Balkanizing Pakistan; An Alternate View

[kdsingh80]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hughes/balkanizing-pakistan-a-co_b_635950.html

Balkanizing Pakistan: A Collective National Security Strategy

Michael Hughes, Geopolitical journalist

Posted: July 6, 2010 05:43 AM

Breaking Pakistan to Fix It

The argument for Balkanizing Pakistan or, more specifically, fragmenting the Islamic Republic so it's easier to police and economically develop, has been on the table since Pakistan's birth in 1947 when the country was spit out of a British laboratory. And lately, the concept is looking more appealing by the day, because as a result of flawed boundaries combined with the nexus between military rule and Islamic extremism, Pakistan now finds itself on a rapid descent toward certain collapse and the country's leaders stubbornly refuse to do the things required to change course. But before allowing Pakistan to commit state suicide, self-disintegrate and further destabilize the region, the international community can beat them to the punch and deconstruct the country less violently.

To quell any doubts about Pakistan's seemingly uncontrollable spiral into darkness, just recently, Foreign Policy Magazine ranked Pakistan as the tenth most failed state on earth and it would seem its leaders are hell bent on securing the number one slot - an honor it can add to their already dubious distinction as the world's largest incubator of jihadist extremism. Afghanistan will never see peace or prosperity with a neighbor like Pakistan and the U.S. will always be threatened by terrorist plots spawned in Pakistan's lawless regions - like the most recent Times Square bombing.

The most popular approach to fragmentation is to break off and allow Afghanistan to absorb Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which would unite the Pashtun tribes. In addition, the provinces of Balochistan and Sindh would become independent sovereign states, leaving Punjab as a standalone entity.

Balkanization is based on the premise that the weak central government in Islamabad is incapable of governing Pakistan's frontiers, which have become the number one source of regional instability. The governing Punjabi elite have neglected the other three major ethnic groups - the Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Baluchis, primarily because a majority of Pakistan's budget is spent on the military rather than economic development, schooling or infrastructure. Only 2% of Pakistan's GDP, for example, is spent on education despite the fact Pakistan's literacy rate stands at 57%.

Minority groups have also been underrepresented in institutions such as Pakistan's military - which is the country's most powerful entity. Punjabis who represent 40% of the population constitute 90% of the armed forces. Pakistan's own history provides a prime case study of what happens when an ethnic group can no longer tolerate political and economic disregard. After a quarter century of strife the Bengalis rebelled, seceded and founded Bangladesh in 1971.

If the Balkanization solution is ever put in motion, accusations will surely fly that it's yet another example of U.S. imperialism and neoconservatism run amok. However, this would be a diplomatic and multilateral effort, plus, it is more about reversing the inequities of British colonialism than it is building some new world order.

Inherent Instability

Pakistan's problems began when the British drew its boundaries haphazardly, which was primarily a product of incompetence and haste than maniacal design. According to an article in the New York Times last year, British colonial officer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe was given six weeks to carve a Muslim-majority state from British India although he had never even been there before. Radcliffe's private secretary was quoted as saying that Sir Cyril "was a bit flummoxed by the whole thing. It was a rather impossible assignment, really. To partition that subcontinent in six weeks was absurd." It would be a comical anecdote except for the fact that hundreds of thousands of people died in the ethnic cleansing that followed as a direct result of British carelessness.

Pakistan's border with Afghanistan - the poorly-marked Durand Line - had been drawn in 1893, also by the British, but it was never meant to be a long-term legally-binding boundary. The faux demarcation split the Pashtuns in half. By reinstating the original natural boundaries, Pakistan's western provinces would be returned to Afghanistan and the Pashtun tribes would be reunited. Such a move would also remove a strategic advantage for the Afghan Taliban, who can easily blend in amongst fellow Pashtuns on the Pakistani side of the border today.

The British did not only gift Pakistan with lethal boundaries, according to renowned Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan inherited a "security state" from British rule, described by scholars as "the viceregal tradition" or "a permanent state of martial law". Intellectual Christopher Hitchens asserted Pakistan has been a fiefdom of the military for most of its short existence. As was once said of Prussia: Pakistan is not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country. Hitchens also said the country was doomed to be a dysfunctional military theocracy from day one - beginning with the very name of the country itself:

But then, there is a certain hypocrisy inscribed in the very origins and nature of "Pakistan". The name is no more than an acronym, confected in the 1930s at Cambridge University by a NW Muslim propagandist named Chaudhri Rahmat Ali. It stands for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, and Indus-Sind, plus the suffix "-stan," meaning "land." In the Urdu tongue, the resulting word means "Land of the Pure." The country is a cobbling together of regional, religious, and ethnic nationalisms, and its founding, in 1947, resulted in Pakistan's becoming, along with Israel, one of the two "faith-based" states to emerge from the partitionist policy of a dying British colonialism. Far from being a "Land of the Pure," Pakistan is one of the clearest demonstrations of the futility of defining a nation by religion, and one of the textbook failures of a state and a society.

