Political Turmoil in Pakistan: No End in Sight

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• Political Turmoil in Pakistan: No End in Sight

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  Hello, I'm John Milewski, and this is Wilson Center NOW, a production of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

  
  My guest today is Michael Kugelman. Michael is deputy director of the South Asia Institute, which is part of the Wilson Center's Indo-Pacific program. He joins us to talk about multiple areas of unrest in Pakistan. Michael, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Good to be back here with you. So, Michael, we know there are plenty of places that we could start.

  
  We could talk about sectarian violence in the north of the country, along the Afghanistan border. We could talk about terrorism and other hotspots or or we could start with protests in Islamabad led by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan's wife. But I want to start with a piece of up a quote from a piece that was published in the Nation just yesterday.

  
  And I want to get your reaction to it. It says, Amid the dizzying churn of Pakistani politics, where political parties take turns doing the military's bidding and journalists are terrorized for holding them to account, there is a sense that the country has never been so broken. There have been crackdowns in the past, but Islamabad has never witnessed anything so brutal.

  
  I want to get your reaction to that. Is that overstatement or is that a fair characterization of what's happening? Well, I mean, unfortunately, given Pakistan's history, I would argue that what we're seeing today, as bad as it is, is not necessarily unprecedented, particularly if you go back to earlier years of Pakistan's history, when you had military rule and you had dictators like Zia ul Haq.

  
  I mean, the the level of repression and brutality that we saw playing out across the country at that time might well have been unprecedented. But that's not to take away from how serious things are today. And what I would point to is not only the examples that you that you mentioned in that quote from the nation, but also, you know, on very micro levels, on a very personal level, as my own conversations with friends and acquaintances and contacts across Pakistan, particularly among young people in Pakistan, is that I just don't ever remember there being so much anger and skepticism and mistrust of the country's leadership, the country's institutions, including the army, which, you know, for

  
  many years has been the most powerful entity in in Pakistan. You look at the data which the government in Pakistan itself releases periodically about the large number of people that have left Pakistan. We're not just talking about brain drain issues. We're talking about very highly skilled individuals, along with non skilled folks who have been leaving. The numbers are very high, the highest they've been in in several decades.

  
  So I think and also you hear about this idea of a crisis of confidence and a loss of the social contract just that people appear to feel increasingly disconnected from those in charge, which is very unsettling. Mike, you know, this is really interesting. Michael, I want to ask you as sort of the billion dollar question, because I talked to our colleagues in the Wilson Center who are regional experts from other parts of the world on other parts of the globe, and you get a lot of the same thing and you could really, really apply that formula to the United States, where we have this harsh partizanship in a hotly contested election with really lots of

  
  extreme rhetoric all over the place. Is are there particular things that are happening in Pakistan that you hear people talk about? Or is this sort of part of this global fever that seems to have swept all around the world? The French government on the verge of collapse as we speak here today, martial law declared in South Korea. This seems to be the new norm.

  
  Yeah, I think you're right to an extent. And indeed, this this this level of of discontent and unhappiness across society in Pakistan, in that deep levels of polarization. You're right, This is happening in so many countries, including including the U.S. to an extent. But I think what makes Pakistan a bit different and perhaps even unique is that these things are playing out against a broader backdrop of other problems, other crises, such as a significant upsurge in terrorist attacks over the last few years, as well as sectarian violence, along with economic stress, which is very significant and has contributed to the fact that so many people, including very skilled, are leaving the country, as well as

  
  the increasing impacts or the increasing effects of climate change. Pakistan is one of the most climate change vulnerable countries in the world, and it has not been a policy priority for the government. So basically, yeah, I mean, you're seeing there's this political polarization, this public cynicism toward institutions. This is not unique to Pakistan, but the fact of the matter is that Pakistan is experiencing what many analysts have described as appalling.

  
  FRAZER So many serious crises playing out alongside each other on top of all these these issues that we're discussing up to now. I want to ask you about each of the individual situations, but before I do that, is there a common thread that binds them together? Is it a weakness of the central government? Are there is there a thing that you can identify that binds them all together or do they all stand alone?

  
  Are there are they all unique in their own right? Well, you know, I would argue that this political crisis that Pakistan has been facing for several years, mainly the confrontation between the government and Imran Khan and his supporters, that has become such a big distraction that it's made it very difficult for the state to tackle these other crises, the economy, the worsening security situation and so on.

  
  And so that would that would suggest that the priority should be on fixing the political situation. But, you know, one has to argue that one could argue that all of these different crises are major priorities. The fact that you're having terrorist attacks really on a daily basis around the country and so many people are hurting economically. All of these things deserve equal priority.

