commentary
What Is Really Happening
in Pakistan?
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
Throughout the cold war,
the Pakistani left and
ethno-nationalists struggled
together against the dominant
military establishment backed by
American imperialism. As the
New Great Game unfolds in the
region, the need to revive this
historic alliance is greater than
ever, but, in the short run, the
prospects of such a revival
seem remote.
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar (amajid@comsats.net.pk)
is affiliated with the People’s Rights Movement
in Pakistan and is also with the Lahore
University of Management Sciences.
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T
he collapse of Pakistan has been
prophesised countless times in the
62 years since the Partition of I­ndia.
The conspiracy theories doing the rounds
at present are, therefore, hardly a novelty.
It is true that more serious questions
are being raised about Pakistan’s future
in the present conjuncture than ever
before, but it is also true that most of the
doomsday scenarios in circulation pay little
attention to social forces and political
alignments within Pakistan, and focus
almost e­xclusively on the vagaries of the
“Great Game”.
Even if (one or many) international
powers are committed to redrawing the
map of the region, without the support of
a critical mass of political players within
Pakistan no such project is tenable.
While the western corporate media ob-
sesses about the Islamists and Pakistan’s
nuclear weapons, the true nature and ex-
tent of Pakistan’s internal fragmentation
remains underspecified. From the outset
Pakistan has been a state that has refused
to accept its inheritance of multiple and
relatively well-constituted national groups.
The rot set in before Partition when
Congress influentials like Sardar P­atel
insisted that Pakistan would sooner or
later be incorporated back into Mother
I­ndia. Such veiled threats provided the
perfect foil for bureaucrats and generals
trained in the best colonial tradition to
whip up frenzy after frenzy about India’s
hegemonic d­esigns and thereby thwart
the nation-building process even before it
had b­egun.
Nation Never Made
And indeed a nation – Pakistan – has
never become. Sindhi, Baloch, Bengali and
Pashtun ethnic-nationalities have never
acquiesced to the structure of power in
which Punjabis and Urdu-speakers domi-
nate under the guise of defending Islam
march 6, 2010  vol xlv no 10  EPW   Economic & Political Weekly
and the cultural legacy of Mughal north
India. Thus, east Pakistan seceded in 1971
– still the only instance of a majority popu-
lation seceding from a minority in the
modern era – and ever since the remain-
ing underrepresented ethnic-national
groups have continued to challenge the
unitary state.
Throughout the cold war, ethnic-­
nationalists and the Pakistani left worked
collectively towards what they perceived
to be a shared goal: to transform the uni-
tary state into a socialist federation. Until
the Sino-Soviet split the alliance of leftists
and nationalists had simple choices to
make about its cold war alignments. Sub-
sequently, matters became more comp­
licated. Even so, not until the collapse of
the Soviet Union did things change
d­ramatically.
The left fractured (even while some
small Trotskyite factions attempted to fill
the void), while the once convergent inter-
ests of the various ethnic-nationalists
started to diverge. The Pashtun middle
class became increasingly co-opted into
the civil bureaucracy and military. Radi-
cal Pashtun nationalism had already been
dealt a decisive blow by the cultivation of
jihadi militancy from 1977 onwards. Sin-
dhi nationalism developed in an ambiva-
lent direction following the rise of the
P­akistan People’s Party (PPP) under Sindhi
leadership and the subsequent emergence
of the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) in
the 1980s, which marked the culmination
of the creeping demographic and political
changes in urban Sindh that had started
with the Partition migrations. The Baloch
remained the least integrated and aliena­
ted from the state but the wider objective
environment ensured that Baloch nation-
alism started to become more exclusive
and, in some cases, openly chauvinistic.
Crisis of Identity Anew
Following the events of 11 September 2001
and the direct influx of imperialist forces
into Afghanistan, Pakistan’s crisis of iden-
tity has erupted back into the spotlight. In
short, Baloch and Pashtun ethnic-­
nationalists of various stripes have adapt-
ed their politics to the imperatives of the
“New Great Game”. At a time when the

need for leftists and ethnic-nationalists to
coalesce around a broad anti-establish-
ment, anti-imperialist platform is perhaps
greater than ever, it appears as if the trend
is in the opposite direction.
The Awami National Party (ANP) in the
Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and
the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party
(­PkMAP) in Balochistan are the two e­thnic-
nationalist organisations operating in
Pash­tun majority areas. The ANP has
made clear that it is hedging its bets on
the U­nited States (US), throwing its weight
behind the “war on terror” in the hope
that the empire is committed to not just
taking on the Taliban and Al Qaida mili-
tarily but also reversing the radicalisation
of Pashtun society. For its part the US
also appears to be patronising the ANP
f­ollowing its resounding victory in the
NWFP provincial elections of 2008, when
it defeated the alliance of religious parties,
Muttahida­-Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which
had itself come to power in 2002 on the
back of a broad wave of anti-American
sentiment following the invasion and
o­ccupation of Afghanistan in late 2001.