Pakistan deteriorated throughout the decades because of its focus on building the military and developing Islamic extremist groups to use as weapons in their eternal obsessive struggle against India. It's true the U.S. helped Pakistan build these groups since the beginning of the Cold War, but America learned on 9/11 they had created a Frankenstein monster that now needed to be slain.

Many analysts have suggested India is less of a national security threat to Pakistan than its homegrown terrorist groups, many of which have openly declared their mission to topple the state, which would allow jihadists to secure nuclear materials. Yet, based on its strategic decision to foster extremism and its recent public support for Taliban rule in Afghanistan, it appears the biggest existential threat to Pakistan is its own political and military leaders.

The Last Straw

With that being said, Balkanization does seem like an extreme step at first blush, and perhaps Pakistan should be given another chance. Yet, after considering Pakistan's historic and current relationship with Al Qaeda - it becomes much easier to justify.

Since the war began in 2001 the U.S. has asked Pakistan to root out extremists from sanctuaries in a Rhode Island-sized area called North Waziristan, chief among them being the lethal Haqqani Network. However, Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani asserted his forces were too bogged down fighting the Pakistani Taliban elsewhere in places like South Waziristan, Orakzai Agency and various districts across the NWFP.

I contacted an Afghan intelligence analyst about this and he assessed General Kayani's claim with one single word: rubbish. The Pakistan army consists of 500,000 active duty troops and another 500,000 on reserve. If Pakistan truly wanted to capture the Haqqani Network they would be able to drag them out of their caves by their beards within a few days.

In a movement that should have floored U.S. policymakers, Kayani was brazen enough to try and inveigle Afghanistan to strike a power-sharing arrangement with the Haqqanis. And Kayani, apparently the spokesperson for the Haqqani group, said they'd be willing to split from and denounce Al Qaeda, which is President Obama's primary rationale for the war. However, there is a higher probability of General Kayani converting to Hinduism than there is of the Haqqani Network ever being decoupled from Al Qaeda.

According to the Long War Journal, Siraj Haqqani, their leader, sits on Al Qaeda's decision-making body. Haqqani's friendship with Osama bin Laden dates back to the war against the Soviets in the 1980s and it was Haqqani that ensured safe passage into Pakistan for many Al Qaeda figures after the collapse of the Taliban in 2001. An Institute for the Study of War analysis concluded that Haqqani was "irreconcilable" and negotiations with him would actually strengthen Al Qaeda and would undermine the raison d'etre for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan over the past decade.

In other words, the Haqqani Network is Al Qaeda. Pakistan has had a close relationship with the Haqqanis for over 30 years, who are still seen as a crucial anti-Indian asset. So, for nine years the Pakistanis protected the Haqqanis and claimed ignorance as to the whereabouts of Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden and the Quetta Shura. Nine years, nearly $300 billion dollars and 1900 dead coalition soldiers later, the U.S. has officially verified that the entire war effort has been focused on the wrong side of the mountains.

A stable Afghanistan is in Pakistan's best interests, but this message has been preached time and again with little to no results, and the U.S. has waited long enough for Pakistan's leaders to uproot the extremists that orchestrated 9/11. But now, it appears as if the international community will have to do it for them.

Edited August 30, 2010 by kdsingh80

[dalsingh101]

No one wants to disturb another Pakistani hornets nest to be honest.

If the west had a clean chance they would flee from Afghanistan as it is. Lets face it, Paks have outsmarted the goray and taken a shed load of their money whilst doing so. Simple as.

[chatanga1]

balochistan tried to remain semi-independent in 1947, but they were crushed by the Pak army over the next 2 years. They been kinda quiet since. Sind tried the same thing in the late 60/early 70s but met the same fate as the Balochis.

[SURYADEV]

Lets face it, Paks have outsmarted the goray and taken a shed load of their money whilst doing so. Simple as.

But to what purpose, cant see where that money has gone and who is benefiting from it.

Maybe its to may for the soldiers at the Indo-Pak border or some swiss bank account.

[tonyhp32]

Pakistan hadn't won. As JB said, the money is probably in the politicans' bank accounts, the common people get shafted and are dying of hunger after the flood. There's probably another disaster on the way in the form of a natural catastrophe or even a nuclear explosion. Pakistan has lost big time from both the first Afghan war and during the war on terror. The country lurches from one calamity to another. When the US leaves, Pakistan will be in bigger danger as they will then face a more belligerant Taleban who will claim to have defeated two superpowers. The likelihood is that there will be violence in Pakistan for a long time yet.

As for balkanising Pakistan, the state could probably quite easily split in four or even five independent states while the same could also be said of India but the successor states would be more in number.

