Why unity is vital for Pakistan's survival

About two million people fled the Swat valley as the army took on the Taliban

In Karachi, John Humphrys considers the fractured nature of Pakistan, and why it is vital that the Taliban militants are defeated.

The last time I came here Pakistan was fighting for its survival. It was at war with its powerful neighbour India, from whose territory it had been carved barely 25 years earlier.

India supported East Pakistan in its fight for independence and won and Bangladesh was born.

The people of what remained of Pakistan were devastated.

Today, nearly 40 years later, it is once again in a struggle for survival but instead of fighting India it is, in the words of the politician Imran Khan, fighting its own people - the Taliban.

They want to impose their own version of Islam on this country, and they want an Islamic state run according to Sharia law.

Vulnerable

No one I have talked to in Karachi over the past week seems to believe they can take over the country. But nor do they believe they can be eliminated as the government now says it is determined to do.

It is one thing to send the army into their stronghold with its tanks and gunships. It is something else again to root them out when they go into hiding.

But what they can do with their threats and their suicide bombings is spread fear - which they are doing. And Pakistan is vulnerable.

This is a fractured country - divided by obscene extremes of wealth. Divided by language. Divided by class. Divided by ethnicity.

For Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the unity of Pakistan was his life's work

The tribes who have controlled the border regions for a thousand years have as little in common with the suburban dwellers of the new Karachi as the gentle followers of Sufi have with those Muslims who would flog a girl for the crime of wearing a pair of jeans.

Those tribal regions have become more radicalised, more dangerous, because they have seen so many of their own people killed in attacks by Americans.

This country is riddled with secessionist movements with their own military wings fighting for independence just as East Pakistan fought successfully.

In some areas the military has effectively ceded control to them.

Nothing to lose

When a state is threatened by a foreign power its people rally behind the flag.

But when the threat comes from within they have to feel they have a real stake in the defeat of the enemy - and it is easy to see why many people in this country might feel the state has not done enough for them to justify their unconditional support.

When you talk to some of the poorest, as I have been doing this past week, you wonder what they have to lose when they already have nothing.

From where I stand looking across this vast, seemingly endless city there is one building that dominates the skyline. It is the tomb of Pakistan's first president, the father of the nation, Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

Here is what he said at the time of partition: "In a few years we have made the Muslims of India, who were only a crowd, into a nation. We now have one flag, one platform and one voice."

Today there are many voices and many platforms but there is still the one flag.

For Jinnah, the unity and the strength of Pakistan was his life's work. In one sense at least it is stronger than he could have imagined. It has its own nuclear missiles.

Which is why, for all of us, the unity of Pakistan matters.