On 2 December 2015, Pakistan executed four militants involved in the 16 December 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. The hour-long siege of the school had resulted in the deaths of 151 persons, including 125 children. The executions were possible because the government lifted a seven-year old moratorium on the death penalty in response to the security crisis.
This was a turbulent year for Pakistan. A bloodbath at a Peshawar school in December 2014, where Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) assailants killed 145 people, mostly children, darkened the augury for 2015. Seen as a response to counter-TTP military operations in North Waziristan, the blitz on an army-run school inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s major garrison triggered a 20-point National Action Plan.
Pakistan has reached record levels of foreign-exchange reserves, reaching the equivalent of $20 billion US dollars. However, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) fears this is actually hiding economic weaknesses that will probably force the nation to request more aid from the IMF in the not too distant future.
Pakistan has worked hard over the last few years to rein in its deficit spending and improve its foreign exchange reserves, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it is beginning to bear fruit. The IMF reviewed the nation’s financial policies and practices, including its economic reform program, and found that it had “significantly reduced near-term risks.”
The Pakistani government remains optimistic, but foreign direct investment dropped 58 percent in 2014-15, according to the State Bank of Pakistan. Experts note that investors are beginning to regain interest in Pakistan, but the country remains on troubled waters. Chinese investment for 2015 came in at $229 million, which is three times less than the previous year.
After signing more than 50 agreements with China, providing for US$46 billion in investments in Pakistan’s energy, road and rail network sectors, and construction has begun on the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The project will connect the Chinese city of Kashgar in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with the deep water Chinese-built Gwadar Port at the mouth of Straits of Hormuz. While the project offers opportunities for Pakistan, it is not without its challenges.
Pakistan is in a state of discord. Its civilian governance structure is becoming corrupt and oligarchic. Its façade of democratic order belies a more tawdry reality characterised by money, patronage and cronyism, in which parliament exists to enhance the privileges of the few.
Pakistan’s problems are long-standing, rooted in governance failures, with the resultant erosion of state authority. In this respect, 2014 was no different.
Pakistan in 2014 was characterised by a mixture of ongoing malaise and, in some instances, guarded optimism.
For many Pakistanis, the proudest moment came when the Nobel Committee awarded the 2014 Peace Prize to teenager Malala Yousafzai, along with India’s Kailash Satyarthi, for ‘their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education’.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inherited an economy in poor shape when his government came into power in 2013. The Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) government launched an economic plan in September 2013, with the financial and technical support of the IMF, to reverse the deteriorating macroeconomic picture. The three main pillars of the economic reform program are energy reforms, stabilising public finances, and improving the external balances. If successful, over the following five years, this program would raise economic growth from 3 percent to 5 percent a year.
The United Nations will donate $1 billion to Pakistan over the next three years to provide education to more than 7 million out-of-school children, said Special Envoy on Global Education Gordon Brown over the weekend.
Speaking at an education forum at the Jinnah Convention Centre in Islamabad, the former British prime minister said that the money had come from international donors and would go towards funding the biggest education expansion in the country’s history.
