Baloch
Leaders: (L to R) Akbar Bugti, Khair Mux Marri, Ataullah Mengal
and late Ghaus Bux Bizenjo
Armed
Balochi Nationalism Poses a Grave Challenge to Pakistan Security
By
Najam Sethi
LAHORE,
August 6: For several years we have read stray reports of tensions
in Sui between the Bugti tribes led by Nawab Akbar Bugti and the
federal government over issues of employment, job security, compensation,
etc., relating to work conditions in the gas generating and distribution
companies that pump Sui gas to the rest of the country.
But
that was presumed to be a local affair. The federal governments
of Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and General Pervez Musharraf were
convinced that Nawab Bugti was extorting money from Islamabad
ostensibly on behalf of the Bugti tribesmen who work the gas plants
but actually for himself by nudging his fiercely loyal Bugti tribesmen
to rocket the pipelines whenever the negotiations get bogged down
against his liking.
In
this political seesaw, Mr Bugti was wont to bandy about terms
like ‘gas royalties’, ‘provincial autonomy’,
‘constitutional rights’ etc while portraying himself
as the great and patriotic Baloch nationalist fighting for the
rights of his province rather than for his tribe.
The
federal government, on the other hand, seemed falsely obsessed
about “the need to open up Balochistan for economic development”
and was constantly carping about the “evil and exploitative
Sardari system” in the province that kept the tribesmen
in chains and acted as a “brake on progress” Unfortunately
for the stability and security of Pakistan, the truth is different
on both counts. A brief recapitulation may be in order.
When
the nominal ruler of Balochistan, the Khan of Kalat, dragged his
feet in the early 1950s over signing the Balochistan accession
document to Pakistan, the impatient federal government threw diplomacy
and negotiation overboard and hastily sent a couple of PAF jets
to strafe his palace and make him change his mind.
When
One Unit was declared by General Ayub Khan in the 1960s, Sher
Mohammad Marri, a tribal wadera, protested the usurpation of ‘provincial
rights’, fled to the hills with a band of loyal tribesmen
and started taking potshots at the ‘occupying Punjabi army’
The seeds of Baloch provincial awakening gave rise to Baloch nationalism
in the aftermath of national elections, the eruption of Bengali
separatism and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.
If
Mr Bhutto’s PPP won Sindh and Punjab and Sheikh Mujibur
Rehman’s Awami League swept East Pakistan, the fact also
was that the National Awami Party led by “nationalists”
Ghaus Bux Bizenjo, Ataullah Mengal, Khair Bux Marri, Akbar Bugti
and Khan Wali Khan dominated Balochistan and the NWFP. At the
time, even the Jamiat i Ulema i Islam of Maulana Mufti Mahmud
(father of Maulana Fazlur Rehman) thought fit to join hands with
the nationalists to espouse the provincial cause.
Emboldened
by the stand taken by Sheikh Mujib, the Baloch and Pashtun nationalists
demanded their ‘provincial rights’ from Mr Bhutto
in exchange for approving the 1973 constitution consensually.
But while Mr Bhutto conceded the NWFP and Balochistan to a NAP-JUI
coalition, he refused to play ball with the provincial governments
led by chief minister Ataullah Mengal in Quetta and Mufti Mahmud
in Peshawar. Tensions erupted.
Within
six months, the federal government had sacked the two provincial
governments, arrested the two chief ministers, two governors and
forty-four MNAs and MPAs, obtained an order from the Supreme Court
banning the NAP and charged everyone with high treason to be tried
by a specially constituted Hyderabad Tribunal of handpicked judges.
In time, a nationalist insurgency erupted and sucked the army
into the province, pitting the Baloch tribal middle classes against
the Sindhi-Punjabi oligarchy ruling Islamabad.
The
1970s revolt of the Baloch, which manifested itself in the form
of an armed struggle against the Pakistan army in Balochistan,
was provoked by federal impatience, high handedness and undemocratic
constitutional deviation. It was the effect of unjust federal
policies and not the cause of them. The irony was that Nawab Akbar
Bugti served as an agent of the federal government when he was
appointed as governor of Balochistan by Mr Bhutto throughout the
time of the insurgency and spoke not a word in favor of Baloch
rights or provincial autonomy!The greater irony was that the insurgency
came to an end following the army coup of General Zia ul Haq against
the civilian government of Mr Bhutto.
Soon
thereafter, Gen Zia unfolded plans to desensitize the alienated
Baloch and Pashtun leadership by a multi-faceted strategy aimed
at co-opting the leaders into office while providing jobs and
funds in the federal government to the alienated and insecure
tribal middle classes. More significantly, he created maximum
political space for the mullah parties in the NWFP and Balochistan
so that they could be galvanized in the jihad against the USSR
in neighboring Afghanistan.
Divided,
fatigued and shorn of ideological moorings or avowed enemies like
ZA Bhutto, the Baloch “movement” melted into memory
over the next two decades. Nawab Akbar Bugti was consigned to
negotiating rights and concessions only for his Bugti tribesmen
in Sui. And the various civilian federal governments that came
and went were content to accede to his local pecuniary demands.
In the event, what has changed under General Pervez Musharraf
to compel the Bugti and Marri tribes to join hands? What has transpired
in the last five years to lead to a reinvention of the “Baloch
middle class nationalist struggle for provincial rights”?
