By Lawrence Solomon - from the National Post
Pakistan would be a more stable and peaceful place if its four component nations were unstitched from one another
Since Osama bin Laden was found living unmolested in a Pakistani military town, debate has raged over how to deal with this duplicitous, faction-ridden country. Should the United States and others in the West continue to provide Pakistan with billions in foreign aid, in the hopes of currying at least some influence among elements of the Pakistani leadership? Or should we get tough, and declare it to be the state sponsor of terrorism that it is, knowing this course of action could cripple our efforts to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan and drive Pakistan further into the Chinese sphere of influence?
Neither course would be satisfactory and neither should be adopted. Instead, the West should recognize that the muddle it faces stems from Pakistan’s internal contradictions. This is not one cohesive country but four entirely distinct nations, having little in common save their animosity toward one another, a predominantly Muslim faith and Britain’s decision to confine them within the same borders in partitioning the Indian subcontinent more than a half century ago. The West’s only sensible course of action today is to unstitch the British patchwork, let the major nations within Pakistan choose their future, and negotiate coherently with new national administrations that don’t have impossibly conflicted mandates.
The first A in the word “Pakistan” represents Afghania, a province (since renamed North West Frontier) predominantly inhabited by Pashtuns, the same tribal peoples who live in much of adjoining Afghanistan. They mostly share the same Pashto language and culture as well as religion, and they trade among themselves largely as if a border didn’t separate them.
And, they look out for one another, leading Pashtun factions within Pakistan’s intelligence service to serve interests among their cross-border brethren. In fact, a chief source of conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan stems from the separation of the Pashtuns by a British divide-and-conquer stratagem. The North West Frontier should be hived off Pakistan and allowed to vote for independence or union with Afghanistan, a more natural home.
South of North West Frontier lies Balochistan (the “t-a-n” of Pakistan), the largest and poorest of Pakistan’s four provinces, despite providing the country with 40% of its natural gas, as well as oil, copper and other minerals. Balochs, a largely secular and proWestern people with their own language and customs, have repeatedly tried to break away from their forcible incorporation into Pakistan. The most recent attempt, begun in 2005 with rumoured assistance from India and the CIA, has to date been suppressed by Pakistan’s military, by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, and by the many Taliban fighters that Pakistan hosts in Balochistan’s capital, Quetta. Human rights reports, which detail numerous instances of torture and the disappearances of some 5,000 Balochs, peg the number of internal war refugees in Balochistan at 240,000. Balochs, who consider the federal Pakistani govern-ment to be an occupying force, would welcome independence and freedom from their religiously militant Taliban oppressors.
