Pakistan.pdf.
12 Easterly, “The Political Economy of Growth without Development.”
13 “Country Comparison: Infant Mortality Rate,” CIA World Factbook, www.cia.gov/library/
publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html.
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34
No Exit from Pakistan
Those miserable living standards, however, are not the worst part of the
story. The real tragedy is that Pakistan’s wealth should have translated into a
better quality of life. As the years went by, Pakistanis earned more than their
developing country peers, but especially during the 1980s and 1990s, Pakistan
failed to improve infant mortality rates commensurate with its income level.
Compared with average infant mortality rates among countries where people
had similar incomes, out of every 1,000 infants, twenty-seven more Pakistanis
died before age one.14
Nor is Pakistan very good at educating its infants who survive until school
age. Today, 50 percent of Pakistani schoolchildren between the ages of six and
sixteen cannot read a sentence.15 In 2011, there were twenty-six countries in
the world that sent a higher percentage of their children to primary school even
though they were poorer than Pakistan.16 According to the United Nations
Children’s Fund, roughly 60 percent of Pakistani kids finish primary school
and only about a third attend secondary school.17 These figures are appallingly
low. Pakistan’s historic rival, India, reported rates of 95 percent and over 50
percent, respectively.18 Even Bangladesh, which declared its independence from
Pakistan in 1971, fares better.19
And this is to say nothing of the abysmal quality of education in most
Pakistani schools. Pakistan’s public schools face a crisis of mismanagement,
inadequate materials, and poorly trained teachers.20 Thousands of state schools
even go without teachers. In many case, instructors collect paychecks but never
bother to show up to the classroom.21
In response, millions of Pakistani parents simply have given up on public
schools. They send their kids – at considerable cost – to private institutions.22
Starting in the early 1980s, tens of thousands of private schools opened their
14 Easterly, “The Political Economy of Growth without Development.”
15 “Education Emergency Pakistan,” Pakistan Education Task Force, p. 7, www.educationemergency.com.pk.
16 “Education Emergency Pakistan,” Pakistan Education Task Force, p. 7.
17 “Pakistan,” United Nations Children’s Fund, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/pakistan pakistan statistics.html.
18 “India,” United Nations Children’s Fund, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/india statistics
.html.
19 “Bangladesh,” United Nations Children’s Fund, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/bangla desh_bangladesh_statistics.html.
20 Shahid Javed Burki, “Educating the Pakistani Masses,” in Robert Hathaway, ed., Education Reform in Pakistan (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2005), p. 16. On the poor facilities in Pakistan’s schools, see also “Education Emergency Pakistan,”
Pakistan Education Task Force, p. 7, www.educationemergency.com.pk.
21 Public school teachers are absent from the classroom an average of 15–20 percent of the time, “Education Emergency Pakistan,” p. 7; see also “Pakistan: The Next Generation,”
British Council Pakistan (November 2009), p. 14, http://www.britishcouncil.pk/pakistan-Next-Generation-Report.pdf.
22 In Pakistan, the average rural family spends 13 percent of its income on public schooling. See
“Education Emergency Pakistan,” pp. 7, 11.
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The Four Faces of Pakistan
35
doors. They now serve more than half of the students in many of Pakistan’s
cities.23 Other children attend madrassas, or Islamic seminaries, where tuition
is free.
A handful of Pakistan’s madrassas are better known as terrorist training
centers than founts of theological wisdom. In reality, however, the greatest
danger posed by most Pakistani seminaries is that their narrow curriculum fails
to prepare children for jobs outside the clergy after graduation. Unfortunately,
Pakistan’s public schools do not fare much better. A close look at Pakistan’s
public school curriculum reveals that its typical graduates do not just leave the
classroom unprepared for work, but they are also indoctrinated in a harshly
anti-Indian, anti-Semitic, and anti-Western view of the world.24
Across the board, the failure of Pakistan’s public education system has made
the country less productive and more dangerous. These are not, however, insur-
mountable challenges. The Pakistani government devotes less than 2 percent
of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) to education, which is half the
level India spends and just over a third of the American figure.25 Resources are
not the whole of the story, but they are an important part. India’s concerted
focus on primary education since the mid-1980s has posted impressive gains
in terms of getting more boys and girls into school and keeping them there.26
India is moving ten times faster than Pakistan to reduce the number of young
children out of school.27
Failing Infrastructure
Pakistan also faces other huge shortfalls when it comes to investing in the
infrastructure required of a modern economy. The most obvious problem is
electricity. It is now part of the daily routine for homes and businesses across
Pakistan to experience power outages, or as the locals say, “load shedding.”
