Pakistan looks like a perfect example for the relationship between extractive political institutions and extractive economical institutions as described in "Why Nations Fail".
Elites often sacrifice the long term development of the country for their short term gain and to maintain their elite status.
The problem with Pakistani society is that as the original thought behind the birth of Pakistan namely that Muslims cannot prosper under a secular Hindu majority nation, was essentially a negation of the idea of India, they view any success of India through the prism that India's success is a failure of the idea of Pakistan. However their formula for dealing with this problem has been to undermine India's success by encouraging ethnic conflict in India, rather than investing in their own economic capabilities.
The author seems to have fallen into the same trap, by talking up persecution of India's minorities. Fact remains that Muslims in India are doing much better than Muslims in Pakistan, the population of Muslims since independence has actually grown by over 4% (from 10% to 14%) while Muslims are poorer than Hindus on average, many of them are part of India's cultural and business elite. If one wanted to write of persecution the decline of Hindus in Pakistan's population from 15% at independence to about 1% might be more fertile ground.
Also not noted in this article is that when there have been multiple attempts, largely from the Indian side, to talk peace (Lahore summit by AB Vajpayee, Agra summit, Manmohan Singh's talks in 2008-09, Modi's visit to Pakistan in 2015) each time it has been undermined by hardliners in Pakistan. India today IMO views relations with Pakistan as a problem that cannot be solved and something where you just need to take care the nuisance value does not go beyond a point. If Pakistan needs to come out of the hole it is in, it needs to cut defence spending, initiate real land reforms (not the kind where the Bhutto family owns a quarter million acres of land post said reform), invest in non-religions education (as far as I can tell the reverse is happening), and build infrastructure and factories rather than nuclear bombs. However fear mongering of India has been tremendously profitable to the Pakistan elite and I don't see why they would step back from that. Any respite due to their economic slowdown may be temporary and if things improve they are likely to move back to the status quo.
Perhaps Murtaza is under the illusion that India (sans the BJP) is clamouring for a rekindling of ties with Pakistan. In fact, not too long ago, Rahul Gandhi (scion of the Gandhi family and largely seen as the de-facto leader of the Indian National Congress) said in a talk held in Cambridge that normalisation of ties with Pakistan wasn’t possible until the cross- border terrorism stops.
After 3 direct wars (all begun by Pakistan) and a number of terrorist attacks inside India which have been traced back to terrorist cells in Pakistan which the Pakistan government/establishment refuses to extradite or effectively prosecute - and after various forays for peace by the Indian government - *even* the BJP: Vajpayee in Lahore in 1999 leads to the Kargil war & Modi at a Sharif wedding (also) in Lahore 2015, answered by terrorist attacks in Pathankot in 2016 & then Pulwama in 2019 - you could perhaps say that the appetite for most Indians to even talk with Pakistan is at an all time low.
As for the perpetual & grave identity crisis of Pakistan, there are various well documented instances & events which reveal the sole idea that the state of Pakistan was based on - the 2 nation theory.
Jinnah’s speech of 11th August 1947 has long been held up by the progressives and non-residents of Pakistan as something which meant that the state was *supposed to be* secular - which has been laughed off by serious researchers. Jinnah went around giving incendiary speeches throughout the 2nd World War in Muslim circles & meetings (while the leaders of the Congress were in jail for protesting against Indian involvement in the War) which subsequently culminated in wide spread communal riots & the final massacre of the partition in 1946-47.
Saving face in a speech in the face of increasing scrutiny by the Allied powers (especially the US) is not enough for dear Murtaza to say that Pakistan is a secular state. The very few minorities that remain in Pakistan cannot become Presidents or Prime Ministers - declared so by the constitution.
Hans J Morgenthau, in his book ‘The New Republic’, observed: “Pakistan is not a nation and hardly a state. It has no justification, ethnic origin, language, civilisation or the consciousness of those who make up its population. They have no interests in common, save one: fear of Hindu domination. It is to that fear and nothing else that Pakistan possess its existence and thus for survival as an independent state.”
During the same period, another American scholar Keith Callard in his book ‘Pakistan, a Political Study’ commented: “... the force behind the establishment of Pakistan was largely the feeling of insecurity”.
The Cabinet Secretary of Pakistan, Mohd Ali, when asked by a top Indian bureaucrat, B.K. Nehru, regarding the persistent use of abusive language against India and Hindus by the Pakistani Newspaper ‘Dawn’ (Muslim League’s mouthpiece), replied that, though he knew that it was wrong, but such fabrications about an enemy was necessary for building Pakistan.
Military and civilian rulers in Pakistan have used the anti-Hindu rhetoric for mobilising the people against India both during war and peace. On 29 August, just before the 1965 War, President Ayub Khan in a directive to the Commander in Chief, (General Mohammad Musa), wrote: “…… as a general rule, Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows delivered at the right time and place. Such opportunities should therefore be sought and exploited.”
