By Agha Iqrar Haroon
Karl Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish economist and sociologist published his famous book “Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations” in 1968 in which he introduced the concept of a ‘Soft State’ and feared that Pakistan could become a ‘Soft State’ sooner or later.
His work is considered as “divine writings” by students of political philosophy. Myrdal and his wife Alva were a rare couple as both won Nobel prizes. His another book titled “Rich Lands and Poor” published in 1957 could be considered as base-work for his “Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations” in which he gave the concept of “Soft State”. His academic inquiry is linked with a popular political theory that rich geology and critically important geography (geographical location/geopolitical positioning) sometimes make rich countries poor because they become a victim of adversaries (mostly through proxies) who inject various kinds of fears, and social indiscipline which manifests deficiencies in legislation and, in particular, law observance and enforcement, widespread disobedience and corruption by public officials. He called such states ‘Soft States’. Pakistan is surely one of such countries.
Myrdal chose India, Pakistan, Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaya (now Malaysia) and claimed that without deep and radical reforms to the structure of the above-mentioned states, systemic pressures would eventually spread of resentful nationalism that would cause multilayered social and economic issues. Myrdal said that the low capacity of the state (size of the state machinery to handle illegalities) in implementing policies and programs, and law enforcement would make these states further weaker. Since the 1980s, the perception of the Pakistani state being soft has been broadened to mean how ineffective it has been in dealing with internal and external security threats.
According to another theory, soft states can survive (like Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan) if their population is not inappropriate with their land mass (size). However, Pakistan which has a huge population of over 250 million with 63 percent of youth may not survive for long because its population is already un-proportionate while social indiscipline, the defunct justice system, deficiencies in legislation and law observance and enforcement, widespread disobedience and corruption by state machinery continue to play havoc with it.
Furthermore, Pakistan since Afghan Jihad is the route of almost every illegal business through the Pak-Afghan border has a size of over 10 to 12 billion rupees per day. Ten billion if multiplied by 30 days, the monthly size of smuggling is 300 billion and the annual size is over 3,600 billion. It may be noted that figures are tentative/estimated at the lower side of the calculation because nobody knows the real volume of this economy linked with smuggling. Moreover, the volume and economic impact of Narcotics, household items, and weapon smuggling are not included in the figures mentioned above.
To give an example of the huge cost Pakistan is paying due to smuggling, an official of the customs department shared some horrific figures that may help readers to know that the figure of 10 billion per day smuggling volume is not hearsay. He said that Pakistan uses 1.4 million tires per year and only 15 percent of them are officially imported while only 10 percent are locally manufactured while rest of the 75 percent come through illegal means (smuggling). This huge smuggling is discouraging investors/industrialists from enhancing local manufacturing. Smugglers make Rs. 13,000 or Rs. 15,000 on every piece of tire, indicating that smugglers are making over Rs 19, 200 million every year just from tires. Non-custom paid (NCP) vehicles are over 800,000 (1,500cc power) plying in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan and every vehicle with an engine power of less than 1,500cc is Rs. 2.5 million cheaper than custom-paid vehicle of the same engine power. Just calculate what would be the figure when 800,000 is multiplied with Rs. 2.5 million? Petrol smuggling from Iran is an estimated business worth Rs.1.4 billion per day. These figures are just the tip of the iceberg.
One can imagine that mafias who are running a business of over Rs. 10 billion per day would never wish for a stable and peaceful Pak-Afghan border and will keep engaging security forces in combat with terrorists and keep targeting them when they are manning the borders for controlling smuggling. in September 2023, Pakistan focused on controlling the smuggling of petrol cooking oil, edibles, US currency, and other items at the Pak-Afghan border and almost all political parties from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) started crying and demanded to let the smuggling continue. Same time, attacks on security forces intensified and this situation is becoming critical with every passing day. In the first six months of 2024, 111 officers/soldiers of the Pakistan Army and law enforcement agencies gave their lives and during the same period 1,063 incidents of terrorism were reported while law enforcement agencies conducted 22,214 intelligence-based operations and killed over 354 terrorists but this has become a feature of every day and terrorists living in Afghanistan continue to attack Pakistan almost every day.
Since Afghan Jihad started in the early 80s, smuggling, and terrorism have been eating out Pakistan and bleeding Pakistan’s economy and nobody dared to challenge the smuggling mafia. Now, this mafia is being challenged by the state authorities. Responding to state actions, the mafia is injecting an unprecedented huge amount among politicians, media men, writers, anchors, and journalists who are rejecting any action that could hamper smuggling to and from Afghanistan and Iran. The stakes are so high there is no harm in spending a billion rupee per day out of illegally earned 10 billion per day to buy the support of bureaucrats, politicians, and journalists.
The instant response that came from KP political parties of ‘rejecting the Azm-e-Istehkam’ was expected because mafias understand that any such initiative would go deep down in finding connections among criminals, terrorists, mafia men with politicians, media men, and even with government functionaries. The economic terrorism launched through Afghanistan can keep Pakistan a weaker state or in simple words a ‘Soft State’ that suits mafias who are making billions of rupees per day from political chaos and weak administration in Pakistan. A hard state would never suit those whose billions of rupees are at stake.
Background discussions with several serving and retired officials of law enforcement agencies, customs officials, anti-narcotics staff, and immigration control officials indicate that hotchpotch administrative divisions among several departments controlling borders also help smugglers and terrorists. They suggest that all important wings of the state that are responsible for controlling illegal operations (smuggling/border crossing without documents/transportation of weapons and narcotics etc) should be under one authority as it is practiced in many states of Eastern Europe and Central Asia and such authority can be called “Land and Port Authority”. Such authority should be empowered to check every kind of activity at border controlling (airports/sea ports/border crossing etc) and such initiative can mitigate smuggling in the country. This scenario can give readers a pulse on what kind of threats Pakistan is facing. Now the question is, can a weaker, politically divided soft-state of Pakistan fight back against smugglers and their proxies like politicians, NGOs, and journalists? Empirical data indicates that politicians avoid making unpopular decisions and their popular decisions sometimes play havoc with the country. PTI government invited terrorists from Afghanistan and resettled them in KP in early 2022 because it had a vote bank in KP that is the main route of smuggling and the stable law and order situation in the province was not in favor of mafias. Will politicians stand together for the success of Azm-e-Istehkam?
