But for the most part, what is going on in Balochistan - this
far-flung, underdeveloped, but resource-rich Pakistani province
bordering Afghanistan and Iran - has been largely ignored by the
foreign press.
Trouble in Pakistan's energy-rich Balochistan
As Islamabad moves to exploit its geo-strategic capital in the
mineral-rich southwestern Balochistan province, tribal leaders and
regional nationalists make it clear they are ready to shed blood to
gain more control over the region's natural resources.
By Naveed Ahmad in Islamabad for ISN Security Watch (30/01/06)
Since 2002, a total of 843 attacks and incidents of violence have been
reported in different parts of Pakistan's Southwestern Balochistan
province, including 54 attacks on law-enforcement agencies, 31 attacks
on gas pipelines, 417 rocket attacks on various targets, 291 mine
blasts, and 50 abductions. In the same period, a total of 166 incidents
of violence were reported in the Kohlu district, including 45 bomb
blasts and 110 rocket attacks, according to a senior official of
Frontier Corps (FC) paramilitary force.
Normally, a region experiencing violence of this magnitude would
feature prominently in major international media publications. But for
the most part, what is going on in Balochistan - this far-flung,
underdeveloped, but resource-rich Pakistani province bordering
Afghanistan and Iran - has been largely ignored by the foreign press.
The most eventful year for the defiant nationalist forces in the
province has been 2005, which started and ended with major military
operations.
The Pakistani military launched its first operation in Balochistan in
mid-January last year, after reports that a female doctor had been
raped inside a residential compound belonging to a petroleum company
led to retaliation by local tribesmen. The Bugti tribesmen launched a
rocket attack on the facility and found themselves engaged in a
showdown with the Pakistani military. After heated negotiations in
April last year, the military-led government and the tribesmen agreed
to a ceasefire.
However, on the night of 13 December last year, the ceasefire came to
an explosive end when rebels from the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)
fired two rockets at the Quetta garrison where Pakistani military ruler
General Pervez Musharraf was staying on the first leg of a two-day
visit to the province. Though the military successfully managed to stop
the media from reporting the incident, the worst was yet to come.
The following day, the tribesmen struck again, this time firing eight
rockets at a camp in mineral-rich Kohlu, where General Musharraf was
visiting the newly built garrison and inspecting paramilitary troops.
Three of the rockets landed close to the venue, but there were no
casualties. The BLA quickly claimed responsibility for the attack.
Then, on 15 December, a helicopter carrying the top brass of the
Frontier Corps for an aerial view of the volatile region was hit by
machine gun fire, injuring the top commanding officers. The BLA again
claimed responsibility.
The emergence of the BLA
The BLA, which first emerged in the 1970s, originally consisted mainly
of Marri tribesmen, but its composition later changed to include Bugti
and Mengal tribesmen. Today, the BLA boasts many members from an
educated, middle-class background. And Baloch nationalist leaders say
the present conflict has succeeded in uniting, for the first time, the
educated Baloch and the tribesmen.
It is the first time the two largest Baloch tribes have set aside their
differences to join hands in the struggle. In the 1970s, the Bugtis sat
on the fence while the Marris led the Soviet-inspired armed
insurrection. More than 6,000 Balochis and around 3,000 soldiers were
killed in the bloody conflict, which ended with military dictator
General Zia-ul-Haq declaring amnesty. Thousands of Marri tribesmen
received weapons training in Afghanistan in the 1970s, and today they
rank as strategic planners in the BLA fold. The group has an estimated
4,000 to 5,000 men in its ranks.
Though the identity of its leadership remains secret, the BLA is
reportedly led by a man known as "Ballach", a Moscow University
graduate and the younger son of tribal elder Khair Baksh Marri.
In addition to having its own flag and national anthem, the BLA also
operates a website, which carries reports of its actions. Due to the
porous Afghan and Iranian borders, the BLA men face little trouble in
getting sanctuary and weapons, ranging from sophisticated pistols to
anti-aircraft guns and missiles.
During a visit to Balochistan earlier last year, ISN Security Watch
found the BLA members to be well-trained and well-armed, with machine
guns, rocket-launchers, Motorola wireless sets, and Thuraya satellite
phones receiving information about the movement of government troops.
Nawab Akbar Bugti, a former senior minister in Balochistan and
purportedly one of the most defiant of the tribal elders, told ISN
Security Watch: "Why do you ask me whether what the BLA is doing is
right or wrong? The question to ponder is why so many people in
Balochistan support the BLA?"
The BLA is fighting against domination by the larger Punjab province by
denying them natural resources, he told ISN Security Watch by telephone
from his hometown of Dera Bugti. Home to half of the country's
population and having the highest literacy rate and most fertile land,
Punjab is by far the most prosperous province. Since no political party
can form a government in Islamabad without securing a win in the
populous Punjab, some of the other regional politicians blame the
Punjab for their low standard of living.
Balochistan's deprivation is further aggravated when it comes to
federal funding, as funding is allocated based on population - a
formula that granted Balochistan 85 per cent less funds than Punjab in
the last fiscal year.
