[BRIEF NOTE] "Will Pakistan Survive?"
Aug. 30th, 2007 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldWilliam Dalrymple's recent article in Outlook India, "Will Pakistan Survive?", is worth reading, if only as a representation of the common wisdom that the problem with Pakistan isn't the Pakistani people nearly so much as it is a Pakistani state, founded on an alliance between feudal landlords and the military, that combines malign neglect of the population with sponsorship of a variety of religiously and politically extreme ideology. If the Pakistani state is unable to educate or feed or protect its people, then parallel states founded on religious authorities will--the whole point of the Lal Masjid siege is that said mosque constituted itself as the nucleus of a separate state in the heart of the Pakistani capital, issuing laws and administering punishment to perceived miscreants.
What Dalrymple doesn't mention is that Pakistan is becoming less and less able to solve these problems without involving the wider world--the Waziristan War is intimately connected to the NATO occupation of Afghanistan and the wider imperiatives of anti-terrorist campaigns, for instance, the Kashmir issue dominates relations with India, and the government-ordered attack on the Lal Masjid seems to have been prompted by Chinese demands that Pakistan protect the Chinese citizens taken hostage.
It should go without saying that a 21st century Pakistan that becomes as much a cockpit of international relations as 18th century Poland will do no one any good, but the self-willed weakness of the Pakistani state and the imperatives of the great powers seem set to ensure this. No one has an idea how to escape this blind alley, right?
What Dalrymple doesn't mention is that Pakistan is becoming less and less able to solve these problems without involving the wider world--the Waziristan War is intimately connected to the NATO occupation of Afghanistan and the wider imperiatives of anti-terrorist campaigns, for instance, the Kashmir issue dominates relations with India, and the government-ordered attack on the Lal Masjid seems to have been prompted by Chinese demands that Pakistan protect the Chinese citizens taken hostage.
It should go without saying that a 21st century Pakistan that becomes as much a cockpit of international relations as 18th century Poland will do no one any good, but the self-willed weakness of the Pakistani state and the imperatives of the great powers seem set to ensure this. No one has an idea how to escape this blind alley, right?
