In just a few years, the physical disintegration of Pakistan has become a distinct possibility.
The contrast between the two countries whose borders were cleaved by the Radcliffe line 75 years ago could not be less striking. While one side is racing towards becoming the world’s third largest economy, the other side has descended into a rudderless morass which is incapable of enforcing its sovereign writ over the territories cartographically ascribed to it. Pakistanis question today whether they were ever masters of their own destiny, or mere playthings for powers indifferent, malicious, and everything in between.
In just a few years, the physical disintegration of Pakistan has become a distinct possibility, being grimly analysed by serious names worldwide, including within Pakistan. The country’s demise is a result of its festering, insuperable internal contradictions violently reacting with the portentous changes underway in the world. The Covid-19 pandemic, the Taliban storming to power in Afghanistan, the fallout of the Ukraine war, India’s increasing geopolitical clout, and Pakistan’s febrile political meltdown have exposed the limitations inherent in its rentier state model. Pakistan’s socio-political dynamics are in an unforeseen tailspin, while the economy is in tatters.
In 2023, it is impossible not to question the very basis of Pakistan’s creation. Its formation sounds irrational, and quixotic, even comical to all of us Bharatiyas; it is an artificial flight of fancy which has descended into an unending nightmare for its own denizens. Pakistan is still the only country so formed when a religious minority separated from the majority. The oddities of such a conception were apparent from the get go, for a greater number of this minority continued to remain in the mother country. A body blow to the Two Nation Theory also came in 1971, when the country was sawn in half and their common religion was insufficient to hold them together. Further, Pakistan remains just a thin strip of land with no strategic depth consisting of seven distinct nationalities—Punjabi, Sindhi, Baloch, Pashtun, Kashmiri, Balti and Shina.
The ones who benefitted the most from this saga, apart from the British, were a select group of rich landowners and business families premised on the assurance that land reforms would remain stillborn. This very landowning class then came to enter into a symbiosis with the country’s outsized army to give rise to an extractive rentier state which is by, for, and of 70-odd families. These families form the skeletal frame of the amorphous being called the “establishment” in Pakistani politics. The economic model of Pakistan has thus remained stagnant—rent out its army, its geographic location, and now its armaments.
With buyers no longer willing, Pakistan is at a loss—no global power has any reason to burn billions of dollars to bankroll Pakistan anymore, with America’s war in Afghanistan ending and China’s ambitions of CPEC practically kaput. Domestically, the imminent promise of Ghazwa-i-Hind after reconquering Kashmir from infidels allowed the army to manufacture consent, but with the army itself being hated after their misadventure with Imran Khan, disillusionment reigns.
The civilizational reawakening underway in India, partially emerging from the confidence of a strengthening economy, has made youngsters think more about Pakistan in context of their own heritage. Is the feeling of nationhood in Bharat higher than sectarian adherence? Should one not question the motives of the principal players, be they Hindus, Muslims or Britishers? Were they thinking about India, or were they merely politicians, playing political games? Was Radhakrishnan correct when he said that Indians had allowed themselves to be divided by the British? Perhaps partition had more to do with British interests—maintaining control over the Indian Ocean and preventing the Soviets from accessing Gilgit’s uranium and sharing a border with India. We are all watching recent Pakistani podcasts with wry amusement. In one, I heard a common man on the street saying that all that Jinnah got was a free plot of land, following which he promptly died.
Pakistan is like an ICU patient with multi-organ failure. The phenomenon of collapse seems to be less a question of if, and more a question of when and how. Major fissures are clearly identifiable. The first of course is an unviable economy; no tranches of IMF money can keep Pakistan afloat with the insatiable greed of the army and the ruling classes—the 70 families. The second could be an ethnic disturbance originating in the Pashtun communities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Afghanistan’s machinations as they try to establish an autonomous Pashtunistan, finally removing (in their eyes) the shame of the Durand line. An independent Balochistan is the wish of many in that province but its very small population makes this a less likely possibility. Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) with their Shia-Sunni divides are other flash points, now that people on the Pakistan side of undivided Jammu & Kashmir are more than ever aware of the better living standards of their compatriots across the LoC. India, on its part, has been sending signals that retaking PoK may be on the cards. Notably, the Pakistani Taliban (with their Afghan compatriots’ blessings) have had recent skirmishes in the strategic area of Chitral, over which India has a legal claim. This area, if it returns to India, would provide a vital land link to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Punjab, the rump, is no longer united as sufficient fault lines seem to be developing between north and south Punjab.
To conclude, there seem to be but two outcomes for Pakistan—it lingers as a single country for a few more years with intermittent monetary infusions but with its peripheries escaping its reach, à la Syria or Lebanon. The second is that it undergoes Balkanization, with Gilgit-Baltistan and PoK making a natural reversion to India, as would be legally allowed by the international community. The attitudes and priorities of the United States, and to a lesser extent China and India, or even Saudi Arabia and the UAE, would determine which of these outcomes would actually occur. India’s stance and behaviour in the event of a break-up of Pakistan is yet another question especially if we are confronted with a large number of refugees. Indeed, we live in interesting times.
- Gautam Desiraju is an Emeritus Professor in the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru (gautam.desiraju@gmail.com)