State and Civil Society in Pakistan

Frontier Wars are but the surf that marks the edge and the advance of the wave of civilization.—Lord Salisbury, 1892Like the jellyfish, the absence of a backbone to be broken was the greatest defense of the tribes against the waves of state power which beat upon them.[Yapp 1983:186]IntroductionAn aphorism occasionally heard today purportedly summarizes the approach the British took to govern the parts of the empire that now constitute Pakistan. Their formula, it says, was ‘Rule the Punjabis, intimidate the Sindhis, buy the Pushtun, and honor the Baloch.’ While doing fieldwork in Quetta, the capital of Pakistani Balochistan and, in recent years the setting for several incidents of serious ethnic conflict, I found that current stereotypes about Baloch and Pushtun held by members of both groups about themselves and each other reflect essentially the same attitudes as those expressed in the aphorism.

Honor the Baloch, Buy the Pushtun: Stereotypes, Social Organization and History in Western Pakistan

Quetta straddles four significant historical regions and plays a role in two major armed conflicts - the war in Afghanistan, and the Baloch nationalist insurgency in Pakistan. The city itself has remained relatively peaceful, though a closer look reveals the ways in which the two wars have encroached upon urban life. Quetta is an international border post as well as an internal buffer zone between major ethnic groups. It is a colonial enclave that was originally populated for the purposes of subduing its expansive tribal hinterland. The city is also an urban hub where possibilities of modern political development have been imagined and pursued, and one which bears potential for the appropriation and disbursal of massive economic rents. An analysis of Quetta's geography, history and institutional development shows that three aspects of the city's character - border/buffer zone, colonial enclave and urban hub - have remained significant through its evolution since the late 19th century. A description of the city and its context enables the identification of the various elites and non-elites that have a stake in Quetta and in projects of state-building and state-breaking in its hinterland. The colliding and overlapping interests of the Pakistan central state, its military and political elites, provincial patrons, Baloch and Pashtun ethnic nationalists, settlers, Afghan migrants, and Islamic clerics have shaped Quetta's contributions to state-building in Balochistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Whether it is the border/buffer zone, colonial enclave or urban hub that prevails depends on the balance of power between and alignments within these various elites.

http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/PDF/Outputs/CrisisStates/WP69.2.pdf

Working Paper No. 69. Buffer Zone, Colonial Enclave or Urban Hub? Quetta: between four regions and two wars

........................................................................................................................................................ 3 1.  Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 4 2.  Anxiety of Development ....................................................................................................................... 7 3.  Life in the Imagined Land of ‘Pipelineistan’ .......................................................................................... 9 4.  Territory and (In)security: The Struggle over Identity and Sovereignty ............................................. 14 5.  Fishermen’s Luck: Rude Awakenings on the Shores of Desire ........................................................... 16 6.  Waiting and Watching in the City to be .............................................................................................. 20 7.  Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 23 References .................................................................................................................................................. 24 Information on the competence network Crossroads Asia ........................................................................ 29

The Anxiety of Development: Megaprojects and the Politics of Place in Gwadar, Pakistan

Nationalism is a way of dealing with a world where 'everything melts into thin air'. It is a form of self-love in which individuals celebrate their collective identity. And like all forms of self-love it gets its strength more from the hatred of others than its love for the self Here lies the secret behind some of the most intractable conflicts in the world. Nationalism is, probably, the only form of self-love that gets its life-blood from an institution, the modem state. Had the state not been behind the self-love of the Germans, they would not have been able to torture and murder so many Jews in such a short period of time. Likewise, had the west not helped the Jews to establish their own state in Palestine, the Jews would never have been able to displace and kill so many Palestinians. Nationalism is not the 'pathology' of the modem world, but is, as a sentiment and as a doctrine, only a pathetic way to deal with a pathetic world. But nationalism as a game of power, as a politics, is lethal and destructive. As a sentiment and as a doctrine nationalism may be the child of an unstable and fast changing world but as a politics it is the child of the nation state. This thesis explores the relationship between the nation-state and the nationalisms of four ethnic groups, namely, Pukhtun, Sindhi, Baloch and Mohajir, who have, at various points in time, contested the legitimacy of the administrative structure of the Pakistani state. It starts with identifying the issue of ethnic conflicts, goes on to review the available literature and then outlines a framework for studying ethnic

/pdf/ethnic-nationalism-and-the-state-in-pakistan-2ravovcztr.pdf

V. G. Kiernan

Papers

In Afghanistan's Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations