I think Afghanistan will only take the Pashtun areas of Balochistan, but if they take the whole thing all they are getting is the Baloch Ethnofascists switching their target from Pakistan to Afghanistan.

Also, why can't anyone understand that it was never India's policy to reverse the partition? India damn well knows enough about Pakistan that their people are very patriotic, especially the Punjab area. They would only send troops to Punjab in a Pakistan implodes scenario to protect their own interests, and when everything ends India sends the troops home. And Sindh? What would they get out of Sindh, aside from a pro-Pakistan insurgency? India has more interests in dividing up Pakistan than taking Pakistan. Even Subramian Swami, some hard line BJP Hindu Nationalist who has made a name for himself by making stupid and outlandish remarks, wants to invade Pakistan and divide it into four. Not annex it, divide it into four.



I think you will have to make everything go wrong for Pakistan in order for it to implode.

its hardly reversing partition, we're talking about something that, presuming post 1960 is really close to 1960 (i actually read it as 1960 on the dot) would mean the difference is not that big (12-13 years after partition, it may be a struggle but things could be undone).

Anything post 1970 i agree though, too much time has passed and they would be pretty patriotic and nationalistic by then. That means Sindh probably becomes its own nation and punjab certainly does.
 
Sindh, Bangladesh, Balochistan, the NWFP, and other areas would become independent, but I suspect much of Pakistan would become wartorn hellholes a la the Kashmir Valley, with much ethnic cleansing and murder. I suspect the Muhajir parts of Sindh, for instance, would be this. Expect lots of Partition-style forced movements of peoples with lots of mass murder in between as the nation tears itself apart.

Show me any claims India has on Pakistan besides Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir.

India wants to conquer Pakistan and murder all the Muslims, duh. India is obviously an evil Hindu nationalist Soviet client plotting the murder of everyone they disagree with. /s

On a more serious note, it’s Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Most of the state is actually Punjabi-fied parts of Jammu.
 
the NWFP, and other areas would become independent

I can imagine Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK for short) (NWFP has been outdated since 2010) would join up with FATA in this Pakistan collapses scenario, hell, the two provinces are considering merging right now into one. Now the question is, do they become Pashtunistan or merge into Afghanistan?
 
Would it be possible some areas of Pakistan end up being incorporated into either Afghanistan or Iran, or in a scenario where the additional later disintegration of Afghanistan ends up reuniting the various ethnic regions of both Pakistan and Afghanistan?
 
Doubt it. Iran has no territorial claims on Pakistan.

Was referring to the Balochistan region which Iran controls a part of, perhaps Iran sees the emergence of a Baloch state in the former Pakistan (possibly later Afghanistan) as threat along similar lines to how Turkey views a Kurdish state.
 
Was referring to the Balochistan region which Iran controls a part of, perhaps Iran sees the emergence of a Baloch state in the former Pakistan (possibly later Afghanistan) as threat along similar lines to how Turkey views a Kurdish state.

Maybe you might get Iranian troops trying to curb a Baloch insurgency and supporting Pakistan, and that's it.
 

Srihari14

Banned
India Might take important Cities like Lahore and parts of Sindh but will not outright annex Pakistan, Rather make them their puppets
 
There was a Pakistani Civil War. India didn't annex anything.

Even if there were some full-blown collapse in (West) Pakistan in which India intervened, I doubt it'd be anything more than trying to impose a new, friendlier government and extracting a favorable peace treaty in which Pakistan dropped claims to Kashmir. There aren't going to be annexations, because India isn't going to want to bring in hostile populations or the international condemnation that would accompany it. (For that reason, I even doubt they'd bother annexing Gilgit-Baltistan or Azad Kashmir, even if India currently formally claims them; beyond perhaps some minor border adjustments, they'd probably pressure Pakistan to just accede to the Line of Control as an international boundary.)

Honestly, not to single out this thread, but there are reasons why no major power since WWII has tried to, or successfully has annexed a neighbor's state or territory. International law largely guards the sovereignty and inviolability of state boundaries. And contrary to popular perceptions, countries largely do adhere to international law. (They may try to skirt it, but rarely just blatantly break it.) The number of military annexations post-WWII is actually quite slim: Indonesia and East Timor, India and Goa, Israel and W. Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, Russia and Crimea. Saddam Hussein obviously tried in Iran and in Kuwait.

India isn't going to try to annex Pakistan, whatever some right-wing nationalists' fever dreams. They know doing so would court massive instability and bring in a hugely hostile population. They're not likely to break up the country either, unless it falls apart on its own, since the successor states will likely be weaker and more of a security threat to India than a surviving Pakistani state.

And no, Afghanistan and Iran aren't going to annex territory either for the same reason. They're not going to want to bring in the security headaches or hostile populations.
 
And no, Afghanistan and Iran aren't going to annex territory either for the same reason. They're not going to want to bring in the security headaches or hostile populations.

That does not take into account the Balochi who reside in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan and Iran and would readily take advantage of Pakistan's collapse to establish an independent state.
 
That does not take into account the Balochi who reside in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan and Iran and would readily take advantage of Pakistan's collapse to establish an independent state.

Even if an independent Balochistan were to emerge (and that's a big lift ... the vast majority of unrecognized states fail to win international recognition and struggle to act as independent states), that doesn't automatically lead to Iranian or Afghan expansion. Again, states do not routinely sweep in to grab neighboring territories because it's enormously expensive, draining, carries big international costs, and often means you get a hostile population.
 
Again, states do not routinely sweep in to grab neighboring territories because it's enormously expensive, draining, carries big international costs, and often means you get a hostile population.
This doesn't apply to the Afghanistan annexing pashtun areas
 
Even if an independent Balochistan were to emerge (and that's a big lift ... the vast majority of unrecognized states fail to win international recognition and struggle to act as independent states), that doesn't automatically lead to Iranian or Afghan expansion. Again, states do not routinely sweep in to grab neighboring territories because it's enormously expensive, draining, carries big international costs, and often means you get a hostile population.

