Is Pakistan hopeless?

[BrainGlutton]

@AK84

1. In 1947, the lands that make up Pakistan now, contributed 1% of British Indias GDP. Its more like 15% and between then and now, the area has experienced continious economic growth (except for a couple of years in the mid 90’s), and there has been massive industrialisation in the Punjab and in Sindh and parts of they Frontier. None of that would have ever happened if Pakistan had remained part of India, especially the India of Nehru and his successors.

Why not? India is a federal republic – the Indus Valley states would have had plenty of freedom of action, and a political voice in New Delhi.

[AK84]

We would have lived under the humoruless, over regulated economy of pre-1991 India. There would have been no green revolution in the 1950’s, no massive industrialisation in the 1960’s. We would have been like Assam or Nagaland in modern day India; a region on the periphery, with ethnic and religious differences and little say in matters,

[BrightNShiny]

@AK84

We would have lived under the humoruless, over regulated economy of pre-1991 India. There would have been no green revolution in the 1950’s, no massive industrialisation in the 1960’s. We would have been like Assam or Nagaland in modern day India; a region on the periphery, with ethnic and religious differences and little say in matters,

I’m not going to speculate on how Pakistan would have fared as part of India, but your post about India’s economy here is completely incorrect.

While I don’t agree with most of the economic choices made by Nehru and his philosophical successors, there was massive industrialization in India between independence and 1991. In particular, heavy industry was non-existent in India prior to independence and by 1991, India had built an entire heavy industry process from scratch.

[AK84]

I never suggested otherwise, my point was that the industrialisation that occured in what is now Pakistan would not have happened.

[BrightNShiny]

@AK84

I never suggested otherwise, my point was that the industrialisation that occured in what is now Pakistan would not have happened.

Ok, I misread.

[MilTan]

@AK84

We would have lived under the humoruless, over regulated economy of pre-1991 India. There would have been no green revolution in the 1950’s, no massive industrialisation in the 1960’s. We would have been like Assam or Nagaland in modern day India; a region on the periphery, with ethnic and religious differences and little say in matters,

I don’t know about the rest of your points, but the Green Revolution came to India at roughly the same time, and was centered on the Punjab. Given that the characteristics of the region that made it suitable for agriculture (being well-irrigated and fecund) applied equally to the parts of the Punjab now in Pakistan, it seems likely that had the area remained entirely in India, the same agricultural advances would have occurred across the region. I see no reason to believe that the food-producing areas in Pakistan would have been left out of the Green Revolution.

Further, while provinces like NWFP may, indeed, have been on the periphery of a unified India, it’s a pretty serious stretch to think that Punjab and Sindh would be anything other than major players in a unified nation.

[MOIDALIZE]

Foreign Policy magazine has a very interesting article which argues that geography is going to be the main driver and predictor of future conflicts (a subject which could make for an interesting thread on its own). Speaking of the Indian subcontinent:

The Indian subcontinent is one such shatter zone. It is defined on its landward sides by the hard geographic borders of the Himalayas to the north, the Burmese jungle to the east, and the somewhat softer border of the Indus River to the west. Indeed, the border going westward comes in three stages: the Indus; the unruly crags and canyons that push upward to the shaved wastes of Central Asia, home to the Pashtun tribes; and, finally, the granite, snow-mantled massifs of the Hindu Kush, transecting Afghanistan itself. Because these geographic impediments are not contiguous with legal borders, and because barely any of India’s neighbors are functional states, the current political organization of the subcontinent should not be taken for granted. You see this acutely as you walk up to and around any of these land borders, the weakest of which, in my experience, are the official ones—a mere collection of tables where cranky bureaucrats inspect your luggage. Especially in the west, the only border that lives up to the name is the Hindu Kush, making me think that in our own lifetimes the whole semblance of order in Pakistan and southeastern Afghanistan could unravel, and return, in effect, to vague elements of greater India.

…snip…

Of course, the worst nightmare on the subcontinent is Pakistan, whose dysfunction is directly the result of its utter lack of geographic logic. The Indus should be a border of sorts, but Pakistan sits astride both its banks, just as the fertile and teeming Punjab plain is bisected by the India-Pakistan border. Only the Thar Desert and the swamps to its south act as natural frontiers between Pakistan and India. And though these are formidable barriers, they are insufficient to frame a state composed of disparate, geographically based, ethnic groups—Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, and Pashtuns—for whom Islam has provided insufficient glue to hold them together. All the other groups in Pakistan hate the Punjabis and the army they control, just as the groups in the former Yugoslavia hated the Serbs and the army they controlled. Pakistan’s raison d’être is that it supposedly provides a homeland for subcontinental Muslims, but 154 million of them, almost the same number as the entire population of Pakistan, live over the border in India.

To the west, the crags and canyons of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, are utterly porous. Of all the times I crossed the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, I never did so legally. In reality, the two countries are inseparable. On both sides live the Pashtuns. The wide belt of territory between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Indus River is really Pashtunistan, an entity that threatens to emerge were Pakistan to fall apart. That would, in turn, lead to the dissolution of Afghanistan.

