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Karachi’s decorated buses give the streets a dash of colour |
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Leaning easily against their sandbagged position, the machine-gunners look decidedly bored and even a little sleepy in the glaring midday sun. Watching the quiet approach road to Karachi’s main international airport is, apparently, not the kind of duty that sets pulses racing. The local newspapers may be exercised by the story that a section of the airport is being handed over to American forces as a staging post for Afghanistan – and by the notion that US troops might be hunting for Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan – but Karachi’s citizens apparently couldn’t care less. The mopping up of Al-Qaeda leaders has become a subject of wry humour rather than passionate outrage. When the Americans called their operation Enduring Freedom did they mean that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar were going to enjoy enduring freedom? So runs one popular joke.
Karachi looks and feels almost disappointingly normal. There’s no sign of the overwhelming poverty that assails western visitors to Bombay or New Delhi. The dusty low-rise apartment blocks lining the main route into Karachi resemble the poorer outskirts of southern European cities. There is no sign of the raging mobs of Islamic fundamentalists that briefly filled the screens of CNN and BBC World. Advertisements for McDonald’s and Pepsi abound.
The only signs of lawlessness and anarchy are the motorcyclists who choose to escape the traffic by racing down the pavements and the pedestrians who calmly walk out into the middle of the roaring three-lane traffic, apparently oblivious to danger, negotiating narrow channels between the highly decorated buses and fast moving cars that only a local could detect.
“People here just want to get on with a normal life and improve their lot,” says the editor of one of the most influential newspapers. “The jihadis [Islamic extremists] do not represent Pakistan at all.”
Among the country’s business elite the military government of president Pervez Musharraf – who famously denounced the jihadis in a watershed speech on January 12 – is lauded. “I hope they stick around for another five years, maybe 10,” confides one leading Pakistani businessman over dinner. “They’ve brought real stability.” Although the drag on the Pakistan economy from the disruption of trade during the conflict in Afghanistan and the dispute with India is substantial, this entrepreneur is looking to the future with confidence. His business is auto components – which should be suffering amid the economic downturn. Apparently not: he’s building a large new plant in the north of the country. How has he financed this? “With Chinese money.”
Elections have been set for October, though Musharraf has said he will stay on in some unspecifiied but no doubt extremely powerful role. Electoral reform is coming. Voting will be open to adherents of all religions, not just Muslims. A certain number of seats will be reserved for women, some for technocrats. Those contesting seats must be graduates. This provision has Pakistan’s mischievous and admirably unrestricted journalists chortling happily as they dig into the backgrounds of political hacks who they know have never been to university.
If the military government has done such a good job for the economy, does that mean it would win a free election if it chose to contest one in its existing form? Another editor shakes his head. The bankers and corporate leaders may like them but the people at large have much less of a stake in reform. “This is a country of 140 million people, a third of them extremely poor. Whether Pakistan follows a free-market model or communism, they don’t know and it scarcely affects them,” he says. “But many people in this country are anti-America and anti-globalization.”
The editor of another widely read Urdu-language paper agrees. “Part of the problem is that many of those who looted this country are still walking around free. So the people are a little sceptical. And whether the government’s economic reforms are on the right lines only matters to people if they have jobs. I think the people are waiting to see on that. The government has to deliver over the next couple of years.”
At least senior members of the government have no false notions of their position. “Ah, here are the truly elected people,” finance minister Shaukat Aziz greets those sharing his table at a dinner in his honour. He welcomes the head of the local chamber of commerce, elected there by his fellow business leaders, and local politicians.
Aziz has just given a speech pointing out that when reform is personalized it doesn’t last. The challenge in Pakistan is to institutionalize reform. There’s still much to be done. One guest asks: “Did you know that it takes something like 13 licences to open a gas station here? Of course, every one costs…” He rubs his thumb and fingers together in an unmistakable gesture. “And then of course the people who grant these licences come back for more each year.” He rolls his eyes.
Meanwhile the emboldened dinner guests launch their appeals to one of the most powerful men in the land. A certain very able person has lost his government post because of false accusations of corruption. He really should be brought back. The minister notes down the name. It really is unfair that wealthy Pakistanis should pay import duty on works of art and other antiquities that they are returning to their country of origin. It’s restoring the country’s heritage. Aziz sighs and picks up his fork. “If I say this fork is very precious and deserves special treatment then everything on this table” – his hand sweeps round the plates, glasses and cutlery – “will soon be called a fork.”
Afghanistan is a happier subject of conversation: happier because Pakistani businessmen see a huge opportunity to benefit from reconstruction there. “It will be our cement, our steel, even our manpower,” suggests one businessman. “Every country is pledging to help, but when the dust settles, it will be us, Afghanistan and Iran.”
If Pakistan’s economy does revive, investment inflows might resume, but from what quarter? The banking industry is being restructured. And while US banks are pulling out from Pakistan it is now banks from the Gulf that are looking to invest. Could this be the first sign of a new, regional investment flow. Southern Asian companies trade very little with each other, a matter for regret. The more visionary look forward to greater flows between India and Pakistan, if only the tensions over Kashmir would abate, that might enormously benefit both countries.
Thankfully a trickle of trade between Pakistan and India continues. Safely back in his hotel room, the non-Muslim foreign guest can obtain bar service – after presenting his passport and signing a declaration that alcohol is required for medicinal purposes. A cold Indian beer tastes delicious as you gaze across the darkened Karachi skyline.