Therefore, the general consensus throughout India is that the onus remains on Pakistan to convince India to come take a seat at the table, not the other way around. Let’s see how long that takes to get through the collective heads of the Pakistani government & the military and also their people.
While you say that Pakistan should defer the conflict for the future , the question remains that why should India do the same instead of capitalising of Pakistan's weakness right now ? As a nation India has little to no incentive to let Pakistan grow. As can be observed from data whenever Pakistan is in an economically stable position the number of terrorist attacks in India increase.
Pakistan's founder did not want a "secular homeland". Jinnah has never EVER used the word "secular" in any of his speeches.
On the other hand, he has said, "I could not understand a section of people who deliberately wanted to create mischief and made a propaganda that the constitution of Pakistan would not be made on the basis of Shariat.”
Having Islamic Law/Sharia as the basis of one's constitution is not exactly anywhere close to Secularism.
On another rant against Western countries Jinnah went back to the tried and test method of Islamism. “Take inspiration and guidance from the Holy Quran, the final victory will be ours [….] You have to develop the spirit of mujahids. All I require of you is that everyone … be prepared to sacrifice all, if necessary, in building Pakistan as a bulwark of Islam.”
Pakistan is exactly what Jinnah created - an Islamic republic which wants to be the bulwark of Islam, whose constitution and laws are derived from Islamic Law.
Also, Jinnah allied with Feudals when he allied with Unionist Party(A party of Feudal Landlords). Land Reforms is again, never mentioned by Jinnah. While his counterpart in India, was on record that Land Reforms is India's future as far back as in 1929(India got independence in 1947).
Fantastic read! Thanks for bringing him as a guest Noah!
What I find interesting is that Pakistan and Nigeria are have a lot of similarities. Huge 200M population that's underutilized, massive inequality, religious extremism causing backwardness, massive issues post independence, and they even have similar per capita income levels & UN development levels by HDI.
But they got there in different ways. Pakistan needs land reform while Nigeria depends on oil booms to grow and stalls during commodity busts. It will be interesting to see which nation will fair better by 2030.
Lots of blame mongering on India and other countries. It is a typical Pakistani mindset, not to expose the evils and hypocrisy of their own being, no investment in their own progress. I wonder how it feels to be this insecure? No facts given about the ostensible “outrageous” behaviour of the Indian govt or the “Draconian” Kashmir Law which is for the benefit and protection of persecuted Sikh, Christian, Hindu, Parsi & tribal minorities from Pakistan primarily that any honourable country unlike Pakistan would consider itself liable for. When the hunter can’t hunt the hunted, I guess in a morphed corner of their mega maniac universe protection laws will seem “draconian” - furthermore a Sharia peddling country, plastering that label on one other than itself is comical. There was no mention of the persecution of its minorities from Hindus to Sikhs to Kalash communities other than Ahmediya Muslims (this is where the buck stops for Pakistanis - even to name other minorities seems blasphemous to their cause) and how temples have been turned into toilets and how Hindu, Sikh & Christian women are kidnapped on a daily basis, gang raped, killed if they are lucky enough and if not then forcibly converted to Islam to endure an entirely fallible life. Kashmir is and will always be a part of India. A beautiful land such as and also the birthplace of Shaivism should never fall prey to the same destiny as Pakistan - it should pray that at the rate which it is going, Balochistan does not become a part of India by its own will (but of course a negative state will always assert that it is India’s “draconian” will at play) In actuality there is no revenge to be had on the part of Pakistan for what happened in East Pakistan (which was a part of India to begin with) - it was entirely Pakistan’s doing and the genocide that was being committed by the Pakistani army on Bangladeshi nationals forced India to step in and help Bangladesh. Pakistan should be thanking India for averting and buffering it’s disasters. Pakistan and it’s Murtazas’ can harp all they want, it is the homogenous Islamist attitude of blaming all shortcomings of one’s own on others and lagging behind on the homework needed to build a strong, robust nation and conscientious analysis of what it means to be human. This articles states no real statistics and derivations and lessons learnt on behalf of a pernicious state that Pakistan is. Making excuses and running on the same mindset (of course some superfluous self effacing statements pooh & paah-ing that barely scratch the surface of reality have been made given how bad the situation for the country is despite of the billions of dollars spent on it over the years by extraneous sources from America to Saudi and now China - that in itself is laughable and proves the true nature of Pakistan) No mention of how it has sold itself to China in present times and it’s atrocities in Balochistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Overall, if this article is a testament to the revamp of Pakistan at all, I can say not even an iota of the kind of mind bogglingly deep reconnaissance into the country’s problems and its Islamist stance has been done and at this rate it’s going to remain as non-salubrious, pathetic and laughable as it always was.