The Taliban constitute merely the latest incarnation of Pashtun nationalism. Indeed, much of the fighting in Afghanistan today occurs in Pashtunistan: southern and eastern Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. The north of Afghanistan, beyond the Hindu Kush, has seen less fighting and is in the midst of reconstruction and the forging of closer links to the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, inhabited by the same ethnic groups that populate northern Afghanistan. Here is the ultimate world of Mackinder, of mountains and men, where the facts of geography are asserted daily, to the chagrin of U.S.-led forces—and of India, whose own destiny and borders are hostage to what plays out in the vicinity of the 20,000-foot wall of the Hindu Kush.

Pakistan seems to have the same problem that Iraq and many African nations have: official borders that don’t meaningfully reflect the reality of the various tribes and ethnic groups that inhabit that territory.

The article is here.

[AK84]

That article is nothing short of drivel. The Indus should be a border? Fine, well that leaves out millions of Punjabis on one side and Pashtuns and Balochis on the other (and thats not even counting the diasporas). If he had actually conentrated on the Pakistan Afghanistan border when he was crossing it he would have noticed that most of the heights would have been in Pakistan and it would have a clearly demarcated boundry at pretty much all times.

[AK84]

@MilTan

I don’t know about the rest of your points, but the Green Revolution came to India at roughly the same time, and was centered on the Punjab. Given that the characteristics of the region that made it suitable for agriculture (being well-irrigated and fecund) applied equally to the parts of the Punjab now in Pakistan, it seems likely that had the area remained entirely in India, the same agricultural advances would have occurred across the region. I see no reason to believe that the food-producing areas in Pakistan would have been left out of the Green Revolution.

Further, while provinces like NWFP may, indeed, have been on the periphery of a unified India, it’s a pretty serious stretch to think that Punjab and Sindh would be anything other than major players in a unified nation.

Centered on Indian Punjab of the 1950’s (which included Haryana). The green revolution of the 1950’s in Pakistan came specifically in the barren west and south of Punjab, areas which were near desert like before, rather than in the fertile north east (though that saw growth as well). Its unlikely that any area west of Lahore would have seen much attention.

[Aquila_Be]

An interesting recent article by Michael Totten at this LINK on the Taliban and Pashtun Nationalism which also provides a couple of useful maps that show the ethnic breakdown of Pakistan’s regions.

From the Totten article: -

Take a look at two maps. The first shows the geographic breakdown of Pakistan’s patchwork of ethnicities. You’ll notice that ethnic Pashtuns live in the notoriously backward and violent northwestern frontier provinces. Their region extends deep into Afghanistan and covers the southeastern part of that country. These two regions – which are actually a single region with a somewhat arbitrary national border between them – are where most Taliban activity has been concentrated since the United States destroyed their regime in Afghanistan. A second map shows the breakdown of areas in Pakistan currently under Taliban control. You’ll see, when you compare the maps carefully, that almost all areas that are either Taliban-controlled or Taliban-influenced, are Pashtun.

At this stage of the process it’s by no means certain that the mainly Pashtun Taliban forces are certain to overrun the much more densely populated Punjabi part of Pakistan. However, that does not preclude the possibility of a break up of Pakistan as a unified state in the longer term.

[MOIDALIZE]

@AK84

That article is nothing short of drivel. The Indus should be a border? Fine, well that leaves out millions of Punjabis on one side and Pashtuns and Balochis on the other (and thats not even counting the diasporas). If he had actually conentrated on the Pakistan Afghanistan border when he was crossing it he would have noticed that most of the heights would have been in Pakistan and it would have a clearly demarcated boundry at pretty much all times.

I think you may have missed the point of the article. I’m sure the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is clearly demarcated, but that area which is officially the territory of two different nations is dominated by the Pashtuns, a people who don’t seem to hold much allegiance to the governments of Pakistan or Afghanistan.

[AK84]

The article fails to note

1. The Pashtun diaspora all over Pakistan; the city with the largest Pashtun (or as in Pakistan they say, Pakhtun) population? Karachi. There are several major settlements in Islamabad, lahore and in the industrial heartland. The majority of the economic activity of the Frontier is linked to the Punjab and always has been for about 2000 years.

2. The Afghan taliban and the Pakistani Taliban are two seperate entities, with different aims. The Afghan Taliban are the original taliban, the Pakistani Taliban are a grouping of mostly Pakhtun but also from other ethnicities, people who want a Taliban like state in Pakistan. Note the statements made by the Taliban back in December when the Indo-Pak tensions arose.

3. The Taliban in the Frontier have been targeting Pakhtun nationalists in the Frontier, quite viciously.

4. Pakhtuns are pretty well integrated into Pakistans power dynamic, something like 35% of the Army is Pakhtun (for about 20% the population) and 4 Presidents (Ghulam Muhammad, Ayub Khan, Yayha Khan and Ghulam Ishaque) and many other senior officials have been Pakhtun.

5. Even within the Frontier there are a multiple ethnicities distinct from Pakhtuns. The largest are Hindkos, then you have Urmaris, you have Persian speakers (who can also be subdivided into Tajiks, Chitralis and Nuristanis). In the south you have a large concentration of Seriakis and Baloch especially around the industrial area near the Indus (DI Khan for instance).

The article is extremely simplistic and quite well off the mark.