Pakistan is not a country, Pakistan is an army. Do you’ll think Pakistan is an artificial country created by British to keep India weak. It’s an artificial country created on religious sentiments. Pakistan is a relic set up as a counterweight to India – and its tendency to tilt towards the Eastern Block. It is a failed British fantasy about the fabrication of a nation-state. It has other failed and failing peers in the Middle East, all fabricated during the 20th century. It is time to seriously review all of these structures and redraw the borderlines.
With more than a little irony, even the Iranians are worried. “Pakistan is not a country, Pakistan is an army,” an Iranian close to the regime in Tehran recently complained to me. “And it’s an army you can’t count on.”
My Iranian friend tried to make the case that we would be better off with Tehran having a nuclear bomb than Pakistan’s generals. Small comfort to Washington and Tel Aviv, but he was on to something.
The truth is Pakistan is an artificial country, its borders drawn by British colonial administrators in a fit of expediency, its people hopelessly divided along ethnic lines. None of it mattered, democracy or not, as long as the generals stood shoulder to shoulder and held off disintegration and chaos — kept the nukes safe, out of the hands of radicals. Let’s hope the generals aren’t having second thoughts.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1682637,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics