Delhi, Dee 21. Speaking to the nation for the first time since he assumed office President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto assured Pakistanis last night that he would continue to wage a 1000-year war against India until Kashmir was liberated. Pakistan’s new flamboyant President thus indicated that he has not yet come to realise that his overriding obsession over the Kashmir dispute has done more than anything else to contribute to the humiliation and destruction of Pakistan as a nation. For instance, there is little doubt that Mr. Bhutto and his fellow West Pakistanis refused to cooperate in framing a constitution with the Bengalis earlier this year when it became obvious that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s constitutional proposals would have brought about normal relations with India.

In essence, this entire tragedy can be traced back to Mr Bhutto’s preoccupation over Kashmir, and it is perhaps worthwhile examining just how much Pakistan has lost because of the Punjabi’s and President Bhutto’s all-consuming animosity towards India. In the first place, Pakistan has lost its eastern wing and 54 per cent of its population. It has been reduced from one fifth to one tenth of the size of India. In the process, the Pakistan Army has lost 90,000 troops and enough military hardware to equip two Indian divisions. (One of the current jokes circulating in Delhi today is that the largest donor of military aid to India this year is Pakistan.)

The old myth that the Pakistan Army was capable of holding its own on the Western Front has been exploded, and this war has seen Pakistan lose valuable and strategic areas of her Western province. Pakistan has lost vital areas of the Rann of Kutch which were ceded to it by the international tribunal after the 1965 conflict. With the cessation of hostilities last week, the Pakistanis also discovered that the Indian troops were well esconed over 1,000 square miles of the Sind desert. In the North, the Indians had captured several strategic salients and bulges along the Western border, including Dera Baba Nanak enclave, south of the river Ravi in the Punjab and the strategic Shakargarh bulge to deny Pakistan forces access to the nearby Indian border communication routes to Kashmir.

In Kashmir itself the Pakistanis failed to break through the Indian defensive positions. The Indians captured the Akhnur Dagger salient which juts into India west of the city of Jammu, a number of border posts along the Jammu front, several commanding heights near Poonch, Rajauri and Naushera, the Lipa valley south of Tithwal and 40 strategic hill posts overlooking the Indian road link to Leh. In the two-week war the Pakistan forces lost half their navy, a quarter of their combat aircraft and about 30 per cent of the their ground forces. But the Pakistanis will perhaps feel the repercussions of this conflict more on the economic front than anywhere else.

With the birth of Bangladesh as an independent nation, Pakistan’s gross national product has automatically been reduced by 40 per cent. Foreign exchange earnings from jute, tea and paper exports of the Eastern wing will drop by 45 per cent. The Pakistanis will also loose a consumer market of 75 million people to India, their large jute mills and the profits of West Pakistan industry in the eastern wing in terms of the Bengal consumer market. West Pakistan stands to lose about £120m a year. At the same time, the blow to industry in West Pakistan will be exacerbated by the fact that large quantities of consumer goods for the Bengal market have not been shipped to the East during the past eight months and are being stock piled in Karachi.

Tax revenues will drop by 40 per cent, exports by 44 per cent and domestic savings by 33 per cent. With defence spending already taking 54 per cent of the budget, it is obvious that Mr. Bhutto’s threat of a continuous confrontation with India will have a disastrous effect upon the economy. But perhaps even more important in the long term, Pakistan has lost the only effective counterbalance which would have perhaps preserved the regional integrity of West Pakistan itself.

With the secession East Bengal, the 20 million West Pakistanis belonging to the provinces of the Sind, and the North-West Frontier will feel particularly vulnerable in being dominated by 40 million Punjabis. One can foresee regional schisms developing within the Western province in the coming years. The war has also shattered Pakistan’s illusion that Islamabad’s foreign policy was superior to that of India. China and America failed to come to Pakistan’s assistance at the crucial stage of the war and a new feeling of isolationism has begun to set in. These, then, are the consequences of the new President’s consuming obsession over Kashmir. It is doubtful whether Mr. Bhutto will accept the fact that the dispute is already a lost cause and his country will probably continue to plunge towards despair and disintegration for the cause of for million Kashmir Muslims across the border.