Pakistan's Future?

“For every time your gun goes off
A new rebel is born
When there’s forty one bullets
there’s forty one thousand thorns”

- Erik Petersen, Mischief Brew


Pakistan has seen its fair share of warfare throughout the years since its formation as an Islamic State after the Partition, a splitting of India by the British based on religious demographics. The Indian subcontinent was divided, India was giving to Hindus and Sikhs, Bangladesh became Eastern Pakistan (and later during a civil war, Bangladesh) and Pakistan was formed, splitting the state of Kashmir and the Punjab, the latter much to the dismay of Sikhs as it's the founding place of Sikhism,Nakana Sahib, the birth place of Guru Nanak Dev is now in Western Punjab, Pakistan. When the border lines were drawn up what ensued is one of the largest mass migrations of people recorded in history, and is still controversial on the subcontinent, it displaced up to 12 million and up to a million died.


Gandhi is widely accepted as the figurehead for the struggle of independence from the British using the Hindu doctrine of Ahisma, non-violence, although many other figures were prominent such as the Indian revolutionary anarchist Bhaghat Singh. In my opinion, Gandhi and Bhaghat Singh are like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, I see many parallels: both the peaceful King and Gandhi the figurheads of the movement but radicals too had a strong influence on the movements. Gandhi was one of many who met in India along with Winston Churchill to plan out borders, but was against the formation of a Muslim state, despite much inter-communal violence between people of different faiths. This has been portrayed in many films, such as the recent 'Slumdog Millionaire' where Hindus storm a Muslim slum and kill Muslims.



Despite Partition, a large amount of Muslims remained in India and even though the film is based after partition, it's a good insight to how different communities treated each other. A lone boy painted in blue is decorated in the style of the Hindu god Krishna so that those entering are aware of his religion, and therefore will not kill him. Imagine what happened there; but on a much wider scale. The stories told from generation to generation, as Partition is still in living minds for many people on the Indian subcontinent are simply horrifying and some collected stories were published by Penguin which you can buy here. Not all the violence is one-sided, as there was much Muslim on Hindu violence during the Muslim conquest of India and were severely mistreated under the Muslim casts system. For more information on this, check out the Gujarat riots of 2002; religious prejudice-based violence is sadly common in the Indian subcontinent, such as the ongoing Pakistani-Indian conflict of Kashmir.



Three military dictatorships of Ayub Khan (to which Urdu poet and revolutionary Habib Jalib was extremely opposed) Zia-al-Haq and Musharraf, where does this leave Pakistan? Bhutto got kicked out on alleged charges of corruption, reinstated a few years later, kicked out again, self-imposed exile, then reached an agreement with then-prime minister Musharraf where she was granted amnesty and previous claims of embezzlement and all corruption charges dropped. She was later assassinated after a Pakistan People’s Party [PPP] rally just two weeks before the scheduled election. Nobody is quite sure who did it, in Pakistan it’s a ‘whodunit’ on a scale similar to JFK’s assassination. Many think the prime minister himself was to blame when the road was hosed down a few hours later: what does this tell us? What about forensic evidence? My money’s on it’s the same guy who shot Tupac; let’s be honest, they both disappeared with no clear leads despite large numbers of people being around! Joking aside, if she was to win- which did look probable- it’d be Musharraf & Co whose powers would be diminished; ultimately they benefitted. I guess we’ll never know.


Arguably due to the new offensive in Afghanistan in Helmand province, Pakistan, especially the North-West Frontier, has become a haven for the Taliban as Pakistan brought in Shariah Law (which the US backed, but quietly), of course for that specific territory. To put this in reference, our troops are fighting in Afghanistan: are they losing their lives so that we can affectively, more or less, move the problem to a different area? “It’s okay, we can fight the Taliban, they’re in Swat province now, they’re bombing Pakistan, it’s Pakistan’s problem now”? There are Taliban bomb attacks in Pakistan regularly and public support for the elected PPP has diminished; economic unrest is rife with commodities and staples hard to find, not to mention the power cuts. Sugar is almost impossible to get hold of, except on the black market at more than a day’s wages.
Where does this leave Pakistan? A friend in Pakistan told me that public support for shariah law is growing under the rule of the PPP and public support for the government quickly diminishing. Washington called Islamabad ‘the most dangerous place on earth’ and Obama stated that he would be willing to ‘attack Pakistan’, with or without Pakistani consent, exacerbating the situation in an already discontent and troubled country. He's already thereatened troops in the region. This presents a very worrying prospect: would America & Co invade Pakistan?