Will Pakistan Break Up? - Carnegie Endowment for International ...

Remarks by Selig S. Harrison, Director, Asia Program, Center for International 

Policy 

“Will Pakistan Break Up?” 

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 

June 09, 2009. 

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Remarks Not Checked Against Delivery 

I’m going to start with a citation from the Scripture. Scripture for me on the subject 

of Pakistan is an important book called The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s 

Partition, by Narendra Singh Sarila, a retired Indian diplomat who was the ADC to 

Mountbatten. He got unprecedented access to the British archives. In his book he presents 

detailed, definitive evidence showing that as early as March, 1945, Winston Churchill and the 

British General Staff decided that Partition was necessary for strategic reasons. They 

deliberately set out to create Pakistan because Jinnah had promised to provide military 

facilities and Nehru refused to do so. 

This is the key to understanding why Pakistan is so dysfunctional. It’s an artificial 

political entity. The British put together five ethnic groups that had never before co-existed 

in the same body politic historically. The Bengalis were the biggest. They outnumbered all 

of the other four combined—the Punjabis, the Pashtuns, the Baluch and the Sindhis. Five 

became four of course when Bangladesh seceded. 

As it happened I was in Dacca during the Bangladesh crisis of 1971 when the Army 

moved in to crush the independence movement. I had a memorable conversation with 

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in which he said it would be best if the Bengalis did secede because 

Pakistan would be more manageable without them. What he meant was that he would have 

a better chance of running Pakistan in cooperation with the Punjabis if he could get rid of 

the Bengalis. And that’s what happened except that the Army, as you know, eventually 

executed him. 

The Army bequeathed by the British to Pakistan was overwhelmingly dominated by 

Punjabi officers and soldiers. So with the Bengalis gone the Baluch, Pashtuns and Sindhis 

have faced a cruel historical irony. For centuries they had resisted the incursions of the 

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Moghuls into their territories, but now they find themselves ruled by Punjabis who invoke 

the grandeur of the Moghuls to justify their power. Together the three ethnic minorities 

constitute only 33 percent of the population, but they consider 72 percent of Pakistan 

territory to be their ancestral homelands. That is a prescription for built-in conflict. 

Let’s look at the Baluch first because they have an active insurrection going. They 

never wanted to be in Pakistan. They had to be forcibly incorporated in 1958 by a Pakistan 

occupation Army. The army still has cantonments located all over Baluchistan to cope with 

an insurgency that is periodically suppressed and then soon revives. The insurgency is fueled 

primarily by Baluch resentment of the Punjabi economic exploitation of Baluchistan, 

especially the extraction of most of the natural gas used by the rest of Pakistan on what the 

Baluch consider unfair terms. Baluchistan has enormous natural resources including oil that 

can’t be developed until the insurgency ends. There are 22 foreign investment projects in 

Baluchistan now on hold so this is a big debilitating economic problem for Pakistan in 

addition to a political and military problem. 

The Army and its intelligence agencies do their best to divide the Baluch by buying 

off and assassinating their leaders. They have killed two strong leaders of the Baluch 

insurgent forces in recent years, first Akbar Bugti and more recently Balach Marri, making 

them martyrs. At the moment the Baluch armed struggle does not have effective united 

leadership but the six million Baluch are politically more aroused than ever before. There 

are still some moderate Baluch political figures who favor staying in Pakistan if the 

minorities get the provincial autonomy envisaged in the 1973 Constitution, but support for 

independence is growing. The ISI continues to round up Baluch and Sindhis without giving 

them access to lawyers and courts despite the advent of the so-called civilian government in 

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Islamabad. More than 900 Baluch and Sindhi activists have disappeared without a trace. I 

urge you to read the Amnesty International report, Denying the Undeniable: Enforced 

Disappearances in Pakistan, which cites chapter and verse on this massive violation of human 

rights, more than the much publicized disappearances in Pinochet’s Chile. 

By themselves, the Baluch are in a weak position militarily, but they are beginning to 

forge alliances with Sindhi factions that could become significant. What the Baluch and 

Sindhi leaders are talking about is a sovereign Baluch-Sindhi federation stretching from the 

Indian border to Iran. The most obvious impediment to this dream of course is the fact that 

Karachi is right in the middle of the area concerned with a multi-ethnic population. But the 

Baluch and Sindhis point out that Karachi depends on gas and water pipelines crossing 

through areas of the surrounding countryside under their control. 

