Pakistani security officials stand guard at a checkpoint following a security high-alert, a day after a suicide blast in Islamabad on December 23, in Peshawar. Photo: EPA-EFE
Opinion
Kamala Thiagarajan
Kamala Thiagarajan
Pakistan’s crumbling economy is fuelling a rise in terrorism in South Asia
Weakened by Covid-19 and catastrophic floods, Pakistan’s disintegrating economy is causing unrest and terrorism to spill across its borders
For the sake of regional security, India must make peace with Pakistan and combine forces to tackle terrorism
Financial fault lines are widening in India’s neighbouring countries – after Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, it’s now Pakistan’s turn. In recent months, the Pakistani rupee has repeatedly hit record lows against the US dollar and inflation has surged to 27.6 per cent, the highest since May 1975.
The country has barely recovered from the unprecedented floods last year, which devastated an economy already reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic. The floods affected 33 million people, displaced 8 million and caused more than US$14.9 million in estimated damage. Pakistan, once one of the richer countries per capita in South Asia, now lags even further behind India and Bangladesh.
The impact on ordinary folk has been dire. The acute shortage of wheat in a country that is usually the world’s eighth largest producer, is threatening food security. Parents are moving children to less expensive schools and economists forecast job losses, more social unrest and a shrinking gross domestic product.
According to the UNDP’s Pakistan National Human Development Report released in 2021, middle-class incomes have been steadily shrinking over the past two decades. The unemployment rate of university graduates surged from less than 5 per cent in 2007-2008 to over 16 per cent in 2018-19. The UNDP report stressed that Pakistan needed sustained and equitable economic growth.
But some of the government’s knee-jerk reactions to the spiralling crisis have been ludicrous, and only compounded the suffering. Last June, Pakistanis were urged to drink less tea to conserve the foreign exchange used to import the commodity.
On January 23, the country suffered nationwide blackouts as the cash-strapped government’s energy-saving measure of turning off electricity during low-usage hours at night backfired, and the national grid failed, leaving millions in darkness.
Vendors sell fruit under battery lights in Lahore, Pakistan, on January 23. Millions of people across Pakistan’s major cities were plunged into a blackout prompted by a power grid failure, dealing another blow to a nation already reeling from surging energy costs. Photo: Bloomberg
Economists have called for sweeping reforms, which include courting investors and reinvigorating trade and commerce, while relying less on loans. Finance minister Ishaq Dar last month announced a government-to-government liquidation of assets – especially with friendly countries such as Saudi Arabia and China – and a “flood tax” on the wealthy to sustain the economy and shore up dwindling foreign exchange reserves.
This came after former prime minister Imran Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), published a paper warning that hyperinflation and unemployment could push the country into chaos and anarchy.
Those are India’s fears too. As warnings grow of regional instability and violence fuelled by the economic crisis, India is watching events unfold with uneasy wariness. Fears of unrest in Pakistan now dwarf India’s concerns about China’s growing influence over Pakistan, especially via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an important part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Terrorism and violence have grown in Pakistan amid political unrest, a trend that has become more pronounced since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021. In its 2022 annual security report, the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) recorded a 27 per cent increase in terrorist attacks from the previous year.
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Police demand more protection and answers after deadly mosque bombing in Pakistan
Police demand more protection and answers after deadly mosque bombing in Pakistan
Take for instance recent events. PTI vice-president Azam Swati, who was arrested last October, has made accusations of custodial torture, naming the military officials behind his ordeal. A month later, former prime minister Khan was shot during a protest march, an attack he described as an assassination attempt. Several party leaders in his convoy were also injured. Last December, terrorists seized a police station in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province in northwestern Pakistan, and took several hostages.
The last attack was planned by the Tehreek-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban. The banned TTP, formerly kept in check by Pakistan’s military, carried out 89 terrorist attacks last year, according to the PIPS report.
If India thought that Pakistan’s problems would mean fewer targeted attacks on its soil, the security report also stated that cross-border violence associated with the terrorist group was growing. Disturbingly, the Pakistani Taliban has reportedly announced its own government in northern Pakistan. While this is widely regarded as an empty threat, it is still a direct challenge to the authorities.
These developments should give India cause for anxiety. Indian authorities firmly believe the attack on India’s parliament in 2001 and the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 were both masterminded in Pakistan. Perhaps that’s why on January 2, while being interviewed on a three-day trip to Austria, India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, threw diplomacy to the winds when he robustly defended his description of Pakistan as the epicentre of terrorism.
In the midst of this unrest, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has offered an olive branch to India, for the first time since he was voted into office. Speaking with the Dubai-based news channel Al Arabiya, he offered to hold talks to resolve issues relating to Kashmir, which both countries claim, and suggested the United Arab Emirates act as the mediator.
Whether the peace talks materialise, it is clear that for the greater good of South Asia, India and Pakistan must bury the hatchet, now more than ever, to prioritise peace and healing, and to combine their forces to tackle terrorism in the region. Wasting precious resources over futile disputes is no longer an option.
Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, southern India