The
single most critical macro factor is the social and electoral
engineering initiated by the military regime in the last five
years. By sidelining the mainstream PPP and PMLN parties and their
natural “progressive” allies like the ANP, BNP and
others in favor of the mullahs of the Jama’at i Islami and
Jamiat i Ulema i Islam, General Musharraf has alienated the old
non-religious tribal leadership as well as the new secular urban
middle classes of Balochistan who see no economic or political
space for themselves in the new military-mullah dispensation.
Similarly,
by undermining the cause of provincial autonomy at the altar of
local and federal government, the military regime has threatened
the very roots of the constitutional consensus of 1973 enshrined
in the Baloch consciousness. If the federal government had also
delivered the great “development” paradigm and provided
jobs and office, it might have avoided this sense of deprivation
and resentment among the political and economic have-nots of the
province. But it hasn’t. Balochistan remains a backwater
province, infested by Taliban-type mullahs and corrupt, opportunist
politicians, all beholden to the military regime in Islamabad.
We
now have an unfortunate situation in which a “Baloch Liberation
Army” comprising a few armed bands under tribal and middle
class command is conducting military operations against the “agents
and outposts of Islamabad” in Balochistan. Gwadar is an
obvious target. It is a federal project without provincial approval
or participation in which the non-Baloch civil-military elites
are grabbing land for a song.
The
military cantonments planned at Gwadar, Dera Bugti and Kohlu (the
capital of the Marri tribal lands) are viewed as outposts of repression
and control, not development. The corrupt Frontier Corps is thoroughly
hated and despised as a federal instrument of oppression. With
the mad mullahs rampaging in much of Balochistan and defying the
writ of the government, the rise of incipient armed nationalism
poses a grave challenge to the stability and security of Pakistan.
Ten
days ago, army helicopters strafed and bombed a strip of land
between Turbat and Gwadar in Makran district where Baloch insurgents
who had rocketed Gwadar earlier were thought to be holed in. In
retaliation, an army truck was ambushed in Khuzdar last week,
leaving five soldiers dead. Later the puppet chief minister of
the province, Jam Yusuf, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt
on his life.
Two
days ago, the government retaliated by registering cases of murder
against 12 people including a former chief minister of the province,
Sardar Akhtar Mengal s/o Sardar Ataullah Mengal (also a former
chief minister who was sacked and arrested in his time), and the
secretary general of his Balochistan Nationalist Party. And now
the federal interior minister, Mr Faisal Saleh Hayat, has warned
the agitating Baloch tribesmen that the government is poised to
launch a ‘crash program' against ‘subversive elements’
in the province.
A hastily formed four-party Baloch
alliance, led by the Bugti and Mengal groups in Quetta, has condemned
the spate of arrests of Baloch nationalists in Turbat, Gwadar,
Kalat, Dera Bugti, Kohlu and Nushki. They have been joined by
the ‘oppressed nations movement’ (PONM). Together
they are accusing Islamabad of having launched an ‘unannounced
military operation’ in Balochistan in which over 200 activists
of the various nationalist parties have been unjustly detained.
Suddenly, we have a situation in
which all the old “grievances” are being trotted out
– Sui gas has never benefited the people of Balochistan;
Gwadar is in the clutches of a land-grab mafia from Punjab; the
federal government earns billions from gas in the province but
gives only a fraction of that back to it for development; provincial
autonomy promised in the 1973 constitution is non-existent, etc.
Are things coming to a head?
The fact is that Balochistan remains
a neglected backwater of Pakistan. Its politics has been ideologised
and factionalised by federal interference and meddling in pursuit
of dubious strategic regional interests. Its drought-stricken
pastoral economy cannot even provide for its small population.
This state of affairs has lasted fifty-seven years. No federal
government has ever thought of bringing development to Balochistan
and talk of tribal chiefs obstructing progress is nonsense. Past
neglect has now strengthened the ranks of the nationalists and
increased their clout.
The
danger in Balochistan is two-fold. The nascent but alienated middle
class in the few towns of Balochistan is now rallying behind the
nationalists and accepts the ‘sardars’ spearheading
PONM as ‘genuine leaders’ At the same time, the developmental
lag in the province is sufficient to substantiate the anti-center
stance of PONM. That is why any military action in the province
will completely lack local support.
The
other destabilizing factor relates to the ongoing battle against
the Taliban-Al Qaeda combine. The Pashtuns in Balochistan also
have serious problems with the federal government’s policy
on the Pak-Afghan frontier. This could be troublesome since Pashtun
nationalism has also been responsible for the internationally
reported presence of the Taliban in the province.
Therefore
there is need to tread very carefully in Balochistan. The national
interest demands that patience, negotiation and compromise should
be the hallmark of federal policy rather than knee-jerk army operations
and detentions. At the same time, the federal government should
make serious efforts to clinch the new development conditions
of resource sharing with local tribes and regions.
The
future of the oil and gas pipelines that are being planned across
the mountains and deserts and coasts of Balochistan for the prosperity
and stability of Pakistan hinges on a sensible and inclusionary
approach to Balochistan.
The
writer is Editor of The Friday Times, published from Lahore, Pakistan
