Since its inception, Pakistan has been a vulnerable state hedged between a hostile India and a hostile Afghanistan. But in the 1990s there was a brief moment when Islamabad sought to expand its sphere of influence into Central Asia. The Soviet Union had just collapsed and communism was flowing out of Central Asia while Islam flowed in, lacking a concept of nationhood a power vacuum almost the size of continental United States,emerged in the region. centuries earlier, South Asia and Central Asia shared deep running religious, political, cultural and commercial ties Pakistan took upon itself to revive those ancient links and in the process reconfigure itself as a superstate.
When Pakistan declared itself an independent state in 1947, it reopened old questions concerning ethnic faultlines in South Asia, across the border in the kingdom of Afghanistan. Pashtun nationalists immediately looked to absorb all the territories inhabited by their ethnic kin, the Afghan Pashtuns favorite the idea of a Pashtunistan and laid irredentist claims to the entire Pashtun populated areas in Pakistan. political tensions rose so severely that Afghanistan briefly blocked Pakistan's admission into the United Nations when Pakistan came into existence anyway, the Afghan government started supporting Pashtun secessionist groups in the newly independent Pakistan. At the time, Pakistan was quite vulnerable. Its territory was divided into two non contiguous parts, while India laid claim to the Kashmir region. Had Pashtunistan formed,the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan might have split as well as Pakistan would have been reduced to the Punjab province. The stakes couldn't be higher, and a secessionist domino effect loomed over Pakistan after a period of physical violence, embargoes and political threats relations eventually simmered when the Afghan Prime Minister stepped down. By the late 1960s. However, a new front emerged in East Pakistan or modern Bangladesh, where social unrest transmuted into mass civil disobedience. Bangladeshi lawmakers demanded greater autonomy from Islam, and the stand have led to sporadic skirmishes between Pakistani government forces and Bangladeshi protesters. Eventually, though, Pakistan lost its hold over its eastern territories, and Bangladesh declared itself an independent sovereign state. What was earlier believed to be a threat with Pashtunistan happened instead with Bangladesh, and it proved that the secessionist domino theory was real. Pakistan spent the next few decades working tirelessly on unifying its communities by crafting a national identity based on Islamic virtues. While secular ideas had failed earlier, the appliance of faith as a unifying component worked with remarkable success in Pakistan's experience. It was only in the 1990s that Pakistani lawmakers started thinking big and started reconsidering their national identity.
Two things happened by this time, Afghanistan was in absolute chaos and the Soviet Union have broken up in smaller entities in Central Asia, the former Soviet Socialist Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, emerged as independent nations. Although each country had its own national symbols centuries of Russian governance had eradicated any sense of cultural or national awareness. Once the Soviets exited, the area of the communist influence evaporated, historical memories surfaced. With the exception of Tajikistan, all of Central Asia was home to Turkic speaking ethnicities and all of them have been an integral part of the Muslim world. So when the Soviet borders collapsed and within the communist ideology, the top Communist officials refurbish themselves as the new founding fathers, the former communist strongmen became despots and to consolidate their hold on power they erected statues of themselves designated their own birthdays as national holidays, while putting up billboards of themselves all over the new territories. In a space devoid of national identity and ideology, the communities in Central Asia were desperate to believe in something and Islam filled that need, just as it had in Pakistan. There was a strong case for faith to flourish. In ancient times, Central Asia was often referred to as Khorasan where powerful Turkic kings, warlords and mercenaries roamed the plains in search of bounty and conquest. Some of them had traveled west like Timor others had set their sights to the south like Babur, who founded the Mughal empire. Either way, Central Asia was deeply tied to the history of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Now, however, the communities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, were soul searching for cohesive social meaning. Ordinarily, the world would have left well enough alone, however, in the 1990s Geological Surveys calculated that the Caspian Sea Basin held a tremendous hydrocarbon reserves second only to the Persian Gulf region. This fact elevated Central Asia as a storehouse of energy. There was just one problem,Turkmenistan Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the nations that inherited the hydrocarbon wealth, were landlocked. Turkey, Iran and Pakistan were the first to recognize central Asia's cultural flux and energy wealth as a power vacuum. And they also happen to be the only routes capable of delivering the regional hydrocarbons to the industrialized world. As such in 1992, Ankara, Tehran and Islamabad revived and expanded the Economic Cooperation Organization to include the five Central Asian republics The goal was to create new pipelines and introduce a common market