Is Pakistan a Failed State?

By Naeema Saeed

Every time I hear or read about a bomb blast or any other act of terrorism in Pakistan, or when I come across the news of alleged role of the agencies against individuals or groups, I am taken back to my childhood when I, for the first time, came across this debate, “Is Pakistan a failed state?”

I remember I despised this question, which was less of a question and more of an exclamation. I despised it for all I had read in books was glorious about Pakistan. Islamiyat books told that how one believer could overpower at least ten infidels, and history books told how India was an aggressor in the 1965 war. And how we actually defeated them. In 1971, however, India was shrewd enough to plot the successful dismemberment of Pakistan. In 2014, foreign elements are again blamed for unrest in all parts of Pakistan.

No wonder, after all the engineered history which we read in textbooks, when I heard people say that Pakistan is a failed state, it made me cringe. The years passed and I grew up to many realties. I heard the lamentations about distorted history and misquoted facts. I, like many other people of my generation, realized things were not as rosy as we were made to assume in childhood. Nonetheless, for me Pakistan is anything but a failed state. For me it has not been a failed state at least up till now.

States do not simply pass or fail. They, in fact, either degenerate or flourish. They sustain or break. My parents are not only safe and sound, but they have served in public organizations. I have studied in a public university and no near or dear ones of mine have become victims of bomb blasts or targeted killings. No one of my family members is on the missing persons’ list. So the state has worked for me. But unfortunately it is random enough and does not work for everybody.

Pakistani state may mean little to the nomads living in tents across the metros who make their living by sending off their children to collect garbage. More so, it definitely seems like a failure to the child who lost his father in Karachi firing or to the girl whose husband died in a bomb blast. It is a failed enterprise to the Baloch father whose son’s name is on missing persons lists for last several years. Pakistan may be a failed state for the wife whose husband was on guard duty of polio workers and was eradicated while he was working for polio eradication. Many may disagree, but most of the political philosophers of both the democratic and authoritarian inclinations agree that the first duty of any state is to ensure the safety and security of its inhabitants. In fact, political philosophy emphasizes that the state came into being to meet the need of survival of the individuals. The philosophers like Hobbes and Locke stress that the state was created to ensure the survival of all so that individuals may not kill each others as a result of conflicting interests. In short, from philosophical as well as logical point of view, if a state does not fulfill its primary purpose of making the lives secure, it is a failure. The next purpose of the state is to decrease the divide between haves and have-nots and to ensure basic and fundamental rights of all. It can not be over emphasized that Pakistan as a state does not fulfill its secondary purpose as well.

Nonetheless, declaring a state a failure or a success is not as easy as it seems. States do not simply pass or fail. They, in fact, either degenerate or flourish. They sustain or break. Pakistan broke down in 1971. We should remember dismemberment as a lesson of history which we often tend to forget.

The states thrive by investing in the individual and by securing the interests of all; they set on the road of decadence when they aggravate the divide between haves and have-nots and when they take care of one certain class or group.

In Pakistan, the divides are deep and far too many. The provinces are not happy with each other. The civilians complain about army. The army seems unhappy about these complaints. The judiciary is alleged of activism and the politicians are lamented for sloth. Sectarian and religious divides seem beyond repair. Thanks to Twitter, now we know that supporters of different parties have little sympathy and respect for each other. The difference of opinion is scorned. Interests of groups and individual are given far more significance than the interests of the state. It may seem that we fail as a state and that is because we barely pass as a nation. Nonetheless, we can eulogize the idea of Pakistan and shun away any criticism as long as our individual interests are protected.