In my report I conclude that the future of Sind and Baluchistan will depend on how 

relations between India and Pakistan evolve. Until now there has been a consensus in India 

that a stable Pakistan is in the Indian interest. But Pakistan’s failure to act against Lashkar-e- 

Taiba since the Mumbai attacks has led to some re-thinking. 

As Indian anger grows, so does the view that India should support Baluch and 

Sindhi separatism, either as an alternative to full-scale military retaliation against Pakistan or 

as a key part of a two-front military strategy. As an alternative, stirring up the Baluch and 

Sindhis would avoid the risks of a direct military encounter with Pakistan that could escalate 

to the nuclear level and lead to an exodus of foreign investment. As part of a two-front 

strategy, Indian support for Baluch and Sindhi insurgents would keep substantial Pakistani 

forces tied down on the long Sind frontier while others face Indian forces in Kashmir, or the 

Punjab, or both. 

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For the past five years, Pakistan has accused India of aiding Baluch insurgent groups through 

its consulates in Afghanistan but has not provided supporting evidence. These charges have 

lacked credibility because the Baluch have fought with ineffectual small arms. The Baluch 

say their weaponry has been purchased on the black market, with funding from Baluch 

compatriots in Dubai and other Persian Gulf states. Should India in fact decide to give the 

Baluch large-scale sophisticated weaponry, logistical help and funds, they could rapidly 

expand their present force of 4,500 fighters, drawing on the large numbers of Baluch 

unemployed. 

At present, the prospects for an independent Baluchistan, or a Baluch-Sind 

federation, appear remote. But the game-changer would be a war between India and 

Pakistan in which the Indian air force directly supports Baluch insurgent forces. In past 

battles with the Baluch the Pakistan air force has bombed Baluch insurgents and civilians 

alike ruthlessly and the Baluch would need Indian air cover to take and hold territory. 

In addition to their enormous firepower, the Pakistan armed forces control a wide- 

ranging business empire with assets of $38 billion that gives them the economic staying 

power needed to sustain a protracted struggle. 

Whether or not tensions with India lead to the breakup of Pakistan, Baluch and 

Sindhi separatist groups are likely to increase their paramilitary capabilities in the years ahead. 

Thus, unless the central government pursues a peaceful accommodation with the minority 

provinces, Pakistan’s already-serious economic problems will be intensified by debilitating 

ethnic tensions. These tensions will hinder economic development and make the 

implementation of foreign investment agreements impossible in large sections of the 

country. In my report I discuss in detail what is necessary for a peaceful accommodation, 

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especially implementation of the 1973 Constitution leading to a meaningful devolution of 

power to the provinces. 

Now, turning to the Pashtuns, it is necessary to bear in mind that the 41 million 

Pashtuns on both sides of the border have a long history of unity. 

Prior to the British Raj, the Pashtuns had been politically unified since 1747 under 

the banner of an Afghan empire that stretched eastward into the Punjabi heartland up to the 

Indus River. It was traumatic for them when the British seized 40,000 square miles of 

ancestral Pashtun territory between the Indus and the Khyber Pass, embracing half the 

Pashtun population, and then imposed the Durand Line, formalizing their conquest. The 

British subsequently handed over this territory to the new government of Pakistan in 1947 

after a controversial 1947 referendum in the Northwest Frontier Province. The referendum 

was administered under the control of British colonial authorities who openly favored the 

accession of the province to Pakistan. Out of 572,799 eligible voters, only 292,118 voted. 

This was because the referendum was boycotted by many Pashtuns. The Pashtun parties 

that had overwhelmingly won the 1946 provincial elections wanted the referendum to 

include the option of an independent “Pashtunistan” in addition to a choice between India 

and Pakistan. The leaders of these parties were imprisoned prior to the referendum and 

their newspapers banned after their “Bannu Declaration” calling for “Pashtunistan” on June 

22, 1947. Out of those Pashtuns who did vote in tribal gatherings convened by the British 

authorities, all but 2,894 voted for Pakistan. Thus the issue was decided by 50.5 percent of 

the eligible electorate amid charges of blatant rigging that still resonate today. 

After the creation of Pakistan, Zahir Shah’s monarchy, Mohammed Daud’s republic 

and the short-lived Communist regime in Kabul have all challenged Pakistan’s right to rule 

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over its Pashtun areas. At times Afghanistan has espoused the goal of an autonomous 

Pashtun state to be created within Pakistan, at times an independent “Pashtunistan” to be 

carved out of Pakistan and at times a “Greater Afghanistan” that directly annexes the lost 

territories. 

