Pakistan Is Stuck and India Is Stuck Next to It

Christopher Clary

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Pakistan’s ruling coalition has announced its intent to complete its tenure in August, triggering national elections. Intra-coalitional bargaining continues over the wisdom of dissolving a few days before the government’s tenure officially ends at midnight on August 12. If the government dissolves before that date, a caretaker government has 90 days to oversee a national election. If the ruling coalition waits until its constitutional term is complete, then the caretaker government has just 60 days for the task.

Thirty days makes little difference, but the PML-N leadership appears to believe some added time will buy space for the economy to improve and perhaps for more wind to blow against the PTI loyalists left standing with former prime minister Imran Khan. Others in the coalition fear that more time might encourage the caretaker government to indulge in a constitutional pause on elections so it can caretake for longer – perhaps much longer. Bangladesh’s experience with a caretaker government in 2006, which ultimately opted (with military backing) to govern for more than two years instead of its allotted 90 days, may be on such skeptics’ minds.

The old PTI has splintered under the duress it has faced since the May 9 incident – where PTI protests nationwide devolved into property destruction including on military installations. Politicians from the PTI’s provincial base in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the PTI has governed either solely or in coalition since 2013, have defected en masse from their former captain. These are not mere back benchers but include two former PTI chief ministers of the province and at least one former provincial cabinet minister. This most recent news merely adds to the number of PTI leaders who have opted to retire, leave politics, or switch parties – with others still in detention for their alleged roles in the May 9 incident or other purported wrongdoings.

Given Khan’s charisma, the PTI could have been organised around party workers and loyalists. But Khan opted instead to rely on electable politicians – many of whom had switched parties repeatedly in their careers – to vault more quickly to national power with military support in 2018. This decision has been the original sin that has facilitated the party’s vulnerability now that it faces military ire. The extent to which Khan retains his enormous loyalty with the public is unclear. Yet whether Khan voters will have enough plausible candidates to vote for at the polls seems even further in doubt.

Even the 2018 PTI coalition was more fragile than it sometimes appeared to outside observers and PTI diehards. Winning less than a third of the national vote and with PTI requiring partners to secure a national assembly majority, small headwinds against the party always threatened it in a re-election. It now faces a gale from the establishment.

Pakistan’s predicament is considerable. Its sickly economy has been rehabilitated by currency infusions from the International Monetary Fund and rich Gulf countries but absent any meaningful macro- or microeconomic changes that will alter its poor underlying economic health. It continues to be vulnerable to climate-induced disasters. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan has not improved its security predicament as some anti-American Pakistani skeptics had suggested. Instead, Pakistan now struggles with a growing Afghan safe haven. While few expect the security situation to return to the dire days of the late 2000s or early 2010s, the number of attacks on the periphery has notably increased and it is a reasonable fear that core cities may not be far behind.

Pakistan’s economy has flourished in the past only with international patronage – but the prospect for that seems distant, too. While international donors have indicated through their recent behaviour that they will not permit a Pakistani economic collapse, there is no apparent interest in returning to prior peaks of funding. The US is profoundly dissatisfied with its erstwhile ally. China’s own sluggish economy along with the poor performance of many Chinese projects in Pakistan is likely to slow substantially the macroeconomic impacts of Chinese investments in its all-weather friend. Many of the most capable Pakistanis are leaving the country – with emigration tripling in 2022 compared to (pandemic-reduced) 2020 and 2021 numbers.

I first visited South Asia in 2002. At that time, according to the World Bank, Pakistanis earned more on average than their Indian and Bangladeshi peers. Since that time, the income of the average Pakistani has increased perhaps 60% in real terms. Yet in that same period the income of an average Indian has increased by 150% and that of the average Bangladeshi has shot up by more than 160%. The average Pakistani now makes the least of the big three subcontinental states.

Facing such economic and political troubles, Pakistan has focused inward for the last several years. It pursued quiet talks with India that produced a ceasefire in February 2021 – no doubt facilitated by India’s own desire to manage a growing China threat by tamping down violence on the Kashmir frontier. Yet while Pakistanis expected the ceasefire to be a prelude to bilateral political engagement, those subsequent steps never took place. The extent to which this was because of India’s own hesitations or internal civil-military clashes within Pakistan is not fully known. What does seem apparent is none of the major political or military actors in Pakistan is invested in rapprochement with India or vice versa. There are signs the 2021 ceasefire is fraying – with complaints on both sides that adherence to the letter and spirit of the agreement may be less than complete. With few other avenues to signal displeasure, the ceasefire could collapse with just one large attack.

Pakistan continues to exhibit what sociologist Laurent Gayer has referred to in other contexts as “ordered disorder”. Despite nearly continuous, high-stakes political contestation, “the players and the terrains of their confrontation have shown a significant level of continuity” for decades. The same players play the same game in today’s Pakistan, all while the country fails to advance much even while it avoids collapse. None expect that elections, if they take place in 2023, will produce any meaningful deviation from the political status quo. Whether the PPP or PML-N or PTI defectors secure sufficient votes to head the coalition, the same personalities will play the same game of musical chairs.

Pakistan is stuck, and India is stuck next to Pakistan. It would be easy for observers in New Delhi to conclude that this repetitious mess should be ignored. Analyst Happymon Jacob recently stressed that observers must know that “India is no longer locked into a strategic competition with Pakistan.” India’s new agenda is about the Indo-Pacific, not Pakistan. This is no doubt true at some level, but it is not so easy to escape neighbors. If Islamabad and Rawalpindi conclude they have gained little from the ceasefire and opt to divert some of the ire of angry young Islamists toward India, Kashmir could again heat up. Can the Indian counterinsurgency grid and intelligence agencies quash such problems? Perhaps, but with an active China frontier and Manipur aflame, it is hardly a proposition that anyone should be eager to test. India’s capabilities are growing but they are not so great that it can easily manage trouble in the west and the east at the same time. That will require careful choices.

Christopher Clary is an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and a nonresident fellow of the Stimson Center’s South Asia program in Washington, DC. His book, The Difficult Politics of Peace: Rivalry in Modern South Asia, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022.