  
  And yet, you know, it's hard to do that when you're dealing with this, when with this really serious and worsening political crisis still. Well, let me ask you then about a few of the different situations separately and see if we can divide and conquer and try to understand this. Talk to us about the situation with Imran Khan's wife leading protests.

  
  He's been in jail now for over 500 days, facing over a hundred charges, but still remains very popular with big segments of the country. And his wife's been this a bit of a mystery figure. You know, you read the literature about her. It's fascinating. Even things like witchcraft come up this very spiritual or unique figure. His third wife, I believe.

  
  Talk to us about what's happening there and whether or not it's putting any pressure on the government to actually release Khan. Yeah. So Khan, I mean, he's been in jail for more than a year, but he continues to be very popular. In fact, there's indications he's become more popular since he was jailed. You had an election in Pakistan earlier this year and candidates affiliated with with Khan's party won the majority of seats, even though they didn't end up forming a government.

  
  So still very popular. And what we saw with these recent protests is that he still has the capacity to mobilize even from his jail cell. You had thousands of people risking arrests and other threats to to converge on Islamabad. So he has that. But that's all the that's all that's there. I mean, I think that the reality is that the state, the civilian and military leadership, I do think, have an upper hand in that.

  
  You know, we've seen the party, Khan's party, including much of its leadership, are divided. There's a lot of anger from the the base of this party angry that other leaders of the party did not actually join the protesters and that some of them, including Khan's wife, abandoned the protesters at the very moment when they were facing the wrath of the state.

  
  So for all we can talk about Khan and his popularity and his ability to to pressure the the state with his capacity to mobilize. I actually think that the the government has things where it wants to be now that the party is weakened, that Khan himself is is in jail, can't really do much from jail or even mobilize and so on.

  
  So that that I think is refers to the benefit of the state. Now, in terms of Khan's wife, Bushra Bibi, it is very striking and I think the fact that she played a central role in these recent protests sticks to how much the party is in a bad state. I mean, as you say, I mean, she's not known for being a public figure.

  
  She doesn't like to be in the public. She's very religious and very spiritual, likes to take a, you know, sit to be very private. And yet the fact that she was out there, as I understand it, is because Khan himself concluded that he didn't trust the other leaders of the party to lead these protests. And he essentially wanted her to be out there and she was happy to do it.

  She ended up making a number of miscalculations, I would argue. She had been offered or the Communist Party had been offered the opportunity to protest in a different part of Islamabad, the part that was further away from government facilities and the diplomatic compound. But she decided not to do that. She decided to march to two d chalk, which is really like this very sensitive part of town where the government had said that you couldn't have these protests and perhaps this if she had agreed to bring the protesters to a different part of the city, you would not have seen the government crack down in ways that it did ending these protests before they really had

  
  an opportunity or near the possibility of having an impactful outcome. So were they trying to force the government to do something egregious that would turn public sentiment against it? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know at this point. And I think that that Debbie Khan's wife, I mean, she she genuinely wanted to make this as powerful of a statement as possible.

  
  And indeed, Khan might have been encouraging this to an extent. There's been a lot of speculation, a lot of reportage is contradictory. So I don't want to try to make any too educated guesses here. But I think that in the end it was a gamble that that didn't work just because the protests, once they got to Islamabad, they weren't there long before the government moved in with arrests, tear gassing.

  
  And according to to PTI, to Khan's party, they opened fire as well. Though this has been an issue of of of controversy. The death toll is unclear, though it does seem that at least several protesters were killed. So let's turn our attention to the sectarian violence. I'm looking at some numbers here. At least 130 people wounded and 200 or 130 people killed and another 200 wounded in Pakistan's northwest just in the last ten days.

  
  That was official government numbers released just this past Sunday. What's happening there?

  
  Yeah, sorry. Concerning what's happening. What's happening here. This is a part of northwest Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, particularly a region called Kurram. It's been experiencing what I would describe as several years of a violence periodic.

  
  So what's been happening in recent days and weeks is not new, but this is an area with a significant Shia minority. Pakistan is a Sunni majority country, but it does have a sizable Shia minority, particularly in this in this area. And there has been there have been disputes, you know, some of them have been over issues like like land.

  
  And there's also been attacks by sectarian minded militants. And the problem is that this is this is something that, you know, the government, whether the local government in place or the federal government has been unable to deal with that, quite frankly. And what's especially concerning is that over the last few days, there had been steps taken by by local communities.