I am quite surprised at this introspection of Pakistan by Murtaza Hussain. I think he has captured the ills and the shortcomings of Pakistan rather candidly; some clearly visible to even a casual onlooker of affairs of the region and others with some insights. As I read this long essay though, I felt that some of the things he has stated incorrectly, or incompletely, should be set straight.
But before I do that, I must admit that I hadn't known of Murtaza or his work before this. So, I checked out both his own substack and The Intercept. Predictably, his anti-India stance and Hindu-phobia shows up regularly; both in the topics he chooses to write on the Intercept (mainly), and in his treatment in detail of such topics. I can write pages worth of details but that will be tangential to commenting on the article here. The only reason I am mentioning this is to establish his clear bias against India and it helped me understand why he had to keep dragging India in this article when the sole focus on Pakistan would have been most appropriate. I should also mention that I did not readily see any other work on either his substack or on the Intercept by him that was critical of Pakistan. Perhaps Noah’s invitation was specific?
That said, I am surprised at his sharp critique of Pakistan and equally surprised that he tipped his hat to BJP government for the progress they have delivered in India. Coming back to where I find his article is either inaccurate or incomplete. First, his claim that Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah was agnostic about religion and was secular. It is like saying that Trump believes in welcoming illegal immigrants wholeheartedly! This is either charitable reimagining of Jinnah or willful ignorance. Nothing could be further from the truth! It was Jinnah who demanded the split from India because he wanted an Islamic nation for Muslims. A split that was so bloody that over 12 million people lost their lives, so it would be quite appropriate to say that their blood was on Jinnah’s hands.
Murtaza also mentions that Pakistan outperformed India in the beginning. This is mostly true, but it requires some color. A newly created Pakistan should have carried proportionate amount of debt that pre-partition India was saddled with. It never paid that amount to India. This amount is said to be in the range of Rs 55 crore to Rs 95 crore, or in 1947-48 value of US$ between $160 million to $295 million. It may seem small by today’s inflated standards, but it was an immense sum back then and both West and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were beneficiaries. What is also noteworthy is that the independent India still gave Pakistan over Rs 300 crores (US$870 million) as their share of the split, without adjusting for the debt that Pakistan reneged on. This is over and above the army, military equipment etc. that was divided between India and Pakistan. My point is, that Pakistan had a clean slate and a flush bank balance to start with, where as India carried all the debt. Pakistan also started receiving aid almost from the start from US, UK and others.
Murtaza also dilutes Pakistan’s bailouts by just casually mentioning of negotiations of a new IMF bailout. What he left unsaid is that Pakistan already has had 23 IMF bailouts in 75 years! Even the poster child of failed economy, Argentina, has had “only 21” bailouts! WSJ reported recently that as of end of 2022, Pakistan had a staggering $130 billion debt, and $73 billion of this amount is due by 2025! It is unclear if this is their total debt, i.e., whether it includes loans by China, various European countries, Gulf countries, Türkiye, and even smaller nations like Malaysia!
Bottom line, Pakistan’s fiscal mismanagement has always been criminal and West, and particularly US and IMF, have kept the drug coming to an addict.
I want to end with one final point, and that is Murtaza’s desperate attempt to drag India in this discussion somehow. He chooses the Kashmir issue and tries to compare Pakistani army’s atrocities in Bangladesh with Indian army’s handling of Pakistan fomented terror campaigns in Kashmir. This is like comparing Germany’s cruel treatment of Jews in WWII to my local county mishandling of an arrest warrant. If Pakistan stops their cross-border terrorism and the proxy war, then they may gain some help from India. India has overlooked Pakistan’s export of terrorism and offered a hand in the past but repeated betrayal has shut that door until Pakistan completely disavows terrorism and dismantles the terrorist factories that it has created.
All in all, no amount of our analysis will be of any help to Pakistan. As Murtuza correctly portrays, it has far too many vested interests that are feeding on the easy money. More importantly, it needs to really take a hard look at the religious fanatism, not just in their intolerance to others and hate for India and esp. Hindus but also, as Murtaza points out, to minorities in Pakistan, mainly other Muslim sects as Hindus, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians are mostly chased out, killed, or forcefully converted already. Until then Pakistan is walking around like a suicide bomber, always in a death embrace of a bomb vest that is held close to their body and so carries real risk of being torn to pieces.
I don't claim to be an expert (at all) on Pakistan--for me the post was a nice introduction and I thought it presented a comprehensive overview, hence my comment. If there were some facts or interpretations of events and the overall situation in Pakistan that you thought the author got wrong, then please share your perspectives with the rest of us so that we can have an interchange and all come away from this better informed.
