Daily Times

How does a sympathetic outsider add up the number of heads on the hydra challenging the nascent Pakistani democracy and calculate the odds of the state’s survival and/or success?
A close Pakistani friend once told me, at the end of an extended stay in the US, that he was anxious to get back to Pakistan because it always looked better from inside than from outside. I wonder if that is still true, or if the spate of recent traumas has increased the number of visible heads on this hydra? Has the view from inside become as bleak as the one from outside?
The tragic and brutal bombing of the Marriott Hotel punctuates that question. Headlines in the Pakistani press equated the day of that dastardly act, September 20, 2008, to September 11, 2001 when the US was attacked. One could dwell, I suppose, on the differences between the two very scurrilous attacks, but much as I dislike to suggest that Pakistan emulate the US in any way, one hopes that its reaction to the Marriott bombing is identical to the US reaction to 9/11 — that it brings Pakistanis together as a nation determined to fight back against those who attack its people and who seek to undermine its already attenuated state. Such a reaction would be enough to mark it as the day that “changed everything” for Pakistan, as Americans now regard 9/11 as a game changer for the US.
In the 10 days since that bombing, there is not much evidence that the country’s recently elected political leaders are pulling together. News reports of the last few days highlight what well could be a divisive struggle for power in Punjab between the PPP and the PMLN. At a time when national unity is needed, such a struggle is not good news to outsiders.
In mythology, a hydra had nine heads, and each had the ability to reconstitute itself if severed from the body. The hydra that challenges the Pakistan government and the people it is elected to defend appears to have only three heads, but each of these is so difficult to deal with that it might be cubed, i.e. raised to the third power. The problems these heads represent are critically interrelated, though this is not obvious to all.
Despite the growing reach of the extremists throughout the country, exemplified by the Marriott tragedy, the economy is perhaps the most immediate challenge to the PPP government that is now in charge in Islamabad. I am inclined to believe that if the government cannot get a handle on the economic meltdown, stop the decline of the economy, and find ways to protect the more vulnerable in the population from sinking further into poverty, it will not last long enough, in any case, to craft a coherent approach to the problems that require a longer term approach.
It is not just power shortages and the rapid rise of food prices that mark the economic deterioration. Capital flight and the rapidly weakening foreign exchange position as well as the depreciation of the rupee are serious indications of an economy on the rocks.
Depreciation of the currency not only leads to more price inflation, but may also affect even the availability of essential consumer and capital goods — things people need to live and industry needs to produce for domestic consumption and export.
Short-term alleviation will require financial support from its Western allies and (though this will be very hard for any Pakistani government to swallow) from the international financial institutions. So far as I can see, neither of the two major parties vying for political dominance in Punjab, the PPP and the PMLN, have had any viable ideas for an effective national or provincial response to this economic challenge.
The other two heads of this hydra are rooted in a body politic that is badly infected with extremism. There is a domestic dimension and a regional, or international dimension, to extremism in Pakistan, and of course, they are both part of the same problem.
The domestic dimension involves the need to use hard as well as soft power to overcome and undercut those extremist groups attacking the state and encroaching on its writ. The regional/international dimension involves containing the extremist groups that attack across Pakistan’s borders with Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, India. In the end, this is the same question and will involve the use of hard (military) power as well as soft power, but both may well be applied differentially.
The inability and/or unwillingness to contain the Afghan Taliban and other jihadi groups roils Pakistan’s relations with its neighbors, and with its non-regional allies — the same allies whose cooperation will be needed to address the serious economic problem. At the same time, the pressures on this novice government are intense enough without the threat of cross-border incursions into Pakistan by those Western allies, a neuralgic subject in the best of times.
Even mature democracies cannot always be trusted to throw partisan concerns — or simple political self-preservation — aside and respond quickly and firmly in a crisis. As I write this in Washington, the news is dominated by the failure of the US House of Representatives to support a compromise package to deal with the crisis in our financial and credit markets.
Those quoting Yogi Berra last night, who famously pointed out that “it ain’t over ‘til its over,” would have been right on the mark in predicting that this delicately balanced package would fail despite the powerful national interest argument that it is vital if the US real economy is not also to follow the financial markets example and implode. The astonishing thing is how quickly national interests gave way to partisan concerns and self-interest while financial disaster continues to stare our legislative leaders straight in the face.
In the US case, however, while the real economy may nose-dive as a result of this short-sighted congressional decision, the state itself is not yet in danger. The Administration may recover enough gravitas when the financial markets go much further south to allow another go at the financial market meltdown before it is too late to keep the real economy from a deep recession, or the next Administration will have to emulate the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) to bring about recovery.
That is the issue: will there be a leader who has the gravitas and vision to lead a fragmented democratic polity through an existential crisis that it doesn’t understand. In the US, Presidents like FDR and Lincoln have miraculously come to power when times called for strong and selfless leadership.
Historians sometimes debate whether it is the leader that finds the crisis or the crisis that finds the leader. But in the end it doesn’t matter; saving the nation is what matters. Pakistan is rich in crises right now. Whether the restored democracy will be rich enough in leaders to prevent those crises from overwhelming the state is yet to be determined.
History would not lead to optimism; but would history have predicted that a country lawyer from the sticks would save the US from bifurcation, or that a patrician who seemed to have no connection to the American people would affect a social revolution in the country and succeed in winning their affection beyond any other President in our history.
Our computer screens, like our minds, remain blank when we ask them to tell us which leaders will rise to such existential challenges.

William B Milam is a senior policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington and a
former US Ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh