Pakistan has been going through
turmoil due to the isolation and stumbling of economy since long and we have
not yet been able to get our economy back to the right track. I will attribute
to the failure of successive governments which failed to keep watch on the
leakage and destruction of the economy because of their bad fiscal policies.
Let us not hesitate in terming this as national failure. Our main problem
remained as lack of political wisdom to move the country as the country had
fallen prey in the hands of own complexes rather the rulers worked more to save
their rule against the internal and external political compulsion rather run
the country on merit and the economy remained as the last priority.
The weak economy in fact forced
the rulers to beg from US, IMF and the World Bank. All of these international
aiding institutions have their own geo political agenda and we continued
getting trapped in their hands. We are now in a tight grip of this octopus in
the form of a non-ending web of debt trap. The weak dictatorships and fragile
governance have always been under their pressure and unable to play in the
greater national interest. What could be the fate of a nation whose President
House is offered to CIA Director William J Casey to make war plans and make it
a battle ground for world powers at the cost of national interest?
Let me confess that the terrorism
is a created warfare by West in Pakistan in order to achieve the following:
1. To get a control over
Afghanistan and to ensure that USA policies are implemented till the time USA
wants. On December 25, 1991, the once-mighty Soviet Union had fallen, largely
due to the great number of radical reforms that Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev
had implemented during his six years as the leader of the USSR. Gorbachev also
resigned from his job as he was disappointed, leaving Boris Yeltsin as
president of Afghanistan in 1979, Mikhail Gorbachev, replaced the ineffectual
Karmalas president of Afghanistan with Muhammad Najibullah. But after almost a
decade of war, Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in February 1989. By the
end of Afghan war, Afghanistan erupted into a violent civil war that was to
last until 1996 and was more intense in its violence than anything witnessed
during the Soviet-Afghan War. As the Afghan Civil War progressed and Soviet aid
diminished, Najibullah’s position became increasingly vulnerable as the Soviet
back had also been cut. On 26th of September 1996 in the UN compound in Kabul
city, Dr Mohammad Najibullah and his brother Shahpur Ahmadzai were tortured and
killed publically by Afghan Taliban. He wanted to flee from Kabul and so he
planned a secret flight to India along with Benon Sevan, head of the UN’s
humanitarian aid division to Afghanistan. The Kabul airport was under the
control of his friend Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan of Uzbek heritage and not
just Dostum, most of his partymen had also abandoned Najibullah in this plan.
Foreign minister Abdul Wakil and army Chief General Mohammad Nabi Azimi, keen
on their own political and physical survival, wanted to offer Najibullah as a
prisoner to the Mujahideen forces. They had rushed to the airport on getting
news of Najibullah’s escape attempt, and asked Sevan to disembark the plane to
avoid further embarrassment and potential violence as they wanted Sevan alive
and safe given his UN connection. Najibullah was hated because of his
connections with Soviets but was a true preacher of peace and laid down his
life for the unity of his country. Execution of Najibullah is one of those many
reasons of rift between Pakistan and Afghanistan as General Zia had trained
Gulbudin Hekmatyar and other such warlords who destabilised Afghan government.
3. During the Afghan-USSR war,
Pakistan got very close to Afghanistan as USA was channeling everything through
Pakistan. During the rule of Taliban in Afghanistan, the relationship between
Afghanistan and Pakistan was very close. It all changed after the 9/11 in 2001
attacks and Taliban was denounced by everyone including Pakistan. Pakistan
basically toed the line of USA reluctantly because George Bush said, “Either
you are with us, or with them”. In one stroke Pakistan lost their best Afghan
ally. Taliban had Osama bin Laden as their state guest and they indulged in
global terrorism.
Both attacks brought economic
crunch in Pakistan with increase in production/consumption of drugs and culture
of gun running.
Let us examine how these war
strokes hit our economy, developments and contributed to the destruction of
peace in Pakistan. We lost our developments progress which can be judged by the
following indicators and we started losing our economic foot hold.