For a tour of Pakistan's challenges, my favorite book remains Anatol Lieven's "Pakistan: A Hard Country." If you want to know more about some of the issues mentioned in this post, I recommend it.
In a larger sense, of course, Pakistan's tragedy is not that different from many other developing countries. Maybe someday we'll get a better recipe than the old Washington Consensus for getting countries out of the elite capture trap.
We have some hints, now, for better policy; Noah's covered a lot in his development articles. But those better policies have to be enacted by politicians -- and we still know so little about how to get better politics.
Author gives Jinnah far too much credit - Jinnah didn't have a plan - he told different things to different people and tailored his message to the audience. At the end of the day everyone got a different message about what Pakistan was supposed to be - and that confusion persists till date.
Jinnah never wanted a secular state, he simply didn't care about the details beyond getting his own country.
Over time the strongest groups - the mullahs, the military and the mill owners (Feudals) have all taken their share of the pie and ended up defining the state in ways that are beneficial to their interests.
Ishtiaq Ahmed has written extensively about Jinnah and particularly about his complete lack of a coherent agenda for Pakistan.
Secondly the topic of the essay is 'How can Pakistan join the South Asian boom' - basically 2 economies in South Asia are booming - India and Bangladesh. Pakistan still can not bring itself to change it's strategic orientation with respect to these countries - (beyond having some long term fantasy to turn Bangladesh against India militarily and convert it to the 'Pakistan ideology').
The blocker on normalization is not coming from the Indian side 'Hindu fascist BJP' or whatever - Modi invited the PM of Pakistan to his swearing in ceremony and visited Pakistan to normalize relations early in his tenure, only to get backstabbed with back-to-back terror attacks.
It is the Pakistani establishment and the Pakistani intellectual class which is unable to digest normal relations with India, and even now is dreaming of a strategic pause in their eternal war against India rather than a genuine change of direction and the assessment of the potential of India as a friend rather than an enemy.
If there is no strategic realignment to reverse relations with India and Bangladesh- there is no way for Pakistan to practically benefit from the broader South Asian boom in terms of trade, investment and technology, except for the soft power and psychological effects of seeing their neighbours making tangible progress for the first time. (Before the pandemic - Pakistani media had studiously avoided showing any pictures of skyscrapers, metro trains or new airports coming up in India.)
Only if Pakistan is able to calm down its politics and society and reform internally into a more moderate country, will it start benefiting from the global value chains moving there eventually as Indian labor costs become prohibitively high - but that requires for most of India to first become significantly richer than Pakistan and such an expectation can backfire badly India still has poorer states like UP, Bihar and Jharkhand which still have cheaper labor than Pakistan and can fuel Indian manufacturing for at least another decade after the southern states become prohibitively expensive.
A rational elite would have figured out a pivot to India/"grand bargain on Kashmir" a long time ago - specially in the 2008-2012 era when India overtook Pakistan in developmental indicators comprehensively, India's long term economic trajectory was firmly established. Instead, the elite decided to stick its head in the sand and pretend that India was not rapidly expanding, and instead decided to act as a conduit for Chinese investment in Pakistan.
You can see the difference in how India is leveraging the quad vs how Pakistan used CPEC by acting as a strategic bulwark against India.
India is leveraging its security relationship with the US to pull in high-tech export oriented manufacturing into the country using India labor and to increase FDI into defense, electronics, IT, r&D- in the meanwhile it is maintaining a stable trade relationship with China (with increasing scrutiny in a few sensitive strategic sectors) and only promising the US economic and technological competition with China - not all out war - this gives it space to change to a more neutral position if needed in the future if it gets the appropriate deal from China.
Pakistan on the other hand has left no scope for compromise with India - halted trade which ended up harming itself more than India. It offered itself to China for cheap let the chinese build infrastructure using dollar denominated debt which ultimately had no direct impact on its exports.
I'm also going to ignore classical Pakistani mistakes that comes from reading newspaper headlines instead of looking at the primary source for data - e.g. India's GDP per capita is now higher than Bangladesh's because BDesh also had a devaluation in the past year - etc.
"By midcentury, Pakistan could have a population greater than 330 million, making it an outsize part of a global population that is generally growing older and more scarce."
Pakistan doesn't seem like a good candidate to sustainably reach that population level.
"An average Pakistani household spends 50.8 percent of monthly income on food. This makes them particularly vulnerable to shocks, including high food prices. The impact of climate change and population displacements exacerbate the situation."
Pakistan looks like a perfect example for the relationship between extractive political institutions and extractive economical institutions as described in "Why Nations Fail".
Elites often sacrifice the long term development of the country for their short term gain and to maintain their elite status.
