Failing Conflict Management between Federation and Unit: An Analysis of Conflict Management between the Federation of Pakistan and East Pakistan

Abstract

The history of Intergovernmental relations in Pakistan is full of conflicts and clashes between Center and its federating units since the creation of this country. At the time of creation the federation of Pakistan was composed of Center and five federating units. Those federating units were home of distinct ethnic sub-nationalities which included Bengalies in East Pakistan, Punjabies in Punjab, Sindhies in Sind, Pukhtoons in NWFP and Balauch in Baluchistan. The people who migrated from Muslim minority provinces of undivided India had different culture and language from indigenous sub-nationalities who resided in the cities of Sindh and few cities in Punjab, such as Multan and Lahore. But the majority of those migrants settled in major cities of the province of Sindh.

The multi-ethnic federal structure of Pakistan needed a delicate balance among units and with center. The leadership of the federation failed to develop a balance among them not only through action but also through unjust policies. Pakistan complex ethnic structure and typical geography, that is, two part of a country are twelve hundred kilometer away from each other, in fact posed a serious threat to the national integration in the nascent state.

The ruling elites of Pakistan, by and large, failed to produce an accepted legal document that could have cemented the unique physical and political structure of the country. Pakistan’s successive failures in decentralizing the administrative machinery proved fatal for the country’s territorial integrity in 1971 and later on perpetuate the forces of disintegration among the remaining federating units.

Keywords: Conflict Management, Pakistan, East Pakistan, Bangladesh, Analysis