Furthermore, because the majority of influential federal politicians,
bureaucrats, and generals hail from Punjab, most major development
projects and industrial estates have been directed there.
Though natural gas was first discovered in 1952 in Sui in Balochistan,
the Baloch capital, Quetta, did not have any natural gas until the
1980s, and only then because an army garrison needed it. But by that
time, natural gas had already been supplied to even the most remote
villages in Punjab. Today, Sui gas from Balochistan provides 38 per
cent of the country's supply, yet only six per cent of the
province's 6.5 million people have access to it.
"People feel that they won't get their rights through democratic
and legal means," Dr. Abdul Hayee Baloch, a leader of the Balochistan
National Party, told ISN Security Watch.
The military mindset
General Musharraf has shown zero tolerance of this tribal defiance.
Largely backed by the US because of his collaboration in the "war on
terror", the general has ordered his troops to eliminate the
miscreants. And while the military operation launched to punish the
defiant tribesmen was initially a limited one, it soon broadened to
include other tribes sympathetic to the Baloch nationalist leaders.
Facing stiff resistance from the BLA's guerrilla tactics, the
military resorted to using gunship helicopters and fighter jets to bomb
the remote mountain areas. According to the tribal Marri Ittehad Group,
80 people have been killed in those remote operations. The government
has kept silent over the number of fatalities.
In the meantime, as military operations in Balochistan intensify,
militant attacks on government installations, petroleum pipelines, rail
tracks, and power grids are on the rise. The Baloch nationalist forces
claim that innocent women and children have been killed by the
military. The BLA website has published photos of the blood-soaked dead
bodies of children and women they said had been killed in the military
operations. The military refutes the charges and claims to have only
launched "surgical strikes".
Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Naeem, the commander of the paramilitary
Frontier Corps, told reporters in Quetta that nine out of 15 militant
camps had been dismantled in the Kohlu district alone. During a
targeted action against tribesmen, nine FC personnel were killed and 14
others injured, while some 50-55 tribal militants were killed in
operations in Kohlu and Dera Bugti, Naeem said. The government claims
that 12 militant camps are still operating in the gas-rich Dera Bugti
district, with two having been dismantled so far.
Though information from the remote mountainous regions is sketchy, and
the media has only very limited access owing to the government's
expressed "security concerns", the anti-Musharraf opposition and
human rights activists largely subscribe to the nationalists' claims.
Opposition parties claim that the government is planning to build three
expensive military outposts at Kohlu, Gawadar, and Sui. The country's
strategic planners say these military outposts, called cantonments, are
needed for greater security in the province in light of the 11
September 2001 attacks on the US and increasing Indian influence in
neighboring Afghanistan and Iran.
"With India continuing to increase its presence in the southern
Afghan city of Kandahar, we have no choice but to secure Balochistan
against external threats by building additional cantonments,"
Lieutenant General Senator Javed Ashraf Qazi, Retd, told ISN Security
Watch.
In addition, the elusive al-Qaida leadership provides the Pakistani
military with an excuse for larger bases in the once-abandoned
province.
Renewed geo-political significance
Covering nearly 350,000 square kilometers, Balochistan is by far the
largest of four provinces in the country, though it is home to less
than 7 per cent of Pakistan's population. More than 80 per cent of
Balochistan, designated as a tribal area, is governed through special
laws that locals complain are highly discriminatory. The police are
ill-equipped and poorly staffed, and smuggling and banditry are a major
means of subsistence.
In addition to the long, treacherous, and porous borders with
Afghanistan and Iran, Balochistan also has a 770km Arabian Sea
coastline. This least developed Pakistani province also provides the
country with some of its most vital ores, such as uranium and gold, as
well as an abundance of natural gas and oil. The recent unrest has
roots Musharraf decision to award some lucrative oil and gas
exploration in the Kohlu region to companies outside the region. Soon
after that, the events of 9/11 revived the geo-political significance
of the country's abandoned province.
When the Soviet troops marched through the streets of the Afghan
capital, Kabul, in the late 1970s, Islamabad used Balochistan to house
large numbers of ethnic Pashtun refugees from Afghanistan and set up
religious seminaries for their education. Those same students later
made up the main body of the Taliban that overran Kabul in 1996. After
9/11, the US again appropriated various naval, air, and other
facilities in the Pasni, Panjgur, Shamsi, and Quetta areas in
Balochistan to attack the Taliban regime. At the same time, Islamabad
announced a number of mega development projects in Balochistan and also
voiced its intention to establish new military garrisons there. In
addition, the government initiated an ambitious deep seaport project in
the tiny city of Gawadar, which would be linked to Karachi by a coastal
highway. The Chinese engineers are now in the final stages of work on
the seaport.
Iran has also been dragged into the quagmire, with Pakistani officials
claiming that the Iranian town of Mand is a prominent sanctuary for
rebel activity. In addition, Iran had raised serious concerns in 2001
with the handing over to US forces three Pakistani bases in Balochistan
at the start of the war in Afghanistan.
