Is India prepared for an imploding Pakistan?

Sh Krishen Kak emailed me this article written by Sh N S Rajaram in 2001 with the preface: “Prophetic!“. 

In an email yesterday, Sh Rajaram mentioned how the “…attack on the Sri Lankan team is eloquent testimony to the collapse of the state….”.  I am afraid one of my worst nightmares - a rapidly disintegrating Pakistan – may be closer to reality than I thought.

*** Excerpts from “Meltdown in Pakistan” (2001) ***

The Indian establishment, obsessed with the insurgency in Kashmir, appears to have totally missed the cataclysmic changes taking place across the border that may soon render the Kashmir issue all but irrelevant.

Here is the reality: Pakistan is now a state on the verge of collapse. While world attention is focused on the so-called “nuclear flashpoint” of Kashmir, the State of Pakistan is being overwhelmed by forces of history and geography. A state with less than a tenth the resources of India, Pakistan is forced to fight insurgencies on its frontiers perhaps ten times as great as in Kashmir. It is only a matter of time before the institutions of the state totally breakdown. And this is because of the fundamental irrationality of Pakistan, which is less a state than a turbulent frontier that a small Punjabi elite is attempting to hold together.

…Here is what it means in simple terms: while world attention is focused on the proxy war in Kashmir, conflicts far more fierce and fundamental in nature are taking place in the borderlands of Pakistan � in the Northwest Frontier, Baluchistan and even Sind. This has set the state of Pakistan on a course of irreversible dissolution (see the “Middle East After Realignments” map below).

…Of course border problems are nothing new, but in the case of Pakistan it is of an altogether different dimension. The reason is simple: Pakistan is made up mostly of border regions with a small Punjabi core. As Kaplan puts it:

“PAKISTAN covers the desert frontier of the Subcontinent. British civil administration extended only to Lahore, in the fertile Punjab, near Pakistan’s eastern border with India; its Mogul architecture, gardens, and rich bazaars give Lahore a closer resemblance to the Indian cities of New Delhi and Calcutta than to any other place in Pakistan. But the rest of Pakistan - the rugged Afghan-border regions of Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province, the alkaline wasteland of Sind, and the Hindu Kush and Karakoram Mountains embracing Kashmir – has never been subdued by the British or anyone else.”

It is a small chunk of India latched on to a huge and hostile border region. It is a total mismatch.

This might be an oversimplification but his basic insight is valid:

Pakistan is made up of a vast desert frontier with a small Punjabi core.  This unruly desert frontier is what a Punjabi elite and a sprinkling of Mujahirs like Genral Musharaf are trying to rule, while holding up Islam as the unifying force. But this has not made the people on the frontier hate them any less…Pakistan’s answer to this encirclement was to create the Taliban through which to control Afghanistan itself. …This obscured for a while the fundamental irrationality and the chaos that is inherent in the makeup of Pakistan. The flow of foreign money, especially during the Afghan War, obscured also its economic fragility of the small productive Punjab trying to support the vast unruly and unproductive frontier.

…To compound this folly, Pakistan has now embarked on a course of destabilization of India itself. It is difficult to see how an unstable India helps Pakistan any more than an unstable Afghanistan does. But today Pakistan is a state that is distinguished not by reason but dogma, beginning with its geography. Its belief in Islam as the solution to all its problems has led it to define itself as the Jihad state par excellence in the world today. It has made it also the most despised country in the world. It sees spreading terror as its salvation. This bespeaks a mind stupefied by religious dogma to a point beyond reason and logic. This is Talibanism pure and simple.

This has now come back to haunt it in the form of Afghan refugees and lawlessness on a scale that has overwhelmed the Pakistani establishment.

…With such mighty forces at play, it is clear that a Punjabi-Mohajir elite in a slender sliver of land cannot hope to control a vast and “lawless frontier” – as Kaplan puts it. The only natural boundary between this frontier-land and the plains is the Indus River, which leaves Pakistan with no strategic depth. The question then becomes one of survival – not exercise of authority. It also shows the futility of India placing trust in any Pakistani leader, in the hope of achieving peace in the region. No leader can control either geography or the forces of sectarian hate and violence that dominate the region. It is only a matter of time before the state crumbles under the weight. When that happens, all of Pakistan will become a “lawless frontier”. …The consequences for the region can be cataclysmic, and India should prepare for the inevitable outcome.

…By one of those coincidences of history, this institutional meltdown in Pakistan is paralleled by a meltdown in the Indian intellectual establishment. It is a sobering reminder of the bankruptcy of the Indian (Leftist) intellectual establishment that this fundamental analysis of the problem of Pakistan and its consequences comes from a Western reporter in far off America and not anyone in India.

…The breakdown of reason in Pakistan is paralleled by a similar breakdown in India. The dogma of Jihad has its counterpart in the dogma of appeasement. Fortunately their days are numbered. The meltdown in Pakistan will consume its advocates in India also.  What is needed therefore is a new way of looking at the problem - one rooted in ground realities rather than fantasy.

The first point to note is that Pakistan will not crumble quietly. It is too steeped in hate and violence to disappear like the Soviet Empire.  More likely, it will be like former Yugoslavia. Eventually the land beyond the Indus will return to being the frontier that it has always been, and the Punjabi-Mohajir colony calling itself Pakistan will be struggling for survival.

…Here is the historic pattern previously alluded to. Whenever there was a weak state in the Punjab region, it has fallen before invaders from the northwest. This was the case when it was invaded by Darius, Muhammad of Ghazni, Timur, Babar and Nadir Shah. On the other hand, whenever the Punjab was part of a powerful state, it has turned back the invader. This is what happened when the Greeks, the Huns and Afghans in the time of Ranjit Singh tried to invade the planes.

…Saving Punjab is as much India’s responsibility as it is Pakistan’s.  India cannot let these invading forces cross the Indus and turn West Punjab into a wasteland. The only way for Punjab to survive is to let the frontier be frontier and rejoin India - its natural home. But is the Punjabi ruling elite capable of such vision? As one Pakistani (Punjabi) journalist told Kaplan, “We have never defined ourselves in our own right – only in relation to India. That is our tragedy.”

…Punjabis should see for themselves that Pakistan is a fantasy that died the day Bangladesh broke away…The choice for the Punjabis of Pakistan is clear. Forces of history and geography are against them. They can return to their natural home in India as the proud citizens of a great power or continue their sordid existence as a client state that can be hired by a patron whenever a dirty job needs to be done. But even this is precarious and short-lived existence….

For India the option is clear. Pakistan as it exists today is facing a meltdown. Changes of government and leaders will not turn back the elemental forces now in play. And negotiations and treaties with a melting state are meaningless. As India becomes a great power, the Pakistani Punjab and the land east of the Indus River will inexorably be drawn into India. And the Indus River will again be its natural boundary. There will be many challenges, but the goal is clear: to minimize the damage and destruction during this historic reunion, which I now feel is inevitable. In summary, India can no longer afford the luxury of being a soft state, continuing to avoid hard decisions and actions. A soft state at this critical juncture in history may also face a meltdown like Pakistan.

*** End of Excerpts ***

Related Posts:

A strategic response to terror – “Balkanization” of Pakistan? 

The nonsense about “non-state actors” 

Pakistan: A State-sponsor of Terrorism? 

All roads lead to Pakistan (once again) 

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and The “Raja-Mandala” approach to containing Pakistan