The problem with Pakistani society is that as the original thought behind the birth of Pakistan namely that Muslims cannot prosper under a secular Hindu majority nation, was essentially a negation of the idea of India, they view any success of India through the prism that India's success is a failure of the idea of Pakistan. However their formula for dealing with this problem has been to undermine India's success by encouraging ethnic conflict in India, rather than investing in their own economic capabilities.
The author seems to have fallen into the same trap, by talking up persecution of India's minorities. Fact remains that Muslims in India are doing much better than Muslims in Pakistan, the population of Muslims since independence has actually grown by over 4% (from 10% to 14%) while Muslims are poorer than Hindus on average, many of them are part of India's cultural and business elite. If one wanted to write of persecution the decline of Hindus in Pakistan's population from 15% at independence to about 1% might be more fertile ground.
Also not noted in this article is that when there have been multiple attempts, largely from the Indian side, to talk peace (Lahore summit by AB Vajpayee, Agra summit, Manmohan Singh's talks in 2008-09, Modi's visit to Pakistan in 2015) each time it has been undermined by hardliners in Pakistan. India today IMO views relations with Pakistan as a problem that cannot be solved and something where you just need to take care the nuisance value does not go beyond a point. If Pakistan needs to come out of the hole it is in, it needs to cut defence spending, initiate real land reforms (not the kind where the Bhutto family owns a quarter million acres of land post said reform), invest in non-religions education (as far as I can tell the reverse is happening), and build infrastructure and factories rather than nuclear bombs. However fear mongering of India has been tremendously profitable to the Pakistan elite and I don't see why they would step back from that. Any respite due to their economic slowdown may be temporary and if things improve they are likely to move back to the status quo.
Perhaps Murtaza is under the illusion that India (sans the BJP) is clamouring for a rekindling of ties with Pakistan. In fact, not too long ago, Rahul Gandhi (scion of the Gandhi family and largely seen as the de-facto leader of the Indian National Congress) said in a talk held in Cambridge that normalisation of ties with Pakistan wasn’t possible until the cross- border terrorism stops.
After 3 direct wars (all begun by Pakistan) and a number of terrorist attacks inside India which have been traced back to terrorist cells in Pakistan which the Pakistan government/establishment refuses to extradite or effectively prosecute - and after various forays for peace by the Indian government - *even* the BJP: Vajpayee in Lahore in 1999 leads to the Kargil war & Modi at a Sharif wedding (also) in Lahore 2015, answered by terrorist attacks in Pathankot in 2016 & then Pulwama in 2019 - you could perhaps say that the appetite for most Indians to even talk with Pakistan is at an all time low.
As for the perpetual & grave identity crisis of Pakistan, there are various well documented instances & events which reveal the sole idea that the state of Pakistan was based on - the 2 nation theory.
Jinnah’s speech of 11th August 1947 has long been held up by the progressives and non-residents of Pakistan as something which meant that the state was *supposed to be* secular - which has been laughed off by serious researchers. Jinnah went around giving incendiary speeches throughout the 2nd World War in Muslim circles & meetings (while the leaders of the Congress were in jail for protesting against Indian involvement in the War) which subsequently culminated in wide spread communal riots & the final massacre of the partition in 1946-47.
Saving face in a speech in the face of increasing scrutiny by the Allied powers (especially the US) is not enough for dear Murtaza to say that Pakistan is a secular state. The very few minorities that remain in Pakistan cannot become Presidents or Prime Ministers - declared so by the constitution.
Hans J Morgenthau, in his book ‘The New Republic’, observed: “Pakistan is not a nation and hardly a state. It has no justification, ethnic origin, language, civilisation or the consciousness of those who make up its population. They have no interests in common, save one: fear of Hindu domination. It is to that fear and nothing else that Pakistan possess its existence and thus for survival as an independent state.”
During the same period, another American scholar Keith Callard in his book ‘Pakistan, a Political Study’ commented: “... the force behind the establishment of Pakistan was largely the feeling of insecurity”.
The Cabinet Secretary of Pakistan, Mohd Ali, when asked by a top Indian bureaucrat, B.K. Nehru, regarding the persistent use of abusive language against India and Hindus by the Pakistani Newspaper ‘Dawn’ (Muslim League’s mouthpiece), replied that, though he knew that it was wrong, but such fabrications about an enemy was necessary for building Pakistan.
Military and civilian rulers in Pakistan have used the anti-Hindu rhetoric for mobilising the people against India both during war and peace. On 29 August, just before the 1965 War, President Ayub Khan in a directive to the Commander in Chief, (General Mohammad Musa), wrote: “…… as a general rule, Hindu morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows delivered at the right time and place. Such opportunities should therefore be sought and exploited.”
