November 1, 2013, was a landmark day for democracy in Pakistan.

On that day, the parliament of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province passed a right to information law (the provincial government enacted it several weeks later). It was hailed as “one of the most forward-thinking and progressive laws” in Pakistan’s recent legislative history. Even before its passage, the World Bank was declaring it one of the top three right-to-information laws in the world.

In the words of M Shafiq Anjum, a Pakistani commentator, the law allows KP residents “to strengthen the democratic process by facilitating their participation in public affairs and making the government more accountable.”

The law limits the exceptions officials can raise to prevent sharing state information with the public, establishes a commission to investigate citizen complaints about delayed or ignored information requests, and contains whistleblower protections.

November 1, 2013 was also a landmark day for a very different reason.

On that day, American drones fired missiles at a compound in the North Waziristan tribal agency. Several men died, including Hakimullah Mehsud—the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, which has killed thousands of people in recent years.

Pakistani political leaders reacted to the death of one of the country’s biggest mass murderers with rage, not relief. Islamabad, insisting it was close to starting peace talks with the Taliban, denounced Mehsud’s death as “an attack on regional peace.” Other politicians threatened to block Pakistan-based NATO supply routes. Some conservative religious party leaders called Mehsud a “martyr.” Others urged their countrymen to shoot down drones.

Mehsud’s death came at the end of a bloody week—one that had featured bomb blasts in the South Waziristan tribal area, and in the provinces of Balochistan and Sindh. Two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were also defused on the roof of a house in Punjab province.

The cycle began anew the very next week. Monday, the fourth of November, alone saw a deadly sectarian strike in Karachi, the destruction of NATO tankers in Balochistan, a grenade attack in the Orakzai tribal area, and a bomb (which did not detonate) in Peshawar.

This jarring juxtaposition of same-day events crystallizes two prominent yet contradictory trends sweeping across Pakistan: deepening democratization and rapid radicalization.

The Wave of Democratization

Ever since a pro-democracy movement swept across Pakistan in 2007 and 2008, leading to the resignation of military strongman Pervez Musharraf and to elections that brought a civilian government to power, the nation has achieved impressive democratic progress—and considerably more so than during previous eras of civilian rule.

In 2010, Pakistan passed its 18th constitutional amendment, which transferred much authority and many resources from the federal government—long a power base for the country’s military—to the provinces. One analyst described it as “one of the most dramatic deconcentrations of power in Pakistan” since the drafting of the country’s 1973 Constitution (which remains in force today). One of the amendment’s core objectives (in addition to curtailing the power of the presidency) is to bring services closer to the people, and particularly those in underserved areas—such as Balochistan—often given short shrift by federal bureaucrats in Islamabad.

Last year, for the first time in Pakistan’s history, one democratically elected government completed a full term and transferred power to another. There was no “visible” meddling by the military in the May 2013 national election—a major change for an institution notorious for influencing elections. Thanks to recent court testimony, we now know that in 1990, Pakistan’s army chief forced the leader of its feared intelligence agency, the ISI, to pay politicians “millions of dollars” to defeat the government of Benazir Bhutto.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s courts and private media are increasingly activist and feisty, and serve as checks on state power. Indeed, both institutions are targeting the military—until recently, an entity few would have dared confront. The Supreme Court has sought to investigate army abuses in the insurgency wracked Balochistan region, and journalists are increasingly criticizing military policies. Criticism of the military has intensified since the unilateral U.S. raid on Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in 2011—an incident that shattered the military’s veneer of invincibility by highlighting its inability to deter the incursion. The army has appeared even more vulnerable in recent weeks with Musharraf, who was pressured out of office in August 2008, on trial for treason. It is the first time a former army chief has been tried in a civilian court.

Increasing Radicalization

Yet, unfortunately, the encouraging spread of democracy is accompanied by an alarming growth in extremism.

Militancy is no longer limited to Pakistan’s tribal belt. It now extends far into the country’s “settled” areas, including its major cities. In recent months, Al Qaeda cells have been discovered in Lahore (Pakistan’s cultural capital) and Karachi (its financial capital and largest city). Additionally, the Wall Street Journal reports that Pakistani Taliban forces “control or dominate” nearly a full third of the area of Karachi.

