PAKISTAN: THE GEOGRAPHIC INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE GREAT-GAME OF IMPERIALISM
The Great Game is a term many are familiar with, but regarding its actual provenance and importance in modern world only few really know. Geopolitics is not normally conducted as an overtly stated business! In order to discuss the Great Game between Britain-America and Russia, one has first to explain some background and context.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain was the greatest global power of the early modern age. It blazed a trail of cultural, political economic and technological progress, hitherto unprecedented in the history of humanity. However the British outlook is marked by a characteristic greed and callous selfishness rarely seen elsewhere. And that has led to the debasement and degradation of what could have otherwise been a fairy-tale potential in human history.
From the 1760s onwards — which time marked the start of the Industrial Revolution in England — Russia also began to assume its present shape, and its vast landmass (the largest on the planet) as well as intrinsic Eurasian character made it the natural global contender to Britain’s status. Russia was an organically integrated “land empire” as opposed to Britain which was a mercantile empire. Therein also lies another important difference which became important after the Tsars: if Britain was a selfish little power of shopkeepers and cartels — Russia on the other hand was responsible for the first practical and workable implementation of an alternate philosophy of European modernity and progress, which even if it was somewhat erroneous, was a well intentioned and scientifically planned path to progress, clearly based on the concerns and ideals of humanitarian welfare. It added another feather to its cap of its already remarkable characteristics leading the way by taking a revolutionary step and establishing the world’s first socialist state. Despite the seeming glamour and abundance of capitalism, communism was negligibly as noxious.
Although Anglo-Saxon concern regarding Russia had existed since the days of Empress Catherine, fat Britain (and its American successor) were greatly alarmed by the unexpected development of the Bolshevik Revolution and felt threatened by this new path initiated by Soviet Russia — which would jeopardise their established positions, rich pickings and greed. Britain owed its global position and development to the plunder and exploitation of India (with which imposition the teeming millions of Indian citizens saw no harm in complying). America owed its legendary riches to a vast virgin land peopled by indigenous tribes, which was systematically taken over and “settled” by European colonists and immigrant arrivals, in a setup dominated by the Anglo-Saxon race.
The British were the first to establish an empire set up and run by a cartel of tea and pepper merchants. That was their Indian Empire, their “jewel in the crown”.
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The British used Iranian lands (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan) as buffer shields to defend their Indian imperial possession from Russian attack. This was flanked by the “outer” buffer component of Afghanistan which functioned independently and could afford to be left like that, on account of its hopeless backwardness. There is no development in the western provinces of Pakistan too — other than what is minimally required — as these areas are expendable buffer zones.
These areas mentioned above were later to become Pakistan’s western (trans-Indus) provinces — but their strategic role remained the same in the Pakistani chapter of the Great Game: for use as strategic frontier shields and accessories to protect the ethnic Indian “core” territories of Pakistan (Punjab and Sindh), which housed the major active principle of interest to the Anglo-American regional strategy against Eurasian Russia. This purpose saw its peak utilisation during the Afghan Jihad era, in the Western fight against the Soviet attempt to change the status of Afghanistan through a Marxist coup and armed intervention — with the objective of incorporating it into their bloc.
Pakistan was crafted as a regional pillbox or “picket” to face Soviet moves in South Asia, especially Afghanistan — leading onto control of the Arabian Sea — Persian Gulf and threatening the Middle Eastern interests of the West which included petroleum and the Suez waterway. Though the British departed physically, they saw it convenient to cleave from their old Indian Raj a client rentier state in the Indus Valley which would act as an entrepot for their hegemony as well as carry out their larger geopolitical tasks. The creation of this state was justified to the public by manipulation of various political trends shaped up into a dubious and flawed religious ideology. Its anti-India character would collide with the interests of the actual leaders of Indian national independence such as Nehru’s global non-alignment and statist economic conceptions. Islamic “ideology” was also thought of as the primary anti-communist instrument.
China’s relationship with Pakistan which began rather late in the day, is an entirely different and opportune matter. It has always remained separate from and secondary to Anglo-American imperatives, and was based on the convenience of both being anti-Soviet, anti-India and close neighbourly. China’s relationship with Pakistan — typically characterised by shrill and vulgar populist rhetoric — reached its apogee with the grandiose CPEC geopolitical scheme of 2015, which has since failed. China’s expectations regarding Pakistan as a whole have been dashed onto the jagged rocks lining the shores of reality.