Therefore, the general consensus throughout India is that the onus remains on Pakistan to convince India to come take a seat at the table, not the other way around. Let’s see how long that takes to get through the collective heads of the Pakistani government & the military and also their people.
While you say that Pakistan should defer the conflict for the future , the question remains that why should India do the same instead of capitalising of Pakistan's weakness right now ? As a nation India has little to no incentive to let Pakistan grow. As can be observed from data whenever Pakistan is in an economically stable position the number of terrorist attacks in India increase.
Excellent overview--very well written.
There are a few inaccuracies in the article.
Pakistan's founder did not want a "secular homeland". Jinnah has never EVER used the word "secular" in any of his speeches.
On the other hand, he has said, "I could not understand a section of people who deliberately wanted to create mischief and made a propaganda that the constitution of Pakistan would not be made on the basis of Shariat.”
Having Islamic Law/Sharia as the basis of one's constitution is not exactly anywhere close to Secularism.
On another rant against Western countries Jinnah went back to the tried and test method of Islamism. “Take inspiration and guidance from the Holy Quran, the final victory will be ours [….] You have to develop the spirit of mujahids. All I require of you is that everyone … be prepared to sacrifice all, if necessary, in building Pakistan as a bulwark of Islam.”
Pakistan is exactly what Jinnah created - an Islamic republic which wants to be the bulwark of Islam, whose constitution and laws are derived from Islamic Law.
Also, Jinnah allied with Feudals when he allied with Unionist Party(A party of Feudal Landlords). Land Reforms is again, never mentioned by Jinnah. While his counterpart in India, was on record that Land Reforms is India's future as far back as in 1929(India got independence in 1947).
Your guest writer has his head up his arse, if that is at all possible.
Fantastic read! Thanks for bringing him as a guest Noah!
What I find interesting is that Pakistan and Nigeria are have a lot of similarities. Huge 200M population that's underutilized, massive inequality, religious extremism causing backwardness, massive issues post independence, and they even have similar per capita income levels & UN development levels by HDI.
But they got there in different ways. Pakistan needs land reform while Nigeria depends on oil booms to grow and stalls during commodity busts. It will be interesting to see which nation will fair better by 2030.
Some info on Nigeria:
https://open.substack.com/pub/yawboadu/p/inequality-within-west-africa-and?utm_source=direct&r=garki&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/yawboadu/p/nigerias-economy-part-three-1960?utm_source=direct&r=garki&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Lots of blame mongering on India and other countries. It is a typical Pakistani mindset, not to expose the evils and hypocrisy of their own being, no investment in their own progress. I wonder how it feels to be this insecure? No facts given about the ostensible “outrageous” behaviour of the Indian govt or the “Draconian” Kashmir Law which is for the benefit and protection of persecuted Sikh, Christian, Hindu, Parsi & tribal minorities from Pakistan primarily that any honourable country unlike Pakistan would consider itself liable for. When the hunter can’t hunt the hunted, I guess in a morphed corner of their mega maniac universe protection laws will seem “draconian” - furthermore a Sharia peddling country, plastering that label on one other than itself is comical. There was no mention of the persecution of its minorities from Hindus to Sikhs to Kalash communities other than Ahmediya Muslims (this is where the buck stops for Pakistanis - even to name other minorities seems blasphemous to their cause) and how temples have been turned into toilets and how Hindu, Sikh & Christian women are kidnapped on a daily basis, gang raped, killed if they are lucky enough and if not then forcibly converted to Islam to endure an entirely fallible life. Kashmir is and will always be a part of India. A beautiful land such as and also the birthplace of Shaivism should never fall prey to the same destiny as Pakistan - it should pray that at the rate which it is going, Balochistan does not become a part of India by its own will (but of course a negative state will always assert that it is India’s “draconian” will at play) In actuality there is no revenge to be had on the part of Pakistan for what happened in East Pakistan (which was a part of India to begin with) - it was entirely Pakistan’s doing and the genocide that was being committed by the Pakistani army on Bangladeshi nationals forced India to step in and help Bangladesh. Pakistan should be thanking India for averting and buffering it’s disasters. Pakistan and it’s Murtazas’ can harp all they want, it is the homogenous Islamist attitude of blaming all shortcomings of one’s own on others and lagging behind on the homework needed to build a strong, robust nation and conscientious analysis of what it means to be human. This articles states no real statistics and derivations and lessons learnt on behalf of a pernicious state that Pakistan is. Making excuses and running on the same mindset (of course some superfluous self effacing statements pooh & paah-ing that barely scratch the surface of reality have been made given how bad the situation for the country is despite of the billions of dollars spent on it over the years by extraneous sources from America to Saudi and now China - that in itself is laughable and proves the true nature of Pakistan) No mention of how it has sold itself to China in present times and it’s atrocities in Balochistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Overall, if this article is a testament to the revamp of Pakistan at all, I can say not even an iota of the kind of mind bogglingly deep reconnaissance into the country’s problems and its Islamist stance has been done and at this rate it’s going to remain as non-salubrious, pathetic and laughable as it always was.