Let’s see how gradually we lost
in terms of sliding rupee:
Priority of dollar to Rupee
1972 Z.A Bhutto 4.7- 9.9
1983 Zia-ul-Haq 13.1 - 17.7
1990 Benazir Bhutto 24.0
1991 Nawaz Sharif 25.0
1994 Benazir Bhutto 30.6 - 40.3
1997-99 Nawaz Sharif 53.0
1999-2008 Pervez Musharraf 62.0
2008 – 2013 Asif Ali Zardari 67.9
– 98.3
2013 – 2018 Nawaz Sharif 100.75 –
128.50
2018 Imran Khan 134
If you examine the corresponding
timings you will see our destruction started during the Afghan war followed by
unstable successive governments.
The downward slide shows that our
socio-economic structure was badly destroyed with neighbouring Afghan giving
rise to engineered terrorism which engulfed the peace as well as the law &
order situation of our country. The situation has scared the investors
resulting into the flight of capital from Pakistan to alternate locations
chosen by rich businessman.
The above indicators show how
badly the Afghan wars have affected our economy. The successive decline in
rupee and other indicators are the testimony of socio-economic bogging down. We
did not learn the lesson and could not understand the long terms of war against
Pakistan. The West created forces like al-Qaeda, Taliban and now Daesh making
peace in Pakistan to be at risk all the time. The Daesh is playing on its
master’s voice in Middle East and it is being felt that next targets of Daesh
will be Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and China and it is written on the walls
that Daesh will operate worse than al-Qaeda.
The above data shows that the
value of our rupee slid down because of these proxy wars/ Afghan war. Similarly
our investments went low because of insecurities by investors.
The war on terror by the USA has
been very damaging for Pakistan and it is not stopping and continuing on daily
basis. The impact of Afghan refugees is huge on our fragile economy. It has
also negative impact on our social fiber and country remained hostage in the
hands of terrorism and the refugee’s camps remained hub of terrorist activities
as they have served as nurseries for terrorists.
We need to build our national
institutions by some good doable policies to improve our socio-economic sector
and accountability processes to control corruption.
The negative propaganda must end
now and let there be collective national approach to get out of the economic
crunch and other grave crises. We are sitting on time bomb with this
deteriorating economy which may lead us to international bankruptcy and serious
internal crises as the rupee has gone under serious pressure.
Let us be honest in acceptance of
the fact that this government has no option except to get further loan from IMF
on their conditions whose impact in the shape of price hike is visible and it
is going to be seen more. The government needs to focus on their own economic policies
now to overcome these growing crises and to avoid these tiny and bigger time
bombs from blowing in the form of bouts of price hike for a common man. It
would be better for PM Imran Khan and his team to overcome these growing
economic crises in time.
Now is the time that the
government needs to drastically reduce the imports and allow the incentive
based exports. Recovery of billions of dollars defaulted by business community
and State Bank was unable to recover it. It will help towards retirements of
foreign debt.
The Government must act without
discrimination against the business community which has taken trillions of
dollars out of Pakistan to Canada/Malaysia and Sri lanka but unfortunately the
authorities have turned blind eye towards this illegal flight of capital from
Pakistan. Pakistan suffered in the hands of corrupt business community and
their supporters from banks. It is important to the core to get rid of these
small time bombs of bursting economy everyday.
I appeal to everybody who matters
to stop propagating about corruption in Pakistan without proofs as it is
destroying our image and international rating for Pakistan economy and
investment.
I would like to conclude by
advising the ruling party that it is not the time to create unwise negative
atmosphere in the Parliament rather take both the houses into confidence and
place your government’s vision, policies and proposals on fiscal, foreign and
internal security policies before the joint session of the Parliament to get
collective vision for long term strategies and to take the country out of the
crises with common vision.
The Article has been Published in
‘’The News’’ on October 22nd, 2018
The Link to Article is: https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/383862-pak-socio-economic-time-bombs
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