There is never a dull moment in the Pakistan polity, with what the erudite call "fissiparous tendencies" erupting all over all the time. This was as true during the month of March as in any other. The Karachi cauldron boiled over once again as the Mohajir factions of Altaf and Haqiqui went after each other even as the former threatened to withdraw from its alliance with the Pakistan Muslim League (Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif´s party) in governing Sindh.
If Sindh was unstable, the Punjab-dominated national government was seeing other provinces generate pressures with renewed urgency. Once again, the debate between provincialism and centralism began to pick up steam, with the proponents of the "Pakistan Ideology" calling for strict adherence to a tight-knit nation-state ruled from Islamabad. Parties which were till a few weeks ago regarded as in the mainstream suddenly became "anti-national" in the minds of some.
Nawaz Sharif´s national alliance in Islamabad was weakened when the Awami National Party of the nwfp, a partner of nine years´ standing, decided to opt out of the coalition. The trigger was the Prime Minister´s sudden amnesia regarding a promise made to rename the North West Frontier Province "Pakthunkhwa". This is an important matter for the Pakhthuns (Pathans), who make up the majority in the province, and who want the name change since the Sindhis have Sindh, the Punjabis Punjab and the Balochs Balochistan.
Balochistan, meanwhile, was unsettled. The use of its abundant resources for the greater national good – particularly for the benefit of Punjab province and the city of Karachi – has always rankled and the Balochs are growling. While there was that small (or not so small) matter of dropping the ´u´ from "Baluchistan" and replacing it with an ´o´, even more significant was the tussle with Islamabad regarding the withholding of funds for the province.