The End of Pakistan?

Hardly. For those who are confused, some have claimed that the fighting in the northwest of Pakistan, especially in the Swat Valley and nearby areas such as Buner indicate that the Taliban and other similar militant groups pose a serious existential threat to Pakistan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8013677.stm

Sad to say, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is among these prophets of doom. Now, I'm not just refuting these claims because I don't want to sound pessimistic. In fact, I have often been criticized for being pessimistic. But I don't see these gloomy predictions as being based in fact.

The first reason that I doubt the Taliban's ability to pose an existential threat to Pakistan is the fact that there are massive ethnic differences between where the Taliban are popular and the rest of Pakistan. The Taliban are overwhelmingly Pashtun, an ethnic group which inhabits the northwest of Pakistan, and much of Afghanistan. Pashtuns compose around 12% of Pakistan. The only other ethnic group in Pakistan which shares relatively close ethno-linguistic ties is the Baluch, who are a mere 4% or so of Pakistan. The main ethnic group in Pakistan, the Punjabis (around 50%) don't share much in common culturally with the Pashtun. Their language is different, and many Punjabis have some affiliation with Sufi orders, which the Taliban reject.

Furthermore, politics in general in Pakistan tended to be divided (to a considerable extent, though not completely) along ethnic lines. For example, the PPP (led by the Bhutto family) is most dominant in Sindh amongst Sindhis, although it has strenght in parts of the Punjab. Its main rivals, the PLM-N and PML-Q are strong in the Punjab. Both however, have considerably less strength in the northwest, where much of the fighting is. For example, in the legislature of the NWFP, which includes Swat and Buner, the most powerful party (with 38 seats) is the Awami National Party, which is a Pashtun nationalist (secular) party. The PPP has 20 seats, and is followed by Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (a coalition of religious parties which wants Pakistan to be a theocracy opposes ties to the US) with 14 seats. The PML-N has 7 seats, PML-Q has 6, and a party which broke from the PPP has 6. The remaining 33 seats are unaffiliated with any party. By contrast, in the Punjabi legislatue, the PML-N is the leading party with 171 out of 370 seats. They are followed by the PPP (107), PML-Q (83), and the MMA has 2 seats. In Sindh, the leading party is the PPP (93 out of 166), followed by the MQM (which represents mostly the immigrants from India as a result of partition and their descendants) which has 51 seats, PML-Q (9), and the Awami National Party has 2 seats. The MMA has none, and the same goes for the PML-N.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/pakistan/images/map-ethnic-1.gif

This map demonstrates to some extent where the various ethnic groups in Pakistan are distributed. It quickly becomes evident that politics are very closely tied to ethnic divisions. And the fact is that even in Afghanistan, the Taliban was overhwhelmingly Pashtun, even though Afghanistan is only 42% Pashtun.

Furthermore, there is the military infeasability of Pakistan takeover. The fact is that much of Pakistan's population is in the low-lying, flat provinces of Sindh and Punjab. If the Taliban were to venture into these areas, the Pakistanis could call in their air force. The Taliban have no reliable method of bringing down aircraft. The only reason the use of airstrikes has been unsuccessful is that they are fighting in their native terrain, which is mountainous. Out in a nice, flat plain, they would be sitting ducks, and would be pummeled in a matter of minutes if not seconds.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Pakistan_Topography.png

The link above is to a topo map of Pakistan. In case you aren't familiar with the term, it means that it physically demonstrates the variation in altitude (basically shows how mountainous or level parts of the country are).

I am tired right now, so this article will be continued at a later date. But, I will try to sort of give you a sense for my opinions. Basically, I've shown that the Taliban and other groups don't really pose a existential threat to Pakistan. But, there is no doubt that they can continue to dominate the country's northwest and basically set up an effectively independent nation (or nations, as I will show in part 2), which is undoubtedly a problem, and cannot be allowed to happen (though arguably it has already happened to some extent).