The state is responsible for basic civic infrastructure required for its citizenry, including security, education, health, social institutions, justice system, etc. The absence of these fundamental features disenchants the population, and people gradually feel insecure and may resort to alternative administrative structures, most commonly, dictated by their primary and tertiary blood relations followed by tribal roots.
People inhabiting border areas, mountains, forests and difficult terrain do not rely upon the state apparatus for security. Instead, they survive through community networks and counter natural calamities, wild animal hordes, robbers, etc. Weapons are indispensable to sustain themselves in hostile circumstances.
When states cease to deliver, they cease to exist and leave behind a mess of unresolved conflicts that cost millions of lives. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the war in Chechnya, Georgia and Abkhazia, after the dismemberment of Yugoslavia infighting between splinter states of Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo, disaster in Somalia at the hands of the tribal warlords, Hutu and Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, Burundi massacres and, last but not least, internecine conflict in Afghanistan can be cited as flagrant state failures that gave lethal dents to collective human civility.
In Pakistan, the common people have started feeling the shattering of state organisation. They feel that probably they are living in a stateless society, for the state has failed to deliver the promised socio-economic benefits against their taxes. There are parallel socio-political institutions competing with the state by delivering to their beneficiary networks. The irony is that we lack social and civic education in our syllabus and our school system does not educate youth to trust the state institutions. In case this education is imparted to youth, they get disillusioned when they enter into real life and experience practical difficulties.
The situation differs in rural and urban areas. We have inherited difficulties from the past. After the end of unjustified imposition of the One Unit system and the fall of Dhaka, the first PPP government, although it had many achievements and reforms to its credit, tampered with the recruitment process in police and administrative jobs. Merit was compromised and people lacking quality were recruited on the basis of political considerations. They were loyal to individuals, not to the state.
General Ziaul Haq and his followers, who remained over-occupied with external affairs and military adventures, totally neglected internal issues and fading state institutions. Unemployment, uncertainty and political upheavals during the early 1980s bred crimes. Unfortunately, General Zia, for his vested interest, political gains and to counter democratic and nationalist movements, deliberately divided people into ethnic groups.
The Urdu-speaking and other groups were organised into ethnicity-based political entities that, in the process, turned into networks of urban lords. The ethnicities enclosed themselves in narrow shells. The inclusion in or exclusion from the network became the only parameter for survival. The state apparatus responsible for civil administration in Karachi has been rendered ineffective for decades. The Afghan war made available lethal weapons as easily as street toys. Coupled with hallucinatory drugs, especially in the urban areas, this cocktail seduced our youth to imitate trigger-happy warriors a la Hollywood films.
In urban areas, the police would not listen to the common public. In case someone encountered some incident, he or she would not contact the police as a matter of right being a Pakistani citizen, but would first look for some reference. Considering that reference, the police would listen to his complaint and register a report. This has been the order of the day for quite a while. Powerful families and communities established militant squads to harass the common citizens and created a precedent to be copied by others. Wajahat Force established by Chaudhry Wajahat Hussain, the younger brother of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain in Gujrat, the heart of Punjab, seems to be a strange development, given the fact that the Punjab province used to be the safest place before the rise of religious terrorism, boasting an excellent state infrastructure.
The situation in the other provinces is worse. In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, people have been practising the tribal code for centuries and the recent tampering with the social fabric brought upon by armed conflict further alienated people from state organisational structures. In Balochistan, prolonged political unrest and a naïve and selective treatment of different ethnic groups considerably repelled people. The Pakhtun and Hazara communities generally depend upon their cousins across the border with Afghanistan. The Baloch in Marri-Bugti areas could not enjoy the fruits of development and deeply entrenched themselves in the tribal hierarchy. The Mengals, Langos, Rinds, Raisanis, Zehris and other communities were compelled to revive their local administration systems through equipped squads. Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind was supported by the state to establish the Rind Force to strike at the Raisanis. The vacuum created by the state has been reportedly filled by various Baloch underground militant organisations in the tribal belt and the drug mafias in Kech Mekran.
Sindh has been experiencing the worst parallel administrative systems. After the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) started in the year 1983, an effective administrative structure faded into a corrupt feudal-tribal system. In the absence of an effective justice system, people had to fall back on the old hierarchy and panchayat systems for an urgent disposal of local conflicts. When the conflicting issue involves more than one community, then the jirga system is established to resolve intra-community conflicts by entrusting the powers of arbitration to a committee of various chiefs acceptable to all. To diffuse the anti-dictatorship movement in Sindh, deliberate interventions in the social fabric pitched various racial groups, like Samat, Baroch, Darawar and Brahivi, against each other.
Although this venture failed on a macro-level due to the tolerant nature of the people, on the micro-level it caused harrowing difficulties for people in most of the districts in upper Sindh. The Mahars, Jatois, Pitafi, Legharis, Chandias, Brohis, Teeghanis, Shahanais, etc., are the worst affected communities that lost thousands of lives but the state is conspicuous by its absence. In lower Sindh, the Musharraf regime created new fiefdoms and a new brand of spiritual and criminal lords in Thatta, Mirpurkhas, Tharparkar and Sanghar.
As a whole, the majority of the population feels insecure due to the absence of assertive state bodies and mostly depends on alternative arrangements. The establishment of private security agencies, private health facilities and schools, water tanker mafias, etc., can be cited as a few examples illustrating state withdrawal.
We are busy investing billions of US-funded dollars in FATA and tribal areas which, no doubt, is the right thing to bring them into the mainstream, but it appears we are losing our established ground, which we can ill afford.
The writer is a MS in Social Sciences, a professional trainer, researcher and peace activist. He can be reached at nizambaloch@gmail.com
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