Pakistan: This Summer's Political Thriller

While summer can bring many things, there’s no doubt that a surplus of movies that would never do well in any other season will debut. For those in the political community, however, it means an excess of reports that- perhaps like their counterparts in the film industry- would never do well during the rest of the year either. This summer’s political thriller? The country of Pakistan. Kicked off by Matt Waldman’s London School of Economics’ report, “Sun in the Sky—Relationship between Pakistan’s ISI and Afghan Insurgents,” the recent influx of reports discussing Pakistan’s state of affairs has come to beg the question: has Pakistan become the new theater for political analysts this summer?

While not stereotypically divided, Pakistan has indeed been divided into something similar to your summer-time movie cast. Like a true play, there are substitutes for each role; the role of the ‘bad guy’ one day is the government of Pakistan, the next day it’s back to the insurgents. And, of course, there remains the eternal question of who exactly the ‘good guy’ is: America? Amnesty International? Political analysts? The suspense is enthralling while the construct is simple and repetitive. Like many movies this summer, however, it promises to overlap.

From the London School of Economics to Amnesty International to the RAND Corporation, the list of reports continues to grow exponentially while the presentation of information does not. All three institutions conclude the same thing: that the government of Pakistan and its intelligence agency (ISI) support rather than deter the Afghan Taliban movement in some way. The solution, all three suggest, is enforced transparency coupled with reduced assistance from the United States. Yet, the reports, like many movies of the summer, are inherently flawed with respect to their script. Waldman’s LSE report is conflicting on several accounts: the reliability of his sources is extremely unclear and unsubstantiated, the implications of his findings place the Taliban, the Pakistani government, and, by extension, the United States at fault simultaneously, and the author’s own excessive caution regarding his assertions that the ISI and Taliban are working together leave the reader both uninformed and confused.

While there can be no chance of a monetary refund for reading these reports as can be the case with poor films, the fundamental question remains: Why? Why are these reports being published in such likeness and bulk? At least with movies, the genres purport to be different. Yet with these reports, the scenes are always the same. As with Amnesty International’s two reports, “‘As if Hell fell on me’- Human Rights Crisis in Northwest Pakistan” and the analysis of Pakistan’s human rights situation released in its annual report, the focus largely remains to be Pakistan’s government or lack there of. Placing greater emphasis on the “indiscriminate and disproportionate force” carried out by Pakistani security forces, Amnesty International neglects the root of the insurgency and instead, like Waldman, implicates the Pakistani government of playing a double game.

Don’t get me wrong- there is value to these reports. With two more reports from the Brookings Institute and Foreign Policy detailing Pakistan’s educational system and questioning its ability to be a successful state, readers should by this point, if anything, be able to spell Pakistan correctly. Yet with it being summer, it comes as no surprise that the authors of these reports feel pressured to publish something, even if that something is all the same. They, like their readers, seem to be stuck in a sort of report fatigue. All in all, however, there can be no doubt that Pakistan is definitely the blockbuster hit of the summer.