Sleeping with the Enemy

Sleeping with the Enemy:

Pakistan’s Military Industrial Complex and Existential Crises of National Identity

by Patrick J Christian

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In a May 2011 Wall Street Journal article, reporter Bret Stephens suggests that Pakistan is undergoing existential crises of national identity. The truth of this observation is sobering because Pakistan is at the heart of two very different, but deadly conflicts; an inter-state contest of nuclear will with India and an intra-state conflict in Afghanistan. Understanding Pakistan’s existential crises of identity may well be the only way that the international community will keep these two separate conflicts from spiraling out of control into the next multi-continent war.

In a recent visit to Pakistan, US Secretary of State Clinton and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mullen emphasized the need for Pakistan to subordinate religious fundamentalism and identity defining border disputes to international rules of law as conditions for American assistance and economic support. What both US policy makers and Bret Stephens miss is that Pakistan’s conflict with India and involvement in the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan are only the most visible threats facing the South West Asia region. In many ways, the four provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the Pastho’s homelands constitute the seeds for the next regional multi-state war. The Punjabi and Mujahir identity conflict with India is a visible issue that deeply affects the mindset of the Punjabi dominated military officer corps. The fact that Pakistan’s military is almost completely populated by ethnic Punjabi’s who collectively constitute a closed and powerful politico-socioeconomic order is far less visible. What has become in effect a military class within the democratic state of Pakistan is rejected as essentially foreign by key segments of Pakistani society. In Balochistan, the Pakistani military is battling a decades old insurgency with more US funded weaponry and material than is used to fight the Pakistani Taliban. Historic Balochistan includes 45% of Pakistan’s national territory and most of its natural resources, plus significant chunks of Iran and Afghanistan; factors that create the conditions for a regional multi-state war. The Pashtun people of Pakistan and Afghanistan are intricately caught up in competing objectives of ethnic nationalism and universal Islamic fundamentalism and their struggles have a disproportionate affect on both countries’ chances of security and stabilization.

Download the Full Article: Sleeping with the Enemy

Patrick J Christian is a doctoral student at NSU Department of Conflict Analysis & Resolution with an emphasis on psycho-cultural identity and ethnic based conflict. He received his master’s degree from Gonzaga Jesuit University in Spokane, Washington in cross-cultural organizational leadership and his baccalaureate from University of South Florida in international relations, history and pre-law. Patrick has extensive experience in the practice and research of intra-state violence, civil war and tribal conflict. He has led field teams conducting combat advisory missions, tribal engagement and counterinsurgency operations in Caquetá, Putumayo and Los Amazonas Colombia; Puerto Francisco Orellana in Ecuador; Darfur Sudan; Bilate and Ogadin regions of Ethiopia; and Baghdad and Taji Iraq. He has served as the Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, Ethiopian Special Operations Department, and the Colombian Army’s 6th COLAR Division as well as served as the United States Representative to the African Union Ceasefire Commission in Darfur Sudan. Patrick has trained US Army Special Forces, US Navy SEALs, and USMC Advisory Groups in combat advising, tribal engagement and psycho-historiographical profiling of tribes in conflict. His articles on combat advising, tribal engagement and conflict analysis and resolution have appeared in Special Warfare Quarterly and the Small Wars Journal. In 2011, BrownWalker Press published his first book, a Combat Advisor’s Guide to Tribal Engagement, available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble booksellers.