What Pakistan must do next

The humiliated civil and military rulers of Pakistan face several choices if they are to regain any credibility on the world scene.

Their sheltering of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden is just one of that country’s many shortcomings and the patience of western and other governments has been stretched too far.

For a start, al Qaeda’s presumed new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Taliban's Mullah Omar are still at large in Pakistan, masterminding attacks in Afghanistan on Nato forces, including New Zealanders.

Compassionate citizens around the world showed their displeasure with Pakistan’s duplicity by all but refusing to raise funds for last year’s devastating floods, which left more than 20 million homeless.

The inability of the weak civilian politicians to respond was matched only by the self-aggrandisement of Pakistan’s true powerbrokers, the military. Although run by only 600,000 out of a population of 170 million, the military commands most of the country’s economic resources and the billions of dollars of aid that flows in from America.

While some of this is used against Pakistan’s own substantial internal Islamic terrorist activity, most of it goes toward funding a nuclear-armed war machine against India.

Islamists have killed more than 3000 Pakistanis since 2009. But they have caused much more mayhem in India over the past two decades.

Sadanand Dhume, of the American Enterprise Institute, has several excellent articles describing this on his home page.

Pariah state needs good home
Pakistan ranks at the bottom of most world benchmarks and has become increasing intolerant of religious and other freedoms. It spends more than twice on arms and soldiers than it does on health and education combined. It passes laws on blasphemy and kills educated Christians.

The high levels of illiteracy and low measures of human development are the main contributors to those scenes we see of burning effigies, riots and outpourings of hate against a world most of its people cannot hope to experience for themselves.

Pakistan’s elite has had all the benefits of western civilisation. Many have done well for themselves both inside and outside the country.

The military has ruled the country directly for more than half of its 64 years and pulled the strings for the remainder. Yet there is little but misery to show for it and Pakistan remains the major security threat to most of its neighbours as well as a continuing disappointment to its well-wishers in the West.

Don’t take my word for it. Aside from Mr Dhume, Professor Iftikhar Malik’s brief study, Pakistan (New Holland, $30), is as good a place as any to start. The Economist has favourably reviewed two academic books, while at the American Enterprise Institute, Apoorva Shah has a brilliant profile of the man who really runs Pakistan, General Ashfaq Kayani, who replaced the ill-fated Pervez Musharraf as head of the Army.

The Economist also offers concise and valuable insights on the four strands that have turned Pakistan into a cauldron of intolerance and violence: strategic position; the role of Islam; poor governance; and dominance by the armed forces.

Showing who’s boss
If you are a genuine superpower, it pays to let others know. For too long, the US has held back and this is reflected in the tide of anti-American commentary that has followed the capturing of Osama bin Laden.

It was a high-risk mission across another country and its success must be weighed against the odds of failing, as did the 1980 Delta Force raid to rescue US hostages in Iran.

One ingredient was not trusting Pakistani authorities for fear they would tip off the target. Such a display of resolve and expertise has been long overdue.

As Daily Telegraph blogger Damian Thompson observes:

The Islamic world is amazingly receptive to what I call “counter-knowledge.” Let’s start by reminding ourselves that most people in Muslim countries have their doubts about 9/11, and millions of them believe unquestioningly that it was plotted by the CIA.

Others have picked up on the declining influence of bin Laden’s brand of Islamic jihadism, which Reul Marc Gerecht, at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, says was based on the notion that

American feebleness would bring the inevitable collapse of the unrighteous and the restoration of a more virtuous age. [bin Laden] sustained himself for so long in the Middle East and Central Asia because lots of Muslims – especially in powerful places in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan – were sympathetic to his cause. For a time, he tapped into an angry, shameful intellectual current among Muslims, who after World War II were increasingly immiserated by their ever more lawless rulers.

Some of those rulers have now gone, or in Libya and Syria are pounding their citizens into sumission. This, as Fouad Ajami concludes, “has simply overwhelmed the world of the jihadists.” He continues:

In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Syria, younger people – hurled into politics by the economic and political failures all around them – are attempting to create a new political framework, to see if a way could be found out of the wreckage that the authoritarian states have bequeathed them…

bin Laden's fate [is] of no interest to the people in the sorrowful town of Deraa enduring the cruelty of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his death squads.

Lessons from the Canadian election
After delivering three indecisive results in six years, Canadian voters have finally opted for a Parliament made up of two major parties and two much smaller ones.

The winners in this week’s poll were Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, who won a comfortable majority after near misses in two previous elections, and the New Democrats, led by Jack Layton.

The losers were the badly led Liberals and Bloc Québécois, both of which now hold only 13% of the seats in the House of Commons. French-speaking voters, in particular, moved to the New Democrats while the Tories picked up support in manufacturing-based Ontario.

Canada hasn’t been a world trendsetter since the two decades after World War II. But that has changed in recent years as it has become a forceful member of the elite G-7.

The implosion of the centre provides some interesting parallels for New Zealand. John Key should take comfort from Mr Harper’s government, which embraces fiscal rectitude and free trade while maintaining even-handed social policies.

Meanwhile, the union and state employee-backed New Democrats have emerged from their previously marginal role on the radical Left with energetic populist policies that might appeal to Labour here.

It remains to be seen whether the resurgent Left will hold its popularity as Canada continues to rise in prosperity from Mr Harper’s successful formula.