Pakistan can barely keep its head above water. A third of the country is flooded. Hundreds of thousands are homeless. The state with its 220 million inhabitants, which has possessed nuclear weapons since the late 1990s, is overwhelmed by the magnitude of the catastrophe. But the flood of the century is only one of several crises. Economically, Pakistan is one of the South Asian countries on the brink of collapse due to high foreign debt, declining foreign exchange reserves and galloping inflation. Pakistan was only able to avert the state bankruptcy that Sri Lanka had to declare thanks to a financial injection from the International Monetary Fund.
In Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, the situation has led to a popular uprising and the expulsion of a president. Even before the floods, fears were growing in Pakistan that the country could become a second Afghanistan. In the 75 years since it was founded, the “land of the pure” has often stood on the brink of a failed state. Before the flood disaster, a third of the population lived below the poverty line. The corona pandemic has left its mark, and the war in Europe is also having an impact on the country. Pakistan got a large part of its wheat imports from Ukraine. Food prices are exploding. The harvest has been destroyed and it is questionable whether the farmers will be able to start sowing the wheat in the near future.
Instability is a hallmark of the system
The hunger crisis has already begun in some parts of the country. Politically, too, the country is in danger of sinking into chaos. Instability in Pakistan has long been a hallmark of the system. No elected Prime Minister has governed his entire term of office. The country was ruled four times by a military dictatorship, most recently from 1999 to 2008 by Pervez Musharraf. In the worldwide corruption, press freedom and democracy rankings of human rights organizations, it occupies one of the bottom places.
The military is the power in the background that has penetrated all social and political institutions and established a parallel state. “Other countries own an army, but in Pakistan an army owns a country,” it says, paraphrasing a quote originally made for the former Prussia. The links between the military secret service and Islamist terrorists, including the Taliban, who have been in power again in Afghanistan for years, can hardly be kept secret.
Riots as aid packages are distributed in Lal Bagh camp, Sehwan, Sindh Province, Pakistan
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Image: Till Fähnders
The tension between the military and the civilian government and the influence of the Islamists are among the factors that have long hampered Pakistan’s development. But the political leadership has also made mistakes in recent years. Imran Khan was elected Prime Minister in 2018 with great promises. The former national cricket team captain has not lived up to expectations. He could not steer the country through difficult economic waters. The former “puppet” of the generals has fallen out with the military. The National Assembly voted him in the spring of no confidence.
Khan promotes political polarization
The power struggle is also about the successor to the army chief, whose term of office expires in November. As a seasoned populist, Khan prefers to blame “foreign powers” for orchestrating his overthrow. Anti-American rhetoric has a long tradition in Pakistan, and the major powers have long struggled for influence in the region.
Pakistan is at a geopolitical hotspot, alongside arch-enemy India, which is also armed with nuclear weapons, and the Taliban state in Afghanistan. Khan sought proximity to China and Russia. Memorable were the images that showed him next to Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on the first day of the Russian attack on Ukraine. He is playing with fire when he now abuses the crisis for political polarization.
The new leadership, on the other hand, criticizes Russia and is working on better relations with Washington. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is trying to counter the impression of a loss of control. Many see his government as the lesser evil. But the fundamental criticism is justified that the government, with its executives who come from well-known political dynasties, represents exactly what has been going wrong in Pakistan for years.
The government, like its predecessors, shares some of the blame for the fact that Pakistan was not better prepared for the flood. Many grievances have been known since a flood disaster in 2010. The inability to learn the right lessons from the crisis could prove as devastating as the flood itself.
