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SPEAKING FREELY
When self-determination equals
self-destruction
By Stanley A Weiss
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
LONDON -
India's Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani told me
the story this way. Pakistan's President General Pervez
Musharraf looked at his Indian guests and said, "I was
born in India and, after partition, my family settled in
Karachi, the capital of Pakistan's Sindh province. Why
not let the people of Kashmir decide whether they want
to continue to be a part of India?"
To which
Advani replied, "I was born in Karachi and, after
partition, moved to India. Why not let the people of
Sindh decide whether they want to continue to be a part
of Pakistan?" At which point Musharraf changed the
subject, knowing full well that the Sindhis would vote
for independence.
The terse encounter highlights
the central tension underlying much of today's
instability from the Indian sub-continent to Afghanistan
to Iraq and in many other countries - self-determination
vs national preservation. Frustrated by centuries-old
conflicts, some Western observers have advocated
redrawing the regional maps and carving up "artificial
countries" created by former colonial powers.
At
first glance, certain states seem ripe for the picking.
Pakistan is an invention - literally an acronym
denoting the provinces of the new Muslim state after its
1947 partition with India: "P" for Punjab, "A" for the
Afghan-border region of the northwest frontier, "K" for
Kashmir, "S" for Sindh, and "TAN" for Balochistan.
The dominant Punjabis have never succeeded in
forging a Pakistani national identity. Balochistan,
Pakistan's largest province, has chaffed under the iron
fist of Islamabad. (When I asked my cab driver here in
London if he was Pakistani, he replied indignantly, "I
am not Pakistani! I am from Balochistan!") Pashtuns in
the North-West Frontier Province have long dreamed of an
independent Pashtunistan with their ethnic cousins
across the Afghan border.
Likewise, the dominant
Pashtuns of southern Afghanistan have never forged a
unifying national psyche. Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmens in
the north have more in common with their brethren in
neighboring Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. In
the west, Herat province is reverting to its historical
role as a virtual extension of Iran.
Finally,
whether Iraq survives as a multi-ethnic nation may hinge
on the Kurds, the world's largest ethnic group without
its own state. Today, 30 million Kurds are spread across
Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, and repeated Kurdish
rebellions have been brutally crushed.
So why
not think the unthinkable and simply dispense with the
irrational borders of the past? After all, isn't the
birth of new states from the wreckage of Yugoslavia the
latest tribute to self-determination?
On the
contrary. The orgy of violence that accompanied the
breakup of Yugoslavia would be a picnic compared to the
carnage if dysfunctional states like Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Iraq fell - or are pushed - apart.
Ethnic minorities should be careful what they wish for:
reckless quests for self-determination may only sow the
seeds of their self-destruction.
Don't expect
Islamabad to give up Sindh and Karachi, Pakistan's
financial capital and the source of most of the nation's
revenues. Pakistan's eastern wing, now Bangladesh, won
its war for independence in 1971, but 3 million Bengalis
died in the process. The Punjabis have suppressed past
rebellions in Balochistan and would do so again.
Pro-Taliban Islamists effectively control the provincial
legislatures of Balochistan and North-West Frontier
Province. Is the world prepared for two new independent
al-Qaeda havens?
In Afghanistan, the Pashtuns
may long for unity with their Pakistani cousins, but not
at the expense of losing influence over the more fertile
and prosperous regions of the north.
The Kurds
may have found an answer. The continued presence of
Turkish troops in northern Iraq is a blunt reminder that
Ankara will forcibly oppose an independent Kurdistan,
which could incite Turkey's own restive Kurds. Bowing to
reality, Kurdish leaders in Iraq appear to have
abandoned their quest for statehood, casting their lot
with a federal Iraq that preserves Kurdish autonomy.
Autonomy could also break the Gordian Knot of
Kashmir. Lose the "K" in Pakistan to India and Pakistan
loses its raison d'etre as a homeland for Muslims on the
sub-continent. Similarly, if India gives up its only
Muslim-majority state, it risks losing its national
identity as a secular state in a predominantly Hindu
country. Ceding Kashmir's 4 million Muslims to Pakistan
would prompt Hindu extremists to unleash a wholesale
ethnic cleansing of India's 150 million Muslims and a
flood of refugees that would destroy Pakistan.
So why not compromise? Pakistan controls 35
percent of Kashmir and could accept the present Line of
Control, agreed to in 1972, as the permanent border. In
return, India could restore to Kashmir the autonomy that
it enjoyed for several years after partition.
In
an ideal world, each of these distinct ethnic groups
could have their own independent homelands. And some
day, they just might. But in today's real world, their
security and survival lies not with independence, but
with a high degree of autonomy. And there is nothing
artificial about that.
Stanley A Weiss
is founder and chairman of Business Executives for
National Security, a national, nonpartisan organization
of business leaders based in Washington. This is a
personal comment.
Speaking Freely is
an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers
to have their say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
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