challenges to Pakistan's domestic security, The

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2002 by Hilali, A Z

INTRODUCTION

Pakistan is a country of heterogeneous peoples and culture. Its society is feudal and tribal. Its economy is scattered and its political institutions are weak, fragile and unstable. It is divided on ethnic, cultural, racial and religious lines. Ethnic and sectarian violence has polluted the society and there is an overall atmosphere of acute political polarization. The federal structure has failed to achieve a national identity or produce a viable political order in which the people of all provinces may live together as equal partners. In fact, an apparently "unbridgeable" division between the people and central government policies and priorities has pushed the country's smaller nationalities to challenge the integrity of the state.

In the conventional international relations literature, strong states are primarily characterised in terms of a high degree of socio-political cohesion, as a necessary prerequisite for society as well as national security. On the other hand, weak states' insecurity is based on the low degree of socio-political cohesion, Barry Buzan says that weak states can exist in a "condition of effective civil war which mirrors all the worst and none of the best features of anarchic structure at the international system level."1 Unstable and weak states in fact display a paradox: they are at once strong in the category of despotic power, but weak in infrastructural power.2 According to Thomas Callaghy, most weak states are authoritarian and lacking authority, extractive and strapped, coercive and loose.3 In general, in weak states the props of vertical legitimacy - authority, reciprocity, trust and accountability - are largely absent.4 These states often appear to survive essentially as a show, a political drama with an audience more or less willing to suspend its disbelief.

Moreover, many weak states face a fundamental difficulty of social fragmentation along religious, ethnic, tribal and cultural lines. These problems have emerged due to the very distribution of territory of post-colonial states, as the manner in which these states were founded. They have no well-defined territories but territories allocated to new nation-states by the colonial powers have proved remarkably durable, the arbitrary and recent character of the divisions notwithstanding. The federal solution has proved successful in many newly independent Afro-Asian states with diverse ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic and racial groups. In this context, Pakistan is the only British former colonial state that has been dismembered, in 1971, mainly because the ambitious ruling elites persisted in neglecting the rights of the people and ultimately the state lost its sense of solidarity and cohesion. Nation-building has never been the process of winning an argument. In fact, the main threats to Pakistan's domestic security arise from a failure to resolve the political dilemmas of nation building. Thus, internal vulnerabilities can jeopardise national security and these are more critical than external dangers.

This article addresses some of the factors that have led to the present tragic state of affairs in Pakistan. It contends that a primary cause of the domestic problems of Pakistan is authoritarian rule and centralisation. Emerging issues like ethnicity, sectarianism, centre versus province and a Kalashnikov culture pose a serious threat to the state. I will discuss core emerging factors of instability and analyse in depth the weaknesses of .governing institutions and national unity under the idea of a strong centre and a weak nation.

REGIONALISM

Pakistan has a federal system and constitutionally is a federation but, unfortunately, the controversy over federal authority versus provincial rights has not yet been resolved. The highly centralised federal structure of the country is a source of fuel to centrifugal forces which seem to be getting much stronger than centripetal forces in Pakistan. The sense of multi-nationality is getting stronger and the idea of a single nation has declined. Minority groups fear the majority and could erupt if the ruling elites fail to accommodate their demands.

In Pakistan, Punjab is the largest province in terms of population and resources and has heavy representation in the military and bureaucratic services. This is a major source of resentment within the smaller provinces, which have a deep-rooted fear of domination by the majority of Punjab. Thus, the roots of regionalism are internal political squabblings which already have damaged the sense of national unity. This matter is more complicated because the federal structure is highly centralized and the central government has strict hold over provincial governments. The governmental structure could hardly be described as truly federal, for in fact neither the parliamentary system nor the federation is genuine. A federal system can be strengthened by giving cultural freedom and autonomy but Pakistan has attempted to impose uniformity where diversity is desirable and the sense of deprivation is all the deeper in consequence. The crux of the whole centre-province relationship lies in the financial sphere. Federalism implies not only an allocation of legislative powers but financial powers as well. In practice, the centre and the provincial governments should be independent of each other, each within its sphere; neither should be subordinate to one another, but they should coordinate with each other.5