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India-Pakistan | ||||
Why Not Ask About Pakistan's "Right to Exist"? | ||||
2007-10-30 | ||||
Does Pakistan have a right to exist?
In fact, Pakistan represents an arbitrarily constructed, chronically unstable, perpetually embattled, deeply dysfunctional and undeniably shaky creation of the retreating British Empire. Before 1947, the territories eventually designated as “Pakistan” (the name means “Pure Land” in Urdu) comprised an integral part of British India. The hastily and sloppily drawn borders corresponded to no historic nation state, and represented only a desperate concession to Muslim agitators who wanted no part of a newly independent, Hindu majority India. The creation of Pakistan led to an explosion of unspeakable barbarity and bloodshed, with “Independence Riots” claiming a total of at least 500,000 lives (some sources say more than a million). Meanwhile, Pakistan’s creation created the greatest refugee crisis in recent history; UN figures indicate that more than 14 million human beings fled their homes in desperation, with Hindus and Sikhs trying to escape the hostile new Muslim state and find safe haven in India, and Muslims moving from India to Pakistan. During most of its 60 year history, Pakistan has suffered from dictatorial military rule – in contrast to the surprisingly durable democracy in its gigantic neighbor, India.
In light of this history, itÂ’s shocking that few Americans or Europeans question the troubled and divided nationÂ’s existence.
This doesn’t stop the President of Iran, or the terrorist organizations he openly supports (Hamas and Hezbollah), or twenty states in the Arab League (except for Jordan, Egypt and Morocco), from regularly denying Israel’s very existence – excluding it from maps, referring to the Jewish State as “Occupied Palestine” or “The Zionist Enemy.”
On every conceivable basis—history, international recognition, authorization by world bodies (The League of Nations supported a Jewish homeland on the site of Israel in 1923, a decade before anyone even proposed the idea of Pakistan), stability, functioning economy, democratic institutions, rule of law, enforceable borders, successful self-defense on multiple occasions, desire of peace with neighbors, support by a majority of its own citizens, respect for religious and ethnic pluralism --- Israel contrasts favorably with “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan.” No, the nightmarish, basket-case nation on India’s northwestern border won’t disappear or dissolve. But its persistence (despite horrendous civic unrest, Islamist fanaticism, rampant militarism, and nuclear threats to its neighbors and the rest of the world) should help persuade antagonists and skeptics that Israel will remain at least as permanent a feature on the world stage. | ||||
Posted by:john frum |
#5 Pakistan comes across as a toxic cocktail of islamo-fascist one-upmanship supremacism and the worse of Indian egotism. Indian-muslims, the naturalized ones, are known as "mamaks" in M'sia and which is not really a term of endearment. They always want the full privileges of the malays from the government because of religion. |
Posted by: Duh! 2007-10-30 20:51 |
#4 With the single act of proliferating nuclear technology to Iran, Pakistan forsook all right to territorial sovereignty. They will have to consider themselves rather fortunate if Pakistan does not become the first nation in history to undergo nuclear attack without having first declared war. |
Posted by: Zenster 2007-10-30 17:31 |
#3 I'd also like to know about France's right to exist. Really. |
Posted by: Iblis 2007-10-30 15:56 |
#2 McZ, those aren't ethnic minorities, they are tribes. Due to globalization of communication and transport the biggest problems facing the world center on this archaic organizational form and its unsuitability to the modern world. The sole source of legitamacy of Islam is that it provides some commonality for the tribes. But, as can be seen in Pakistan and other areas of the MME when puch comes to shove the tribes will out. |
Posted by: AlanC 2007-10-30 11:08 |
#1 Only 1 Pakistan minority had anything to do with the country's formation: Hindus. And Hindus have been reduced from 20% to 1% of Pakistan's population. There are major separatist groups among ALL the remaining ethnic minorities: Sindhis, Balochis, Waziris, Pashtos. Revolt is open in both Balochistan and NW Frontier Province. In Sindh, the MQM has slaughtered hundreds of Punjabis, usually extremists - and they advocate banning Jamaat-i-Islami. At 9-11, Pakistan was collapsing under US sanctions; now they are thriving from US aid and the Karzai's Pashto Heroin industry. |
Posted by: McZoid 2007-10-30 03:27 |