for goods and services across the region. But the long term objective being to regroup the block towards strategic implications. Ankara explored ways to promote palm Turkic ideas since most of the Central Asian republics were Turkic, but the sheer distance put an end to this plan. Tehran, meanwhile, took an interest in promoting its deep historical ties to Central Asia but this vision ended abruptly because the Iranians are tethered to a different branch of Islam, Pakistan was left as the only potential power broker in the race for Central Asia and Pakistan did meet much of the criteria. It adhered to Sunni Islam It was in the immediate vicinity It shared cultural commonalities and like Central Asia, Pakistan had done some soul searching as well so it knew how to construct social cohesion, and possibly how to meld Central Asia with Pakistan. Appreciating the historical opportunity euphoria overcame Islamabad. Suddenly, Pakistan seemed like it was about to emerge as a heavyweight in global politics. If Islam about could get some trade deals going with Central Asia, it could cement its foothold. In 1992, Pakistan tendered about $10 million in credit to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in order to establish joint ventures in cotton, textiles, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and agriculture. Pakistan signed the deal with Uzbekistan to construct highways, manufacturing plants, and even to establish satellite communications. In Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan signed agreements to import hydroelectric power and pledge to bolster the reach of the English language in banking, accounting, insurance, diplomacy, etc.
These initial projects ranged from trade and science to education and tourism, but the icing on the cake was the Turkmen pipeline, which stretched from Turkmenistan to the Pakistani port of Karachi where tankers could ship the crude oil anywhere else. The technical specification of the plan was fairly simple and because it bypassed both Iran and Russia the venture got the approval of Washington. Now it was believed that this pipeline would have granted Pakistan significant influence over Central Asia, allowing Islam about to promote its commercial interests and gradually solicit the region into its sphere of influence. In just a few generations, the authority of Islamabad would have stretched from the Siberian plains of Kazakhstan to the tropical coastline by the Arabian Sea. Not only would Pakistan gain enormous strategic depth, but also a heavy boost in manpower, resources, logistics, funding, etc. These assets would have leveled the playing field with India. And surely that was an objective worth pursuing. There was just one complication, the Turkmen pipeline, the primary project towards a Pakistani hegemony would have to go through the lawless domain of Afghanistan. Not only did Afghanistan share a common border with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, but it also provided a direct route for road rail and air traffic. On the face of it constructing a pipeline across one of the most chaotic places on Earth seems irrational,the price however, A Pakistan that could match India in its resources and capacity was one the Pakistanis could not let slide. It was a shot in the dark, but an opportunity nonetheless. One thing was certain Pakistan had long term strategic interests going into Afghanistan, interests that were shaped by factors, forces and considerations beyond Afghanistan itself. The Pakistani intelligence agency ISI believed that it could be done Afghanistan could be subjugated and all they had to do was create a corridor to Central Asia that would begin in Peshawar continued through Jalalabad, and Kabul stretching onward to Mazar e Sharif until finally arriving at the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. A parallel corridor was to be traded along the Turkmen pipeline.
When it became evident that the Pakistani proxy groups could not deliver either of the corridors. Islam above began supporting the newly emerging Taliban from 1994 onwards, this turned out to be a disaster. The Taliban aggravated the endemic violence in Afghanistan. They then turn against Pakistan, as they refuse to recognize the Durand Line as an international border, effectively reviving the idea of a unified Pashtunistan. The rise of the Taliban stimulated jihadist movements across the periphery including the newly independent Central Asian states, Islamist militias popped up in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. If jihadism was Pakistan's idea of social cohesion, then Central Asia would have none of it. Officials in Tashkent accused their Pakistani counterparts of directly training Uzbek jihadists, and deliberately reduced political and economic relations. The other countries followed suit and Central Asia is honeymoon with Pakistan collapsed soon after. To seal the deal,Many of the Central Asian republics chose to re establish security ties with Russia. By the turn of the millennium, Islam abuts vision for a superstate perished in its cradle, and the rest is history. Humbled by its past failures, Pakistan pursues a more modest policy today. Its deep water ports of Karachi and Gwadar serve as ideal shipping hubs providing the landlocked Central Asian republics, Afghanistan, and even China's Xinjiang region with much needed access to the Arabian Sea. shifting the focus to its own territory makes a whole lot more sense.After all, political power without economic power is just sterile.
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