets worse; the military takes up its anti- India agenda and in the ensuing crisis, Pakistan goes back into the international doghouse.

This happened in the 1950s when Field Marshal Ayub Khan joined the American camp in the then-unfolding Cold War; in the 1980s when General Zia-ul-Haq made Pakistan serve Washington’s interests in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan; in the 2000s after General Pervez Musharraf threw in Pakistan’s lot with America’s war on the Taliban; and in the 2010s when General Qamar Javed Bajwa hitched Pakistan’s wagon to the service of a different principal, this time China and its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Belt and Road Initiative.

Each time, Pakistan benefited by offering its geopolitical services to a big power. Each time, the engagement with a global power bailed Pakistan out of the economic mess that it found itself in. And each time, Pakistan was unable to fundamentally transform itself for the better because the military-jihadi complex used the financial and political benefits to strengthen its own hold on power and policy.

It neither has the inclination nor competence to carry out the structural economic reforms necessary to take Pakistan away from dependency to development. Despite tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid since the 1950s, it also received 24 International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailouts since 1947, roughly once every three years.

Pakistan now needs about $20 billion in external financing to avoid a balance of payments crisis. Of this, around $17 billion is expected from debt rollovers from China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, IMF and other multilateral sources, leaving it nearly $3 billion short.

The government’s biggest expenditure is debt servicing, which amounts to 7% of GDP. To manage its fiscal deficit, it needs to reduce its debt repayments, cut its defence budget or raise tax revenues. Lenders won’t permit the first, the military-jihadi establishment won’t allow the second and the elite will not accept the third.

For now, even if Pakistan were to succeed in helping the US and Iran make a deal, it is unclear how it will secure enough money to avoid economic turmoil. It will need $170 million for every dollar increase in crude oil prices. This is in addition to the minimum of $3 billion a year it will need if all its foreign lenders agree to roll over debt.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that a Pakistani general who explicitly takes power faces a crisis in an average of four years and becomes a lame-duck in eight. The distribution is bimodal though: generals who inherit instability (Yahya Khan, Musharraf and Asim Munir) meet their first crisis in around two years. Coups following relative stability (Ayub Khan and Zia) get around seven years before things get very messy.

If Field Marshal Munir survives the current upheavals, we can expect him to stick around for nearly a decade, and during this time, he will try to get his own shy at the Indian stumps.

The author is co-founder and director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy.