I think only one of your epithets applies: sensible.
Regards,
Sujeet
On Feb 1, 2008 3:49 PM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
> [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.
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