When Pakistan appears in the news, it is often due to terrorist acts, social unrest or some natural disaster. But there is another picture of the country as well. An image where Pakistan still has major problems both politically, economically and socially, but where development is going in the right direction.
An example of this is the latest statistics on terrorist acts. According to the Pakistani army , the number of terrorist attacks decreased by 45 percent between 2019 and 2020. From 2013, the terrorist attacks in Pakistan have decreased by 86 percent.
There are other statistics that also show that the situation in Pakistan has improved. Other crimes such as murders and kidnappings have decreased, for example. This means that Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, has gone from being the sixth most dangerous city in the world in 2014, according to the World Crime Index, to now ending up in place 106 . Marginally more dangerous than Malmö, but safer than San Francisco and Manchester.
Environmentally, things are also going in the right direction for Pakistan. The country has succeeded in achieving the UN’s environmental goal Sustainable Development Goals 2030, ten years in advance . This has been done, among other things, through a giant project to plant ten billion trees to stop erosion. Great efforts have also been made to improve sanitary conditions in the cities. In addition, 15 percent of the country’s area will be set aside for nature reserves.
Pakistan must also become more environmentally friendly in the field of energy. There were far-reaching plans to build coal-fired power plants that would have produced 2,740 megawatts. But those projects have now been scrapped and will instead be replaced with renewable electricity.
Pakistan is still a very poor country with many and big problems. The country’s total GDP is $ 316 billion, which is less than half of the US defense budget. But despite small resources and many problems, Pakistan shows that it is possible to reverse negative trends and create faith in the future, even in places that we in the West have almost written off as hopeless cases.
