Pakistan

Here is an excerpt from a discussion on Pakistan's future among our friends. We thought we'd post our views here.

We're not very sanguine about the (Indo-Pak) peace process ; the strong Pakistani military -- with a soothing, anglophone General at helm -- keeps the civilized world from dealing with the monster that Pakistan is, because it's much too tempting to buy the mirage these dictators have to sell.

Given this, we (meaning the civilized, democratic world) might actually be better off absent Musharraf (or another similar General), because then we would have no lazy excuse to evade our responsibility of emaciating the Pakistani monster -- a bellicose terror state, a nuclear proliferator, a modern day colonialist (witness the fate of Afghanistan & PoK), and a proselytizer of radical jihad some of whose global children "secure" their futures through suicide bombings (ours, in contrast, build global supply chains).

This does not need Iraq-style military action. All it needs is a weaker Pakistani military, which will then allow the inherent contradictions of that artificial state to manifest themselves (admittedly, India, too has some of the same contradictions, but our pluralist democracy & sustainable economic growth are great glues; Pakistan has none of this). Baluchistan is in near-revolt (again!), Pashtuns are kin to their siblings across the Durand line (whose shelf life has now expired!), and Sindh is being starved of water by its Punjabi cousins; then there's also the Mohajir issue (Altaf Hussain having already said the partition was a blunder!). Paraphrasing T S Eliot: Pakistan is like dead water & dead sand, contending for the upper hand!!!

Our task (i.e. of the civilized world) is to deploy our resources to contain this necessary conflict, so that it burns on a manageable fuse, but it burns alright (kinda' like a controlled burn for forest fires). In the end, hopefully, we'll have 3-4 smaller & more pliable states -- where we can, via persuasion or imposition, require modernity & democracy.