The year 2023 brings nothing but fear in Pakistan; fear of confrontation from “known” and “unknown” dangers from abroad, especially the western border along which the writ of the state is particularly weak. There are multi-pronged security challenges, not only from the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)—whose numbers include Pakistani tribesmen that had fled to Afghanistan in the wake of military operations—but also the Afghan Taliban ruling Kabul, whose shelling from across the border has martyred soldiers and civilians alike. Terrorism is also surging in long-suffering Balochistan, which is also facing growing public unrest over a political inability to ensure due rights for the local population. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government has neither the popular mandate to tackle these issues, nor the economic means to overcome the challenges.
A secondary, but no less important, concern is Pakistan’s wobbly economy, where years of mismanagement are finally coming home to roost amidst a looming global recession and devastating floods that caused damages of $30 billion. The country’s inflation rate, most directly hitting the pocketbooks of the impoverished, has not dropped below 20 percent since June, hitting a peak of 27 percent in August. This is largely linked to fuel and energy prices, which are now out of reach of the common man, and the Pakistani rupee’s value declining to an all-time low against the U.S. dollar.
According to the State Bank of Pakistan, the country’s foreign exchange reserves have dropped below $6 billion, their lowest value in eight years. Experts maintain this trend cannot be reserved without energy conservation and a diversification of investments beyond a reliance on textile exports and external borrowing. In the ongoing fiscal year, the World Bank has predicted that Pakistan’s economy will grow by a mere 2 percent, insufficient to meet the country’s fiscal needs.
Worst of all is the political mess Pakistan is in with a weak coalition government in power, joined by fear of the ‘hybrid regime’ of Imran Khan and the Army, but seemingly unable to field a convincing counter-narrative to the PTI chief’s rhetoric of isolationism and simplistic “good vs. evil” binaries. Khan’s supporters feel proud that the “imported” government now trying to tackle Pakistan’s perennial downturn will be ousted by his charisma, and an “unfair world” brought to the heel by his greatness. Despite Khan’s “policy” of offending Pakistan’s “pampered” traditional allies, they believe a new government led by him will appeal to the “right-thinking people” of the world and revive prosperity, with the U.S. regretting its past indifference to Khan’s “magic” and “offended” Muslim states coming back hat-in-hand over their inability to comprehend the greatness bringing light to the Islamic world.
Barring any unconstitutional delays, 2023 will be the year of general elections across Pakistan. With the ruling coalition clearly failing to provide any relief to an ever-burdened public, the upcoming polls are Khan’s to lose—provided he can overcome the jitters of the establishment he has alienated in his naked bid to return to power since his ouster in April.