Editorial
Is it too little, too late for Pakistani democracy?
Those who like to live on the edge should take a trip to Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, and experience first-hand the terror of living in a nuclear-armed state that is on the verge of imploding.
Such is the impression of foreign visitors who say the all too palpable tensions prevailing in the country invoke comparisons with Lebanon at its worst or the last days of the Boer-ruled whites-only Republic of South Africa.
Travel a few miles north west of Islamabad and witness how the rule of law has been replaced by a hazy no man's land of uncertain truths defined from day to day by the Taliban or whichever extremist group happens to be in charge of the local shadow administration.
Pakistan was always an artificial creation that beggared belief. Those Muslims who stayed behind in India at the time of independence — Maulana Azad was a prominent example — predicted that the new country created in the name of religion could not possibly endure.
Twenty-four years later, in 1971, they were proved right when erstwhile East Pakistan broke away to form the independent Republic of Bangladesh. Yet bickering continued among and between those communities that continued to be held together in the surviving state of Pakistan.
Further disintegration was always on the cards, but the military dictators who have until recently ruled Pakistan always managed to keep a lid on dissent. They were able to do so by sheer repression, but also by playing one ethnic group off against another.
In recent years Pakistani army commanders further mobilised support by forging an unholy alliance with a variety of Islamic terror groups, whether al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Tayba others.
These groups are the army's legacy for a Pakistan that is slowly struggling to embrace democracy. Some progress has been made by Pakistan's elected leaders who have managed against all the odds to push through long awaited constitutional changes, including a curb on the powers of the president. For the first time in decades authority has returned to the office of the prime minister.
Other changes include the creation of the province of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa — formerly the North West Frontier Province — that is a nod in the direction of the ethnic Pushtuns, who have always demanded a separate identity that keeps them out of the clutches of the Punjabis.
But while the advent of democracy has been welcomed in theory by many, this evolution of Pakistan's identity may be a matter of too little, too late.
The forces unleashed by Islamic terror groups are now engaged in a life and death struggle that pits them against the democratic state as well as a variety of ethnic and linguistic groups. Punjabis, Baluchis, Pashtuns and Sindhis are just some of the communities struggling to assert themselves, if necessary at the expense of the state.
Whether Pakistan can survive these strains remains to be seen. In neighbouring India opinion is divided about whether regional security would be better served by a united or fragmented Pakistan. In the US, the concern is not whether to cope with a fragmented Pakistan, but how to cope with an Islamic power that will emerge from the existing mess.
For the people of South Asia, what happens in Pakistan in the months ahead is a matter of profound concern that will affect their lives for years to come. At the very best they must wait and see. At the very worst they must be prepared to endure and, if possible, help to shape the outcome of the struggle for Pakistan.
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