Jerusalem, Oct 2 (IANS) Pakistan’s military establishment has long sought to divide provinces in the name of restructuring, with critics alleging that the move is driven by a lust for centralised power to subjugate distinct nationalities and sub-nationalities inhabiting resource-rich lands, a report has detailed.
“The Pakistani military establishment and the political leadership of Sindh, spearheaded by President Asif Ali Zardari and his party, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), remain deeply divided over the contentious issue of provincial restructuring and the proposed administrative separation of Karachi. This widening rift carries the dangerous potential to trigger the disintegration of Pakistan, threatening a repetition of the 1971 birth of Bangladesh,” Hasan Mujtaba, an award-winning journalist and human rights defender, wrote in ‘The Times of Israel’.
“A catastrophic, unprecedented genocidal pogrom is feared if the stubborn military establishment remains bent on hacking the country’s historic provinces into over a dozen pieces. To mask this dismemberment, the establishment labels these fractured territories ‘Administrative Units’. In reality, they would function as the new provinces of a severely diminished Pakistan—assuming the state could even survive such a drastic, forced ‘surgery’,” he added.
According to Mujtaba, Pakistan’s 18th constitutional Amendment has emerged as the main flashpoint between Sindh and the military establishment under Army Chief General Asim Munir, with the military pushing to annul these protections through the proposed 28th Constitutional Amendment, which could significantly erode the provinces’ financial and administrative autonomy.
He highlighted that the 18th Amendment, passed during Zardari’s first tenure as President with a two-thirds majority in both Pakistan’s Senate and National Assembly, significantly expanded provincial powers and checked central authority.
“The root cause of the generals’ frustration is the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, which guarantees that a major portion of federal revenues is distributed directly to the provinces. The military, which already consumes a massive portion of the national budget under the banner of defense, desires to divert these NFC funds back into federal coffers,” Mujtaba mentioned.
“Through political proxies and aligned media figures, the establishment continues to exert intense pressure on President Zardari to compromise on the 18th Amendment and back their provincial restructuring plots. Seasoned political analysts warn that capitulating to these demands would sign a death warrant for the PPP’s immense popularity and voting bloc in Sindh—the party’s core bastion of power for nearly two decades,” he noted.
He further said that by aggressively redrawing Pakistan’s internal boundaries, the Pakistani military appears to be presiding over the country’s potential disintegration.
–IANS
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