Since its inception,
Pakistan has been plagued by volatility and chaos engendering speculations about the survival and integration of this state created on the basis of religion. With the passage of time this debate of a breakup scenario has somewhat intensified. The secession of East Pakistan in 1971 gave a certain credence to the arguments of those sections of the intelligentsia who had doubted its long-term existence. Since that episode the speculations of the balkanisation of what was left of Pakistan have been rife and doing the rounds incessantly in debates raging on, especially in the provinces where national oppression has been ubiquitous.
The main reason for this cynical attitude is the relentless crisis and the generalised decline in all vistas of the economy, state and society. But at the present moment in time the intensity of the predicament is so severe and excruciating that a generalised incredulity and disillusionment has engulfed the social psychology of the country. The mayhem in Balochistan, the bloody conflagration in Khyber Pushtunkhawa, the killing spree in Karachi, the lynching pogroms in Sailkot and Tando Adam, the heinous bigotry making the lives of women and religious minorities a nightmare, the sectarian slaughter scourging society, imperialist drones spewing death, the terrorist slaughter, and the vicious intrusion of religious vigilantes in the private lives of people is suffocating society. Juvenile girls are being accused of blasphemy through Ziaul Haq’s draconian laws. Pakistan is in melancholy.
These are the intrusive rudiments of barbarism, the product of the acute crisis of Pakistani capitalism in terminal decay. Adding insult to these injuries is the avalanche of economic and social onslaughts unleashed upon the already impoverished masses. The rocketing prices, escalating unemployment, drastic collapse in living conditions, agonising deterioration in health, education, transport, housing, water, sanitation, electricity and distraught social relations have wreaked havoc. The dominant intelligentsia with its constricted outlook, shackled in the fetters of an obsolete and redundant capitalist ideology, is now the merchant of doom. With this mindset, it can only envisage the horrific scenarios of bloodshed and destruction, disintegration and a gory civil war. Those in power, steeped in plunder, paint a surreal and false picture of achievements they themselves do not really believe in. To cover up the disaster they have wrought, the political, military, judicial and media elite churn up frivolous issues to divert the attention of the masses from the devastation tormenting society.
Although the disintegration or breakup of Pakistan is not ruled out, it is not the immediate perspective. Its disintegration can be of many variants. David Sanger of The New York Times in his recent book, Confront and Conceal wrote the following: “Late last year Barrack Obama told his staff that his biggest single national-security concern was that Pakistan might disintegrate and set off a scramble for its nuclear weapons.” In an earlier work, The Inheritance, Sanger quotes a US spook: “Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a nuclear scientist met bin Laden in August 2001. Mahmood was our nightmare. He had access to the entire Pakistani nuclear programme. He knew what he was doing. And he was completely out of his mind.” To build a nuclear arsenal squandering billions that could have eliminated illiteracy and infant mortality is not very sane either.
These imperialist fears are not completely absurd but they are conveniently exaggerated. The imperialists have phlebotomised Pakistan. The military elite indulged in the US covert and overt wars and in the process accumulated massive black wealth in billions through the drug trade devised to finance the Afghan jihad. Now these financial interests have come into outright conflict. The US strategists detest the Pakistani state’s policy of strategic depth that undermines their plans. Both sides are desperately trying to avoid a direct clash. These conflicts are not confined to the Afghan-Pakistan border areas, but are visible across Pakistan, in particular in Balochistan where a covert proxy war is currently raging on between the US and Chinese. The Chinese are employing the Pakistan army for their control of Gwadar port and the lust for mineral wealth in these rugged mountains. The Americans are trying to deter this venture in every possible way. The Saudi monarchy and Iran’s aristocratic clergy are in another proxy war in the region where the gruesome killings of innocent Hazaras and other ethnic minorities has become a harrowing spectre.
According to The Economist, “Pakistan is not at imminent risk of a fundamentalist takeover. But the long-term trends are in the wrong direction.” In reality, there are many other ‘trends’ that are probable in the long term. A breakup of Pakistan on national lines cannot be ruled out, but a more likely scenario is that this society will continue to fester in the wounds being inflicted by the system and the state until and until a mass revolt erupts. The Pakistani ruling classes and their state have miserably failed to resolve the national question and create a modern nation state. Along with the class repression, the subjugation of the oppressed nationalities, women and religious minorities has intensified. But a national liberation through the patronage of imperialism would further escalate the exploitation of the toiling classes of these oppressed nationalities. The plunder of the resources of these regions will increase momentously. History is witness to the fact that the imperialists have always used and abused the national exploitation of the oppressed nationalities. They support the oppressor or the oppressed nations according to their vested interests in those regions. A genuine national liberation of the oppressed nationalities can only be successful on a revolutionary basis. When this is linked to the class struggle, it can overthrow the state and system that crushes the masses and intensifies the national oppression to fulfil the lust for ever-increasing rates of profit of the ruling classes and imperialists.
The real issue is the fate of the people. There is another scenario expediently concealed by the masters of the universe. It is the perspective of the rise of the class struggle and revolution. States came into existence and they withered and vanished too. Mighty empires arose and became extinct. The integrity, solemnity and sovereignty of the states are rhetoric of the elites that own and plunder these states. Such deceptions cannot last long. The real concern is the wellbeing of the inhabitants of the state. If a state and society cannot deliver the masses decent conditions of life then its existence becomes onerous and vain. It has no right to exist.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]