I am quite surprised at this introspection of Pakistan by Murtaza Hussain. I think he has captured the ills and the shortcomings of Pakistan rather candidly; some clearly visible to even a casual onlooker of affairs of the region and others with some insights. As I read this long essay though, I felt that some of the things he has stated incorrectly, or incompletely, should be set straight.
But before I do that, I must admit that I hadn't known of Murtaza or his work before this. So, I checked out both his own substack and The Intercept. Predictably, his anti-India stance and Hindu-phobia shows up regularly; both in the topics he chooses to write on the Intercept (mainly), and in his treatment in detail of such topics. I can write pages worth of details but that will be tangential to commenting on the article here. The only reason I am mentioning this is to establish his clear bias against India and it helped me understand why he had to keep dragging India in this article when the sole focus on Pakistan would have been most appropriate. I should also mention that I did not readily see any other work on either his substack or on the Intercept by him that was critical of Pakistan. Perhaps Noah’s invitation was specific?
That said, I am surprised at his sharp critique of Pakistan and equally surprised that he tipped his hat to BJP government for the progress they have delivered in India. Coming back to where I find his article is either inaccurate or incomplete. First, his claim that Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah was agnostic about religion and was secular. It is like saying that Trump believes in welcoming illegal immigrants wholeheartedly! This is either charitable reimagining of Jinnah or willful ignorance. Nothing could be further from the truth! It was Jinnah who demanded the split from India because he wanted an Islamic nation for Muslims. A split that was so bloody that over 12 million people lost their lives, so it would be quite appropriate to say that their blood was on Jinnah’s hands.
Murtaza also mentions that Pakistan outperformed India in the beginning. This is mostly true, but it requires some color. A newly created Pakistan should have carried proportionate amount of debt that pre-partition India was saddled with. It never paid that amount to India. This amount is said to be in the range of Rs 55 crore to Rs 95 crore, or in 1947-48 value of US$ between $160 million to $295 million. It may seem small by today’s inflated standards, but it was an immense sum back then and both West and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were beneficiaries. What is also noteworthy is that the independent India still gave Pakistan over Rs 300 crores (US$870 million) as their share of the split, without adjusting for the debt that Pakistan reneged on. This is over and above the army, military equipment etc. that was divided between India and Pakistan. My point is, that Pakistan had a clean slate and a flush bank balance to start with, where as India carried all the debt. Pakistan also started receiving aid almost from the start from US, UK and others.
Murtaza also dilutes Pakistan’s bailouts by just casually mentioning of negotiations of a new IMF bailout. What he left unsaid is that Pakistan already has had 23 IMF bailouts in 75 years! Even the poster child of failed economy, Argentina, has had “only 21” bailouts! WSJ reported recently that as of end of 2022, Pakistan had a staggering $130 billion debt, and $73 billion of this amount is due by 2025! It is unclear if this is their total debt, i.e., whether it includes loans by China, various European countries, Gulf countries, Türkiye, and even smaller nations like Malaysia!
Bottom line, Pakistan’s fiscal mismanagement has always been criminal and West, and particularly US and IMF, have kept the drug coming to an addict.
I want to end with one final point, and that is Murtaza’s desperate attempt to drag India in this discussion somehow. He chooses the Kashmir issue and tries to compare Pakistani army’s atrocities in Bangladesh with Indian army’s handling of Pakistan fomented terror campaigns in Kashmir. This is like comparing Germany’s cruel treatment of Jews in WWII to my local county mishandling of an arrest warrant. If Pakistan stops their cross-border terrorism and the proxy war, then they may gain some help from India. India has overlooked Pakistan’s export of terrorism and offered a hand in the past but repeated betrayal has shut that door until Pakistan completely disavows terrorism and dismantles the terrorist factories that it has created.
All in all, no amount of our analysis will be of any help to Pakistan. As Murtuza correctly portrays, it has far too many vested interests that are feeding on the easy money. More importantly, it needs to really take a hard look at the religious fanatism, not just in their intolerance to others and hate for India and esp. Hindus but also, as Murtaza points out, to minorities in Pakistan, mainly other Muslim sects as Hindus, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians are mostly chased out, killed, or forcefully converted already. Until then Pakistan is walking around like a suicide bomber, always in a death embrace of a bomb vest that is held close to their body and so carries real risk of being torn to pieces.
I don't claim to be an expert (at all) on Pakistan--for me the post was a nice introduction and I thought it presented a comprehensive overview, hence my comment. If there were some facts or interpretations of events and the overall situation in Pakistan that you thought the author got wrong, then please share your perspectives with the rest of us so that we can have an interchange and all come away from this better informed.
