Pakistan Fissures II: Ethnic Cleavages
By Aaron Mannes
In the Washington Post yesterday Selig Harrison, wrote an op-ed arguing that the Punjabi-Pashtun ethnic conflict underpins the rise of the Taliban. The Punjab is Pakistan’s most powerful province. Home to about half of the country’s population, the Punjab dominates Pakistan politically and is the primary source of manpower for the army. Harrison argues that Pakistan’s Pashtuns are cut off from Afghanistan’s Pashtuns and marginalized. Pashtuns are the largest single ethnicity in Afghanistan, and combined with Pakistan’s Pashtun population would dominate that country. In addition to fostering dissatisfaction among the Pashtuns, the situation creates an incentive for Pakistan to keep Afghanistan weak and off-balance – so that it is less able to foment trouble among Pakistan’s Pashtun population.
The well-informed Pakistan Policy blog takes issue with several of Harrison’s assertions and criticizes Harrisons policy prescription of incorporating the tribal FATA with the “settled” NWFP as a map re-drawing “fetish” of “old white men.”
Pashtun vs. Pashtun
The truth is probably somewhere in between. The Pashtuns have, to a great extent, allied with the Punjabis and serve in Pakistan’s armies in substantial numbers – but, at the same time, Pashtun nationalism has absolutely been a concern for Pakistani elites. The Taliban’s rise could also be understood as settled Pashtuns vs. tribal Pashtuns. This is the oasis people vs. desert people paradigm set forth by the great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun over 600 years ago (this plays into the issue of feudalism raised in my previous post. Many of the settled Pashtuns of the NWFP look towards Islamabad and ally with the Punjabis, while some of the tribes of the FATA seek closer bonds with the Pashtuns on the other side of the Durand Line.
One of Many Ethnic Conflicts
While Pashtun nationalism is a potentially serious challenge to the integrity of the Pakistani state, unfortunately, it is only one of a myriad of ethnic conflicts that shape Pakistani politics.
Read the full post here.
