WE may be among the most crisis-prone nations globally. In this writer’s view, we have faced nearly 30 crises since 1990 or one every 14 months on average. This includes political crises when the ruling set-up or its head were removed in contentious circumstances (seven); economic crunches that led us to the IMF (eight); natural and health-related calamities like earthquakes, floods and Covid-19 (four); internal or external security challenges (five) and crises due to street unrest (five).
This sorry status arises from the state’s predatory, security and autocratic bent. The economic crises arise as our predatory rulers induce fickle growth via high twin deficits. The external security crises reflect the hold of hawks on both sides of our eastern border. The internal challenges come from the gripes of excluded ethnicities or our tolerance in the past of violent groups to gain a regional security edge. The political crises and street unrests relate mainly to establishment feuds with politicians. Natural crises cause excessive harm as our rulers eschew disaster management. Economic progress requires peace and economic stability, which need political stability, which, in turn, requires political legitimacy. So, a prolonged loss of political legitimacy lies at the root of all our crises.
The longest crisis-free phase after 1990 was 2001-2005 when a military-led set-up induced questionable stability via fickle US aid and repression. But it only delayed and magnified the inevitable crises that erupted during our first polycrisis from 2005-08. We witnessed the 2005 earthquake, the start of Baloch and TTP violence, Benazir Bhutto’s death and street unrest, and the 2007-08 economic crisis the set-up caused. They led to its fall despite its macho aura of invincibility and debatable claims of progress.
Flawed policies are fomenting future trouble.
The Baloch and TTP-linked crises have raged on since then. The frequency of crises has gone up. The PPP inherited the 2007-08 economic crisis that was boosted by the 2008 global recession. It witnessed the mega floods of 2010 and the removal of its prime minister in 2012. Its government caused an economic crisis in 2013. The PML-N inherited the economic crisis, faced the PTI dharna in 2014, lost its prime minister in 2017 to court decisions, and caused an economic crisis itself in 2018. The PTI inherited the problems, faced Covid-19 in 2020, caused an economic crisis in 2021 and saw its prime minister removed through a no-trust vote in 2022. This started our second polycrisis with floods in 2022, mismanaged economic crisis, PTI protests till 2024, spikes in militant violence and war with India in 2025.
Given the internal boost from the war, resurgent ties with the US and (fickle) economic stability, this hybrid set-up is claiming stability and invincibility. But Pakistan is the humbling ground of many a haughty regime that exuded sham invincibility. In trying to escape the strong pull of the root causes of crises, it faces the same insoluble puzzle as past set-ups — achieving elusive stability. Repression may only delay the inevitable and cause a bigger polycrisis.
Flawed policies are already fomenting future trouble. The failure to fix our perennial external deficits may cause an economic crisis as growth picks up. Given the government’s inability to fix the deeper causes of insecurity, our three external and local security foes may jointly try to inflict more violence. If civilians are supposed to forego democratic freedoms in order to fortify the ‘same page’, it may, instead, lead to cracks and divisions in the regime, ie, establishment-civilian, the PPP-PML-N, intra-PML-N, and cause a political crisis. Greater autocracy may spark national anger against oppressive policies, which may ignite Arab Spring-type protests. Natural crises remain a wildcard given the neglect of disaster control.
So, despite the rulers’ incumbency plans, based on dubious assumptions of durable stability, we may be an external shock away from an economic crisis, a terrorist attack away from war, a spark away from street unrest, a civilian refusal away from a political crisis and a big monsoon season away from a natural crisis. Such events may quickly negate the desperate attempts to exude an aura of invincibility that set-ups with low legitimacy need badly and that cause their fall.
A crisis-weary nation can see an end to the recurrent crises only through political legitimacy based on fair polls and civilian sway. Otherwise, with external, economic, demographic, security and natural threats set to increase in the coming decades, we may become even more crisis-prone.
The writer has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in political economy and 25 years of grassroots to senior-level experiences across 50 countries.
murtazaniaz@yahoo.com
X: @NiazMurtaza2
Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2025