In 1980 the Soviet Union’s armed intervention to prop up Afghanistan’s failing Marxist government marked the apex of Pakistan’s purpose as a Western imperialist tool via which they destroyed the USSR and its global bloc, thereby momentarily winning the Cold War. The already rugged wilderness of Afghanistan was turned into an ash heap, and Islamic extremism was spread out over the world — which soon turned around and bit its own benefactors. But the Afghan Jihad also began an era of military sponsored gangster rule in Pakistan, criminalising its whole society. Both America and its Pakistani proxies were heady with their “victory” and had a good time for the next twenty years thereafter, till Russia began to dust itself and stand up again on the world stage. One key reversal of the victory was the occurrence of 9/11 which led to US aggression in the Middle East including its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In the former country, they were to stay in an expensive occupation for twenty years following which they achieved nothing and fled Kabul like a thief in the night on 15 August 2021. Russia, which had been making various moves on the global strategic chessboard after the “Arab Spring” mischief of 2011 — saw this defeat as a major opportunity and began its military action in the Ukraine. This new situation effectively ended the Anglo-Russian Great Game in South Asia, which had been operating since the time of Empress Catherine the Great and shortly after Ahmad Shah Abdali created his Durrani Empire, later to be called Afghanistan. The focus had shifted elsewhere, and the situation was no longer one of long games and cold wars, but of acute conflict and emergency.
It must be added that 9/11 marked the start of the failure of American plans for ultimate global supremacy (“New American Century”) which was a long drawn out process — along with the rise of chronic dysfunction in the Pakistani state and society, and Talibanism in its (Pashtun) buffer areas.
With this rather sudden end to this long and major epoch in the affairs of modern history — the raison d’etre for the existence of Pakistan was suddenly and unexpectedly called into question, that too at a time when almost three decades of “partying” had made Pakistan systemically dysfunctional and its only hope of sustenance was the Western aid it and its ruling elite received from their Western sponsors.
In recent years when Russia and China created their current global geostrategic partnership to counter the West, many overtures were made by them to Pakistan to come on board and avail a new chance, but these were unsuccessful as they did not conform to the sort of relationship Pakistan’s elite had with its Anglo-American overlords. Pakistan was not a valid political and ethnic entity and it existed only on free aid for rentier services rendered — an arrangement which the Pakistanis knew that Russia and China could not satisfy, but that was the only arrangement acceptable to them.
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THE ARRANGEMENT: The importance of Pakistan structurally revolves around its core. This is the actual centre of control, which answers to its imperialist masters and is made up of the provinces of Punjab and Sindh — which is where all of Pakistan’s British installed infrastructural development, industry and agricultural potential are concentrated. These areas are ethnic Indian, and border the Republic of India on its left side, via a British designed border known as the Radcliffe Line. These are the best original and most settled areas of this country, and their condition reflects an ancient continuity. The Iranian lands beyond the Indus are wastelands and wildernesses, with nominal facilities and governance, although they are very resource rich. The Iranians (Pashtuns-Afghans and Baluch) are tribals who have plundered India for centuries, and they still operate in a similar “mode” of letting out their services. Their latest such use was in the Afghan Jihad.
As stated above, Pakistan is territorially composed of a cis-Indus neo-colonial CORE area, which is ethnic Indian and composed of the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. This is flanked on the western side of the river by the SHIELD area: the backward and lesser developed trans-Indus Iranian provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, and the remote Dardic region of Gilgit-Baltistan which borders the Pamirs, China and Kashmir. The River Indus originates a little beyond Gilgit, in Tibet. As a whole, all these ethnic Iranian and Indian regions constitute the INDUS VALLEY, which is an ethnic watershed zone between Turco-Iranian Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.
The trans-Indus areas and Gilgit served during British times as the first or inner layer of the shield. Their modality of governance was such that they were formally part of the British Empire, but with nominal government control and special laws tailored to the requirements of local ethnic and social situations. The areas easy of access were formed into provinces. Remote and turbulent areas that could not be controlled directly, but were nevertheless important to influence — were made into autonomous sub-regional zones such as the Pashtun FATA where a “Political Agent” resided, who represented the imperial government….hence the designation of “tribal districts” (which operated not under regular British imperial law but conditionally agreed tribal customs) as territorial “agencies”. A similar system was introduced for Baluchistan, called the Sandeman system. Many of these agencies were ruled by local princelings who were co-opted and controlled by the British. Many of such areas bordered the Kingdom of Afghanistan — which served as the “outer element” or external layer of the buffer arrangement, over which the British had no direct control.
It is important to note, that during the British era, this complex buffer arrangement served to defend the most vulnerable side of the British Indian Empire itself, the actual border of which for all intents and purposes lay across the Indus River. In Pakistani times after 1947, the two western provinces served to act as the buffer between a hostile and unreliable Afghanistan (and USSR) and the Punjabi dominated core neo-colonial state nucleus run by the army which served as the bogeyman of Anglo-American imperial strategy in this region.
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Though they were far from perfect, people may find it convenient not to mention Afghanistan’s communists any longer. Be that as it may, the Jihad won out in Afghanistan in 2021. It is also now poised to win here in Pakistan — or at least parts of it.