The resistance movement against the Soviet occupation and the U.S. offensive 

against Al Qaeda and the Taliban that began in 2001 have produced deep divisions in 

Pashtun society that make the future of the Pashtunistan” movement uncertain. The 

traditional supremacy of the malik over the mullah in tribal society was weakened when the 

United States, together with Islamist groups in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, channeled 

weapons aid and funding for the anti-Soviet struggle to favored Islamist clients in 

Afghanistan. This was at the behest of the Pakistan Directorate of Inter-Services 

Intelligence. The ISI’s objective was to build up surrogates opposed to the Pashtunistan 

concept. When these surrogates proved unable to consolidate their power after Soviet forces 

left, the ISI turned to the Taliban, which had a Pashtun base but was dominated by clerical 

leaders with a pan-Islamist ideology. Significantly, however, the Taliban government that 

ruled from 1996 to 2001 did not accept the Durand Line despite Pakistani pressure to do so. 

Notwithstanding the divisions in Pashtun society produced by the convulsions of the 

past three decades and the resulting growth in the power of the mullah at the expense of the 

malik, the Pashtuns continue to have a powerful sense of collective identity rooted in an 

ancient tribal structure that still defines their lives. The preeminent British expert on the 

Pashtuns is Richard Tapper, Professor Emeritus at the London School of Oriental and 

African Studies. We should bear in mind what Tapper says: “In spite of the endemic 

conflict among different Pashtun groups, the notion of the ethnic and cultural unity of all 

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Pashtuns has long been familiar to them as a symbolic complex of great potential for 

political unity.” 

Military action in the Pashtun border areas by the Pakistan armed forces, and by U.S. 

predator aircraft, has resulted in widespread civilian casualties. That has had a profound 

political impact. The newly-politicized and radicalized Pashtuns of the Federally 

Administered Tribal Areas, known as FATA, now see themselves as political brethren of the 

Pashtuns in the Northwest Frontier Province and the northern corner of Baluchistan. They 

want economic development, but development under Pashtun control, not under the control 

of the Punjabi-dominated central government. More important, by arousing a Pashtun sense 

of victimization at the hands of outside forces, the conduct of the “war on terror” in FATA 

has strengthened the very Jihadi forces that the U.S. seeks to defeat. The Taliban has its 

leadership base in the Ghilzai Pashtun tribes, so U.S. policy has enabled the Taliban to pose 

as the champion of both Islam and of Pashtun nationalism. 

In the conventional wisdom, one or the other, either Islamist or Pashtun identity, 

will eventually triumph, but there is another equally plausible possibility that the result could 

be what Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Hussain Haqqani, has called an 

“Islamic Pashtunistan,” embracing some or all of the Pashtuns on both sides of the border. 

At a Washington seminar on March 1, 2007, at the Pakistan Embassy, Haqqani’s predecessor 

as Ambassador, Major General (Ret) Mahmud Ali Durrani, a Pashtun, commented that “I 

hope the Taliban and Pashtun nationalism don’t merge. If that happens, we’ve had it, and 

we’re on the verge of that.” 

What does all of this mean in terms of U.S. interests and policies? The reduction of 

ethnic tensions is directly related to how we deal with Al Qaeda and I’ll discuss that first. 

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Then I’ll consider how a breakup of Pakistan would affect the struggle against jihadi forces 

in Pakistan and broader U.S. interests in South Asia. 

To destroy the Al Qaeda infrastructure in Waziristan we have to get the cooperation 

of the Pashtun tribes and the Pashtun Taliban leaders who are giving Al Qaeda sanctuary. 

But in fact what we are now doing reinforces Pashtun support for Al Qaeda. Sending in 

Punjabi soldiers and inflicting Pashtun civilian casualties with drone attacks has increasingly 

driven the Pashtuns into the arms of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. And as I have said earlier 

this has increasingly politicized and radicalized the FATA Pashtuns. Of course the drone 

attacks have had some success but as Bruce Riedel has observed, “it’s like going after a 

beehive bee by bee.” The benefits in my view are outweighed by the political costs. 

My report argues that the United States should stop the drone attacks, stop encouraging 

Pakistan to send in Punjabi soldiers to fight Pashtuns and focus on creating a favorable 

political environment for low-profile covert operations designed to separate the Taliban 

factions from Al Qaeda. Most of the Taliban factions focus operationally on local objectives 

in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They do not pose a direct threat to the United States. The 

secular Pashtun leaders of the Awami National Party were right in trying to get a peace deal 

in Swat and it’s not clear that it was foredoomed to failure. Some of them think that 

Islamabad overreached by insisting on appellate jurisdiction and control of judicial 

appointments. They think that the deal might not have collapsed if Islamabad had been 

more flexible on these issues. 

