Re: The Ultimate Losers in Pakistan!
Few comments about the contentions by Stephen Cohen:
1. Stephen P. Cohen, a Jew, is considered very pro-Pakistani-Establishment. What he wrote above is an effort to maintian an image of scholarly fairness. He therefore reveals only a tip of the ice-berg.
Note that the "core of Pakistan", as specified in the geopoltics course taught in the Staff College Queta, is confined only to one province i.e. Punjab and doesn't include even a single district from any other province. Obviously, the rest of the provinces are peripheries. This shows the degree of emphasis on Punjab in Pakistan.
Compare the geopolitical view propounded in the geopolitics course of Staff College Queta to the view of Aziz Hindi mentioned in a preceding post when he calls Punjab as the Prussia of Pakistan. This amply demonstrates that "Punjab being the core of Pakistan" is not just a limited view but something broadly shared by influential classes of one province.
"East Pakistan will be defended from West Pakistan" was a typical stunt of the military leaders to ward off the Bangalis demand for adequate representation in armed forces. This in effect meant that almost all of the military establishment, installations, and power will be concentrated in West Pakistan and in the hands of West Pakistanis and that the undereepresentation of Bangalis in armed forces is strategically justified. One other argument, the military leaders of that time put forward to justify this was, Bangalis are not a martial race and are physically not fit to enlist.
The geoplolitics course says that Punjab is the core and the other three provinces are invasion routes. A material manifestation of this thinking is that almost all the military industrial complexes, military installations, defence and strategic assets, headquarters of armed forces, military command and control, etc. are concentrated only in one province. This shows the imbalance.
The geopolitics course says that "fall of the core would mean end of ...national resistence". This is but a ...categorical declaration of the "core's equivalence to Pakistan" and the "peripheral status" of the rest of the provinces.
One wonders on what grounds are other three provinces called invasion routes? If the locus of threat to Pakistan lays in the north-west, then how do you include Sindh among the invasion routes? On the other hand if the locus of threat lays in the East accross Wahga, then how come call the Punjab "the core" but Sindh the "invasion route" whereas Sindh seems to be strategically more secure.
The last excerpt in which the loyalties of Baluchis and Sindhis to Pakistan and their martial qualities are doubted is rather more inflamatory and is indicative of a parochial view of patriotism.