Pakistan's Last Gambit? continues....

Such a possibility had made the well-known analyst Selig Harrison warn in 2008 that: “Pashtuns, concentrated in the north-western tribal areas, would join with their ethnic brethren across the Afghan border (some 40 million of them combined) to form an independent “Pashtunistan.”

The increasing Pashtun civilian casualties in the missile attacks carried out by US predators and Pakistan Army’s sporadic, and often ineffective, military operations (Harrison quoted an ‘authoritative’ estimate of nearly 5000 such casualties since 2001) have encouraged “a potent underground Pashtun nationalist movement.” Harrison said the possible objective of such a movement would be to “unite all Pashtuns in Pakistan, now divided among political jurisdictions, into a unified province,” eventually achieving a “full nationhood.”

Not that this possibility was lost on the Pakistani military leadership. In March 2007, Major General Mahmud Ali Durrani, the Pakistani Ambassador to Washington who later became the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, told a Washington seminar: “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.”

This could prove to be a double jeopardy–on the one hand, it has created a whole army of Pashtun jihadis trained by Pakistanis who can turn against their Punjabi patrons. The continued use of groups like LeT and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) as instruments of the state not only gives these groups official protection but also helps them to emphasise their legitimacy among the people, both of which only encourages and expands the culture of violence which the army purports to contain, if not neutralise.

The increased presence of Taliban and other jihadi elements already has radicalised at least some sections of the society, with serious implications for Pakistan’s sovereignty and its federal structure. Symptoms are openly visible; the 2007 Lal Masjid episode itself should have shocked the people into realising the grave folly of supporting the State’s flirtations with terrorists in the name of ‘strategic options.’ Unfortunately, there is hardly any evidence to show that such a realisation has dawned either on the people or the leadership.

To be continued...