It would be great to have a contribution like this on Egypt.
For a tour of Pakistan's challenges, my favorite book remains Anatol Lieven's "Pakistan: A Hard Country." If you want to know more about some of the issues mentioned in this post, I recommend it.
In a larger sense, of course, Pakistan's tragedy is not that different from many other developing countries. Maybe someday we'll get a better recipe than the old Washington Consensus for getting countries out of the elite capture trap.
We have some hints, now, for better policy; Noah's covered a lot in his development articles. But those better policies have to be enacted by politicians -- and we still know so little about how to get better politics.
Author gives Jinnah far too much credit - Jinnah didn't have a plan - he told different things to different people and tailored his message to the audience. At the end of the day everyone got a different message about what Pakistan was supposed to be - and that confusion persists till date.
Jinnah never wanted a secular state, he simply didn't care about the details beyond getting his own country.
Over time the strongest groups - the mullahs, the military and the mill owners (Feudals) have all taken their share of the pie and ended up defining the state in ways that are beneficial to their interests.
Ishtiaq Ahmed has written extensively about Jinnah and particularly about his complete lack of a coherent agenda for Pakistan.
Secondly the topic of the essay is 'How can Pakistan join the South Asian boom' - basically 2 economies in South Asia are booming - India and Bangladesh. Pakistan still can not bring itself to change it's strategic orientation with respect to these countries - (beyond having some long term fantasy to turn Bangladesh against India militarily and convert it to the 'Pakistan ideology').
The blocker on normalization is not coming from the Indian side 'Hindu fascist BJP' or whatever - Modi invited the PM of Pakistan to his swearing in ceremony and visited Pakistan to normalize relations early in his tenure, only to get backstabbed with back-to-back terror attacks.
It is the Pakistani establishment and the Pakistani intellectual class which is unable to digest normal relations with India, and even now is dreaming of a strategic pause in their eternal war against India rather than a genuine change of direction and the assessment of the potential of India as a friend rather than an enemy.
If there is no strategic realignment to reverse relations with India and Bangladesh- there is no way for Pakistan to practically benefit from the broader South Asian boom in terms of trade, investment and technology, except for the soft power and psychological effects of seeing their neighbours making tangible progress for the first time. (Before the pandemic - Pakistani media had studiously avoided showing any pictures of skyscrapers, metro trains or new airports coming up in India.)
Only if Pakistan is able to calm down its politics and society and reform internally into a more moderate country, will it start benefiting from the global value chains moving there eventually as Indian labor costs become prohibitively high - but that requires for most of India to first become significantly richer than Pakistan and such an expectation can backfire badly India still has poorer states like UP, Bihar and Jharkhand which still have cheaper labor than Pakistan and can fuel Indian manufacturing for at least another decade after the southern states become prohibitively expensive.
A rational elite would have figured out a pivot to India/"grand bargain on Kashmir" a long time ago - specially in the 2008-2012 era when India overtook Pakistan in developmental indicators comprehensively, India's long term economic trajectory was firmly established. Instead, the elite decided to stick its head in the sand and pretend that India was not rapidly expanding, and instead decided to act as a conduit for Chinese investment in Pakistan.
You can see the difference in how India is leveraging the quad vs how Pakistan used CPEC by acting as a strategic bulwark against India.
India is leveraging its security relationship with the US to pull in high-tech export oriented manufacturing into the country using India labor and to increase FDI into defense, electronics, IT, r&D- in the meanwhile it is maintaining a stable trade relationship with China (with increasing scrutiny in a few sensitive strategic sectors) and only promising the US economic and technological competition with China - not all out war - this gives it space to change to a more neutral position if needed in the future if it gets the appropriate deal from China.
Pakistan on the other hand has left no scope for compromise with India - halted trade which ended up harming itself more than India. It offered itself to China for cheap let the chinese build infrastructure using dollar denominated debt which ultimately had no direct impact on its exports.
I'm also going to ignore classical Pakistani mistakes that comes from reading newspaper headlines instead of looking at the primary source for data - e.g. India's GDP per capita is now higher than Bangladesh's because BDesh also had a devaluation in the past year - etc.
"between military and _civilization_ governments"
Freudian typo?
"By midcentury, Pakistan could have a population greater than 330 million, making it an outsize part of a global population that is generally growing older and more scarce."
Pakistan doesn't seem like a good candidate to sustainably reach that population level.
"An average Pakistani household spends 50.8 percent of monthly income on food. This makes them particularly vulnerable to shocks, including high food prices. The impact of climate change and population displacements exacerbate the situation."
See https://www.wfp.org/countries/pakistan