Deaths from sectarian violence have risen sharply in recent years—from about 200 in 2011 to 525 last year. According to Pakistan’s draft Internal Security Policy, “terror incidents” have risen from 523 between 2001 and 2005 to a staggering 13,198 between 2007 and 2013. (Given the immensely high recent figures, “terror incident” likely covers a broad range of events. These probably include both actual attacks, as well as military operations against extremists, failed terror attacks, discoveries of militant safe houses, and so forth.)

Pakistan’s many militants are merely exploiting a social and political environment that is increasingly hardline. Witness the attacks on schoolgirls for not wearing the hijab; provincial government bans on concerts; and federal government bans on “immoral” telecommunications content.

An Unsustainable Contradiction

The upshot of these two divergent trends—one toward more democracy, the other toward more extremism—is a raft of contradictions. Pakistani courts recognize the rights of transgendered individuals while police ban music on public transport. Provincial governments support a right-to-information law while also cancelling a launch of Malala Yousafzai’s new book. And perhaps most ironically, the chief beneficiary of last year’s historic election—the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party—has rigorously pursued peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, an organization that vows to destroy democracy.

These two trends can only coexist for so long. Pakistan is approaching an inflection point where one will begin to threaten the other.

Sanguine observers may contend that the consolidation of democracy can in time undercut the appeal of extremism. After all, Pakistan’s increasingly vibrant civil society is providing peaceful channels for registering grievances. As Pakistani academic Adil Najam has written, activist media and a new generation of social justice-minded musicians are imbuing society—and particularly its young members—with greater “voice.”

But, the democracy-undercuts-extremism argument overstates the strength of Pakistani democracy. While democracy in the country is certainly becoming more robust, it remains highly fragile—and vulnerable to the predations of militancy.

Despite all the recent achievements of Pakistan’s civilian-led democracy, the military remains the country’s most powerful institution. It wields veto power over security and defense policy, boasts a vast economic empire rarely subjected to scrutiny, and enjoys considerable operational impunity—thanks to a clause in the constitution that prevents high courts from challenging its actions. Critically, it is the military, and the broader security establishment in which it resides, that regards some Pakistani militant groups as useful for state interests—and therefore refuses to crack down on them.

At its core, Pakistan’s democratization is about processes more than principles. Power is being decentralized, and free elections are becoming more common. Yet aside from some token gestures, precious little has been done to strengthen minority rights, pluralism, or tolerance—core democratic values in critically short supply in Pakistan. There has also been little done to narrow Pakistan’s stark class divides, which have institutionalized economic inequalities.

A small Pakistani elite—comprised mainly of wealthy agricultural landholders but increasingly of affluent urbanites as well—lives lavishly, but the majority of Pakistanis live in poverty, with limited access to land, water, and energy (the 18th Amendment, which is meant to facilitate better service delivery, has done little to address this problem).

Thanks in part to high defense and debt servicing budgets, the Pakistani state has never, to this day, made a genuine effort to invest in the health, education, and well-being of its citizens (most other developing world democracies—including India—have made better efforts to do so). Finally, there has been little done—whether through police reform, swifter and fairer justice, or other legal correctives—to better protect average people from violence and other scourges.

This failure to advance democratic principles, to provide basic services on a large scale, and to offer any semblance of proper justice enables extremist ideologies—and those who act on them in violent ways—to entrench themselves comfortably in society.

Conclusion

In effect, Pakistan is radicalizing faster than it is democratizing. And there is little reason to think democratization will catch up anytime soon—especially if public opinion is any indication. A Pew poll released on the eve of last year’s election found that 56 percent of Pakistani Muslims would prefer “a leader with a strong hand” over a democratic government (only 29 percent preferred democracy—the lowest figure among the nearly 40 countries surveyed). Significantly, young Pakistanis—a dominant demographic, given that two thirds of the population is under the age of 30—have also demonstrated considerable displeasure with democracy. In one recent poll, more of them supported military rule or sharia law than democracy.

So long as the Pakistani state continues to sponsor militant groups (or, at best, looks the other way), to refuse to take more robust legal action against extremists, to tolerate school curricula with hardline messages, and to willingly accept funding from its close Saudi Arabian ally, which is often used to support hardline Wahhabi and Deobandi Islam, then radicalization will continue apace.

Pakistan’s worsening militancy problem does not only threaten Pakistani lives and the country’s long-elusive stability. It also jeopardizes Pakistan’s democratic progress—one of the few bright spots for a country that has seemingly suffered so many more tragedies than triumphs in recent years.

Pakistan’s Contradictory Changes