Author: Deven Kapur
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 18, 2008
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/262580.html
Introduction: It's impossible to understand
Pakistan's current woes without examining the massive volume of aid it's amassed
over the past half century
Democracy suffered a string of setbacks in
2007, many thanks to oil. Gushing oil revenues helped Vladimir Putin consolidate
authoritarian rule in Russia, Hugo Chávez expand populism in Venezuela
and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confront the West. All the while, an analogous force
was at work in Pakistan. For more than 50 years, Pakistan has reaped its own
unearned manna, which has filled its coffers and kept its fragile state afloat.
In this case, however, the money didn't come from the ground, but from massive
military and other forms of aid, largely from the United States, China and Saudi
Arabia. Yet while the source may be different, the impact of all this cash on
Pakistan has been just as destructive as oil wealth elsewhere: bloating the
military and creating a culture of violent instability, in which assassinations
like that of Benazir Bhutto are sadly inevitable.
It's impossible to understand Pakistan's current
woes without examining the massive volume of aid it's amassed over the past
half century - and that aid's deeply corrosive effects. Since its inception,
Pakistan has strived desperately to counterbalance India, cultivating ties with
any state willing to help it. This has never been hard: in the 1950s, Washington
contributed generously in exchange for Pakistan's anti-Soviet military stance.
Then, beginning in the 1960s, China, which also saw India as an enemy, came
calling. Still more money flowed in from rich Middle Eastern governments, especially
Saudi Arabia's.
The 1980s brought the Afghan war against the
Soviets, with Pakistan as the main conduit for supplies and support to the mujahedin;
the United States alone chipped in $5.3 billion during this period. The CIA
and Saudi intelligence also poured money and sophisticated technology into Pakistan's
ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence agency, helping turn it into the most notorious
and destabilising actor in the country. Altogether, Pakistan accumulated a whopping
$58 billion in foreign aid between 1950 and 1999, allowing it to become one
of the biggest military spenders in the world. After 9/11, Washington's generosity
redoubled; it's since given Pakistan more than $10 billion in assistance.
The consequences have been devastating, for
reasons similar to those at work in the so-called natural-resource curse. Extensive
research shows that when governments luck into unearned cash (which economists
call 'rents') from oil or other resources, the healthy links that bind them
to their citizens are often severed. Freed from relying much on taxes, governments
spend the money arbitrarily. Citizens, left untaxed, feel less motivation to
monitor things carefully. The result is corruption, misrule and a host of other
ills.
Rents paid for natural resources are bad enough.
But 'strategic rents' - earned by a country for its role in the foreign policies
of other states - are even more damaging. Military aid by definition entrenches
the militaries that get it, making them less responsive to civilian control.
Pakistan's military has grown enormously powerful over the years, resistant
to democratic checks and highly entrenched in every aspect of the country's
commercial, civil and political life. From banking to insurance, cereals to
cinnamon, the military's presence and influence can be felt everywhere. Strategic
rents have also helped radicalise Pakistan, since some of the Saudi aid money
for jihad in Afghanistan has gone instead to fund extremist madrassas in Pakistan
itself.
Strategic rents are also susceptible to manipulation.
General Pervez Musharraf, for example, has consistently avoided foreign criticism
and kept the money coming by arguing, essentially, that while he may be imperfect,
the alternative - the Islamists - is far worse. To support this case, Pakistan's
leaders have resorted to trickery at times. For example, according to the Pakistani
journalist Ahmed Rashid, prior to last year's confrontation at the Islamabad
Red Mosque, the government stood by idly as militants poured into the compound
- though it could have easily flushed them out in the early days - in order
to highlight the Islamic 'threat' Pakistan supposedly faced, and the need for
more aid.
Can Pakistan escape this vicious cycle? An obvious
solution would be to divert some military aid to civil society and to tie other
aid to specific objectives such as counterterrorism. Yet this obviously is very
unlikely to work. It would require the Pakistani Army to comply, and why should
it? After all, the generals know that even if Washington cuts them off, China
and Arab states will pick up the slack.
What, then, should Washington do? Given the
deadly combination of nuclear weapons and rabid jihadist groups in Pakistan,
the United States can't simply stop supporting Musharraf and his generals. But
backing them as the lesser of evils would also be a mistake. Unquestioning military
aid has stunted the growth of civic institutions. Pakistan's mullahs and its
military are also more closely linked than is widely appreciated. The West's
top goal must thus be to get the military out of Pakistan's politics and economy.
This won't be easy, and it won't solve all the country's problems. But it's
the best hope in a bad situation, and Pakistan's only shot at real stability.
The article is co-authored with Arvind Subramanian.
Kapur is director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of India at the University
of Pennsylvania. Subramanian is senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for
International Economics in Washington, D.C.