The End of Pakistan?

By Aaron Mannes

Although it is wracked by floods, violence, and other tragedies, this small story from rural Pakistan caught my eye recently:

SHIKARPUR: Ten people were killed in an armed clash between Magsi and Qambrani tribes in the jurisdiction of Golodaro police station on Thursday evening.

According to sources, the gunbattle followed a brawl over irrigation of paddy crops near Kuddan village.

The sources said the Qambrani tribe lost seven men while the Magsi tribe lost three.

Sanaullah Abbasi, a senior police official, told Dawn five bodies had been recovered.

A big police contingent stormed the village late in the evening and brought the situation under control.

This story encapsulates several important realities about Pakistan: declining resources, the increasing violence over the declining resources and the inability of the government to control this violence.

This is a miniature of the violence that has recently wracked Karachi – also fundamentally a conflict over land and resources. These riots are unfortunately endemic to Pakistan’s commercial capital. Just two years ago, on the weekend that the world watched as Mumbai suffered from an overflow of Pakistan’s internal disorder, Karachi was suffering its own outbreak of violence in which at least 40 people were killed, not unlike the recent fighting.

The great fear of the West is Pakistan falling under the control of radical Islamists. The great fear of Pakistan’s leadership is the state fracturing (this is probably #2 for the West – a nuclear Yugoslavia.) But the endemic low level violence suggests another possibility, the state dissolving – a nuclear Somalia.

Medium and Long-Term Dangers
Meanwhile the terrible flooding is testing the capabilities of Pakistan’s institutions and they are failing. Their record at providing immediate relief is mediocre. But the floods have destroyed Pakistan’s crops, so that the country (which is already broke) will be forced to buy or beg food abroad. It will be several years before Pakistan’s agricultural production will return to their previous levels – so food shortages will be an ongoing problem. Even without the crisis food security was a problem in Pakistan. In addition, cotton crops, essential to Pakistan’s major export industry – textiles – have also been devastated. All of this can only further weaken an already precarious economy.

Assuming the floods and their aftermath do not lead to state dissolution it certainly weakens Pakistan for facing its longer-term crises.

Read the full post here.