THE MOST USEFUL MYTH in Islamabad is that Pakistan survives on miracles. It does not; it survives on institutions. The miracle story is noisy; the institution story is quiet; the former asks for applause while the latter files the paperwork and carries on. Lately, the quiet has been winning, and that is the most grown-up thing to happen to national life in years. When routines replace drama, confidence creeps back into sentences, and the anxiety that once framed every conversation yields to a calmer cadence. Markets do not rise because pundits cheer; they rise because systems work. “Progress is what remains after the headlines fade,” and for once we are letting that sentence earn its keep.
Markets do not rise because pundits cheer; they rise because systems work.
Call it the Hafiz effect if you like. A soldier who knows the Book by heart has spent the last stretch reminding the state of its own spine; it is an oddly modern kind of traditionalism, in which continuity is the most radical promise. Strength is not swagger; strength is systems that outlast every mood swing, every press conference, every taunt from across a border. When that lesson lands, narratives shift; ministries stop acting like rescue squads and start acting like service desks. The phones in friendly capitals begin to get picked up on the first ring; not out of charity, but because a counterpart on the other end can deliver what he signs. The country discovers that dignity is not a speech; it is a schedule kept. “Authority is the art of making tomorrow predictable,” and the art is being practised again.
At home the new grammar is competence. The currency rackets and the diesel mafias discovered what happens when authority shows up before the cameras do; it is amazing how quickly swagger melts when receipts are demanded and trucks are weighed. The message was simple; the state will not be gamed; the public will not be held hostage to arbitrage. That message travels from the customs post to the wholesale market, from the exchange counter to the petrol station, and it changes behaviour faster than any slogan. You can call it discipline. You can call it deterrence. You can also call it respect for the citizen’s time. Deterrence is not only for enemies across a border; it is also for temptations across a counter, and merchants understand mathematics better than most.
Strength is not swagger; strength is systems that outlast every mood swing, every press conference, every taunt from across a border.
Policy, long addicted to poetry, made friends with prose. Approvals moved through single windows; minutes were written in verbs; deadlines stopped being rumours. You can dislike centralisation and still admire execution; you can argue about jurisdiction and still admit that, for once, delivery arrived on time. The better habit is not to romanticise bottlenecks; it is to remove them and then publish the queue times so no one can quietly rebuild them. Strong institutions are not slogans; they are habits kept on dull Tuesdays, audited on dull Wednesdays, and improved on dull Thursdays. When a process becomes boring, it is usually becoming reliable; boredom is underrated as a public good.
Credit also belongs to the civilians who chose the unglamorous path. Shehbaz Sharif put on the hard hat and did the rounds that never trend on social media; the corridor meetings that shorten the distance between promise and project; the briefings where a missing permit can still kill a billion-rupee idea. Ishaq Dar spoke the only dialect that crosses borders without a visa; arithmetic; and he insisted that friends and critics alike do the sums with him rather than trade adjectives. He sold prudence without apology; he explained that Pakistan is not playing zero sum; it is doing the sums; and he backed it with timetables that survived the trip from briefing slide to bank account. “Diplomacy that balances the books balances the politics,” and that is the point.
Strong institutions are not slogans; they are habits kept on dull Tuesdays, audited on dull Wednesdays, and improved on dull Thursdays.
Across the horizon the tone changed from reactive to deliberate. With India the theatre was blunt, then brief; shots were traded, words were hurled, the temperature rose, and then the thermostat was turned down before the paint peeled. Deterrence that ends in de-escalation is not a retreat; it is control; it is the difference between a reflex and a decision. There was no appetite for humiliation, only for being heard, which is a more adult instinct than vengeance. The power of the performance lay in its restraint, and restraint is what neighbours remember when they decide whether to call tomorrow. “Strength is the ability to stop,” and the country proved it could.
With Afghanistan the frontier was treated as a frontier should be; a line to be respected and a logistics problem to be managed; not a melodrama to be milked. Fences, lists, crossings, consequences; the dull machinery of sovereignty worked overtime while humanitarian sense kept its place in the room. Rules were written so that compassion had a channel rather than a hashtag; paperwork reduced improvisation; coordination replaced the easy theatrics of outrage. You can be firm without being cruel; you can be orderly without being cold; you can be neighbourly without pretending that security is optional. Borders are less about walls than about agreements; agreements mean forms; forms mean discipline.
