South Asian leaders are slowly learning to accept the fact that the world has shifted from politics to economics and thus policies need a mind shift. The smaller non militarized South Asian states like Bangladesh, Nepal, etc are already rapidly moving towards that goal but all suffer from internal management weakness. Even then, these states have shrugged off many of the indicators to measure how well a state is doing. These were mostly developed by the elite of late colonialism but as they are on the wane, it’s allowing socio-economic forces greater space.
Currently, Pakistan is in its perennial regional conflict soup and this time as expected its Afghanistan. The country’s government has accused Pakistan of helping the Taliban and so one can’t say that Pakistan’s old ways are on an immediate overnight mending operation. The problem of course is that Pakistan remains largely a military run state. Not to be political means less military relevance and that can become an existential threat of sorts to the armed forces.
Despite all this, several Pakistani leaders have recently mentioned a desire to shift priorities. Moving the foreign politics agenda from “geopolitics to geo-economics” as has been said. It seems, Islamabad wants to bond with South and Central Asian neighbors to generate trade and investment.
But given the situation arising around Afghanistan, this isn’t easy. While Pakistan wants more money and less PR as a “terrorist” hosting country, the problem is, are circumstances within its control given it is already an empowered lackey of sorts in a deadly conflict where superpowers are playing .
Pakistan feels it’s not doing badly given its late start. An agreement to reduce tensions with India was signed this year and even Bangladesh has been less belligerent when it has come to Pakistan. Khan also visited Sri Lanka this year to enhance commercial relations with Colombo, with which Islamabad enjoys positive ties. However the China factor is also there.
Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are very close to China despite having India as the next door neighbor. It’s possible that Pakistan is trying to sneak in where China has opened doors. But that means more dependence on China which one is not sure is the best news for Pakistan given that China’s Afghan priorities are higher.
Pakistan is geographically schizoid and that has added many problems to its own manufactured ones. Not only is it trying to fight India, it’s also trying to keep its boots plated in the Afghan soil. That is a very difficult situation, because Kabul is a place where big players are neck deep and Pakistan has little control over what overtakes it. And now it can’t even decide whether to stay in or get out.
Pakistan needs economics more than politics and as the latest says, China has refused to lend more time or conditions loosening on its debts. So money is a primary issue. But the big obstacle is the internal governance dynamics of Pakistan where its military priorities decide economics and Pakistan hasn’t done great in either sector. One hopes that economics wins.
