Pakistan needs development, not politics.

In a report in the Guardian newspaper, Saeed Shah contrasts the feeble behaviour of President Asif Ali Zadari with the much stronger performance of the Pakistani military in relation to the ‘rescue’ of the victims of what has been described as ‘the worst floods in the country’s modern history’. It is not difficult to understand the tone of rage behind Shah’s report. President Zadari is sojourning in this part of the world, a trip including a ding-dong with our own David Cameron and a ‘drop in’ on his, Zadari’s, sixteenth century chateau in Normandy.
At the same time, six million Pakistani people have been drowned, gone missing or left homeless, hungry and destitute by the floods. The military is particularly strong in Pakistan, the country having been under military rule for more than half of its 63-year existence. Shah quotes Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political analyst based in Lahore: the military got an opportunity to demonstrate its organisational and technical skills. The military knows they have public support, so they can pursue their own agenda.
The ‘agenda’ that Rizvi refers to is, according to Shah, the possibility of its sliding back into political power because of the recent demonstrable weakness of the civilian government, that is, its inability to cope with the floods. It seems a shoddy thought at such a time, and yet, I suspect Rizvi is barking up the right tree. However, it is for all the wrong reasons.
The annual monsoon is not an unexpected event like an earthquake or tsunami. It arrives every year, on cue. The people most at risk are always the poorest; their homes and possessions swept away, their crops and cattle lost. Being still in development, vast swathes of the 200 million-strong Pakistani population are at risk from this type of devastation. The last thing it needs is to be held as pawn by a tussling military and government, presided over by an indifferent president.
What Pakistan needs is a programme of infrastructure; shorings and dammings, runnels and rivulets, designed to ally the worst effects of an unexpectedly heavy monsoon. If the government won’t or cannot provide, then the world bank must explore ways to raise the billions needed to help the country develop fully. It would be less expensive in the long run, financially speaking. After all, the cost of the topographical travesty known as Palm Jumeirah only cost $12.3 billion.