factors buried deep in the Pakistani psyche. The secession of East Pakistan in 1971, when a bungled counter-insurgency campaign cost Pakistan half of its territory, shattered the military’s self-image as the guardian of the nation, and furrowed deep scars in its thinking. Subsequent attempts by other ethnic groups to claim greater independence – Baloch, Pashtuns and Sindhis, among others – met with a neuralgic response. Balochistan was the most glaring example of this weakness – a huge chunk of the country’s land mass that, seven decades after independence, was under tenuous central control.
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