Strongmen have followed the playbook of “divide and rule” since antiquity, and Pakistan’s most powerful man is no exception. Field Marshal Asim Munir, the Pakistani military chief who wields real power despite a nominally superior president and prime minister, may be planning to break up the country’s four provinces into a dozen or more, according to a report by The Economist.
Pakistan’s four primary administrative provinces — Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan– have remained unchanged since the country’s creation in 1947. The most populous province, Punjab, has a population of 128 million, slightly over half the national population, while Balochistan, the least populous province, has just 15 million people, some 6 per cent of the total.
Reformers have long argued that the arrangement makes governance unwieldy. Now Munir, who is seen as Pakistan’s de facto ruler, reportedly wants to redraw the map entirely, replacing the four provinces with 12, 15, or even 160 smaller ones.
The rationale sounds reasonable, but the motive, critics suspect, is less so. According to The Economist report, the divided new mini-polities are likely to be ruled by elected chiefs, or by provincial or district assemblies, or by nominees of “the government” — which is essentially the Field Marshal himself.
Munir claims the provinces are too big to be well-run, and that is why the country is in such a dismal state. He is right about the country’s poor shape, with inflation in double figures and a growth rate less than half of India. But experts point out that one of the biggest reasons behind it is the very institution Munir represents.
The Army in Pakistan, The Economist report noted, gorges on taxpayers’ money, owns huge tracts of the country’s most valuable land, and controls businesses that intimidate their competitors.
The country has been under direct military rule for more than two-fifths of its existence, and civilian governments in much of the remainder, like the current Shehbaz Sharif rule, have been terrified of upsetting the men with guns.
The army also wants to keep ties with India hostile, which may be terrible for the country’s growth but a great prospect for the defence budget. In Freudian psychoanalysis terms, Pakistan’s military represents the very problem it claims to solve.
The Economist report points out that there are two major reasons to be wary of Asim Munir’s plans. The first, the report said, is the country’s very limited pluralism, making the big provinces an essential counterweight to the centre.
“Punjab and Sindh, a southern province centred on the country’s commercial capital, Karachi, are the fiefs of two long-lived parties, the PML(N) and the PPP, respectively. Even under military dictators, they have preserved alternative centres of power, up to a point. No doubt that is why the field marshal has them in his sights,” it said.
The second reason to be cautious of the plan is that it was a product of Field Marshal Munir’s cunning. The report described him as someone who has been “ruthless in consolidating power in his own hands.” “He has partly co-opted the PML(N) and the PPP, whose de facto leaders now serve as a weak prime minister and an even weaker president. He has thrown Imran Khan, the leader of the third main party, into jail. Protests in support of Mr Khan, a former cricketing superstar and the country’s most popular politician, are met with bans and barricades. TV channels dare not mention his name,” it noted.
So, the report said it was unlikely that any plan to divide Pakistan by Munir was about empowering provincial governments to help Pakistanis. Rather, it was more likely that the move would make politicians more malleable to the demands of Munir.