Part of the problem is that Pakistan’s energy supply has not kept up with grow-
ing demand. Yet technical experts suggest that financial mismanagement, theft,
and an antiquated distribution network are in fact the main barriers to a steady
energy supply.28 Pakistani consumers, including the government and military,
routinely fail to pay electricity bills, starving energy suppliers and forcing them
23 Hathaway, “Introduction,” Education Reform in Pakistan, p. 3.
24 C. Christine Fair, Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 2008), pp. 94–101.
25 “Education Emergency Pakistan,” p. 8. See also “Education Spending (percent of GDP) (most recent) by Country,” www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu edu spe-education-spending-of-gdp.
26 “Pakistan: The Next Generation,” British Council Pakistan (November 2009), pp. 23–4, http://www.britishcouncil.pk/pakistan-Next-Generation-Report.pdf.
27 “Education Emergency Pakistan,” p. 19.
28 “Country Report Presentation: Pakistan Energy Crisis and Solution,” presentation at JICA Training and Dialogue Program on Energy Policy by Muhammad Latif, chief, Energy Wing, Planning Commission of Pakistan, May 2011, http://eneken.ieej.or.jp/data/3843.pdf.
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36
No Exit from Pakistan
to cut production. Artificially low energy costs (set by the state to appeal to
consumers) also reduce the incentive for investment in the power sector.
In a country with scorching summers, the loss of air conditioning can
make modern buildings uninhabitable. Even for wealthy Pakistanis who have
invested in generators for their homes, it usually takes a few minutes for the
new power source to kick in. For an American visitor, having the lights go out
abruptly in the middle of a conversation is unnerving, yet most Pakistanis are
so accustomed to the inconvenience that they don’t even miss a beat. If sitting
in the pitch dark, they may simply flip on their cell phones and place them on
the table as dim bluish torches.
Of course, as any Karachi businessman can explain, sitting in the dark over
dinner is the least of his troubles. In 2011, a couple of successful Pakistani man-
ufacturers generously hosted me for lunch at a fine French bistro in Karachi.
Over chilled cucumber soup, they explained that Pakistanis pay an average of
about twice what their Bangladeshi competitors pay for gas and electricity.29
Worse, because they could not be sure of a steady power supply, their factories
could not operate at full capacity and faced unexpected delays. Foreign buyers
who needed guaranteed on-time deliveries had already moved on to more reli-
able manufacturers outside Pakistan. International investors were also scarce.
My lunch companions went on to explain that their Bangladeshi competitors
squeeze over four times more export value out of a bale of cotton by turning it
into finished goods ready for sale to rich Western consumers. Pakistan, on the
other hand, exports a lot of unfinished goods – raw cotton, yarn, and cloth –
because its factories are in such sorry shape. As a consequence, Pakistan also
forgoes jobs and the profits that would come from turning cotton into designer
jeans or high-end dress shirts. In an economy where textiles account for over
40 percent of urban jobs and about 60 percent of export earnings, such lost
opportunities are costly.30
Even if Pakistan manages to address its electricity woes, it is still running
out of water. Rain falls infrequently in Pakistan; seasonal snow melt from
the Himalayan glaciers provides the freshwater that flows through Pakistan’s
rivers, and those rivers feed the world’s single largest network of irrigation
canals. This irrigated network accounts for one-fourth of Pakistan’s GDP,
two-thirds of its jobs, and 80 percent of its exports.31 Canal construction
29 Author conversation with Karachi businessmen, October 2011.
30 “The Case for US Market Access for Pakistani Textiles,” Punjab Board of Trade & Investment, Government of Punjab, December 4, 2009, p. 3, http://www.pbit.gop.pk/pbit/uploaded/
projects/The%20Case%20for%20Market%20Access%20for%20Pakistani%20Textiles.pdf;
Khurram Anis, “Pakistan Textile Exports May Be Hurt by Gas Shortage, Group Says,”
Bloomberg, December 9, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-09/pakistan-textile-exports-may-be-hurt-by-gas-shortage-group-says.html.
31 “Pakistan’s Water Economy,” World Bank Group, http://www.worldbank.org.pk/WBSITE/EX
TERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/PAKISTANEXTN/0,,contentMDK:21102841
pagePK:141137piPK:141127theSitePK:293052,00.html.
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The Four Faces of Pakistan
37
was a revolutionary transformation of the national landscape that began under
British colonial rule and was expanded and reinvigorated by World Bank – and
heavy American – investments that began in the 1950s.32 But the canals are
falling apart after decades of inadequate repair; too many Pakistani farmers
still rely on old-fashioned flooding techniques for irrigation, and Pakistani
megacities demand many times more water than in generations past.
