President Obama's strategy towards Pakistan is arguably going to be the defining hallmark of the administration's foreign policy. The US needs a strategy that serves long-term goals of eliminating Al-Qaida, limiting the Taliban’s spread in Pakistan, ensuring the security of Pakistan's nuclear assets, addressing Pakistan-India tensions such that they do not become an impediment to economic success of India.
The only long-term solution to solve the complex problems facing Pakistan is facilitating a democratic state that is secure, stable and prosperous and has the civic resolve to weed out extremism from its society. This may seem like a far reaching statement to anyone who has dealt with the complexity of the country. The situation in Pakistan is dire and growing worse. A revolution of the voiceless, disempowered poor youth is all but a certainty. The only question is what ideology will they cling to? The conditions are ripe for rapid rise of radicalization that will tow under large swaths of rural Pakistan into hands of extremist militants.
We believe, we the civil society stakeholders of Pakistan can play critical role by giving the youth hope, a vision of a better future, a meaningful participation in creating solutions, and in the process forge a new national identity. Such a fundamental shift in mindset can only be driven from within the society.
However, President Obama's message of Hope and Change resonates as deeply in the city slums and remote villages of Pakistan as it does in the inner cities and heartland of America. President Obama's historic election victory has created a breath of fresh air, and it is important to build on this message to usher a new paradigm of understanding. In line with this view, Vice-President Joe Biden is spearheading the Biden-Lugar bill to offer up to $15 Billion in development and economic aid to Pakistan over the next decade.
The lawyers movement to uphold the constitution of Pakistan, and the Say No To Terrorism campaign present examples of large civil movements that that are taking shape in Pakistan. Say No To Terrorism (YehHumNaheen.org) music video was created through collaboration of Pakistan's top media artists to get people to take stance against terrorism. The campaign resulted in a world record shattering 62 million petition signatures of the voiceless people who dream of a better Pakistan. We can cultivate such passion, but we need effective institutions that can turn raw energy into an organized a force for change, and in the process shape a new national identity. We seek to create coalitions of organizations and individuals with credibility, integrity and influence to drive this change from the inside.
Our message to President Obama is to take note of this movement, and US to align its strategy towards Pakistan to strengthening civil institutions that can enable such movements to spread. To bring change we need to build institutions that enable our people to voice their demand for change, be heard in a meaningful way, to hold the government accountable for delivery of basic services, provision of security and justice.
Our strategy draws inspirations and lessons from President Obama's electoral campaign. We seek to build a shared narrative, create sophisticated mass mobilization campaign that bring together coalitions of civic interest groups to organize, and collectively become a force for change in Pakistan. This strategy is based on designing mechanism of aid delivery that increases social capital of America, while increasing transparency and accountability to mitigate the major risks factors to achieving goals. This strategy goes beyond soft “branding” of America. It seeks to align long term-interests of the US in the region with fundamental developmental and security interest of people on the ground. This civic movement of human development is to strengthen civic institutions, building the scaffolding upon which a functioning democratic state can stand. This strategy leaves no particular person, interest group or government department with capacity to completely block progress.
Strategic Goals
Based on prior stated US foreign policy objectives towards Pakistan we propose a reset of priorities for the policy towards Pakistan. The priorities are set in an order such that higher ordered priorities, if executed with a particular process, will re-enforce success of lower order. Then based on peculiar realities of Pakistan we propose an integrated top-down and a bottom-up strategy to achieve those goals.
Six broad development policy goals:
Fundamental Problems: Lack of Trust, Fractured Leadership and Inefficient Aid Delivery
We assert that lack of trust is the core hurdle in building US social capital and influence in Pakistan. President Obama has reached out to the Muslim world with a message of friendship and respect that has sown seeds of trust. However, to actually grow trust America must act to demonstrate that she is listening, and extend trust by joining hands to collectively deliver strong results. Accordingly, mechanism of aid delivery should be evaluated to see how it can induce trust, mitigate significant risks of aid misappropriation and minimize risk of unintended negative consequences for any choices made. For example, due to current low mutual trust, America cannot provide unconditional aid to Pakistan civilian government, because this is most likely to result in the aid being wasted in gross corruption that will further reduce public trust towards America. However, this aid cannot be based on performance using a naive Tit-For-Tat strategy for two reasons. Firstly, this strategy is only likely to work when the executive power is consolidated, and Pakistan has a fractured leadership base. The democratic political government has limited control over the military, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), religious, feudal land lord politicians and civil bureaucracy that have their own incentives to further their divergent goals. Secondly, the only credible threat the US has, is in reduction of aid and imposition of sanctions against Pakistan. The Pressler Amendment exactly did the same and the US later had to introduce Brown Amendment to restore non military aid. Most Pakistanis already apprehend America to repeat the same mistake and abandon Pakistan as soon as America's immediate interests in eliminating Al-Qaida are accomplished. Such a hip-hop strategy will further undermine the rebuilding process and irreparably damage the US image. The threat of making US aid conditional on performance of government thus plays to the fears of Pakistanis, reducing trust and may provide further incentives for “entrepreneurial” rogue elements in Pakistan leadership to keep Al-Qaida around and thus perpetuate dependence on American aid. Moreover the threats of sanctions will increase anti-American sentiments and play further into hands of extremists.
