|
Pakistan
Subversion and Civil Unrest
Internal threats to Pakistan come from several sources. The greatest
danger to the democratic constitutional structure is posed by
the recurrent intervention in the government of the Pakistani
military and, since the Zia years, by the president who, under
the controversial Eighth Amendment to the constitution, is empowered
to arbitrarily dismiss the prime minister and National Assembly
as well as the provisional governors. It could be argued that
the military has only intervened when the political situation
has deteriorated hopelessly and that the threat is in fact from
much more deepseated problems.
Another danger is the problem of ethnic unrest. Punjab, with
almost 60 percent of the population, dominates almost all aspects
of national life. This fact is resented by smaller ethnic groups,
all of whom have at one time been actively dissident.
For the most part, with the exception of Sindh, the situation
was quiet in the early 1990s. Sparsely settled Balochistan required
an extensive pacification campaign by the army from 1973 to 1977,
and both Afghan and Soviet involvement was alleged. After the
war in Afghanistan, however, there was no source of outside support
and no significant violence. The potential for unrest remains,
however, because Baloch feel threatened by the growing numbers
of non-Baloch moving into the province. The North-West Frontier
Province has long been restive and subject to Kabul's blandishments
on the basis of shared Pakhtun identity, but Afghanistan no longer
offers a feasible alternative, and the Afghan Pakhtun tribal groups
have participated rather well in Pakistan's modest prosperity.
Some Kashmiris in Pakistani-held Azad (Free) Kashmir probably
envision a future independent of Pakistan, but their attentions
have been absorbed by the problems of Indian-held Kashmir.
In the early 1990s, the principal challenge in civil unrest came
from Sindh, Pakistan's second most populous province, where the
indigenous population was under increasing pressure from non-Sindhis
who had migrated there. Based on their ethnic identity, Sindhis
have formed several political movements, notably the Jaye Sindh,
which the government perceived as threatening to Pakistan's unity.
Islamabad also claimed that these groups were receiving help from
India in their quest to establish a "Sindhudesh," or independent
homeland for Sindhis. The muhajir (immigrants from India
and their descendants) minority in Sindh, which dominated Karachi
and the other cities, have been in sharp conflict with the Sindhis
and other ethnic groups. Further, large numbers of kidnapping
and bombings in Sindh--the virtual breakdown of law and order--necessitated
the imposition of army rule in 1992 (see Prospects for Social
Cohesion , ch. 2).
An additional source of unrest has been the rampant gun culture
and spread of narcotics-based corruption, particularly since the
war in Afghanistan. Pakistanis have always been well armed, but
the availability of cheap, modern weapons has meant that criminals
and private citizens have significant firepower at their disposal.
Because most violence is criminal or anomic, it does not pose
a direct threat to the state, but should the crisis of governability
in Sindh spread more broadly, it could place unbearable stress
on the nation.
In the early 1990s, foreign-sponsored subversion in Pakistan
appeared to be insignificant. The Afghans were too preoccupied
with their own concerns to agitate along the frontier, and the
Soviet Union, which had long had adversarial relations with Pakistan,
had fragmented into a number of self-absorbed states occupied
by the struggle for survival in a new postcommunist world. India
had ties to dissident groups in Sindh and perhaps elsewhere; these,
however, were probably maintained in order to remind Pakistan
that its involvement with Punjabi Sikh and Kashmiri Muslim insurgents
in India was not cost-free. In its more youthfully exuberant days,
the Islamic regime in Iran was involved in subversive support
of Shia elements in Pakistan, but such activity was no longer
a significant factor.
During the Zia period, a group called Al-Zulfiqar, operating
from Damascus and Kabul and seeking to destabilize the government
through terrorist actions hijacked, an aircraft in 1981. Murtaza
Bhutto, a son of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was involved, and AlZulfiqar
claimed to have some relationship to the Pakistan People's Party
(PPP), which was totally denied by the PPP. Although authorities
have reported continued activity by AlZulfiqar , its existence
is shadowy at best, and with the return of democratic rule, its
activities have been insignificant. There are no other known,
organized subversive groups that threaten the government in any
serious way.
Pakistan's attitude toward terrorism is somewhat more ambivalent
than that of most other countries. On the one hand, Al-Zulfiqar
demonstrated to Pakistan the importance of international cooperation
in combatting international terrorism as manifested in airplane
hijackings and bombings. On the other hand, however, Pakistan
has had no qualms about supporting insurgents in India, some of
whom were engaged in activities that can only be described as
terrorist.
In January 1993, the United States warned Pakistan that it was
under "active continuing review" for possible inclusion on the
Department of State list of terrorist countries for its alleged
support of terrorist activities in the Indian states of Punjab
and Kashmir. By July, however, the United States had withdrawn
its threat, having determined that Pakistan had implemented "a
policy for ending official support for terrorism in India."
As Pakistan approached the end of its first half-century of existence,
its security problems had changed yet were in many ways the same.
The global setting had altered radically, but the enmity with
India remained a constant, although it had gained in predictability
and, probably, stability. Subversion was still a potential rather
than an active threat. Problems of law and order were more acute,
but the means of dealing with them had not changed greatly. Rather,
Pakistan's security problems were rooted in its own polity and
society. Repeated political collapse, corruption, inability to
define its ethnic and religious identities, and failure to meet
the needs of the people--these are challenges that could eviscerate
a state even with the most capable military machine and efficient
security apparatus. Pakistan, as it considers its continuing security
dilemma and the international image it wishes to project, must
energetically confront and deal with these harsh realities.
* * *
The government of Pakistan goes to considerable lengths to protect
dissemination of information about its armed forces, making research
on the military difficult. One of the few officially sanctioned
publications is Defenders of Pakistan by Brian Tetley,
essentially a coffee-table book but with useful information on
the role, functions, and organization of the armed forces. For
early history, Fazl Muqeem Khan's The Story of the Pakistan
Army remains an indispensable source. Research by United
States and Pakistani scholars during the 1980s has considerably
enriched the understanding of the military. The historical picture
is amplified by the two volumes of Shaukat Riza's The Pakistan
Army and Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema's Pakistan's Defence Policy,
1947-58. Hasan-Askari Rizvi has contributed two excellent
studies--The Military and Politics in Pakistan and Pakistan
and the Geostrategic Environment, both of which cover the
modern period, as does Robert G. Wirsing's Pakistan's Security
under Zia, 1977- 1988. Foremost in the analytical field is
Stephen P. Cohen's The Pakistan Army. The most current
information is available from the annual International Institute
for Strategic Studies' The Military Balance and Jane's
Defence Weekly, as well as several publications authored
by Richard P. Cronin and Barbara Leitch LePoer of the Congressional
Research Service of the Library of Congress. Of these, South
Asia: U.S. Interests and Policy Issues is particularly useful.
(For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)
Data as of April 1994
|