Scientists predict that climate change will cause glaciers to melt more rapidly
than in the past. As a consequence, Pakistan will go through decades of unpre-
dictable floods and droughts. Devastating inundations like those of 2010, which
temporarily left one-fifth of the country under water, are likely to be a regular
occurrence unless Pakistan builds new dams and modern water management
systems.33 Even today, however, Pakistan lives on less water per person than
any other country in Asia. A third of all Pakistanis do not have access to safe
drinking water. By some estimates, 30,000 residents of Karachi alone die from
this problem each year.34 The social and economic costs of Pakistan’s water
crisis are already staggering.
Why then, with education, energy, and water challenges so glaringly appar-
ent, has Pakistan’s government done so little to reform or invest? A big part of
the answer to this question takes us back to the identity of Pakistan’s leadership.
Over the course of the nation’s history, too many of them sent their children to
Too many sipped cool cucumber soup even as their countrymen struggled to
find safe drinking water.
Rather than contributing to revenues that could provide better public ser-
vices, Pakistan’s elites have also selfishly kept their tax burden at a minimum.
So severe is the tax problem in Pakistan that only 1 percent of the country’s
citizens – and only a third of its legislators – paid taxes in 2011, helping to make
Pakistan’s tax-to-GDP ratio the lowest in South Asia.35 Many of the country’s
rich may also be deliberately denying resources to the poor for fear that an
32 Douglas J. Merrey and James M. Wolf, “Irrigation Management in Pakistan: Four Papers,”
IMI Research Paper No. 4, p. 14; International Irrigation Management Institute: Digana Village, Sri Lanka (1986), http://books.google.com/books?id=Xw1M0R6PxfoC&pg=PP4&dq=united+
states+investment+pakistan+irrigation+1950s&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepa ge&q=united%20states%20investment%20pakistan%20irrigation%201950s&f=false.
33 “Construction of Dams Is the Only Solution to Prevent Floods: ICCI,” Pakistan Today, September 7, 2011, http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/09/07/news/profit/construction-of-dams-is-the-only-solution-to-prevent-floods-icci.
34 See Michael Kugelman, “Introduction,” in Michael Kugelman and Robert M. Hathaway, eds., Running on Empty: Pakistan’s Water Crisis (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2009), pp. 5–27.
35 Farhan Bokhari and Serena Tarling, “Pakistan Seeks Access to Western Markets,” Financial Times, March 21, 2010, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f669734e-3504–11df-9cfb-00144
feabdc0.html#axzz1rBpQ5lSR; Umar Cheema, “Representation without Taxation: An Anal-
ysis of MPs’ Income Tax Returns for 2011,” Center for Peace and Development Initiatives, 2012, http://www.cirp.pk/Electronic%20Copy.pdf.
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38
No Exit from Pakistan
educated, prosperous, and healthy public would challenge their monopoly on
political power.36 Pakistan’s pattern of elite rule is thus deeply entrenched and
self-reinforcing. When reform-minded leaders have gained power in Islamabad,
they have always found it expedient to depend on established politicians with
a vested interest in the status quo.
garrison state
Pakistan’s infamous journalist and political analyst Dr. Shireen Mazari has
been dubbed the “Lady Taliban” for her extreme views, not least her defense
of the Taliban and diatribes against the United States. Yet her nickname doesn’t
quite do Mazari justice. In 2007, after a dinner conversation with Mazari and
several others in Islamabad, a Pakistani friend observed that Mazari – who
does not wear a headscarf, sometimes dyes her hair in bright, unnatural colors,
and has a Ph.D. from Columbia University – would not last five minutes in a
country ruled by the obscurantist Taliban. Indeed, Mazari is less of a Talib than
the archetype of a hyper-nationalist. Unfortunately, her worldview is pervasive
throughout the Pakistani military.
With access to army documents, she wrote Pakistan’s official history of the
1999 Kargil conflict, a near-war with India that began when Pakistan infiltrated
fighters across its de facto border with India.37 Mazari’s book, widely derided
as a work of army propaganda, claims that India was responsible for escalating
the conflict and that Pakistan’s civilians have unfairly attempted to blame the
army for the failed military campaign that ensued. Whatever its factual basis,
there is little doubt that Mazari’s book won her friends inside the army and
cost her the respect of the academy.
When the Musharraf regime came crashing down in 2008, the new govern-
ment quickly stripped Mazari of her job as the director of a government-funded
think tank in Islamabad. Soon after, she also lost her regular column in one
of Pakistan’s English-language newspapers, The News, for writing unsubstan-
tiated stories about an American aid contractor, naming him in print, and