Pakistan aimed to increase its hold over Afghanistan after the Cold War victory to the extent of possible territorial incorporation or at least having it as a permanent protégé. But the Taliban were not interested in continuing to follow the exact orders of the Punjabis whom they secretly considered as their historical inferiors and held to be a lesser people. And their future intentions such as their hosting of Al-Qaeda would nullify all such prospects in a different way.
By 9/11 the last phase of the Great Game had begun to show its fully blown repercussions, and after this key turning point it effectively became dormant because the US was now directly present in Afghanistan, and in full force. Russia was preoccupied with its own internal existential crises at this time.
But the US still required the existence of Pakistan — this time as a transit and logistical route to support and supply its heavy presence in Afghanistan. A vital component of the Western aid to Pakistan at this time was the so-called CSF or Coalition Support Fund, which lined the pockets of Pakistani generals, bureaucrats and politicians. The Pakistani Taliban also began their rise at this time, and the US was afraid that a weak and “abandoned” Pakistan would pose the same threats to its security as the Afghan Taliban had once done.
In 2011 Osama Bin Laden was finally tracked down and killed in a house next to Pakistan’s Military Academy. This was one the main stated objectives for the US presence in Afghanistan. Russia once more became confident enough to confront the US globally after the events of the so-called Arab Spring. In Pakistan, the kleptocratic Zardari government had literally begun to drill into Pakistani financial assets in the course of its robberies. The decline of US global ascendancy and that of Pakistan in general were writ large.
In 2014 Russia occupied and regained the Crimea and in 2015 China launched the CPEC scheme of its ambitious Eurasian OBOR project in Pakistan.
What really quickened matters was the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Pakistan had not met with several CPEC targets and began to cool towards the idea. It was mentioned less and just faded. The Imran Khan government was beginning to totter due to endemic mismanagement and dysfunction. In the course of its three years in power, Pakistan borrowed an aggregate of more money than what it had done ever since its birth in 1947. Declining US global influence forced it to take an emergency decision to pull all its troops out of Afghanistan in 2021.
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The Pakistani elite is drawn from all the ethnic constituents of the country, but is presided over by the Punjabi component, which together with its Indic character is the overwhelming influence in charge of all the other “sub-toadies”. This in turn is dominated by the army. One is reminded of a witty quip by the late Najibullah Ahmadzai, the last communist president of Afghanistan who said in Pashto: “Wretched is the slave woman who washes clothes [or slaves away] for another slave woman”. Although at the time he was referring to the Afghan Mujahideen-Pakistan relationship, the adage nicely describes the slavish relations between the minority ethnic elites of Pakistan with the Punjabi majority who are themselves the slaves of America.
The Americans would never tolerate any Pakistani leader who deviated from this agenda, even in a flawed manner. The demagogic Z.A. Bhutto and Imran Khan are primary examples. The Americans even got rid of their Islamic conqueror of Afghanistan, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq when he got too big for his shoes and his "Islamic conquest" stuff got to his head. Pakistanis are not conquerors, but obedient slaves and should remain so -- and thus spake Uncle Sam!
The lengthy era of the CIA orchestrated Jihad in Afghanistan had different stages, but was a bonanza time for the Pakistani elites beyond their wildest dreams. The debauchery caused by Afghan Jihadi Dollars was proverbial, taking on an uncontrollable momentum of its own and acquiring a character which ended up in corrupting and crashing the whole British crafted Pakistani state edifice with its runaway gangsterism and delinquency. Pakistan’s Jihadi crisis is like that of an alcoholic: first drinking himself silly, and then to death…but Uncle Sam assisted by shipping untold truckloads of liquor to this wretch thinking he could squeeze some use out of him. Instead after 2021, his job has come a-cropper, and the alcoholic lies dying in the gutter of history, writhing to get his “fix” which is now being denied him.
But of course nobody cared then. In the clever words of the infamous Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Who cares for some stirred up Muslims, when we got the liberation of central Europe and the end of the cold war?” The foxy faced immigrant Pole — who rather resembled a creature out of a sty — might not have been aware that in the Afghans he was dealing with the people of Gog-Magog….and that the consequences would be far reaching indeed. He was long dead by the time his country’s troops scrambled to leave Kabul in a shambles in 2021.
Being especially pampered as they always have been over the past two centuries — the elites of the Indus Valley lands have never really taken anything seriously. Easy come, easy go was their motto till now and never in the wildest expectations of their dull and addled minds could they have ever imagined any disastrous outcomes. They thought the English/Americans would forever be there to take care of them, and they have little if any conception or interest in their own history or people, and about where they have actually came from.
The whole scheme now rots as it should. It is predatory and artificial. It has to be exposed fully for what it is, once and for all — to die as it should.
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