RAJA UMAR KHATTAB speaks softly and carefully: “I would not say Karachi is a safe city, but it is better now than before.” Seven years ago, the police compound that houses his wood-panelled office, with its photos of three different Pakistani presidents decorating him for courage in the line of duty, was hit by a truck bomb that left a 12-metre-wide blast crater and 20 dead. The diagonal scar on Mr Khattab’s neck is another story; assassins had planted a bomb near his house. Such are the hazards of heading the elite counter-terror force in a steamy metropolis of 20m with a reputation as the most dangerous city in Asia.

Ordinary crime is not so bad in Karachi. The trouble is an explosive ethnic and sectarian mix, spiked with every flavour of radical Islam, primed by repeated waves of rural refugees, and inflamed by law-enforcement tactics such as the “encounter”, a disturbingly common event where the official report says the victim died in an exchange of fire, but oddly enough his hands are tied and no police suffered a scratch. In each of two big waves of bloodletting, in the early 1990s and again from 2007 to 2013, perhaps 10,000 people were murdered in the city. The worst episodes involved not terrorists but rival parties vying for control of local government.

Things are improving. Mr Khattab notes that there have been no bombings in Karachi since his team busted a terrorist bomb factory last year. Politically motivated deaths have fallen steeply, from 2,029 in 2014 to 474 in 2016 and a mere 89 in the first quarter of 2017. One reason is the deployment since 2013 of the Rangers, a tough paramilitary force that has used overwhelming firepower, plus encounters, to arouse fear. “They don’t have families here like we do,” explains Mr Khattab.

Karachi does feel relaxed, if slightly battered. Shops stay open late, and on its bustling streets women mingle comfortably with men

Karachi does feel relaxed, if slightly battered. Shops stay open late, and on its bustling streets women mingle more comfortably with men than in strait-laced Lahore, Pakistan’s inland metropolis 1,000km to the north. For those who live in the port city’s expansive seaside suburbs, there are further compensations: big houses with poolside bars, bevies of servants and, behind high walls and security guards, night spots as fancy as any in Dubai or Mumbai.

Pakistan has far fewer billionaires than India does, but feudal habits are more ingrained. Miftah Ismail, chairman of the Board of Investment, reckons that the country, with a workforce of 65m, has around 10m domestic servants. “People talk about Islam and forget about class motivation,” says Aatish Taseer, a New York-based writer who is half Indian, half Pakistani. “You’d think they would have done away with caste since everyone’s Muslim, but it lurks everywhere just below the surface.”

One caste that does nicely is the army. Officially, Pakistan’s annual defence spending runs to a modest $8bn, or 2.6% of GDP, but that does not include officers’ generous pensions, which according to SIPRI, a Swedish think-tank, push the total closer to 4%. Further spending may be hidden in Pakistan’s unusually large budget allocations for contingent liabilities. A range of industries owned by the armed forces, as well as of army-operated trusts such as the Fauji Foundation, a holding group with declared assets of $3.3bn in 2015, also fall outside the budget.

The army is Pakistan’s biggest property developer, too. Its Defence Housing Authorities own large tracts of prime land in every city, including 35 square kilometres along Karachi’s waterfront and a chunk of Lahore’s exclusive eastern suburbs amounting to a quarter of the city’s area, complete with golf clubs, shopping malls and business parks. “They treat us very well here, you see,” says a former general, explaining why he retired to Lahore rather than join some of his family in England.

Such privilege also explains the army’s interest in sustaining the sense of threat, and in keeping Pakistan’s politicians in check. There are many ways of doing this. Political parties—many of which are said to have been incubated by the army for this purpose—tend to pander to the army. The police and courts keep a respectful distance. And the army’s media wing exerts a powerful influence on the press. Whereas some private television channels are seen as eager mouthpieces, others face pressures that range from reprimands on the phone to threats and unfortunate incidents.

Given the opacity and unaccountability of the “deep state,” it is not surprising that many Pakistanis see its hand behind the proliferation of extremist religious groups. In response to terrorist attacks such as one on a boys’ school in Peshawar in 2014 that left 141 dead, the army has increasingly taken the offensive against groups that challenge the state. But other, equally radical outfits that direct violence at foreign enemies or at perceived domestic troublemakers continue to evade punishment. In private, journalists and politicians worry that harsh laws making blasphemy punishable by death, which have inspired more than one murderous vigilante attack, are being left in place to discourage dissent in general.

Crack of Dawn

In the face of such constraints, Pakistan’s public life remains remarkably vibrant. Indian journalists expressed grudging admiration last year when Dawn, a Pakistani English-language daily, published embarrassing details of a closed meeting between top military and civilian leaders. The politicians were quoted as warning the generals that Pakistan risked diplomatic isolation if the army did not rein in specific extremist groups.

An equally telling exchange came in April this year when Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister, fired a top adviser in an apparent gesture to placate the army over what had become known as the Dawn leaks. The general in charge of the army’s public relations riposted with a curt tweet saying this was not good enough. Much of Pakistan’s press angrily declared that the army should answer to elected leaders, not the other way around. A week later the general withdrew his tweet.

Still, in the test of wills between civilians and the armed forces, it is the generals who retain the upper hand. The army has not taken action against the militants named in the Dawn leaks but has come up with a counter-narrative, suggesting the breach proves that civilians cannot be trusted with state secrets. Mr Sharif, for his part, remains vulnerable. He faces ongoing investigations into evidence, leaked in the Panama papers that exposed details of thousands of offshore bank accounts, that his family bought luxury properties in London.

Mr Sharif’s centre-right party is still widely expected to hold on to power in elections due next year. It has a virtual stranglehold on the Punjab, home to nearly half the country’s population. The rival centre-left Pakistan Peoples Party remains strong in the second-most-populous province, Sindh, but has been tarnished by corruption charges. A relative upstart, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI, led by Imran Khan, does well in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, a largely Pashto-speaking province. But despite Mr Khan’s cricket-star appeal and his anti-corruption platform, his party has made little headway elsewhere. A dozen smaller parties represent particular ethnic or religious groups.

So after 70 years as a nation Pakistan still lacks a truly national party. Provincial identities remain strong, and years of interference by the deep state, including three periods of direct military rule, have stunted the country’s political evolution. “Democracy is all about conflict, so to make it work you need mediating institutions,” says Ayesha Jalal, a historian at Tufts University. “This is where Pakistan is truly lacking.” The country remains a collection of provinces speaking different languages, in theory united by Islam but in fact held together by the army.

This means that Pakistan is unlikely to change. Its economy will continue to underperform and its society will remain conservative. The rich will continue to hide behind high walls. “There may be green shoots, but they are not green enough or numerous enough to last,” concludes an experienced Pakistani journalist. No wonder that many of his countrymen are placing high hopes on the great dragon peering down from the north.