By Akhilesh Pillalamarri
Maybe what Pakistan needs is more Islamization.
It is clear that Pakistan’s current state of affairs is simply unsustainable in the long-run. Pakistan’s current path of political and social development is a dead end. Although Pakistan has two main political parties that are quite moderate, these parties have failed quite spectacularly to modernize, industrialize, educate, or develop Pakistan’s society over the past six decades. While Pakistan’s military is largely to blame for retarding Pakistan’s political development, its political elite also shoulders the blame. As in India, Pakistan’s political elite is a largely Westernized group that tends to look after its own interests instead of the holistic development of its country. However, while India’s elite at least imbedded the basic constitutional principles and infrastructure in their country for India to mature, this cannot be said of Pakistan’s elite.
As a result, Pakistan, with its large population of 200 million, is rapidly heading toward failure. The education of its population is poor and even those with some education have no economic opportunities. Pakistan suffers from enormous, uncontrolled private violence, often of a sectarian nature, in the form of bombings, shootings and riots every day. Its population has also become increasingly radicalized, to the point where the line between ordinary mob violence and fundamentalist activist is becoming increasingly blurred.
The root of the problem is the fact that the Pakistani government lacks the will, capacity and legitimacy to solve Pakistan’s problems. There are too many important actors in the country that do not respect the civilian parliamentary government. With this fact in mind, the only stable political solution for Pakistan is to transform into an Iranian style Islamic state, with the obvious caveat that there will be some differences due to their different histories and the fact that Pakistan is mainly Sunni. Why this controversial solution? Pakistan has reached a point where there are so many private actors and institutions within society advocating or going about implementing some form of Islamic fundamentalism that the only way to control them is to institutionalize them.
Read the full story at The Diplomat
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