India is also not oblivious to the situation in the Pakistani backyard.
Pakistani officials claim that two Indian consulates close to the
border in Iran and Afghanistan are providing weapons and financial
support to the BLA in revenge for the Kashmir insurgency. Tehran and
New Delhi both deny the allegations. India's Foreign Ministry
spokesman has twice "advised" Islamabad to exercise restraint in
the military operation against Baloch tribesmen.
"The government of India has been watching with concern the spiraling
violence in Balochistan and the heavy military action, including use of
helicopter gunships and jet fighters by the government of Pakistan to
quell it," Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna was quoted
as saying. "We hope the government of Pakistan will exercise
restraint and take recourse to peaceful discussions to address the
grievances of the people of Balochistan."
Pakistan shrugged off the warning, saying India would do best not to
interfere in Pakistan's internal affairs.
Exploits of a medieval tribal system
Initial allocations for the government's development projects
amounted to Rs 140 billion (about US$2.33 billion), the largest sum of
federal funds pledged to Balochistan since its independence from
British rule in 1947. The other projects included a naval base, a water
reservoir, and a network of roads and tunnels.
These massive, back-to-back development projects, in what was until
only recently an extremely neglected region, sparked suspicion among
nationalist circles that the mineral rich areas would either be
separated from the province or a heavy influx of outsiders would reduce
their influence in the region.
The nationalists want Islamabad to recognize Baloch rights over their
coastline, oil, gas, and other resources. Despite its vast resources,
the province lags miserably behind in all human development indicators.
However, the nationalist Baloch leaders have always capitalized on the
tribal people's lack of awareness of their rights, patronage from
tyrant tribal chiefs, and Islamabad's negligence to create a sense of
Pakistani identity among them. The nationalist leaders have a vested
interested in ensuring the federal government has little control over
the province, and the tribesman, suffering from deprivation, support
them.
Historically, the military-led governments have used the tribal elders
for domestic and regional exploits, such as the insurgency against the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In return, the government gives the
tribesmen a free hand to operate drug and other smuggling rings, police
their own people, and dispense justice as they please. The
Afghan-Baloch-Iranian border has now become a major human trafficking
hub and a notorious drug smuggling route to the western world. An
estimated 80,000 people find their way to the Middle East via
Balochistan's Makran coastline and the neighboring Iranian port each
year, according to a senior Interior Ministry official.
Fearing ethnic marginalization
Most Baloch people suspect that once the mega projects are completed,
they could become victims of demographic marginalization. The Baloch
population is already losing in numbers to the Pashtun ethnic group in
districts bordering Northwestern Frontier Province and Afghanistan.
Baloch politicians generally use the example of Karachi as a city that
followed a markedly non-Baloch pattern of development when a seaport
was built by the British in the 19th century.
"Fifty years ago, Karachi had half a million people, all of them
locals," said Sardar Ataullah Mengal, one of the three major tribal
chiefs in Balochistan, who recently ended his 18-year exile in London
and is now living in Karachi. "Today, Karachi has 14 million people,
80 per cent of them outsiders."
The nationalist leaders believe the government is trying to turn
Gawadar into another Karachi. They believe that one day, five million
ethnic Balochis may become a minority in their own province.
Though the Baloch nationalists and the supporters of militancy
represent a very small portion of the population, their actions make
them a significant factor. The Baloch tragedy is a two-fold one.
Firstly, the Baloch people have yet to find a leadership that could
free them from the clutches of an unfair tribal system and unite them
on a single political platform. The so-called nationalist movement acts
on behalf of exploitative and vested tribal leaders who have worked in
their own way to deliberately keep the people illiterate and the
province under-developed. The second problem lies with the successive
authoritarian regimes of Pakistan, which do not believe in the
diversity and federal system of the country. Such regimes prefer to do
business with tribal leaders instead of democratic forces that could
bring the Baloch youth into the national mainstream and encourage them
to develop a stake in the country's political system.
Leading human rights activist IA Rahman told ISN Security Watch: "As
for Balochistan, the only significant development over the past 40
years is a national consensus on the denial of its rights for a longer
period than has been the fate of any federating unit in Pakistan."
Even moderate tribal elder Sardar Shahbaz Khan Mazari blames General
Musharraf for provoking the Baloch nationalists to violence. "You
know the way he talks [...] He's so arrogant [...] that's not
acceptable," he said. In a public speech earlier this year, Musharraf
said: "If they [the Baloch nationalists] do anything, I will hit them
so hard they won't know what hit them." To that Mazari responded:
"Musharraf [...] has not just antagonized the people but even the
senior army hierarchy, the retired ones, who consider him an
upstart."
The general's decision to stay on as army chief while at the same
time serving as the country's president has created an authoritarian
regime that has led to the disillusionment of nearly all sectors of
society. And the military he leads chooses to impose administrative
solutions to the most sensitive political issues, thus resulting in
bloody militancy. Many analysts say that while Musharraf is busy
earning kudos from the US for his efforts in the global "war on
terror", the conflict in his own backyard is turning bloodier by the
day.
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