  
  There is, for instance, a group of tribal elders who wanted to form a jirga to try to deal with this crisis, but they had trouble actually accessing the area. Security officials were not letting them in. This is very concerning as well. Yeah, and the geography is important here, too. I mentioned that this is an area near the border with Afghanistan.

  
  You also have some militants in Afghanistan that have been making statements, thus anti-Shia statements, things like that that just inflame things even more. So this goes back to what I had said earlier. This is a very serious crisis, a very major security crisis for Pakistan. And yet I think one reason why the state has been absent is that it has been so focused on the political crisis, particularly when the protests were playing out and there was so much focus on essentially shutting down Islamabad and deploying security forces, including, as I understand it, the army into the streets of Islamabad to try to confront these protesters.

  
  That meant that there's there's so much less policy space being allocated to this crisis. You know, some miles away in in Kurram District. So it's it's it's very unsettling. And the fact that there is clearly no strategy to tackle it is very concerning. Is it just a matter of focus, policy focus, or are resources an issue as well?

  
  Yeah, I mean, resources are an issue as well for sure. I think it's a combination of things. It's a lack of policy attention, it's a lack of resource and quite frankly, a lack of, you know, just not a sense as to what the best path forward is. It's because it's so complex. You've got these religious tensions playing out along, you know, what would appear to be, you know, relatively banal issues like a land dispute.

  
  On the other hand, you have the risk of sectarian militancy. And then you've also got the Pakistan's tensions with Afghanistan, which play in Pakistan, has been unable to engage with the Taliban leadership in ways that might enable the Taliban to be helpful in addressing this issue. Though the idea of asking the Taliban to help diffuse a violent situation in it itself would appear to be a very risky thing to do as well.

  
  Now I'm going to shift gears to the terrorism front and more news out of Pakistan in the last couple of days. The military said it carried out major intelligence based operations over the weekend and eliminated individuals in two separate incidents. Critics saying that it's still not nearly enough as far as what the government has promised. And in taking on these terrorist elements.

  
  And then here are some numbers. There were at least 71 attacks by armed groups in November. The number of attacks in 2024 has already surpassed last year's total, with more than 856 incidents recorded up until November, compared with 645 in 2023. And the result of this has all been more than a thousand deaths, including civilians and law enforcement.

  
  Yeah, So, you know, I mean, Pakistan went through an especially difficult time with terrorism some years ago, a period between 2007 and 2014. That was just a hurt, the worst period of terrorism in Pakistan's history. What's happening now is thankfully not that bad, but there are concerns that it could reach those levels again. We even seen this upsurge in attacks since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan because that enabled Afghanistan to become an easier sanctuary for many of these militants.

  
  I should say that most of the terrorists staging attacks in Pakistan are are part of the Pakistani Taliban, a Takrit Taliban Pakistan movement very closely allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Taliban are happy to essentially provide them with sanctuary, and that makes them stronger. Another problem is that you have three different types of terrorism playing out in Pakistan now.

  
  One is what I just mentioned, the Pakistani Taliban, which has largely been carrying out attacks on security forces, the army police in Pakistan. You also have what I would describe as ethno nationalist militants, particularly in Baluchistan, that are staging attacks mainly on Pakistani security forces. They feel that the Pakistani state is essentially exploiting natural resources. And there's actually been a long running insurgency in Baluchistan in recent years.

  
  So there's that. And third, you have the Islamic State issue ISIS, which we hear a lot about in context around the world. Islamic State's most active, potent affiliate these days, as is key Islamic State Khorasan province, which is based in Afghanistan, but does have a presence in Pakistan and has staged some attacks inside Pakistan as well. So and what's also notable is that most of these attacks, as I said, have been targeting security forces, but civilians are getting hit now more so than we had seen over, you know, going back several years.

  
  And foreigners now are coming into the crosshairs as well. The Chinese are have been have been threatened in Pakistan for several years by many of these groups I mentioned. But it's notable that in recent days, the U.S., U.S. officials have released a warning, a terror warning for Americans to be careful about a hotel, a five star hotel in the city of Peshawar, a Serena hotel, because of threat of according to the to the to the alert credible threat to Americans there.

  
  So all around, it's just a bad state of affairs in this regard. And there is no clear strategy, no coherent strategy, no strategy at all from the state about how to address these issues other than episodic reactive tactical measures like staging some kinetic operations to kill some terrorists. And I hate to pile on, but in the midst of all of this unrest and violence and whether it's terrorism, sectarian violence or whatever the nature of it might be.

