Manan Ahmed points out that the Pakistan failed state meme goes way back, as does the idea that only a military coup could save it:
it was in this context that Pakistan was first crowned a “failed state” – giving rise to decades worth of books and studies with titles like The Failure of Democracy in Pakistan (1962), The Failure of Parliamentary Politics in Pakistan, 1953-1958 (1967), Pakistan: Failure in National Integration (1968), Ethnic Conflict and the Failure of Political Integration in Pakistan (1973), Pakistan, Failure in Nation Building (1977) and Pakistan On the Brink (2004)...
...This decades-long tendency to reduce Pakistan’s complexity to either “failure” or “stability” reflects, above all, a glaring poverty of knowledge about the real lives of 175 million Pakistanis today. Since 2007 alone, they removed a dictator from military and civilian power without firing a single shot, held the first national election since 1997 – in which right-wing radical parties were soundly rejected – and launched a secular movement for justice.
...This decades-long tendency to reduce Pakistan’s complexity to either “failure” or “stability” reflects, above all, a glaring poverty of knowledge about the real lives of 175 million Pakistanis today. Since 2007 alone, they removed a dictator from military and civilian power without firing a single shot, held the first national election since 1997 – in which right-wing radical parties were soundly rejected – and launched a secular movement for justice.
Pakistan is a functioning society let down by its political overclass as a whole, in which the army is a major player.
Talk about restoration of military rule in Pakistan is based on the idea that it can’t defeat the Taliban under civilian control. But why would the Army beat the Taliban under civilian rule if the threat from that quarter promises to bring it back to power? And why would it defeat the Taliban when in power if the Taliban were the main justification for it being there.
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