Am thinking in terms of both Iran and Afghanistan looking to invade a fledgling Balochistan born from the remains of Pakistan's former Balochistan province due to fears such a state could cause Baloch in Iran and Afghanistan to seek to join/merge with Balochistan, akin to concerns a potential Kurdish state would have on Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
 
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They're not likely to break up the country either, unless it falls apart on its own, since the successor states will likely be weaker and more of a security threat to India than a surviving Pakistani state.
While I absolutely agree with you that India wouldn't annex anything besides having Pakistan drop its claims to Kashmir, I don't follow your logic that they wouldn't partition Pakistan in to weaker successor states if they had the chance. In the long-run, a united Pakistan in the process of developing nuclear weapons (if we're assuming a 1970s-1990s range for this proposed implosion) is way more of a security threat to India than a bunch of squabbling successor states. Granted, there would be a lot more internal strife in those successor states, and there would still heavy anti-Indian and Pakistan-nostalgia sentiments, but I don't see how that's more of a threat.
 
While I absolutely agree with you that India wouldn't annex anything besides having Pakistan drop its claims to Kashmir, I don't follow your logic that they wouldn't partition Pakistan in to weaker successor states if they had the chance. In the long-run, a united Pakistan in the process of developing nuclear weapons (if we're assuming a 1970s-1990s range for this proposed implosion) is way more of a security threat to India than a bunch of squabbling successor states. Granted, there would be a lot more internal strife in those successor states, and there would still heavy anti-Indian and Pakistan-nostalgia sentiments, but I don't see how that's more of a threat.

Because it still isn't that realistic. I realize we're on an alternative history website. None of us know how some alternative time line would work out and nothing is impossible. But I find it unlikely that any plausible Indian government is going to try to forcibly break up (Western) Pakistan for a number of reasons:

- International law / diplomacy: India would be an occupying power. They'd have zero jurisdiction under international law to break the country up. Nobody would recognize it and it would earn massive international condemnation. As I said, countries largely *do* adhere to international law, though they may skirt it from time to time. And countries largely guard norms against redrawing boundaries by force or by external powers because that's a norm that protects themselves as well.

- Practicalities: Pakistani nationalism is well-developed. It was absolutely a thing by the early 1950s, with the crucible of Partition forging a great deal of national unity in a short time. Obviously this wasn't true of the Bengalis, but secessionist movements elsewhere in Pakistan, though real, have never been more than a fringe viewpoint.

So any forced balkanization would earn massive international condemnation, would require a large-scale Indian occupation, be opposed by the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis, and would be massively destabilizing, both by creating a draining occupation and by creating a number of weak, internationally-unrecognized states that would if anything be more dangerous on a day-to-day basis than a nuclear-armed rival. Yes, a nuclear rival is a threat, but not one that is a problem on a regular basis. Weak successor states wracked by insurgencies and an unpopular occupation would be a far greater security risk, encouraging terrorism towards India, refugee flows, and fueling Islamist extremism.

Part of the reason I'm being very dismissive to this scenario is not because of this scenario itself but because it touches on a number of cliches that are common on this board which I think are vast misreadings of both contemporary history and several modern realities. There's this trip that ethnically diverse nations are ripe for breakup. In fact, you only really see monoethnic states in Western Europe and a couple of other exceptions (Japan, S. Korea). Diversity is the norm, not the exception, and most publics, even in poor, multiethnic states, have a decent amount of nationalism and commitment to their countries.

Also, the only balkanizations post-WW2 were the three Communist unions (USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia), all of which were on paper loose confederations that gave their constituent parts a constitutional right to secede and only functioned as centralized states under a party dictatorship. Once that dictatorship was gone, they proved unworkable and fell apart. And that their constituent parts had a constitutional right to secede gave them legitimacy in international law that most seceding states do not have. Most states that have gone through civil wars in the past 50 years have held together, not combusted.

There's also this trope that assumes that occupying powers -- or going further back, colonial powers -- have some inherent ability to force their will upon other nations. Breaking them up, redrawing boundaries, imposing new governments. It was never entirely true even in the 19th Century (where most colonial boundaries and arrangements involved some negotiation and give and take with local powers), and it certainly hasn't been true in the OTL 20th. To apply it here, India doesn't have the capacity to force Pakistan to breakup, to run a major occupation, or defy the world in annexing broad swathes of Indian territory. I appreciate the thread, and people have posed some interesting thoughts, but it -- like a lot of threads on here that look at countries outside the Western world -- isn't really that plausible IMO.
 
secessionist movements elsewhere in Pakistan, though real, have never been more than a fringe viewpoint.

The Balochi independence movement is perhaps the largest independence movement in all of South Asia with the exception of that of the Sri Lankan Tamils. I think it's very likely that, in the case of a totally massive defeat of Pakistan, Balochistan breaks away.

Khyber Pakhtunkwa tried to break away in the form of the Bannu Resolution, led by notable anti-Pakistani Pashtun Bacha Khan, who was a Congress supporter pre-Partition and felt that Partition was a massive betrayal of pro-India Muslims.

Gilgit tried to break away as the "Republic of Gilgit-Astore" as well.

So yes, secessionism is real in Pakistan, though not along the Indus Valley. But even along the Indus Valley, there is stuff like the Punjabi language movement, and history has shown us that language movements can turn into nationalism.

with the crucible of Partition forging a great deal of national unity

Sure, but there were few refugees in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkwa, or Gilgit. So, the horrific violence and inhuman brutality of Partition did not inspire national unity in those regions.
 
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