In the third world war, when the West falls to its knees, the government of Pakistan will collapse like an inflated balloon and melt along with its vile patrons!
Author: Arif Hasankhan Akhundzada, researcher and analyst of regional issues and Pakistan, member of the Sangar Advisory Council
A pointwise explanation of its characteristics and future
- Pakistan was created as an Anglo-Western post-war geopolitical tool to counter Soviet influence in the crucial Middle East. It was a wholly aid-dependent, rentier state run by a cabal of gangster elites which was headed by the Army, at various times overtly or covertly.
- The country’s “frontier” regions were kept backward and prevented from social and cultural development or change — for use as buffers. These areas — notably their Pashtun population — also constituted the active “warhead” component of this geopolitical instrument called Pakistan.
- The main control centre and mechanism of Pakistan lay across the Indus (in Punjab and Sindh).
- Kashmir was to be used as a bargaining chip to face off with an India that might display non-aligned or internationally independent tendencies. The Kashmir “discourse” would also serve to justify Pakistan’s separateness of existence.
- China played its own dubious and unscrupulous role with regard to Pakistan. It derived a selfish local geopolitical advantage via its Pakistani policy, without seeing the harm it was causing by accosting such an entity. It is still engaged in the same mode, but will not succeed.
- The Soviet re-engineering and absorption of Afghanistan and its society was thwarted via Pakistan and the CIA “Jihad” crafted for the purpose, beginning from 1980. That Jihad has turned into a very deeply entrenched issue, which is still running and the effects of which are extremely insidious, complex and widespread — being one of the most long lasting of all geopolitical processes of ”modern” times.
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Ø In 2021 the global geopolitical picture changed dramatically, with the US Army fleeing Kabul in August, and the advent of the Ukrainian War situation from November. This changed situation portended a dramatic shift and downturn for Pakistan with regard to its existential raison d’etre which had remained secure till then. Be that as it may, the West is not desirous of seeing its old Pakistani toy in Chinese hands (CPEC) or as a Russian ally. When Pakistan’s naïve Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was in Moscow on 24 February 2022 — celebrated and praised Russia’s Ukraine action, America ordered the Pakistan Army to remove him and replace him with a seemingly impossible and unlikely “national coalition” of old democratic political kleptocrats.
Ø With regard to future prospects, the situation in Pakistan is now terminally critical and uncertain, but there is no hope for any change — or revolution, for that matter — which may act favourably within the ambit of the Pakistani structural status quo; the only hope is for the advent of WW3 and nuclear conflict to take place, when the West will be brought to its knees and its aid to its cronies and proxies will evaporate instantly. Then the “neo-colonial” Pakistani State apparatus will collapse resultantly like a deflated balloon and will melt away effortlessly along with its vile patrons!
Ø In the event of such — or any other form of collapse, precipitated by other factors or “black swans” — it can be surmised that Punjab and Sindh will return to the fold of Mother India without much further ado; the Pashtun areas of “KP” and north Balochistan will come under TTP (Taliban) control and function as an extension of the main Taliban regime in Kabul; and Pakistani Balochistan itself is likely to become an anarchic conglomerate of independent tribal fiefdoms (much as it now is and previously was).