[dalsingh101]

Who said the money isn't being pilfered? It goes without saying that it is. What sort of idiot would even imagine otherwise?

But no one can tell what will happen when the yanks sod off. You'd have to be a bit of a bewakoof not to think that the ISI wont be using its taleban connections to calm things down. Remember these guys help form the taleban originally. Then they'll probably distract everyone with the Indian bogeyman card.

Everyone will be happy. The average Pak by seeing his country more stable and attacking India. Jihadis with a nice juicy holy war against cow worshiping, pusillanimous infidels. No doubt some of our own lot will do their patriotic bit for 'Mother India'.

That being said, I sometimes feel I sense some increased polarisation between Afghano paks and the Panjabi ones these days.

[dalsingh101]

duplicate

Edited August 31, 2010 by dalsingh101

[kdsingh80]

Everyone will be happy. The average Pak by seeing his country more stable and attacking India. Jihadis with a nice juicy holy war against cow worshiping, pusillanimous infidels. No doubt some of our own lot will do their patriotic bit for 'Mother India'.

You are totally forgetting that in future ,the demographics of India will much favour muslims rather than Hindu's.Already Muslims are officially 13.4% and this does not include 40-50 million illegal bangladeshi's .so Unofficially there population could be around 20% at present.Hindu and sikhs are much more money minded and look to western type of model which means less and less kids in Future for these communities While muslims believe in sharia and more kids.

[dalsingh101]

You are totally forgetting that in future ,the demographics of India will much favour muslims rather than Hindu's.Already Muslims are officially 13.4% and this does not include 40-50 million illegal bangladeshi's .so Unofficially there population could be around 20% at present.Hindu and sikhs are much more money minded and look to western type of model which means less and less kids in Future for these communities While muslims believe in sharia and more kids.

So how exactly do you think this will effect India then?

Besides, how can anyone blame sullay for masses of Hindus and Sikhs caring for wealth over their religion?

If we are walking dumbly into a majority Muslim world, who have we got to blame but ourselves?

[kdsingh80]

So how exactly do you think this will effect India then?

Besides, how can anyone blame sullay for masses of Hindus and Sikhs caring for wealth over their religion?

If we are walking dumbly into a majority Muslim world, who have we got to blame but ourselves?

Well may be Hindu's themselves will want to divide India when they see ground realities going against them and muslims may want an undivided India when they sense that they are in majority .Who knows what lies in Future?

[dalsingh101]

Well, the future belongs to those who organise and prepare for it.

If every one else can't be bothered and we walk into a sulla world. I'll take it as God's will.

[SURYADEV]

Well, the future belongs to those who organise and prepare for it.

If every one else can't be bothered and we walk into a sulla world. I'll take it as God's will.

so what should be on our "action plan"?

[dalsingh101]

First thing is to develop the ability to work together to pull off any community wide plans without the usual shenanigans. lol

I think one big problem now is that Sikhi has become so interwoven with Panjab politics, which are backwards and non progressive, that it spreads through the quom. If we had the will and intelligence at the centre (and the investment), we could perhaps spark off a renaissance. We said earlier, where is the quality resources today? Where are the wise leaders too? We just have to have worldly wise leaders now, rustics wont cut it for a trans global community.

But ultimately, I think the biggest difference could be made on individual levels by being more open, kind, strong and involved in studying and practicing Sikhi on a deep internalised level and supporting each other on that journey. I have to say, I think this site has been one of the best places I have found for that in a long time.

Every, if not most Sikhs, need to imbibe the understanding that they are members of a trans global nation. That we want to build this nation up and make it stronger. Not indulge in petty politics and feuding. Which is bloody hard for Sikh Panjabis as it seems to be characteristic. That includes me too btw! If you think about it, we are also going through a phase of complete leadershiplessness too right now.

I'm not smart enough to think of some pervasive plan to get us out of the rut. But I know the litmus test for success will be when we are changing our own society for the better and the wider one around us too, whilst being robust and strong doing it.

Gurdwaras will play a central role in this I'm sure. Convincing leaders also. There is certain nonsense we just have to get over. Like feuding in Gurdwaras and causing bad vibes over theological differences.

We also need to be embedded within but also independent from the wider globalised economy as well. Influential in media for example.

Unless I got this wrong (which I could) I think a large part of the game in future will be a numbers one. How can we grow, significantly and relatively quickly without the very process banging us out of shape?

Materialism, or our obsession with it, needs checking urgently too.

Edited August 31, 2010 by dalsingh101

[kdsingh80]

Well, the future belongs to those who organise and prepare for it.

If every one else can't be bothered and we walk into a sulla world. I'll take it as God's will.

