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Article Excerpt
Ever since 9/11, America's preoccupation in Pakistan has been with "terrorism." Anti-American Pakistani militants call it part of their jihad against the U.S.-NATO "occupation" of Afghanistan. Today political stability has become the overriding U.S. concern in Pakistan. President Obama says his administration is "working to secure stability in Pakistan" because he is "gravely concerned" that an unstable Pakistan could become a haven for militants. (1) Pakistan's stability hinges mainly on its interethnic equations, mode of governance, relations with India and the American policy toward Pakistan. Obama aides acknowledge that U.S. policy since the 1950s has continually abetted the disruption of the nation's democratic governance, fueling its disintegrative trends.
The administration is also worried that political chaos could lend Taliban or al-Qaeda militants access to Pakistani nuclear weapons. Yet Washington has pushed Pakistan into an ominous war with the Taliban, which is spawning the chaos that troubles it. To promote Pakistan's stability, the administration is recasting U.S. policy objectives in that country. It is unclear, though, to what extent the U.S. policy shuffle would help the fraying society pull together.
In this article I explore the threats to Pakistan's political stability, foremost among them the ethnocentrism that is inherent in the multiethnic postcolonial state. Punjabi ethnocentrism, in particular, has played a pivotal role in exacerbating Pakistan's separatist movements and impeding the democratic process. Furthermore, Washington has supported Pakistan's dictatorial regimes and used the country's military forces to promote U.S. foreign-policy goals. I also discuss the impact on Pakistan's stability of the continuing "war on terror" (a term the Obama administration has stopped using). Finally, I look into the steps the United States might take to help shore up Pakistan's troubled political and economic institutions.
Pakistan was born in 1947 as an unstable "nation-state." Like many other postcolonial states, it was created overnight out of disparate ethnic communities that had never lived together as a "nation." The previous year, the departing British colonial rulers of undivided India had held an election, partly to determine which Indian provinces wanted to join the "Muslim homeland." Pakistan would be chopped off from the country's Hindu-majority provinces, which together would become modern India.
The All-India Muslim League spearheaded the Pakistan movement and called the election a "referendum" on its Pakistan project. Ironically, in none of the four provinces that make up today's Pakistan (Baluchistan was carved out as a separate province after the creation of Pakistan) did the Muslim League win the election. The legislature of Sindh province had, however, adopted a resolution three years earlier signaling its support for Pakistan. The ethnic groups in each of these provinces, which would be known collectively as West Pakistan, were preoccupied with their ethnic interests. Only the province of Bengal, a thousand miles to the east, elected a Muslim League government. Besides, Muslims in the Indian province of Uttar Pradesh played a key role in the creation of Pakistan.
Years later, the would-be founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, said to me, "Without the victory of the Bengal Muslim League [in the 1946 elections] and the Calcutta riots, Pakistan would have remained a dream." (2) Sheikh Mujib had joined the Pakistan movement as a Muslim League activist and defended Muslims during the Hindu-Muslim riots in Calcutta that broke out over the Pakistan question in August 1946. Part of Bengal, home of the Bengali ethnic community, would join Pakistan and be called East Pakistan. And yet, irony of ironies, East Pakistan would break away from Pakistan 24 years later to become independent Bangladesh, complaining bitterly of the Punjabi political and economic stranglehold on the country.
British Indian Muslims shared a common religious bond, but their religious values metamorphosed into their ethnic lifestyles, and their political behavior was guided essentially by their ethnicity. In undivided Bengal, Muslims were 52 percent of the population, most of them exploited and suppressed by upper-caste Hindu landowners and money lenders. In 1946, they voted overwhelmingly for the Muslim state, primarily so as to rid themselves of caste Hindu exploitation. Muslims in what would become the four West Pakistani provinces--Punjab, Sindh, Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan--had not suffered similar Hindu suppression. In Punjab (which, like Bengal, would be split between Pakistan and India), Muslims were a third of the population but had a strong middle class, while in the three other West Pakistani provinces they made up large majorities.
Most West Pakistani Muslims warmed to the Muslim state after learning that their provinces would become part of it in any case. The inception of Pakistan sparked vicious riots between Muslims and Hindus in Punjab, Bengal and other parts of the subcontinent. These were followed by three full-blown wars and several minor conflicts between Pakistan and India. The Hindu-Muslim riots, the India-Pakistan wars and the Islamic bond fostered Pakistanis' national solidarity. (3) Yet ethnic values and affinity remain strong among Pakistanis and have been exacerbated by the Punjabi military and political elites' domination of other provinces.
Approximately 75 percent of contemporary Pakistan's armed forces, and roughly an equal percentage of its central...
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