The United States should encourage peace initiatives with Taliban factions in 

Pakistan just as we are now planning to do at the local level in Afghanistan. The idea of 

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peace deals was discredited during the Musharraf period but those deals were negotiated by 

the ISI and did not have local standing. 

The report also recommends that the United States should demonstrate to the 

FATA Pashtuns that it understands their political aspirations. The FATA Pashtuns do not 

want to be ruled by the Punjabi-dominated central government as is now being proposed. 

What they want is integration into the Pashtun NWFP, as an International Crisis Group 

report on March 13 recognized. This would place them under the same legal system and the 

same Political Parties Act applicable to other Pakistanis. The United States should 

encourage the integration of FATA into the NWFP and encourage the creation of a unified 

Pashtun province uniting NWFP, FATA and the Pashtun areas of Baluchistan and the 

Punjab in one entity to be called “Pakhtunkhwa.” The Pashtuns want a stronger position in 

relation to the Punjabis and U.S. support for that objective would completely alter the 

psychological climate in which the campaign against Al Qaeda is operating. 

As I have said earlier, the emergence of an independent Pashtunistan would not 

necessarily threaten U.S. interests if it is under secular leadership. Similarly, an independent 

Baluch-Sindhi Federation would not necessarily conflict with U.S. interests because the 

Baluch and Sindhi areas are strongholds of secular values and moderate Islam. Most of the 

Sindhis are Sufis and many of the Baluch are Zikris. They reject the Wahabi and Deobandi 

brand of Islam pushed by the Sepa-e-Sehaba and other virulently anti-Shia Sunni groups in 

the Punjab. The Islamist threat is centered in the Punjab where Lashkar-e-Taiba and other 

hard-core jihadi groups are increasingly strong. Nevertheless, my report argues that the 

secession of Baluchistan and Sind is not desirable and not likely if the autonomy provisions 

of the 1973 Constitution are honored and if tensions between India and Pakistan subside. 

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I have used the word debilitating several times because it best describes the impact 

of ethnic tensions on Pakistan. Ethnic tensions will steadily debilitate Pakistan even if it 

hangs precariously together. Reducing ethnic tensions has been made more difficult by the 

United States, which has created a Frankenstein by pouring in military aid for the past fifty 

years. We now confront bloated armed forces that have become a privileged elite and have a 

vested interest in holding onto power. They smother civilian government in Islamabad and 

oppose the constitutional reforms necessary to stabilize the Federation. The United States 

should do what it can to strengthen the civilian leadership and encourage a devolution of 

power but it may be too late. President Zardari does what the Army wants in order to hold 

onto his position and Prime Minister Gillani works with the ISI to outflank Zardari. The 

result is that the civilian government lets the Army and the ISI do what they want in the 

minority provinces and Zardari, despite his promises, is afraid to implement the 1973 

Constitution. 

The U.S. could help to reduce ethnic tensions by cutting back very substantially on 

military aid including the cash subsidies known as Coalition Support Funds and by pushing 

civilian control of ISI. There’s an excellent blueprint for U.S. policy in a book just published 

by Carnegie, Reforming the Intelligence Agencies in Pakistan’s Transitional Democracy, by Frederic 

Grare, who was a member of the advisory committee of my study. 

In conclusion, the U.S. faces a crisis in its relations with Pakistan and India right now 

that bears directly on the issues we have been discussing. The Pakistan government has 

taken no significant action against Lashkar-e-Taiba since the Mumbai attacks and has just 

released two of its leaders who had been under house arrest. None of its militias have been 

disarmed. Despite this, the Administration is asking Congress to approve another $10.5 

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billion in aid, and Congressional leaders are considering all kinds of conditions except the 

most important one—cracking down on Lashkar-e-Taiba. India is increasingly upset about 

Pakistan’s lack of action, and there’s a deceptive calm in India-Pakistan relations. Another 

Lashkar-e-Taiba attack would undoubtedly lead to Indian retaliation including covert or 

overt support for Baluch and Sindhi insurgent forces. So the bottom line is that confronting 

the jihadis in the Punjab, keeping Pakistan together and preventing another India-Pakistan 

war are inseparable. 

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