General Pervez Musharraf has shut Pakistan down in the last couple of days. The media is closed, the phone lines are down and Martial Law has been declared. For those of you, like me who were educated in public schools by overworked teachers, you’re reasonably sure Pakistan is near India and that’s about it.
Short Factoids: 161 Million people, stuck in the top left-hand corner of India between Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It is the sixth-largest population in the world. Pakistan declared independence from England in 1947 and became an Islamic republic in 1956. The history goes back to dawn of time, Pakistan being part of the general region of the cradle of civilization around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
There was also an East Pakistan at one time, on the other side of India. In 1971, East Pakistan rebranded as Bangladesh. As India is mostly Hindi, Pakistan is mostly Muslim, which explains why the two have never been the best of friends.
Military governments have been the norm, essentially from 1956, with the occasional lurch into democracy. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Benazir Bhutto’s dad) was prime minister under the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the 70’s, but was executed in 1979 under the directives of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. At the same time India and Pakistan were fighting over Kashmir and Bangladesh was trying to separate.
In short, Pakistan has a very difficult, turbulent and violent political history, with everyone involved at one time or another, behaving badly. None of the various groups in power have been especially virtuous, each determined to hold on to power at all costs.
However, there is another problem: Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan both have missiles that can potentially throw their nuclear weapons a goodly distance. Which is why political unrest in that corner of the world is fraught. India could be nervous about loons gaining control over Pakistan and hurling some bad news over the border.
Conceptually, India could invade or nuke Pakistan to preclude a first-strike. Conceptually, if a fundamentalist group takes control over the Pakistan government, they’ll have their fingers on the trigger. If democracy takes hold again, the Pakistan military might not like the direction an elected parliament is heading, and set off another military coup, using a battle with India as the pretext for a coup. Or Iran on the border, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or al-Qaeda cement-heads.
How many potential moves are there in that chess game? Even Deep Blue, the IBM chess playing computer that took on Gary Kasparov, would gag a processor trying to figure that out.
RoadDave 