Fracturing of Pakistan
TALIBAN has blown up over 300 containers and trucks carrying supplies for western troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan is now almost a fixture in the world news. There is an intense insurgency going on in the FATA. It is an ominous affair.
When we talk about what is happening in Pakistan which Pakistan are we talking about? There are several. There is the one that came into being on August 14, 1947, with its capital in Islamabad, and is a member of the UN. But this state is under threat from the many groups and entities that generally pass muster under the generic name of Taliban. Their war against the state of Pakistan is a serious matter.
Another challenge to the state of Pakistan comes from several ethnic and regional nationalistic parties, especially in the provinces of Balochistan and Sindh. They demand more autonomy from the center and, if things continue to go wrong, they may demand separate states. All these nationalist parties carry the germs of secessionism.
There are several parties in Balochistan that are fighting a second insurgency inside Pakistan. There are many and older nationalist parties in Sindh. Sindh is a peculiar province, where aware citizens think with the minds of nationalists but vote emotionally for the legend that the Bhutto dynasty is. But the strength of the nationalist parties is much greater as many of the PPP members in Sindh can easily pass muster as nationalists and hope that they can achieve empowerment of the Sindhis by riding on the bandwagon of PPP with its heavy emotional symbolism provided by the Bhutto dynasty.
The third is civil society versus the military-dominated state of Pakistan. Pakistan is technically a democracy, though in reality it is a rule of social and economic elites mobilised under the leadership of the bureaucracy and the military and mediated by a few professionals. These individuals acquire real strength. Among the social elites are big landowners with a distinctly feudal mentality and values; they are in cahoots with up and coming industrialists and bankers.
They had surrendered their claim to leadership in the early 1950s, when this transition was typified by the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan. After that, Pakistan has never been a true democracy to this day. Today, a troika comprising the parliamentary leadership, the army and the feudals, industrialists, bankers etc rules it. The common people are subjects of these ruling elites.
A new, educated middle class is emerging, mainly in Punjab but also as isolated groups in cities of Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP. It is the progeny of industrialisation and commercial expansion. Still, they want rule of law, proper democracy and modernism.
Where does one place the powerful groups of religious clerics that were organised in Muttaheda Majlis-i-Amal? One of them, Jamiate Ulmai Islam led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, is now a part of the PPP-led coalition. Even the party that Musharraf founded, PML (Quaid), looks like coming into the coalition with the PPP. This is becoming a kind of rainbow coalition.
An unusual factor in the creation of this coalition is the United States of America, which, with Britain, ensured reconciliation between ex-president Pervez Musharraf and the late Benazir Bhutto with a view to prosecuting the War on Terror more vigorously by giving Musharraf's regime a democratic façade.
Nawaz Sharif of the PML (N) appears to have been brought into the loop through the good offices of the Saudis. As it happens, Benazir died in mysterious circumstances, and Musharraf was forced to resign by the new combination promoted by the West, viz. PPP and PML (N), which was originally meant to support Musharraf. But the Americans quickly realised that events had moved too fast in Pakistan and Musharraf had lost his utility. Nawaz Sharif and Zardari, with American concurrence, forced Musharraf to go.
America had forced the Musharraf regime to hold a reasonably fair election and transfer power gradually to the new government; credit for that goes entirely to the Americans. People jocularly call the American ambassador to Pakistan as the Viceroy. America has become one of the major decision makers in Pakistani politics.
The American leadership of Pakistan politics has helped the rise of the Taliban in Pakistan, who have now made the Pakistan state's control over the tribal areas nominal and partialduring the day it is Pakistan territory but after nightfall it becomes Taliban territory.
In this war, quite like America in Afghanistan, Pakistan is not winning. It even looks like losing control of the capital of the Frontier Province: Peshawar. The ease with which the Taliban torched well over 200 containers, trucks, IPCs and tankers, and other events, shows that Peshawar is menaced in the way many other areas are.
Pakistan is also not winning the less intense but persistent insurgency in Balochistan. Pakistan accuses Karzai's government and India for its troubles in Balochistan and the NWFP. Little credibility can be attached to either the accusation of Afghanistan-India collaboration against Pakistan or its absence. Both are possible because of various differences and interests of these states.
It has to be remembered that America's basic interest in Pakistan is because of Pakistan's location and its army. America has hired the Pakistan army by giving military aid. Therefore, the alliance with the US is for military purposes and is focused on the Pakistan army, which makes the army chief the principal or leading member of the troika.
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