Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [126]
In fact, very often to make a fortune in Pakistan means finding some way to milk the state – including of course international aid flowing to the state, which is one of the principal ways in which the Pakistani elites make money from the West. What is more, given the lawless nature of Pakistani society, you usually also need influence over the state (especially the police and the courts) to defend what you have from predatory neighbours or the forces of the state themselves.
This has a whole set of crucially important consequences. First of all, it usually sets a limit on how much you can take. Most politicians are not in power for very long, and partly for the same reason (because their political patrons lose office) most officials are not left for long in the most lucrative positions. Furthermore, an individual minister or official who steals an outrageous amount for himself will attract the envy of colleagues, who will try to replace him so that they can share.
Thus the great majority of senior politicians of my acquaintance have some sort of property in a posh part of London, which in most cases was certainly not paid for out of legitimate earnings. Most have flats in Knightsbridge or Kensington, or houses further out; and so have good reason not to condemn other people with flats in Knightsbridge. However, families like the Bhuttos, who buy whole country estates in Britain on the strength of their profits from government, will attract unfavourable notice, and earn a bad reputation which can have a serious effect on their political fortunes.
Even more importantly, if to make a lot of money generally means gaining influence over the state, to gain influence over the state generally means procuring some kind of political power. Political power requires supporters – individuals and families with power of their own, gunmen to protect you, and ordinary people to vote for you; and followers have to be rewarded. In other words, a very large proportion of the money made from corruption has to be recycled downwards through patronage or straight gifts – because otherwise the ability to extract corruption would itself dry up. The patronage system therefore has a strongly cyclical aspect, which once again strengthens its anti-revolutionary character.
If the political power of the kinship group in Pakistan depended only on the distribution of patronage, then this power might well have declined over time, given that patronage will always be limited; but it is also rooted in the oldest of social compulsions: collective defence. But while the power of kinship is necessary to defend against the predatory state, it is also one of the key factors in making the state predatory, as kinship groups use the state to achieve their goals of power, wealth and triumph over other kinship groups. So the ancient Pakistani kinship groups and the modern Pakistani state dance along together down the years, trapped in a marriage that ought to be antagonistic, but has in fact become natural to each.
This system has a critical effect on Pakistan’s remarkably low inequality rating according to the Gini Co-efficient, measuring the ratio of the income of the poorest group in society relative to the richest. In 2002, according to UN statistics, the figure for Pakistan was 30.6, compared to 36.8 for India, 40.8 for the US, and 43.7 for Nigeria. Part of the reason is obvious if you sit down with someone from a Pakistani political family and work out their income and expenditure. By the time you have accounted for payments to servants, gunmen and supporters (in the biggest families, sometimes even permanently hired musicians, to sing their praises),