16.06.2013 Terrorism vs good governance
The PTI faces tough challenges as it governs the insurgency-hit Pakhtunkhwa
By Raza Khan
Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) first-ever government has started working in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province as the cabinet portfolios have been allocated after much delay. Irrespective of which party or individual gets what ministry, it would be the overall performance of the government that would be a barometer to gauge the tall claims Khan has been making for many years.
As the PTI has failed to win majority in the National Assembly and is not part of the government in any other province, its government in the KP would also be critical for the future of the party and perhaps democracy in Pakistan keeping in view the party’s slogan of ‘change’ on which it got the second highest number of votes across Pakistan.
The KP is both simultaneously fortunate and unfortunate to have the PTI-led government because the party has a non-traditional political programme, which the province needs the most to sort out its myriad issues. Although the entire Pakistan needs change, the KP needs it the most as the decadent political and economic institutions have almost collapsed due to multifarious factors while the society is experiencing large-scale changes and is in a state of transition. In this situation there ought to be a political force which could not only bring change but also manage change.
The KP, as a society and administrative entity, has had some very critical and peculiar issues and problems. The province is extensively affected by the direct and indirect effects of the unprecedented insurgency-cum-terrorism of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the 30-year-long international conflict plus civil war in the neighbouring Afghanistan. It is important to note that the KP for decades hosted two-third of the 3.5-4.0 million Afghan refugees, the biggest refugee population anywhere in the world, which migrated to Pakistan due to the Soviet-Afghan War and lived there for decades.
A large number of these refugees are still living in the KP. On the other hand, the KP in recent years also experienced one of the biggest internal human displacement in modern world history when due to the TTP insurgency and consequent military offensive around three million residents of Swat-Malakand had to leave their homes to get refuge in rest of the province. Apart from that, presently around a million IDPs from the Fata displaced due to Taliban insurgency are also living in the adjoining districts of the KP.
Terrorism, international conflict and insurgency of such big magnitude and intensity have left the KP government institutions extremely weakened, has significantly eroded the state writ and lacerated the social fabric of the province or more aptly Pakhtoon society. Against this backdrop, what is required is reconstruction and development effort of a gargantuan proportion. It is also a dilemma of the government that it has to reconstruct and develop the province simultaneously.
The incoming government must understand that terrorism in the name of Islam in Pakistan, particularly in the KP, has many causal factors, many of which, like underdevelopment and society’s ultra-conservativeness, have roots in political vacuum and resultant bad policies and governance. Thus terrorism could only be countered through good governance and pro-social change. For this, the province needs a government that is composed of able, educated and erudite people and has cognition of not only the problems but most importantly their solution.
The KP has a strange fate as it has got a government led by a party, which does not have any experience of governance. However, such argument in no way can take the right of governance from the party as it has been given the mandate to rule by the majority people of the KP. At least, the newly-elected Chief Minister of the province, Pervez Khattak, is an extremely experienced and educated man, who has the potential to overcome these challenges and reconstruct the province and put it on the path of development.
Khattak, in his maiden speech to the provincial assembly after election, said that his government has come with full preparation to rule and had ready policies and won’t waste time to think what it had to do. This sounded music to the ears. Because once vision is clear, priorities get straight, policy formulation become rational and their implementation mechanical. During the same speech, one could feel that Khattak as a nominee of Imran Khan had realisation of the situation as he himself said everything in the province had crumbled. “Is there anything in shape,” he questioned.
Apart from the chief minister, there are also quite experienced and educated men in the cabinet like the seasoned campaigner Shaukat Yousafzai, Atif Khan and Sirajul Haq (JI).
Here are some important points, which if taken into consideration, could greatly help the new government to overcome challenges and ensure good governance.
The PTI leadership and everyone else are grossly mistaken when it states that terrorism is the biggest challenge of or in the KP; it is neither. Firstly, it is beyond the capacity of the KP government to address the phenomenon of terrorism in the name of Islam. Secondly, the terrorists have their bases in the tribal areas, a federal territory. Thirdly, the phenomenon of religious terrorism has been the result of decades-old state policies and international intervention in the region and Pakistan.
The KP has not been the mainspring of terrorism but only has been the victim of these forces and policies. So the KP government cannot be expected to resolve these issues unless there is a fundamental change in the state policies and withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. If the provincial government would attempt to eliminate terrorism and bases of its perpetrators by force it would be a grave mistake which the previous provincial government of the Awami National Party (ANP) committed. However, the KP government could mitigate the effects of terrorism. The only way of this is to ensure good governance.
Desire for having good governance was the very reason which motivated most of the people to vote for the PTI in the province because the party, claims notwithstanding, does not have any coherent political ideology.
Taliban have got most of their supporters and fighters among the extremely poor and unemployed youth. Thus poverty and unemployment along with structural underdevelopment and, above all, profound social-psychological conservativeness in the KP have been some, not all, of the main contributing causes to the phenomenon of religious extremism and terrorism. Therefore, if the provincial government come up with such policies that could address these critical issues then it would do its part to counter terrorism in the province.
Thus the challenges which the new government of the PTI in the KP have to face, including effects of terrorism and economic meltdown, are huge but they can be adroitly managed provided the government has the vision, comprehension and solution. With the popularly-elected, experienced and dedicated government of the PML-N at the centre and the PTI-led government in the KP, hopefully the country would see qualitative improvement in governance.