The PkMAP, in contrast, has been far
more circumspect. It has guardedly main-
tained an anti-jihadist posture whilst con-
tinuing to project itself as opposed to the
dictates of the US. In practice the PkMAP is
deeply implicated in the war economy,
and particularly the highly lucrative illicit
trade in guns and drugs, and therefore
pragmatic material concerns rather than
clear ideological principles are likely to
determine its posture. In other words it is
unlikely that the PkMAP will attempt to
reclaim the mantle of anti-imperialism
from the religious right and from which
the secular ANP has almost completely
distanced itself.
Balochistan Scenario
In Balochistan the situation is far less
clear, and to a certain extent therefore,
potentially more explosive. Here too the
major ethnic-nationalist formations have
drifted from the anti-imperialism of the
past. An increasingly popular brand of
radical nationalists is calling for an inde-
pendent Balochistan and claims to be will-
ing to accept assistance from any and all
external forces that support this goal. A
number of militant groups are engaging
Economic & Political Weekly  EPW   march 6, 2010  vol xlv no 10
Pakistani security forces in a low intensity
insurgency, and some militant leaders
openly ask for the US and other western
powers to support them. While it is impos-
sible to prove conclusively if these requests
have been heeded, it is far from fantastical
to believe that the Pentagon is playing
its hand in this theatre of the “New
Great Game”.
Those nationalists calling for the estab-
lishment of a meaningful federal system
in which the rights and resources of
Balochistan are protected are meanwhile
finding it increasingly difficult to survive
politically in a rapidly radicalising environ­
ment. Reputations do not seem to matter:
even Akhtar Mengal, a one-time chief
minister of the province and head of
the most powerful tribal formations in
the province, is struggling to retain a
political presence.
The moderate nationalists appear un-
willing to reach out to the left in the Punjab
and urban centres outside Balochistan,
even though the alliance would suit both.
The militant Baloch nationalists as well as
the ANP and PkMAP have – for varying
reasons – little interest in depicting them-
selves as anti-imperialist and therefore
a­llying themselves with the anti-imperialist
left. Of course, the anti-imperialist left is
small and weak. Most “progressives” in
Pakistan at the present time – which
means to say the upwardly mobile, edu-
cated sections of society – have thrown in
their lot with the US in the epic battle of
civilisation and democracy versus obscu-
rantism and autocracy. Whether or not re-
cent revelations made in London by the
beacons of civilisation and democracy that
negotiations with the obscurantist and
autocratic Taliban (or at least the less
obscurantist and autocratic amongst them)
are necessary will test the resolve of these
“progressives” is a moot point.
US Intentions
What the “progressives” should be asking
themselves is whether the US can forge,
or perhaps even more importantly, is
interested in forging a new identity for
Pakistan. At stake here are not the tired
questions of moderate and inclusive as
opposed to radical and exclusive inter­
pretations of Islam or whether Islam
should play any role in the public sphere.
commentary
In fact these are secondary consider­
ations. If all of the v­arious ethnic-nation-
alities within Pakistan – or at the very
least those who speak for them – are
convinced that they want to have nothing
to do with Pakistan, then i­nternational
powers will not have the good grace to
convince them otherwise.
It is the responsibility of the progres-
sives in urban centres, and particularly in
Punjab, to convince ethnic-nationalists
that there is the possibility of a new social
contract that can be forged collectively.
There can be no misgiving about imperial-
ism’s role in this regard. Indeed, to a cer-
tain extent, Baloch and Pakhtun national-
ists’ belief that the US is committed to
emancipating them from the Pakistani
state underlines the complete failure of
progressives to offer nationalists an alter-
native political vision that is built upon a
clear commitment to protecting the rights
of all nations whilst also addressing the
class question without ambiguity.
Turning Back on Class
Pakistan will not collapse tomorrow, and
it will definitely not be taken over by mad
mullahs who will wield its nuclear arsenal
against the western countries. Pakistan,
is, however, ravaged by serious fragment­
ation along ethnic-national lines which is
being exacerbated by the “Great Power”
conflict that is unfolding across the region.
To some extent, the PPP government
currently in power at the centre is pursu-
ing a po­litical strategy that seeks to mend
bridges across ethnic-national lines. But if
the PPP is depicting itself as the glue in an
extremely fragile federal structure, it has
turned its back on the politics of class that
it once championed.
There is no reason to believe that the
class and national questions cannot be
addressed together by an alliance of leftist
and ethnic-national forces, just like there
is no reason to believe that banking on the
US will loosen the grip of radical Islamist
ideologies on segments of Pakistani society.
The question, as ever, is whether the sub-
jective forces pushing for progressive
change are clear about what needs to be
done, and then whether a critical mass
can be forged that can outline a clear
strategy to ensure that what needs to get
done does get done.
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