[Starts out feeling like it's got a crazy implication, but ends up sounding like a mix of part visionary, part sensible, and part just interesting alternative analytic perspective.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/opinion/01harrison.html
The New York Times
February 1, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Drawn and Quartered
By SELIG S. HARRISON
Washington
WHATEVER the outcome of the Pakistani elections, now scheduled for Feb.
18, the existing multiethnic Pakistani state is not likely to survive
for long unless it is radically restructured.
Given enough American pressure, a loosely united, confederated Pakistan
could still be preserved by reinstating and liberalizing the defunct
1973 Constitution, which has been shelved by successive military
rulers. But as matters stand, the Punjabi-dominated regime of Pervez
Musharraf is headed for a bloody confrontation with the country's
Pashtun, Baluch and Sindhi minorities that could well lead to the
breakup of Pakistan into three sovereign entities.
In that event, the Pashtuns, concentrated in the northwestern tribal
areas, would join with their ethnic brethren across the Afghan border
(some 40 million of them combined) to form an independent
"Pashtunistan." The Sindhis in the southeast, numbering 23 million,
would unite with the six million Baluch tribesmen in the southwest to
establish a federation along the Arabian Sea from India to Iran.
"Pakistan" would then be a nuclear-armed Punjabi rump state.
In historical context, such a breakup would not be surprising. There
had never been a national entity encompassing the areas now
constituting Pakistan, an ethnic mélange thrown together hastily by the
British for strategic reasons when they partitioned the subcontinent in
1947.
For those of Pashtun, Sindhi and Baluch ethnicity, independence from
colonial rule created a bitter paradox. After resisting Punjabi
domination for centuries, they found themselves subjected to
Punjabi-dominated military regimes that have appropriated many of the
natural resources in the minority provinces -- particularly the natural
gas deposits in the Baluch areas -- and siphoned off much of the Indus
River's waters as they flow through the Punjab.
The resulting Punjabi-Pashtun animosity helps explain why the United
States is failing to get effective Pakistani cooperation in fighting
terrorists. The Pashtuns living along the Afghan border are happy to
give sanctuary from Punjabi forces to the Taliban, which is composed
primarily of fellow Pashtuns, and to its Qaeda friends.
Pashtun civilian casualties resulting from Pakistani and American air
strikes on both sides of the border are breeding a potent underground
Pashtun nationalist movement. Its initial objective is to unite all
Pashtuns in Pakistan, now divided among political jurisdictions, into a
unified province. In time, however, its leaders envisage full
nationhood. After all, before the British came, the Pashtuns had been
politically united under the banner of an Afghan empire that stretched
eastward into the Punjabi heartland.
The Baluch people, for their part, have been waging intermittent
insurgencies since their forced incorporation into Pakistan in 1947. In
the current warfare Pakistani forces are widely reported to be
deploying American-supplied aircraft and intelligence equipment that
was intended for use in Afghan border areas. Their victims are forging
military links with Sindhi nationalist groups that have been galvanized
into action by the death of Benazir Bhutto, a Sindhi hero as was her
father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
The breakup of Pakistan would be a costly and destabilizing development
that can still be avoided, but only if the United States and other
foreign donors use their enormous aid leverage to convince Islamabad
that it should not only put the 1973 Constitution back into effect, but
amend it to go beyond the limited degree of autonomy it envisaged.
Eventually, the minorities want a central government that would retain
control only over defense, foreign affairs, international trade,
communications and currency. It would no longer have the power to oust
an elected provincial government, and would have to renegotiate
royalties on resources with the provinces.
In the shorter term, the Bush administration should scrap plans to send
Special Forces into border areas in pursuit of Al Qaeda, which would
only strengthen Islamist links with Pashtun nationalists. It should
help secular Pashtun forces to compete with the Islamists by pushing
for fair representation of Pashtun areas now barred from political
participation.
It is often argued that the United States must stand by Mr. Musharraf
and a unitary Pakistani state to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
But the nuclear safeguards depend on the Pakistani Army as an
institution, not on the president. They would not be affected by a
break-up, since the nuclear weapons would remain under the control of
the Punjabi rump state and its army.
The Army has built up a far-flung empire of economic enterprises in all
parts of Pakistan with assets in the tens of billions, and can best
protect its interests by defusing the escalating conflict with the
minorities. Similarly, the minorities would profit from cooperative
economic relations with the Punjab, and for this reason prefer
confederal autonomy to secession. All concerned, including the United
States, have a profound stake in stopping the present slide to
Balkanization.
Selig S. Harrison is the director of the Asia program at the Center for
International Policy and the author of In Afghanistans Shadow, a study
of Baluch nationalism.