WASHINGTON • Muslim circles have expressed alarm and disgust at the publication of a redrawn map of the Islamic world in a journal closely linked to the US armed forces. The Armed Forces Journal, which has published the redrawn map of the world of Islam along with a long explanatory article, is published by the Army Times Publishing Company, a part of Gannett Company, Inc, the world’s largest publisher of professional military and defence periodicals. The proposed scheme places Pakistan on the chopping block. According to the plan, “Iran, a state with madcap boundaries, would lose a great deal of territory to Unified Azerbaijan, Free Kurdistan, the Arab Shia State and Free Balochistan, but would gain the provinces around Herat in today’s Afghanistan — a region with a historical and linguistic affinity for Persia.
“Iran would, in effect, become an ethnic Persian state again, with the most difficult question being whether or not it should keep the port of Bandar Abbas or surrender it to the Arab Shia State.
“What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s North-west Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren Pakistan, another unnatural state, would also lose its Baloch territory to Free Balochistan. The remaining ‘natural’ Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi. “The city-states of the UAE would have a mixed fate — as they probably will in reality. Some might be incorporated in the Arab Shia State ringing much of the Persian Gulf … Since all puritanical cultures are hypocritical, Dubai, of necessity, would be allowed to retain its playground status for rich debauchees. Kuwait would remain within its current borders, as would Oman.”