You can be firm without being cruel; you can be orderly without being cold; you can be neighbourly without pretending that security is optional.
With Iran the choreography was sharper. Reach was demonstrated, and then restraint made the final argument; capability proved that we could, diplomacy proved that we would not unless compelled. Adults disagree like this; you touch the red line; you acknowledge it; you move back an inch; you keep the phone line open; you plan for the next harvest rather than the next headline. Rivals may not like you; they must understand you; clarity is more valuable than affection in a hard neighbourhood. “Capability earns respect; restraint earns trust,” and you need both if you expect the energy map to cooperate with your growth plans.
Bangladesh offered a different lesson; warmth. The Bengal conversation re-opened with courtesy and commercial sense; history did not vanish; it was simply asked to share the table with the future. Trade is better literature than grievance; connectivity is better therapy than complaint; students and suppliers do more for peace than speeches do. The subcontinent remembers grudges too well; it is allowed to remember opportunities instead, and not only the glamorous ones. Visas that arrive on time are a foreign policy; flight slots and port calls are a doctrine; small kindnesses accumulate into strategic facts. “Reconciliation is cheaper than rivalry,” and accountants have a way of winning arguments over time.
Let the headlines be dull; let the balance sheets sing; let the school day end without disruption; let the factory shift finish with a sense of progress; let the passport queue move.
None of this works without a story people can repeat to themselves. The new story is plain; order first; growth next; dignity throughout. It rejects the doom loop of permanent crisis while refusing the sugar high of empty triumphalism; it asks the state to be boring so the people can be brilliant, which is not much to ask and everything to gain. Let the headlines be dull; let the balance sheets sing; let the school day end without disruption; let the factory shift finish with a sense of progress; let the passport queue move. National confidence is not a mood; it is a pattern; and patterns are made of thousands of ordinary acts done on time. “Let the newspapers whisper while the factories hum,” and you will like the sound.
There are risks; there always are. Centralisation must not become a habit that replaces law with convenience; the urge to cut knots can quietly become the urge to cut corners. Accountability is the antidote; parliament must ask tedious questions and demand tedious answers; committees must insist on documents; courts must referee process, not theatre. The media owes the public curiosity without hysteria; the opposition owes the public critique without sabotage; the government owes the public transparency without vanity. Power that fears questions is already weak; power that welcomes them becomes resilient; and resilience is the only insurance policy that lasts longer than a news cycle.
Investors are allergic to drama; citizens are tired of improvisation; the state that remembers this will make fewer enemies and more customers.
Step back and the outline is clear. Smuggling is harder; financing is cleaner; partners from the Gulf and beyond are no longer being courted with adjectives; they are being courted with timelines and measurable concessions. The armed forces have found a vocabulary that blends steel with restraint; the civilians have found a lane that prizes competence over performance; both are slowly training the bureaucracy to enjoy finishing things. Investors are allergic to drama; citizens are tired of improvisation; the state that remembers this will make fewer enemies and more customers. “Reliability is a strategy,” and it is finally being treated as one.
What you call this moment matters less than what you do with it. Train the habit into every ministry; make service delivery a reflex; turn facilitation into muscle memory; reward clerks who reduce a process from five signatures to three and publish the before-and-after for everyone to see. Teach the same lesson in schools and police stations, at revenue desks and in visa halls; if the citizen meets the state and feels relief rather than dread, then narrative is no longer a press release; it is a lived experience. Pride is not a posture; it is a queue that moves; a water bill that is correct; a licence that arrives when promised. This is how self-respect grows roots.
Pakistan has had its share of epics. What it needs now are routines; and the good news is that routines are being written.
Power, in the end, is not the ability to shout; it is the capacity to keep your promises. Keep them on the border; keep them in the bazaar; keep them in Dhaka and Doha and Delhi; keep them in the ledger and in the classroom; keep them when no one is watching. If the Hafiz effect means anything, it is that discipline can be contagious; it moves from the briefing room to the balance sheet, from the runway to the revenue desk, from a single call to a shared culture. Pakistan has had its share of epics; what it needs now are routines; and the good news is that routines are being written. Not in marble; in memos; in checklists; in timetables that are finally respected. The new narrative is not glamorous; it is better than glamorous; it is sustainable; and if it holds, the country will not need miracles; it will have institutions. ∎
