Daily Times

No doubt it was the stupid economy that shattered the Red Empire, the USSR, an entity that believed in expanding or expiring. Why were the Americans not ashamed for failing to predict the efficacy of that slow poisoning? But instead waged an expensive project known as the Afghan Jihad against the bear who was suffering from countless self-inflicted wounds. But how would General Zia, Hamid Gul and company react to the discovery that it was not their ideologically propelled spirit of jihad but rather the collapsing economy that disintegrated the feared evil empire?

How can one dispute the remarks of General Bajwa, our COAS, regarding the importance of economy? The advice or sort of admonition coming from the chief of an institution possessing diverse, firsthand knowledge, experience regarding governance and economy – literally. Thus, agreed, the cause of the USSR’s disintegration was the failing economy. Period.

But, the question prickling my mind is, what were the causes that failed its economy? I do not want to snarl my thoughts to the chicken-egg argument, whether it’s the economy that shape politics or the other way around. Keeping in mind the passive nature of economy, politics becomes a catalyst to shape it.

Therefore, it would be simplistic rather sweeping to assume that it was the economy that failed the politics, while analyzing the dismemberment of the Soviet Union. The failure of the economy was an effect not the cause.

There was an old joke during the Cold War, ‘Americans can stand in front of the White House and swear at the President, but Soviets have the same freedom! They can stand in front of the Kremlin and also swear at the American President!’

The power structure and polices of the USSR had sown enough seeds of destruction in its womb.The visible power centres had now power while the actual power centre was not visible that made location of responsibility and accountability nearly impossible i.e those who were responsible were not accountable, and the accountable had no power.

The Supreme Soviet, the parliament, was nothing but an exalted nomenclature and glorified edifice and so were the council of ministers and the presidium. Their de facto responsibility was to accept responsibility for what they had not done. Apparently, it was the Communist Party, a vehicle of power. But in reality the engine was the politburo. It was in practice the executive committee of the Communist Party, but effectively that of the Soviet Union, and its de facto decisions had the force of law. All the worthy comrades were waiting for the epiphany from the politburo which could be debated, analysed from various angles, but without any addition, deletion or questioning its punctuations. The concentration of state power in a non-representative body opened doors for all the evils that ultimately devoured the empire.

An ordinary comrade or officeholder could be taken to task for miscalculation of bread and potatoes but the higher ups of the powerful institution were enjoying the lifestyle of the western elite. Today, the assumption is most of the expensive property in the West belongs to those revolutionaries.

With such decadent power structure, the USSR was poised to bring the entire globe under the red flag through the force of the Red Army. Instead of cultivating allies, the revolutionary elites cobbled together a band of proxies and clients who could not even warm up without the Russian Vodka. That constant quest for conquering all the continents to unify human kind through a single political creed dissipated the economy. Therefore by default, producing more bullets than bread and tanks than trucks was the obsession of the empire.

Domestically, the apparatchiks should have been satisfied with a loaf of bread, a portion of potato, as it was a demonstration of a deeply imbibed ideology of equality. Self negation was considered the highest virtue. Infrastructure development was a capitalist luxury and that necessary evil could not transcend the surroundings of Moscow.

Questioning the wisdom and commitment of the Politburo was akin to betrayal and treason, because their image thus painted could do no wrong. It was the Capitalist world from where all the evils emanated and spread. The comrades (the USSR citizens) were allowed and encouraged to debate thoroughly all the evils of the Capitalist world but never to question the Kremlin.

A competition was bound among the USSR’s and USA’s citizens regarding the freedom of expression that gave birth to a political joke: A US citizen claimed that they had freedom of expression to stand in front of the White House to utter invectives against our president. A Russian replied that he/she could stand in the porch of the Kremlin to swear only against your president. It reminds us of our media when their microphones are pointed toward Islamabad and their freedom of expression knows no bounds. Does our mirror also emit some similar reflections?

Our lollipop economists – waiting in the wings for a techno setup – most of them blessed us with their expertise in the Musharraf era by giving us a lollipop economy of cell phones and automobiles with knock on negative effects on infrastructure and productive assets. They should also be advised on the interface of politics of power, policy decisions, particularly security, foreign, and economy. But who formulates those polices? By witnessing the removal of Nawaz Sharif, the plight of ministries of foreign, interior and finance defy the apparent. The minister who nursed the ailing economy is dragged to the courts for being on the wrong side of the fence. What could be the health of economy in a country where no one was sure that the elected government, whether the present or the former, would survive the next day?

Almost for one decade, we are constantly maintaining that we are at war. Our troops are stretched thin from the North, the North West to the South, particularly the FATA and the Malakand Division in PATA which have put extraordinary measures without a sign of reverse to the normal legal situation. For the last four years the eastern border has been heated up. The prerequisites for a stable and strong economy are political stability, transparent power structure, conducive political and policy environment, internal and external peaceful co-existence.

The writer is a political analyst hailing from Swat. He tweets at @MirSwat

Published in Daily Times, October 18^th 2017.