AHC:Best possible outcome for Pakistan

samcster94

Banned
Pakistan had a deck stacked against it(artificiality, split 1,100 miles apart, hostile neighbor), even if you do not take what became Bangladesh into account. What is the best possible outcome for Pakistan???
Bonus points if Bangladesh (even as a separate country) also does better.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
To have Britain partition Kashmir on religious lines and give all of Muslim Kashmir to Pakistan; this eliminates the Kashmir dispute and thus makes Indo-Pakistani relations less tense. Also, the Bengalis should be allowed to form a government in 1970 after they win a majority of the seats in the Pakistani Parliament; basically, what this would mean is no Bangladeshi genocide and thus no Indian liberation of Bangladesh.

As for Bangladesh, you could try getting more investment into Bangladesh; however, I am unsure how to accomplish this.
 
Hari Singh hated Nehru, so if Jinnah decides to negotiate with Hari Singh, maybe he accedes to Pakistan? This is, of course, if Hari Singh eases up on his stubborness.

the Bengalis should be allowed to form a government in 1970 after they win a majority of the seats in the Pakistani Parliament

And then there is a military coup.
 

Zachariah

Banned
Well, with a GDP growth rate of 6.8% during the '60s, Pakistan was seen as a model of economic development around the world, and there was much praise for its economic progress. Karachi was seen as an economic role model around the world, and there was much praise for the way its economy was progressing. In particular, West Pakistan's high rate of economic growth during this time period brought wide regard to Pakistan as a model of successful implementation of capitalism in a developing country - in 1964, GDP growth was at 9.38%. Many countries sought to emulate Pakistan's economic planning strategy- most notably, South Korea directly copied the Pakistanis' second "Five-Year Plan" to kick-start its own meteoric economic growth, with the World Financial Center in Seoul modeled after that of Karachi. Later on though, economic mismanagement in general, and fiscally imprudent economic policies in particular (along with Operation Gibraltar and the Indo-Pakistani War, of course) caused a large increase in the country's public debt, and led to slower growth in the 1970s and 1990s especially.

Pakistan (incl. East Pakistan) had a total GDP of US$9.314 billion, compared to South Korea's GDP of US$2.814 billion in 1962 at the time when it adopted the Pakistanis' 5yr plan- both nations had comparable GDPs/capita at the time, and at that time, Pakistan's rate of economic growth was a couple of percentage points higher than that of South Korea. So then, the best case scenario would be for Pakistan to have continued its meteoric economic growth and retain its place as one of the Asian Tiger economies right up to the present day, with the Pakistani economy growing at a similar pace or faster than OTL's South Korea, to the extent where Pakistan still had a GDP/capita similar to or greater than that of OTL's South Korea by the present day. Which would be enough to allow Pakistan (incl. Bangladesh/East Pakistan) to overtake Japan as the world's third largest economy shortly after the turn of the millenium ITTL, even if historical population growth rates were halved as a result of becoming a developed first-world country. So, how would go about doing that?

Something which many people forget is that both South Korea and Pakistan were pretty much military dictatorships back in the 60's and early 70's. Pakistan's economic ranking was higher than South Korea's back then, and even in religious aspects, there wasn't that much difference. But in the 70's, South Korea chose to aggressively pursue anti-religious extremism. And there's no reason why South Korea couldn't have remained more religious, if not for the aggressive forced conversion policies of their respective military dictators back in the 70s and 80s. Sure, multi-ethnicity's more of an issue for Pakistan, but South Korea used to be markedly more multi-ethnic prior to Park Chung-Hee's policies- to strengthen his rule, he pursued aggressive ethnic nationalism (as opposed to the Pakistanis' Islamic nationalism), and using the "ideology of racial purity" along with state-sponsored encouragement of discrimination against all people of both "foreign-blood" and "mixed blood", effectively conducted silent ethnic cleansing, launching his Saemaul Undong pogrom and the formal "Movement to destroy the worship of gods" in 1970. Whereas in the late 70's, Pakistan instead chose to aggressively pursue the opposite policy of religious extremism, with President General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq launching his Nizam-e-Mustafa pogrom to establish Pakistan as an inherently religious, non-secular Islamic state and enforce Sharia Law across the land upon coming to power. So South Korea wasn't always an inherently non-religious secularist country. And Pakistan wasn't always an inherently Islamic theocratic country either.

Back when it was founded, the Dominion of Pakistan had no official state religion prior to 1956- it was only then that it was declared as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, with the country's first constitution. Which was itself then abrogated in 1958, only two years later, after a military Coup d'état. Pakistan's second constitution was approved in 1962, granting executive power to the president and abolishing the office of the prime minister. It also institutionalized the intervention of military in politics by providing that for twenty years, stipulating that the president or the defence minister had to be a person who had held a rank not lower than that of lieutenant-general in the army. This 1962 constitution was suspended in 1969, and abrogated in 1972. And it was only the 1973 Constitution which actually introduced the adoption of religious, Islamic laws for government and judicial protocols and civil governance in Pakistan for the first time; declaring Pakistan to be an Islamic Republic and Islam as the state religion, stating that all laws would have to be brought into accordance with the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah, and that no law repugnant to such injunctions could be enacted, as well as creating institutions such as the Shariat Court and the Council of Islamic Ideology to channel the interpretation and application of Islam.

So then, what if the 1962 Pakistani Constitution had never been suspended? The Bangladeshi liberation struggle against Pakistan only really took off as a popular movement in the immediate aftermath of its suspension by Yahya Khan, upon his seizing power, and it was led by secular leaders. With this reality and the feeling of Islamic solidarity in the background, the Islamists in East Pakistan viewed Bengali nationalism as unacceptable and instead sided with the Pakistani Army's efforts to crush the Bengali independence movement; secularists hailed the Bangladeshi victory as the triumph of secular Bengali nationalism over religion-centred Pakistani nationalism. Without the suspension of the constitution by Yahya Khan and his Islamist supporters, setting Pakistan on the path toward becoming an Islamic Republic and being governed over by Islamic Sharia law above all else, and without his decision to launch Operation Searchlight, would the Bangladesh Liberation War have even happened? And without it, a saner, more stable and less religiously extremist Pakistan would just have to follow the path which it was already one, towards its best-case scenario. As it was IOTL, South Korea simply adapted that road-map and followed it itself, to great effect. Why couldn't it have worked for the ones who came up with it, Pakistan?
 
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