On the American side problems stem from ineffectiveness of USAID's overburdened legacy “Buy America” policies and the misaligned objectives of outsourced development consultants whose natural self-interest are to maximize their own profits. The combined result of both sets of problems is projects that create “bridge to nowhere” that dwarf the ridiculousness of pork barrel projects that make headline news in America. The American development aid given to Pakistan has achieved little demonstrable progress for Pakistan, and has not advanced America's strategic goals in meaningful ways. It is almost a certainty that if the Biden-Luger aid package uses the same preexisting arrangements it will also be ineffective in obtaining desired results, and is likely to in fact make the situation worse by increasing governmental corruption in Pakistan. Overcoming these hurdles is the motivation for our initiative to inject fresh ideas to tackle one of the greatest challenges of our times.
Proper Aid Mechanism Design is Critical
We propose a mechanism that
Building Trust – Unconditional Commitment to the Poor of Pakistan
To most rapidly build trust, we propose a sustained long-term unconditional commitment to help the most deprived poor people of Pakistan. This clear orientation has potential to restore America’s moral leadership and create alignment in divergent interests of groups in Pakistan. To maximize induced reciprocity the aid has to be clearly perceived with-in Pakistan as being “No-String-Attached”, to overcome current suspicion that America's hidden agenda is to coercively impose Western values. Accordingly, to properly guide perception of authenticity of intent, we propose the development priorities and goals be set using a transparent manner with broad consultation of Pakistani society from top level, down to the district level. This process of broad civil debate should capture the imagination of the civil society, especially with visible participation that reflects the voice of the ordinary youth in envisioning and helping define a better future and create new opportunities for progress. We propose a smart choice architecture to gently guide process with development priorities based on international benchmarks like Millennium Development Goals and public policy expert opinion that serves as cognitive anchor and provides a frames for the discussions, then we open the floor to public debate to change priorities based on local input. This intense involvement of stakeholders including local public, government employees, academia will further cultivating ownership of the development initiatives. This sense of stakeholder ownership is critical for development to have long-term sustainable consequence and at the same time lead to change of heart. This dialogue should be part of a comprehensive demand-side intervention that achieves mass mobilization through use of community organizing coupled with a sustained local mass-media campaign that celebrates inspiring narratives of personal growth and heroism of positive social action.
Reframe “War on Terror” to “Security and Justice”
We propose fundamentally reframing “War on Terror” as “Security and Justice”. Accordingly, the military aid should also include, in the same goal, additional civilian reforms that offer better long term solutions to fighting domestic terrorism crimes within boarders of Pakistan. First, “War on Terror” evokes a metaphor that is often interpreted by local Pakistanis as being associated with imperial expansionist agenda. Second, the “war” is considered an American problem that is imposed on Pakistan, and Pakistanis do not feel ownership and are reluctant actors in this American conflict. However, “Security and Justice” represents the fundamental needs of the people, and thus can induce local ownership of the idea. So this can lead to a necessary perception shift by the people, and they can then be co-opted to help solve their own problems. In Pakistan, the poor do not have access to public goods like security, justice, and basic human rights. This is a fundamental reason why poor masses remain agnostic and can even be joyful when Taliban takes over regions and promises instant justice to the poor. Reform of the rural police and police intelligence, coupled with justice system, can speedup with special focus on deepening civil arbitration capacity training can provide significantly fulfilling the fundamental needs of the poor.
Disruptive Elimination of Knowledge Barriers
To motivate the mobilization's inspiring potential, we propose a disruptive strategy that eliminates knowledge barriers that act as bottleneck to development of Pakistan. This open access to knowledge will enable motivated communities and civil servants to become self-motivated in acquiring training and skills, even if supporting aid programs cannot directly reach them. Accordingly, first, make freely and openly accessible across Pakistan audio/videos of basic K-12 education and intensive training on preventative health-care, farm yield improvement and food processing, vocational skills, and management training content. This services content should then be supplemented with on-going capacity building training content for municipal, provincial and federal government departments. Second, use appropriate multiple channels of delivery and media player hardware accessibility to ensure content is broadly accessible across digital divide in disconnected settings, even in remote rural tribal areas of Pakistan. Third, this content training should be then monitored for effectiveness when taught with local content mediation using a relatively low-skilled teacher/trainer across large number of remote schools and training centers, and tailored to recipient student age and regional conditions.
