THERE is a saying in Urdu “bud sey budnaam bura”, which loosely translates to “bad repute is worse than being bad”. Nowhere is this saying more apropos than in the case of Pakistan. Ask anyone in the world, and the overwhelming majority’s perception of Pakistan is; lack of safety, insecurity, terrorism and on and on. Pakistanis argue back that is not the case, that we are a beautiful, multi-ethnical, multi-terrain, multi-cultural and a hospitable nation. These emotional appeals land on deaf ears, since they are not backed by any facts. Let us explore the facts about Pakistan’s ranking by myriad organizations and factors related to safety and security.
Before we get into the factors related to safety and security, let us look at the impact of misperceptions on Pakistan’s economy, particularly the tourism sector. Admittedly, for the world population, incidents of “terrorism” loom large when considering Pakistan as an investment or tourism destination. And, yes, Pakistan does have its share of incidents of targeted killings/terrorism. However, the impact of such incidents on Pakistan’s reputation is highly disproportionate compared to other countries. It is so disproportionate that it is having a crippling effect on Pakistan, and Pakistan needs to launch a massive worldwide media campaign to negate these misperceptions.
Having made the superfluous and unquantified statements in the preceding Para about the impact of misperceptions, let’s now look at the facts to quantify the statements about the negative impact on Pakistan due to the misperceptions. In the 2022 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), issued by Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), Pakistan ranked at number 10. Admittedly, that is very high! However, Pakistan is in good company whereas India is ranked at 12, Thailand is ranked at 22 and USA is at 28. So, if we were to give alphabetical ranking by grade bandwidth, one could argue that the rank of 1-9 would be A+ unsafe, 10-29 would be A category unsafe, 30-69 would be B category unsafe, and so on. By this gauge, Pakistan, India, Thailand and USA are basically A grade unsafe countries. However, the other countries have managed their perceptions in the world and are not impacted by their bad standing in the GTI. The misperceptions have an exponentially large impact and one needs to only know that despite being in the same unsafe bandwidth, Pakistan received around 20000 tourists in 2022, India received 20 million, Thailand received 40 million and USA 80 million. Need we say more on the effect of misperceptions on Pakistan!
Having cited the negative impact of misperceptions in the preceding, let the author now prove to you that Pakistan is one of the safest countries in the world – Pakistanis and the world just doesn’t know it. Here are the facts to support it. At the onset, let us establish that Pakistan is the fifth largest country in the world with a population of 250 million. And, it is on the way to become the third largest in 15 years with a population of 400 million. This is important to note since size does mean that there will be incidents related to safety and security, but they should be put into context and in comparison to others. For instance, the International Homicide Ranking of 195 countries (2022) noted that Russia ranked 53 highest, compared to USA at 56, Philippines at 77, Pakistan at 81, India at 90 and Thailand at 100. Given this ranking, Pakistan is much safer compared to most other countries, particularly the most visited country in the world, namely USA.
Tourists usually do not look at, nor are they impacted significantly by homicide rates in countries, unless the country is a banana republic with widespread murder and mayhem. What impacts tourists and potential investors are the petty crimes such as robberies, break-ins, petty violence, purse snatching and the like. These incidents are ranked in the Country Crime Index 2023 where the results are astounding. 146 countries were ranked in the index where France ranked at 36, Malaysia at 46, USA at 55, Australia at 76, and India at 77. Who would have thought that Malaysia and France and all these other “tourist safe” countries would be ranked so high? Now the surprise: Pakistan was ranked at 86. It is one of the lowest crime countries in the world.
Now let us address the Gorilla in the room, terrorist incidents. At the beginning of the article the figures from Global Terrorism Index were cited. Notwithstanding the GTI, Pakistan averages 4-5 incidents of targeted killings per month. This is in comparison to 45-50 acts of domestic terrorism per month in the USA. The argument then offered is “but USA is a big country”. Not really, Pakistan is 2/3rd the size of the USA, and has 1/10th the incidents. We are not a terrorism ridden country, or an unsafe country or a crime prone country. In fact, Pakistan is one of the safest countries of the world. We simply don’t know it, and the world surely doesn’t think so. We have to allay the fears and misperceptions about Pakistan through a targeted campaign, and once we do, we can tap into the potentials of Pakistan. It is time to stop talking about the potentials and doing something about realizing them.
—The writer is a former Senior Advisor to the Government and a sector development specialist. He is an active promoter of Pakistan in the world.