  
  We also have the economy to talk about. And this from the Wall Street Journal. Pakistan's reliance on Chinese built power plants is strangling its economy. Pakistan turned to Beijing to solve a crippling energy shortage, now crushed under debt and sky high energy prices, its economy is diving from bad to worse to worser. If that's a word, what, if any, hope there?

  
  Is there anything I guess it's the two are related in a way, in that it's hard to create a thriving economy amidst all the chaos that we've just been talking about for the last several minutes. Right. When you when you have violent protests playing out in the capital and you have rising levels of terrorism, that's not exactly going to make investors comfortable about coming into to deploy capital.

  
  I mean, the good news I know we haven't been talking about good news. The good news is that the macroeconomic situation has stabilized a bit. Pakistan badly needed support from the IMF and it has received two successive packages from the IMF over the last year plus that's helped. Inflation has come down fairly significantly, which is which is always a good sign.

  
  But the bottom line is that many people are still are still hurting. And the austerity measures that go into any type of IMF package suggest that, you know, people, common people could hurt even even more. And I would point to another issue that we haven't mentioned. This is very concerning where there are growing indications that Pakistan is installing a major Internet firewall model along the lines of China.

  
  The government has not come out and admitted this, but recent reportage from Al-Jazeera and several other outlets has made quite clear that the government is moving in this direction. Now, Pakistan has a fledgling tech industry, and in fact, Pakistan's government has played up this tech industry. But when you have an Internet firewall on the way and when you already have periodic crackdowns on the Internet bans on certain social media platforms, that's not going to help a fledgling tech industry.

  
  It's not it's also not going to help the economy on the whole. And so they've already been estimates that the tech industry could face millions in losses if this if this firewall is impacted. And, you know, over the last few days, even many Internet users in Pakistan have complained about smaller speed, assured a lot of slower speeds. And, you know, this is this is just not good when you're already struggling with an economy that's in a very, very in a very delicate state.

  
  You know, we've been discussing all these issues from the perspective of the U.S. looking at Pakistan. But as Pakistan looks at the U.S. and we prepare for a change in administrations in Washington, well, what does Pakistan anticipate in terms of a second Trump administration or what have relations been in the past? And are there any guesses that can be made about whether this will be beneficial or detrimental to Pakistan in the big picture?

  Yeah, I mean, of course, it depends if we're talking about Pakistani policymakers or the public. But in terms of policymakers in the broader foreign policy elite, I think that hope springs eternal. Despite a very complex and often tense relationship between Pakistan and the U.S.. Pakistani officials want to have a good relationship with the U.S. if for no other reason that the U.S. is a key donor, It has a lot of influence at key spaces like the IMF.

  
  And, you know, Pakistan is always hoping that the U.S. would be willing to provide some security assistance, though, You know, as you'll remember, Donald Trump when he was president the first time, suspended all security aid to Pakistan early in that first term. And, you know, it hasn't been unfrozen. So I think that policymakers, I think, are hoping that there could be a fresh start in the sense that US-Pakistan relations were okay.

  
  But there was wasn't much to them. There wasn't much meat on the bones of the relationship during the Biden years. And I think that many policymakers in Pakistan are hoping that Trump will bring a change, though I think that might be asking asking for too much. The interesting issue is if you get to public news in Pakistan, again, I don't want to overgeneralize, but much of the public in Pakistan supports Imran Khan.

  
  He's very popular. And there's a very curious view there that the return of Trump could actually bode well for Imran Khan. There is a view that that Trump would be inclined to sympathize with Khan and his plight because of Trump's much ballyhooed critique of the Deep State, so to speak. And so the idea there is that Trump would see Khan as someone that's gone through similar travails to what Trump has, and that Trump would then want to pressure the Pakistani military to to to bring legal relief to Khan or get him released.

  
  I don't think that's going to happen. But it is an interesting perception that you see from for many, for many people in Pakistan. But again, I emphasize these tend to be people that support Imran Khan. Well, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire. I also read some recent reports that some people in the Trump circle have actually talked about calling for Imran Khan's release.

  So who knows? We'll find out. I know you'll be keeping tabs on things and we'll have you back to talk about it as as the story progresses. Thanks today, Michael, as always, for providing all the knowledge and insights that you have to offer. Thank you. Our guest has been Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center as Indo-Pacific Program.

  
  We hope you enjoyed this edition of Wilson Center now and that you'll join us again soon. Until then, for all of us at the center. I'm John Milewski. Thanks for your time and interest,