Is Pakistan Breaking Apart… Again?

The chronic instability of a nuclear power with a history of sharing nuclear secrets with extremists (Iran and North Korea) should trouble all of us. This rather fragile democracy, the poster child for modern corruption, is teetering on the brink of its own civil war and possible fracture into lesser states. It seems to be a pattern that has defined Pakistan since its birth as a modern nation in 1947, when it ripped violently away from India to severe its Islamic policies and population from the primarily Hindu India as the British granted home rule to most of the Subcontinent.

While the British intended a single nation with Hindus and Muslims living together, Pakistani leaders – led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah – had other ideas. Hindus escaped south, leaving homes and possessions behind, and Muslims reversed the process and fled north. It has battled and warred with India, on and off, ever since. The first years saw military rule, and it was not until 1970, decades later, that Pakistan held its first democratic elections.

But part of the original Pakistan, the Bengali area of East Pakistan, felt very uncomfortable with being governed by the vastly more populous and power West Pakistan. Separated from the west by the top of India, East Pakistan began rebelling against West Pakistani power. In 1971, the Pakistani army intervened in what had escalated into a brutal civil war, filled with charges of genocide. West Pakistan also goaded India into the conflict with attacks on the latter’s military bases in the region. Big mistake. Pakistan lost, and East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh. Estimates put the casualties from this conflict at between 300,000 and a staggering 3 million.

Pakistan has rotated between dictatorial leaders appointed by the military with bouts of democratic and free elections. But the shape of modern Pakistan was deeply impacted by the pro-Islamist practices of General Zia ul-Haq (1979-88), who created a period of stability that brought economic growth to the country (as well as a new nuclear weapons program). Some say that this stability was purchased by means of an unholy alliance with Muslim extremists who were placed in strategic positions in universities all over the country, in high office and allowed to establish the fundamentalist schools known as madrassa. Extremist militant Islamists planted seeds into this fragile and corrupt nation under his rule. Today, those seeds have blossomed into malignant tumorous growths.

Baluchistan and the Tribal District, states that border Afghanistan in the southwest, became a mega-extremist region that was virtually ungovernable by the main powers in Islamabad. The region has served as a base of operations for Taliban incursions against NATO forces in Afghanistan (hence our litany of drone strikes there) as well as direct operations within the rest of Pakistan as well. Explosions and violent attacks against government officials by Taliban and their sympathizers have become routine. Taliban executions and attempted executions against those who support educating women and girls are equally frequent.

But the western part of Pakistan has become more violent than ever, taking out Shiite targets (Taliban are Sunnis who hate the Shiite factions), slaughtering civilians by the dozens, most recently in the unstable city of Quetta. As the newly elected government settled into power in Islamabad – under former and current prime minister, Nawaz Sharif – another separatist movement stepped up the violence. On June 15, The Baluch Liberation Army (some of their soldiers are pictured above), a militant separatist group that is fighting for the independence of mineral-rich Baluchistan Province (in that western area), changed the playing field, perhaps forever.

“Two bomb blasts rocked Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province in southwest Pakistan, on [June 15^th], tearing through a bus and then a hospital where the victims of the first attack had been taken… Pakistani officials said that at least 10 female students were killed when the first blast hit a university bus. At least 19 other students were wounded, a police officer, Mir Zubair Mahmood, told The Associated Press.

“A second explosion occurred as gunmen attacked the Bolan Medical Complex, where the wounded were brought for treatment. Senior Quetta officials were visiting the hospital when armed gunmen forced their way into the compound, leading to an exchange of heavy gunfire… Abdul Mansoor, the Quetta deputy commissioner, was among the people killed at the hospital, according to reports…. The attacks occurred shortly after militants destroyed a historic building early [June 15^th] that once was used by the country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The blast set off widespread panic….  Analysts said the attack on the Jinnah building, a national monument, had symbolic importance, signifying the deep rifts in Pakistan.

“At least five militants attacked the building, Jinnah’s Residency, as it was called, in Ziarat, about 74 miles from Quetta. They used rockets and hand grenades, officials said, and a guard was killed. Explosions caused a fire that quickly engulfed the two-story building. The facade was made of timber and was turned to ashes. A charred bricked structure remained barely intact; television images showed the smoldering remains….

“‘In a way, it is an attack on the very symbol of Pakistan, the man who created Pakistan,’ said Ejaz Haider, the editor for national security affairs at Capital TV, an Islamabad-based television network, and one of the country’s most widely read columnists…  Mr. Haider compared the assault on the building to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ‘Those attacks were against the very symbols and values of the United States,’ he said. ‘In a way, this attack is the same thing.’” New York Times, June15th.

Days later, at a funeral in Mardan (in the northwest), at least 27 people were killed and 55 others wounded in a suicide bomb attack. “No group has said it carried out the attack… One witness is quoted as telling Pakistan's Dunya television that hundreds of mourners were attending the funeral when the suicide bomber detonated his device… ‘We all fell down after the blast,’ the witness is quoted as saying. ‘There were bodies and wounded everywhere.’” BBC.co.uk, June 18th.

As Prime Minister Sharif faces down the United States over its drone attacks on Pakistani territory, asserting his independence and beginning the process of weaning his nation from dependence on U.S. military aid, there are many very real questions that face his administration. Will he be toppled by another military coup (his earlier experiences with that same military were exceptionally unpleasant)? Will Baluchistan successfully secede? Will other states follow or unify with Baluchistan if it does? Will Pakistan itself unravel with militants taking more direct control? And most of all, what happens to that massive cache of nuclear weapons… if it falls into the wrong hands?

I’m Peter Dekom, and much more important than what happens in Afghanistan when we leave is what happens to Pakistan over the next few years.