Pakistan's third Afghan war

By Shahid Javed Burki

Mr. Shahid Javed Burki Vice President, Latin America and the Caribbean The World Bank UNITED STATES

Expertise: South Asia, Pakistan, India, China, Mongolia: politics, government, military issues, development, democracy and democratization

Languages: English

Past Positions: Economic and Financial Advisor to the Government of Pakistan 1996-97; Director for China, East Asia and Pacific Region, World Bank 1987-93; Director, International Relations Department, World Bank 1983-87; Senior Economist and Policy Advisor, Office of the Vice President of External Relations, World Bank 1981-83; Division Chief, Policy Planning and Program Review Department, World Bank 1976-81; Senior Economist, Bank's Policy Planning Division, World Bank 1974-76

Publications: DEVELOPING MONGOLIA, with S. Yusuf (World Bank, Washington DC 1992); "Pakistan's Cautious Democratic Course," CURRENT HISTORY (March 1992); PAKISTAN: THE CONTINUING SEARCH FOR NATIONHOOD (Westview Press, Boulder 1991); PAKISTAN UNDER THE MILITARY: ELEVEN YEARS OF ZIA UL-HAQ, edited with C. Baxter (Westview Press, Boulder 1991); THE SECTORAL FOUNDATIONS OF CHINA'S DEVELOPMENT, edited with S. Yusuf (World Bank, Washington DC 1991); PAKISTAN: DEVELOPMENT CHOICES FOR THE FUTURE (Oxford University Press 1986); PAKISTAN: A NATION IN THE MAKING (Westview Press, Boulder 1986); FIRST THINGS FIRST, with P. Streeten et al. (Oxford University Press 1981); A STUDY OF CHINESE COMMUNES (Harvard University Press 1969)

WITH American air strikes going on since Sunday night, Pakistan is about to enter its third war in Afghanistan. The first began soon after the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. It lasted for ten years and finished when the Soviet troops vacated Afghanistan. The second began soon after the Soviet departure and lasted until September 11, 2001 with the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Pakistan paid a very high price for its involvement in the first two wars. Will the third Afghan war produce happier results?

Pakistan stands today at the same place it did in 1979 - on the eve of the first war - ready to fight for the West in return for the West's help to improve its own situation. But the task this time is much more difficult. The first two wars in Afghanistan have transformed Pakistani society and its economy and politics. They also produced a great deal of scepticism about any association with the United States which will have to be countered by Washington with a credible promise of a long-term commitment to help on a number of fronts.

As Robert Oakley, a former US ambassador to Pakistan, says in a recent newspaper article, "The primary and possibly decisive battle in Afghanistan and Pakistan has already begun without a shot as yet fired. It will be protracted, nasty and confusing, as much political and psychological as military, perhaps more so...It is also extremely important that Pakistan, the vital base of operations, be reinforced in its capability to meet challenges at home."

How can Pakistan be reinforced economically, politically and socially? How can it develop a society, an economy, and a political system that will help its people realize their full potential? How should it begin to take care of the increasing number of poor living in the country? How should it educate and train its citizens so that they become an asset for the economy and society rather than a burden for both? How should Pakistan create an environment that can handle people's frustrations and not turn them into potential martyrs willing to lay down their lives for the causes they don't fully understand?

These and many other questions like them are being asked these days by people in countless TV programmes and in columns of newspapers and magazines. They are being raised not just for Pakistan but also for the entire Islamic world. Many answers have been provided. One set came from Martin Wolf, an influential columnist who writes for The Financial Times. His article appeared under the provocative title of "The economic failure of Islam" and drew the simplistic conclusion that religion had kept the Muslim countries economically and socially backward.

"Why do they hate us so much?" Wolf asked in his article. The "they" in his question are terrorists who took so many lives in their attacks on New York and Washington. According to him, most people have provided two answers to this question: "the terrorists' actions can be explained in terms of the poverty that afflicts their societies and the West's policies. Poverty fuels desperation; our policies stoke humiliation. The answer is to end the poverty and change the policies". But Wolf dismissed this explanation as naive. He argued that the real problem is that the Muslim countries have failed economically.

Wolf offered a copious amount of data in support of his hypothesis. "The humiliation and rage [of the terrorist groups] are the result of long-term historic failure, not of recent events. We are eating the fruit of three centuries of bitterness between a dominant West and an enfeebled Islamic world."

The article inevitably drew a number of responses. According to one, "the suggestion that Islam does not make it incumbent to establish a law-governed state is a blistering error and gross mutation of truth...There are numerous reasons for the economic decline of [the Muslim world]; not least the ignorance, arrogance and political cunning with which the colonizers conducted their daily business of resource extraction, while clipping the wings of free trade in their Muslim colonies"

But before dismissing as highly biased the type of analysis being offered by people such as Martin Wolf, let us first look at the numbers and see what they suggest. In 2000, the average income in the advanced countries was $27,450, with the US per capita income estimated at $34,260. Against this the average income of the historic belt of Islamic countries that stretches from Morocco to Bangladesh was only $3,700.

