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the Column
Studies and reports
Migration can support development
Organised irresponsibility
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Political crises and state borders
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6/2004 |
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[ Failing states ]
Political crises and state borders
Akbar Zaidi doesn’t quite know what to make of the term failing state. The political scientist from Karachi believes that whether his homeland of Pakistan falls into this category or not has little to do with events in the country. Instead, it seems to depend on current thinking in the Pentagon and the State Department in Washington. Nuclear testing and the military coup led to Pakistan’s marginalisation as a failing state. Today, however, Washington needs support in the fight against the Taleban and Al Qaeda and Pakistan is rated as a “major non-Nato ally” despite instances of nuclear proliferation. Zaidi describes Pakistan as a country which is breaking down in some respects, but which is generally managing to remain stable. The army is holding its own as the most important institution of power. Social cohesion, on the other hand, is being eroded. A decisive factor for the future will be whether the growing urban middle classes’ struggle for more democratic participation will succeed. That, however, would imply less political stability.
The term failing state adds little to such analysis. Along with the buzzword development, it was the subject of a conference held in Bonn in early May, which was hosted by the SEF (Foundation for Development and Peace) and BICC (Bonn International Center for Conversion). The comparison between Pakistan and Afghanistan showed that the term failing state can be used to describe quite different situations.
Jochen Hippler, a political scientist from Duisburg, considers it remarkable that development trends in these neighbouring countries are pointing in opposite directions even though they are closely intertwined. He describes Afghanistan as a country in which no monopoly of power has ever been imposed over the entire country. Of all regimes, it was the Taleban who were first able to assume sufficient power to make sense of the otherwise “empty shell of a central state”. Pakistan, on the other hand, was part of the strictly-administered British colony of India. After independence and partition, Muslim elites took over existing structures and created a new central state. However, they hardly invested in infrastructure anymore. According to Hippler, the state has to a certain extent shrunk back to its core repression apparatus. He warns against considering both countries as separate entities. After all, it was Afghanistan’s civil war in Afghanistan that intensified crisis tendencies in Pakistan. Tolerated by the army, the trade in drugs, weapons and smuggling, which served to finance combat operations, also nurtured a Kalashnikov culture in Pakistan.
Analysing cross-border developments in their appropriate regional context will accordingly be at the core of a new SEF series of projects, heralded by the conference in Bonn. SEF intends to look for practicable, multilateral solutions. Consideration of other world areas also confirms the relevance of regional rather than a single state approaches.
For example, Namibia expert Henning Melber and Zimbabwe scholar John Makumbe agree that freedom movements which have come to power in southern Africa have, over the years, demonstrated a tendency of becoming increasingly inflexible and authoritarian. Unfortunately, they are not up to the task of fighting poverty or Aids. According to the two scholars, however, it would be unrealistic to expect governments with common roots in resistance movements to publicly criticise each other. The prognosis for a South Africa under continuous ANC rule over the next ten years looks rather gloomy. The examples of both Namibia and Zimbabwe show, however, that not every kind of state failure should condemn a country to being described as a failing state. While governmental legitimacy is questionable to various degrees in these cases, the respective governments ability to is, so far, beyond doubt.
Hans Dembowski
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