Future of Pakistan
In a hard hitting article, "Break up Pakistan," in Toronto's Financial Post on September 11, Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute in Canada, calls for breaking up Pakistan into various states to stop Pakistanis from slaughtering each other. He writes: "The end of Pakistan -- its dismemberment into constituent parts -- could be all for good. Pakistan -- a creation of colonial Britain that's barely a half-century old -- is less a country than an acronym whose passing would soon be forgotten. There is no Pakistani nation. ... Pakistan is a dysfunctional assortment of disparate, often warring peoples, ethnicities, and cultures whose sum is much less than the potential of its parts, despite much vaunted attempts at nation building."
Mr. Solomon's model is Bangladesh. He finds an analogy in Bangladesh's successful break up from Pakistan after a devastating cyclone in 1970. He writes: "The current threat of secession has a parallel, in 1970, in the province of East Pakistan, when the country suffered its first massive natural disaster. A cyclone that ripped through an enormous swath of land left as many as 500,000 dead. The central government's ineptness and callousness cemented the sentiment for separation. East Pakistan became the sovereign country of Bangladesh the following year."
He also thinks that the success of Bangladesh augers well for the constituent parts of Pakistan if they break up. He writes: "If Pakistan does break up, another parallel provides hope. A few years after the civil war, the dirt-poor country of Bangladesh began to find its feet. Its economy has more than doubled since 1975 and is now increasing at an impressive 5%-6% per year. Goldman Sachs lists it among its Next-11, one of the countries with high potential to become one of the world's largest economies. ... Bangladesh's secession, in hindsight, was all to the good. Completing the dismemberment of Pakistan may well be too."
Although much of what Lawrence Solomon says is correct, it must be pointed out that Bangladesh is a self-sufficient geographic unit with its own coastlines and ports while Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan, and the Frontier province are landlocked and will remain dependent on Sind for international trade and the biggest province Balochistan is so sparsely populated that it does not have enough manpower to run an independent country. As such, Pakistan's dismemberment will not resolve the problem. What Pakistan needs is a decentralised country with proper rules. And the military should not be allowed to interfere with the running of the country.
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