An average western citizen, in other words, was more than seven times richer than an average citizen of the Islamic world. The gap was even wider between the people in the Islamic world and the United States. While India falls within this belt and has a large population of Muslims, it too has done better than its Islamic neighbours. India's standard of living is now one and a half times as high as that of Pakistan and considerably more than that of Bangladesh.

Averages don't tell the entire story, however. There is considerable income disparity in the Muslim world. There are a few very rich people but there are millions of very poor people. Gini coefficient, a generally accepted measure of inequality in which high numbers stand for uneven distribution, ranges between 41.5 for Turkey and 28.9 for Egypt. Pakistan, with 31.2, is in between these two extremes. Another telling indicator of unequal distribution of incomes is the ratio of the shares of income that accrue to the top 10 and bottom 10 per cent of the population. Again, Turkey at 14 has the highest ratio among the large countries of the Muslim world. This means that the share of income claimed by the rich - the top 10 per cent of the population - is fourteen times that going to the poor. For Egypt the ratio is 5.7; for Pakistan, 6.7. For most of the European countries the ratios are between 6.2 and 7.2

In terms of social indicators - the levels of literacy; enrolment rates for boys and girls (in particular for girls); the rates of infant, child and maternal mortality; access to clean water and sewerage facilities - the Muslim world has done poorly compared to the western world. Muslim economies have few modern sectors.Consequently, with populations increasing much more rapidly - another characteristic of the Muslim world - new entrants to the workforce have access mostly to low-paid jobs in backward sectors.

All these numbers raise the obvious question. Why has the Muslim belt done so poorly in terms of economic growth, income distribution, social development and economic modernization? Why, at this time, the economic and social prospects of the Muslim countries seem less inviting than those of the countries in the West? Even when we compare Muslim countries with other parts of the developing world, why do the statistics point to relative backwardness in the case of the former?

There is not much point in denying the logic suggested by these numbers. There is no doubt that the Muslim world has done less well in modernizing its economy and its society. It is also struggling to create a political system that will be responsive to the wishes and aspirations of the people. Malaysia is the only country with a Muslim majority that has succeeded in significantly improving the economic welfare of its population. The oil exporting countries of the Middle East have also improved the standard of living of their citizens but in their case resources came from natural wealth rather than the enterprise of their people. So, one again, the question: Why has the Muslim world done so poorly economically?

One explanation is that the Muslim world may have pursued economic policies that did not support rapid economic development. Economists now accept that economic and political freedoms are of critical importance for promoting economic growth and modernization. Without them, economies can't prosper. In these areas, the Muslim world has done less well. According to World Audit's index of economic freedom, Kuwait at 42nd and Morocco at 48th were the highest-ranking Muslim countries out of 155 for which data were presented. Of the eight most politically repressive regimes in the world, six were from Muslim countries - Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Sudan. According to the well-known Freedom House evaluation of political liberty, just five Muslim countries - Bangladesh, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Turkey - were judged to be partly free.

But should this relative economic backwardness and the inability to modernize be laid at the door of Islam? After all, a thousand years ago the same religion produced some of the most advanced societies the world then knew. To hold a particular religion or a particular set of beliefs responsible for economic backwardness is exceedingly naive. It is as wrong to lay the blame on Islam for the economic backwardness of a number of Muslim countries as it was to claim that the remarkable performance of a group of East Asian nations was because of the pursuit of something called "Asian values." That claim was met with a lot of ridicule in the West. The same kind of ridicule needs to be heaped on the alleged association of Islam with economic backwardness.

Having said that, the question posed above still deserves an answer. We need to look at our situation carefully in order to understand fully the set of circumstances that have contributed to the lack of economic and social progress of the Muslim world. Could this be the consequence of the way this part of the Muslim world was colonized? This was suggested by one of the many responses to the article by Martin Wolf. Or is it because even with the end of the colonial era, the modernization of several Muslim countries has been inhibited by the way the West continues to interact with them?

After all, a number of Muslim countries have rich sources of energy on which the West becomes increasingly dependent as it continues to exhaust its own supply. It is easier to retain access to these resources when they are managed by the regimes highly dependent on the West for their survival. Democracy in many parts of the Islamic world may turn out to be an inconvenience for the West. Or, again, is the relative backwardness of the Muslim world the result of the tribal culture that continues to dominate most of these societies?

The real problem in many countries of the Islamic world is that groups within their societies oppose modernization not because it is against their religion but because it is against their interests. This is the story of Pakistan where a few well-entrenched interests have fought hard to keep the country institutionally, socially and politically backward. On the eve of Pakistan's third Afghan war we have a unique opportunity to finally sideline these groups.