The ‘Not-Raheel’ Sharif

Since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif went into stealth mode, which experts now seem to agree happened around May 13, 2013 upon learning that he was going to be prime minister for the third time, the gulf between Pakistan and other countries grows wider and wider and wider. And more visible by the second.

In Afghanistan, a country that is supposed to be a total mess, an elected leader who supposedly had a temperament unsuited for high office is sailing along, having locked a major strategic agreement with the United States, having transformed his country’s relations with China, and having won plaudits from all around the world for his outreach to Pakistan. President Ashraf Ghani can not only handle foreign affairs, but also the relentless bitterness and poison that is regularly spewed by the toxic coterie of proxies that are employed by has-been Hamid Karzai. By all measures, President Ghani is a superb leader who earns accolades at home and abroad for his efforts.

In Iran, which suffers as much from existential fault-lines as any other country (hint, hint), the conservative Ayatollahs and the liberal wheel-and-deal politicians have come together to bring their nation out of long-term isolation. President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javid Zarif may be saddled with all kinds of inner conflict and limitations within Iran, but the face they present to the world is magnificently well-rehearsed, with the smoothness of an A-list Hollywood production.

In India, an irrepressibly persistent negation of self-doubt has allowed a religious extremist party, with an elected leader accused of mass murder, to oversee one of the great economic road-shows in conventional history. Prime Minister Narendra Modi literally takes the world by storm as he hops from one country to another, finding common ground with countries, pitching his own and doing it all with an abandon that, even to Pakistanis weary of his hostility for their country, is exhilarating to watch.

Firmly sandwiched between these three countries, Pakistan can ill afford the lazy Lahori elegance that seems to be the look Prime Minister Sharif is going for. In any case, there is nothing elegant about the way in which everyone around the chief executive of the country is working in chaos mode, with no direction, no leadership and no visibility from the man in-charge.

The problem with the leadership style, or perhaps more appropriately the non-leadership style, of the prime minister is that it is inflicting unspeakable damage on the country’s present and future. From day one, there was little doubt that the PML-N would be good at doing things as if this were 1990 (quick fact check: it is not. It is 2015).

True to expectations, if it is bypasses, metros and other big ticket infrastructure you want, then PM Sharif’s little brother, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, is your man. If it is a better civ-mil balance you are seeking, and you are easily seduced by YouTube, or Dailymotion clips, then certainly a-younger-by-almost-a-decade-Khawaja Asif is just what the doctor ordered. If you want the 1997 version of a guy with direct relations with the GHQ you want, then Chaudhry Nisar is great.

Even if all three of these folks, and the rest of the large and impressive stable of PML-N studs were working at 2015 specs, with the energy of an election year, and the efficiency of a teenaged, PTI supporter’s naiveté, even then – would it be enough to make it seem like Pakistan can stay in the race with the Irans, Indias and Afghanistans of the region?

It sure doesn’t feel like it. Mind you, this isn’t just about Twitter accounts, although Pakistan’s leadership is among the only in the world that doesn’t get social media, is surrounded by bureaucrats that either also don’t get it, or are too scared to try, and won’t do anything about it. But projecting Pakistan’s positions and a better image of the country are way, way down the list of the things that frustrate Pakistanis invested in a better future for this country.

The fact that in 2015 Pakistan’s foreign office spokespersons tweet with the awkwardness of guilty teenagers is just a more obvious manifestation of a much deeper, and much more dangerous problem. Pakistan’s civil services, its courts, its police, its diplomats, indeed our entire civilian infrastructure, and the range of resources and creativity at their disposal are way, way out of date. They are, for lack of a more appropriate term, incompetent. That is, they are not competent to meet the challenges of today’s Pakistan. Always a whiny and insecure bunch, they will protest much at such descriptions, but they miss the point. It isn’t the Police Service of Pakistan, or the Commerce & Trade Group, or the Foreign Service of Pakistan’s fault that they are incapable of doing the jobs they should be doing. Their protests at being described as incapable are perhaps the best confirmation of the fact. The responsibility for sourcing and funding a capable set of individuals and institutions to run the state is the ‘politicians’, not the ‘bureaucrats’.

An object lesson in just how incapable the state machinery truly is emerges with every new detail that we learn about the gang of violent extremist killers more widely known as the Safoora bus carnage terrorists. The latest bit of information should terrify all Pakistanis. Apparently, the terrorists exclusively used Voice over IP (VOIP) software to conduct all audio/visual communication, thereby easily bypassing the 20th century technology available to Pakistani police known as phone tapping and cellular network signal triangulation.

VOIP is simple. It is the non-cellular, non-telephonic manner in which we conduct ‘phone’ calls over applications like Whatsapp, Viber and a range of others. The Safoora terrorists used an app called Talkray. None of these applications is impossible to track, or tap into, or monitor. However, it requires a set of skills that simply isn’t available to the BPS 1 through BPS 22 system of hiring talent to work in government that has been untouched, like a sacred virgin, effectively since the early 1970s.

Friends will read this and chuckle. Did I just make law enforcement equal to tracking VOIP apps equal to civil service reform? You’re damn right I did. I cannot think of a single thinking and feeling Pakistani who doesn’t feel overwhelmed by the callousness and carelessness of the state. Most Pakistanis who have not thrown in the towel are angry. Some mistakenly think that the way to address the anger is to start cheerleading the slow destruction of our gallant armed forces, by dragging them back into the political arena. Others mistakenly think that Imran Khan will fast bowl Pakistan out of these crises. Here’s the problem: even if divinely-inspired angels were to come to earth to save Pakistan, they would need to re-establish the capacity and capability of the state altogether. Business-as-usual politics or governance won’t do, can’t do, is not doing.

What Pakistan needs is a mean, angry bull in a china shop that cares principally about fixing the country’s most valuable asset (its civilian infrastructure). In a reformed and capable civilian infrastructure lies the magic potion that will help politicians put the generals back into the confines of purely military affairs. It is also the magic potion that will deliver a Pakistan that seems suddenly more energised and engaged on the world stage, capable of taking advantage of its strengths, and more than happy to go toe-to-toe with worst instincts of the Indias of the world.

Short of massive, urgent and immediate reforms to the civilian infrastructure, Pakistan will continue to stand sheepishly on the international stage, with its tail between its legs. Worse, it will stutter and stammer its way to non-solutions like the ongoing Rangers operation in Karachi. Indeed, the stellar work of our bravest sons, in Fata, Balochistan and even Karachi, has no hope of enduring beyond the bullets. Why? Because you cannot sustain a state with a civilian infrastructure that is so broken that it frequently bends over in reverence to non-state actors, from the shiny, English-medium NGOs on one hand, to the scruffy, ex-militant, now welfare outfits on the other.

There is only one Sharif that can change all this, and his name is not Raheel.

The writer is an analyst and commentator.www.mosharrafzaidi.com