the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

and West Pakistan, nearly a million people were killed, mostly by
sectarian mobs. Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah—a moderate
who believed that a united India would have marginalized Muslims—
was unclear whether he wanted a secular state or an Islamic one. He
said things that could be interpreted both ways: “I do not know what
the ultimate shape of this constitution is going to be, but I am sure that
it will be of a democratic type, embodying the essential principles of
Islam.” Whatever that meant. Jinnah may well have had the country’s
future all mapped out in his head, but he died of tuberculosis and lung
cancer just over a year after Pakistan was founded, leaving Pakistanis to
debate for generations to come whether he wanted the country’s
national motto to be “Faith, Unity, Discipline” or “Unity, Faith,
Discipline.” For many, this was not just semantics—it indicated which
precept was to be most important in Pakistan, and hinted at the
identity crisis over secularism and Islam that would soon eat at the soul
of the nation.
After Jinnah died, it was all downhill. The international community
allowed almost half the prize jewel of Kashmir, home to a Muslim
majority and precious water supplies, to stay in India, a decision that
would turn into the regional bugaboo, sparking wars and shadow wars
and cementing Pakistan’s national identity as the perennial victim of
India. Partition left other, less-obvious wounds. Pakistan now had only
one institution with any sense of stability, training, and memory: the
army. And so army leaders, watching incompetent civilians squabble
over power and democracy, would feel compelled to step in, over and
over. Every military coup would squash civilian institutions and any
hope of civil society. Pakistan was supposed to be ruled by a
parliamentary democracy with Islam as the state religion and guiding
principle for the nation’s laws; in truth, Pakistan would be ruled by the
seat of its pants, by the military and its associated intelligence agencies,
either through a direct military coup, or, when demands for elected
leadership grew too loud, through elections with military string-pulling
in the background.
Meanwhile, neighboring India, led by the dynasty of the Nehru
family, leaders who in the formative years of the country never seemed
to die, had been left with most of the subcontinent’s people, land,
natural resources, roads, and institutions. Democracy took hold, largely