by Selig S Harrison

Whatever the outcome of the Pakistani elections, now scheduled for February 18, the existing multi-ethnic Pakistani state is not likely to survive for long unless it is radically restructured. Given enough American pressure, a loosely united, confederated Pakistan could still be preserved by reinstating and liberalising the defunct 1973 constitution, which has been shelved by successive military rulers. But as matters stand, the Punjabi-dominated regime of Pervez Musharraf is headed for a bloody confrontation with the country's Pashtun, Baluch and Sindhi mino-rities that could well lead to the break-up of Pakistan into three sovereign entities.

In that event, the Pashtuns, concentrated in the north-western tribal areas, would join with their ethnic brethren across the Afghan border (some 40 million of them combined) to form an independent "Pashtunistan". The Sindhis in the south-east, numbering 23 million, would unite with the six million Baluch tribesmen in the south-west to establish a federation along the Arabian Sea from India to Iran. "Pakistan" would then be a nuclear-armed Punjabi rump state.

In historical context, such a break-up would not be surprising. There had never been a national entity encompassing the areas now constituting Pakistan, an ethnic melange thrown together hastily by the British for strategic reasons when they partitioned the subcontinent in 1947. For those of Pashtun, Sindhi and Baluch ethnicity, independence from colonial rule created a bitter paradox. After resisting Punjabi domination for centuries, they found themselves subjected to Punjabi-dominated military regimes that have appropriated many of the natural resources in the minority provinces.

The resulting Punjabi-Pashtun animosity helps explain why the US is failing to get effective Pakistani cooperation in fighting terrorists. The Pashtuns living along the Afghan border are happy to give sanctuary from Punjabi forces to the Taliban, which is composed primarily of fellow Pashtuns, and to its Qaida friends. Pashtun civilian casualties resulting from Pakistani and American air strikes on both sides of the border are breed-ing a potent underground Pashtun nationalist movement.

The Baluch people, for their part, have been waging intermittent insurgencies since their forced incorporation into Pakis-tan in 1947. Their victims are forging mili-tary links with Sindhi nationalist groups that have been galvanised into action by the death of Benazir Bhutto, a Sindhi hero as was her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

The break-up of Pakistan would be a costly and destabilising development that can still be avoided, but only if the US and other foreign donors use their enormous aid leverage to convince Islamabad that it should not only put the 1973 cons-titution back into effect, but amend it to go beyond the limited degree of autonomy it envisaged.

Eventually, the minorities want a central government that would retain control only over defence, foreign affairs, inter-national trade, communications and currency. In the shorter term, the Bush administration should scrap plans to send special forces into border areas in pursuit of Al-Qaida, which would only strengthen Islamist links with Pashtun nationalists. It should help secular Pashtun forces to compete with the Islamists.

It is often argued that the US must stand by Musharraf and a unitary Pakistani state to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. But the nuclear safeguards depend on the Pakistani army as an institution, not on the president. They would not be affected by a break-up, since the nuclear weapons would remain under the control of the Punjabi rump state and its army.

The army has built up a far-flung empire of economic enterprises in all parts of Pakistan with assets in tens of billions, and can best protect its interests by defusing the escalating conflict with the minorities. Similarly, the minorities would profit from cooperative economic relations with the Punjab, and for this reason prefer confederal autonomy to secession. All concerned have a profound stake in stopping the present slide to Balkanisation.