Well to prepare and organise for future sometime you may have to do unethical things like what sikhs did in 1947.Imagine if sikhs had not kicked out muslims

from east Punjab what could have been the present secnario, clashes between hindu/sikhs and muslims over petty issue's.

Anyway I agree with you that if muslim world is future then we have to accept it as god's will

[SURYADEV]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11200179

How to fix flood-hit Pakistan

Guest columnist Ahmed Rashid argues that Pakistan's unpopular civilian government should allow foreign technocrats to sort out the country's mess - or its troubles may only get even worse.

Pakistan is under siege - from flood waters that have inundated 23% of cultivable land and extremist Taliban who have killed over 120 people in the past week.

Meanwhile, there is intense political infighting, calls for martial law and an economic downturn that could last for years.

Some Pakistanis are also asking if the floods may just provide a wake-up call: to push the ruling elite to establish good governance, undertake real redevelopment and poverty alleviation, and ultimately strengthen democracy sufficiently to defeat Islamic extremism.

However, any such hope is countered by the real crux of the current crisis. There has been a complete collapse of trust and confidence in the government and the civil-military ruling elite by the people.

Aid fade

It would seem that years of mismanagement, corruption, bad governance and army rule, punctuated by weak elected governments, have finally taken their toll.

At every turn donor countries, charitable foundations, wealthy individuals or school children inside the country or abroad are refusing to give money to the Pakistani state to alleviate the suffering of nearly 20 million people affected by the floods.

At the international level, donor countries are refusing to commit money to the government, and are channelling their aid to Western and Pakistani non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Less than 20% of the aid pledged so far will go through the government, according to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Meanwhile, public fund raising by charities in the US and Europe is reported to be the lowest for any catastrophic act of nature in recent memory.

The UN appeal for $459m remains far from fulfilled - more than five weeks after the floods began.

The UN said on 2 September that international fund raising had ''almost stalled'' in the previous two weeks, when only $17m dribbled in to UN coffers.

It seems the world has also given up on Pakistan, or at least that its government cannot be trusted by anyone.

Yet, already a fight has broken out between the federal government and the four provinces as to who gets to spend the money.

Meanwhile, some opportunist political leaders are calling for martial law or a French revolution.

Since the floods began, there has been no genuine effort by President Asif Ali Zardari or PM Gilani to put together a truly transparent body that would receive and spend the money to the satisfaction of international donors and Pakistanis.

The central government, the provincial governments, the army and even the National Assembly have bizarrely set up separate flood relief funds. And few Pakistanis are contributing because nobody trusts any of them.

However, major help is on the way with international financial institutions putting together between $2bn and $3bn for rehabilitation and rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure.

Kleptomaniacs

If such funding is truly to arrive than it is time that Pakistan's kleptomaniac rulers restore some public trust.

The politicians need to agree to set up a Trust Fund, much like that which operates in Afghanistan to fund the government, army and police.

Pakistan's Reconstruction Trust Fund could be run by a board that included the World Bank, other international lending agencies and independent and prominent Pakistani economists and social welfare figures with no ties to the government.

Pakistanis would still take all the major decisions, but those who did so would not be the cronies of the president, the PM or the opposition leaders.

Pakistan's finance bureaucracy and army would have seats at the table, but certainly no veto powers over how the money is spent.

Their job would be impartial implementation of recovery overseen by the Trust Fund.

Such a fund would not just monitor the cash, but help the government put together a non-political, neutral reconstruction effort.

It would also help plan long-term economic reforms, such as widening the tax base and insisting that landlords pay income tax.

The government has not tapped the large numbers of extremely competent Pakistani technocrats, NGO workers and economists.

Secession lesson

No doubt the army and politicians would reject such an idea, saying that this would spell the end of sovereignty of a nuclear power and be intolerable for an independent nation.

But the elite is already losing its sovereignty every day if it cannot put the country back together again and regain the trust of the people.

The sovereignty the government has lost in the floods is the biggest loss in the country's history bar one, when the ruling elite lost East Pakistan - now Bangladesh - in 1971.

That loss was also triggered by a national calamity when there was a typhoon in the eastern part of the country as it was then, and no relief response came from the West Pakistani elite.

The political infighting and threats will only get worse as the floods recede and haphazard reconstruction starts.

Reconstruction left to the government will be dominated by local interests of politicians and feudal lords rather than a common, rational plan.

Yet with 5,000 miles of road and rail and 1,000 bridges washed away, 7,000 schools and 400 health clinics destroyed, vast areas of the north still cut off, one fifth of agricultural land under water and the looming threat of epidemics spreading though the flood victims, a coherent reconstruction plan is desperately needed.

That needs greater trust between the government, the army and the people which is just not there.

Ahmed Rashid's book, Taliban, has just been updated and reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication.

His latest book is Descent into Chaos - The US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

[Mr Sardar]

90% of army is punjabis ... brappp punjabis no.1