Demand-Side Intervention - Community Mobilization and Civic Institutions
We propose this mobilization should be supported by civic organization program targeted. The programs should run petition drives to cultivate demand for specific programs, provide civic leadership training, hold focus workshops and opinion polls for qualitative analysis. It should also perform high-frequency quantitative monitoring of progress indicators and government department function and corruption, independently analyzing results, and create proposal for improvement based on compiled feedback. Apart from increasing civic confidence in driving change, this strategy should further mitigate the risk of gross corruption and misappropriation of aid resources. The aim of the strategy is to strengthen basic civil services, and civic institutions that deepen democratic roots in the community focusing on specific districts. Nothing builds trust faster than positive results. We advocate celebration and advertisement of all successful achievement with-in community to focus on depth first improvement to develop centers of excellence. Then leverages such success and market it across to neighboring communities with strongest tribal and economic bonds. There are two forces at work. First, there is nothing like peer rivalry that can inspire copycat improvement in neighboring communities. Second, this relationship based cross-community mobilization is most efficient way to organically grow aid program in a region starting with a single community, and leveraging its relationships to its tightest coupled neighbors to help solve their problems. This cross-community mobilization needs to be tweaked to subtly encourage fortunate communities that directly received aid to volunteer to “give back” and help other less fortunate neighboring communities. Through aforementioned voluntary actions, we can build a movement of inter-community social trust and at the same time counter suspicion, cynicism and low trust towards America. This self-motivated social movement is the only way slowly encircle and disseminate knowledge and influence in areas that are hotbed of extremism where direct aid programs are hard to operate.
Supply-Side Intervention - Competitive Alignment of Service Agencies
We propose that the demand-side grass-root intervention be coupled with a comprehensive supply-side intervention to improve delivery of social services through government and social channels. At the core, we advocate for instilling Total Quality Management methodology training across all programs to improving service delivery from government, social sector to entrepreneurial sector to create jobs. The priorities on funding between the supply side should be driven based on the hearing of the civil society. However, we propose "Competitive Cooperation" accountability strategy that targets performance based development aid to alternative channels to induce peer competition for the development goals. Our aim should be to increase capacity and reduce corruption in education, preventative and minimal primary child and maternal health municipal water provisions, police and judicial system focused on delivering results especially targeted a region specific focus to the poorest and most deprived people of Pakistan. However, to hold government departments accountable to deliver performance or face funding cuts, we also include competitive mix of private and civil organizations that can bypass the government to achieve specific developmental and economic goals. Where it is possible, it is vital for this strategy by a “pull” based, where the department faces pressure from bottom and top level to perform, and takes initiative to improve and applies for funding increase based on demonstrated performance. We further propose works with international donors like World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and IMF on OPIC and other multinational donors and investors to focus attention on core infrastructure that is in tatters. This includes investment in energy supply, clean drinking water supply, poor road links between isolated clusters of village and town of high economic activity, and further penetration of 3G wireless mobile phone and data infrastructure into rural area. Investment in primary infrastructure and secondary private enterprise in these sectors will not only create vital jobs but have has significant potential to create multiplier effects on all other social and economic development goals.
Execution Strategy – Modified Millennium Challenge Corporation
We propose that the aid be given through Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) with modification to its charter, because the organization's existing structure is most suited for the immense challenges. We propose creation a specialized a US sub-department to handle challenges of Pakistan modeled after the program of Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which was one of the brilliant innovations of the eight-year Bush presidency. MCC was designed to avoid the shortcomings of other aid programs, has a purposeful mandate and operational flexibility. However changes need to be made to make MCC suited for large scale intervention in Pakistan. First, the aid should be pull based, if Pakistani aid recipient's meet performance qualifications they will receive aid, and there should not be a “use it or loose it” pressure to disburse aid in each year's allocation due to Congressional budgeting process. Second, the proposal for specific compacts to be signed with all tiers of the government, from federal, to provincial, down to the district level. This is to ensure that at no point in the government can block progress. Third, the a single rigid 5 year compact rule of the MCC, has to be modified for this specific case, because the over all level of funding for the entire country is specified.
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