2 hours Ago By Firstpost
India is not only the world’s largest democracy and most populous country, but it is an industrial powerhouse soon to overtake both Japan and Germany to become the world’s third largest economy. India’s success highlights Pakistan’s failure. Rather than pull Pakistan up, generations of Pakistani leaders instead chose to try to tear India down.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency promoted separatism in Kashmir and sponsored terror groups that used Kashmir as an excuse to target Indians far beyond Kashmir’s borders. Pakistan’s strategy failed. It has now been more than five years since the Government of India revoked Kashmir’s special status granted under Article 370.
Pakistan was furious, many Western human rights groups sputtered, and Western diplomats wrung their hands, but Kashmiris thrived. Integration disempowered feudal lords who suppressed the population. Security improved.
Subsequent months showed the Islamists to lack the legitimacy they once claimed and too many Western diplomats assumed. Cinemas opened, national universities opened local branches, girls competed in sports, women entered politics, and Kashmiris resumed their rightful place in India. That Kashmiris thrive in India but remain impoverished under Pakistani occupation haemorrhages Islamabad’s pretence to speak on their behalf.
The ISI has not given up seeking to destabilise Kashmir; however, the Pakistani intelligence agency may still believe it can replicate the Hamas strategy and craft a “red-green” alliance to unite leftists and Islamists to make a cause célèbre for naïve students and journalists prone to morally confuse aggressor and victim. Simultaneously, though Pakistan’s leadership has no positive consensus vision for its own country and defaults to aggression against India. In practice, this has led the ISI to target India with new separatism.
Today, the Khalistan movement is essentially an ISI project to sponsor unrest, separatism, and terror in Punjab. Just as with Pakistan’s Kashmir-orientated terror groups, its Khalistan radicals can harass, intimidate, and cost lives. The question for New Delhi is whether it is prepared for a repeat in Punjab of the multi-decade instability or the return of unrest thrust upon it in Kashmir, or if another strategy might head off Pakistan’s proxy aggression.
India is a legitimate state; Pakistan is not. Centuries of common history and heritage imbue India with cohesion, from Kanniyakumari to Kolkata to Kupwara, and tie Indians together, whether Hindu or Buddhist, Christian or Muslim. The same is not true in Pakistan.
Pakistani officials may pretend their country is a coherent whole, but they understand that, given the chance, Bangladesh’s succession would be the first of many regions fleeing the country rather than the last. The Pashtuns of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa see themselves more as Afghans than Pakistanis. Sindhis stand distinct; so too do the Baloch.
More than Islam, if any common factor unites Pakistanis, it is resentment toward the Pakistani Punjabis who dominate the country and its military. Today, a Baloch is more likely to die at the hands of Pakistani Punjabis than in conflict with India. Put another way, Pakistan, alongside Ethiopia, is at the top of the list of countries most at risk of splintering.
If Indian diplomats seek the high road and assume the world will see the illegitimacy of movements like the Khalistanis, they are naïve. For every analyst, diplomat, or statesman that recognises Pakistan’s cynicism, there are useful idiots like Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau who do not. Rather than rely solely on diplomacy and the good sense of the international community, then perhaps it is time to beat Pakistan at its own game.
If Pakistan wants to sponsor separatism, perhaps it is time for India to demonstrate that Pakistan is opening a Pandora’s Box that is more likely to lead to its demise than India’s. Such a strategy might have the further benefit of winning justice for those peoples either forcibly incorporated into Pakistan or who voluntarily joined more than 75 years ago but now regret their choice. Consider the Baloch, for example.
The Baloch have their own identity and distinct language. Prior to 1947, many Baloch princely states coalesced into a loose confederation under British protection. Some Baloch states chose to join Pakistan, but the Khanate of Kalat sought to remain distinct until Pakistan ultimately absorbed it.
A decade later, Baloch tribes rose in revolt against Pakistani rule, forcing the Pakistani state to declare martial law and dismantle the tribal system. Strategically, Baloch independence would also be a blow to China. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor terminates in Gwadar.
Should Balochistan go its own way, then the corridor essentially becomes a highway to nowhere. As Pakistan once again grows aggressive to distract from its own failures and expands its terror sponsorship, Indian officials remain far too polite. The ISI may believe its own rhetoric, but India has reality on its side.
Pakistan faces a separatist threat; India realistically does not. If Pakistani leaders want to pursue a policy that could lead to their country’s demise, no one can save them. India, however, can make clear that every sword has two sides and perhaps force more mature minds in Islamabad to conclude that the cost of sponsoring further Kashmir unrest or Khalistani terrorism could be the existence of Pakistan in its current form.
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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