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Does Pakistan have a right to exist?
Though a Newsweek cover story recently labeled the turbulent South Asian state “the most dangerous nation in the world” no one dares to ask this obvious question.
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. The majority of the nation remains both illiterate and impoverished—with little of the spectacular economic progress that his made India into a high tech and commercial powerhouse. In 1971, the eastern portion of Pakistan engaged in a bloody struggle against federal forces to separate itself into the new country of Bangladesh. Border wars with India over the disputed province of Kashmir have flared up on two major occasions, with the issue still unsettled at a time that both combatants possess nuclear weapons. Now a new crisis looms as General Musharraf tries to hold onto power in the face of twin challenges from rabid Islamist fanatics and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, recently returned from exile.
In light of this history, it’s shocking that few Americans or Europeans question the troubled and divided nation’s existence.
Instead, agitators on the international left love to challenge the “right to exist” of Israel – a far more stable, prosperous, democratic and, yes, peaceful nation than Pakistan. Though formally recognized as a modern state at almost exactly the same time as Pakistan (1948 rather than 1947), Israel occupies similar borders to the ancient Jewish commonwealth that flourished for more than a thousand years. Moreover the transfer of refugee populations – with 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fleeing the territory of the new state of Israel, and more than 800,000 Jews fleeing Arab states and finding new homes in Israel --- represents scarcely 10% of the massive population shift (involving more than 14 million people) attendant to the birth of Pakistan.
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.”
This Islamist intransigence raises the obvious question: on what basis does Pakistan constitute an “authentic,” “well-established,” “respect-worthy” nation, but Israel does not?
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.
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