More on the oppressed people of Balochistan

An editorial in The Friday Times by Najam Sethi.

These people aren't Islamists. They're secular. They're basically sick of being rules by the Pakistani army.

FAQs about Balochistan and the state

Why has the situation in Balochistan in general and in Sui in particular suddenly flared up? Why are Bugti tribesmen attacking Sui gas installations and hurting the country’s national assets? What are the demands of the Baloch Liberation Army? Why is the BLA attacking military targets in Balochistan? Who is funding and arming the BLA? What is the role of the big Sardars in the political economy of Balochistan? Are the Sardars for or against development and progress? Why is there popular resentment in Balochistan against a national development project like Gwadar? Why don’t the Baloch want military cantonments in their province when the other provinces are awash with them? Why is there so much anti-army feeling in the province? How can the situation be controlled? How can genuine Baloch grievances be addressed? Consider.

Between the Bugtis and PPL have been rent asunder by the rape of a lady doctor allegedly by the hated paramilitary personnel which has given an excuse to tribal hardliners to exploit the situation. The second is more problematic. The breakdown of negotiations between the Bugtis and PPL comes in the wider context and background of a resurgent sub-nationalism in the province in which the mainstream secular nationalist parties have been edged out of political power by the state-government regime of General Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad and replaced by the mullahs and religious parties in the provincial government.

This is the point at which the Baloch Liberation Army enters the picture and clouds the issues. This is the point at which the Bugti local feud with PPL enters the simmering and underlying conflict between Baloch nationalists and Islamabad over the issue of effective stake-holding status in Balochistan. This is the point at which Sardar Ataullah Mengal and Nawab Khair Bux Marri, their offspring and nationalist middle class students join hands with Nawab Akbar Bugti and the Bugtis at Sui to voice their demands and vow to continue armed struggle till death. This is why anti-Islamabad Baloch leaders are not prepared to take responsibility for the actions of the BLA even as they secretly urge it to wage war against the external ‘occupying’ power.

In the 1970s, the Baloch secular nationalists were ousted from power by Z A Bhutto and they launched an armed struggle to reclaim power in the province. In the 1980s and 1990s, they were part of the democratic political landscape of the province. So they shared power and didn’t make trouble. But in the last five years they have been excluded from power in the province by General Musharraf, so they have launched an armed struggle to re-stake their claims.

But there are several major differences between the old and the new. First, in the 70s the Baloch insurgents were largely drawn from the Marri tribe and there was only a smattering of middle class urban elements among them. Now, there appears to be the formation of a tribal confederacy which includes the big Marri and Bugti tribes.

Second, a new generation of middle class Baloch nationalists has cropped up which is readily inclined to join the armed struggle against Islamabad. Third, there were no visible outposts or symbols of occupation in the 70s unlike today when the new port of Gwadar under federal jurisdiction has excluded locals from the fruits of its development.

Fourth, the insurgents were poorly equipped with arms and financially strapped in the 70s unlike today when they are flush with the latest weapons (bought from the Taliban and Afghans) and spilling over with donations collected from migrant Baloch workers in the Middle East. There is also a real possibility of estranged neighbouring states fishing in troubled Baloch waters.

Fifth, the army action in Balochistan in the 1970s was conducted by a largely popular and elected political leader and had a degree of acceptability in mainstream eyes, not least because the Baloch resistance could easily be dubbed as separatist since the Russians were thought to be coveting the “warm waters” of the Arabian sea. But no such conditions attach to the current situation.

Sixth, the regional environment is internally volatile for domestic reasons – as the unravelling of many countries for domestic compulsions demonstrates – but externally calm because there are no separatist-baiting superpowers in the neighbourhood.

Seventh, Musharraf’s military regime doesn’t enjoy the same legitimacy and popularity at home that Z A Bhutto’s government enjoyed in Pakistan at that time. Indeed, all mainstream and nationalist parties in the country are opposed to General Musharraf and even his erstwhile mullah friends are out to create trouble for him. Therefore if any repressive army action is undertaken in Balochistan, it is likely to face stiff opposition from all quarters, including elements of the governing coalitions that Musharraf has built for political survival.

Finally, it may be noted that the Pakistan army was fully focused on quelling the Baloch insurgency in the 70s while today it has its hands full dealing with the violent blowback from South Waziristan and Kashmir.

We are in the era of “internal upheavals”. The Soviet Union, Central, South and South East Asia, Eastern Europe and even the Middle East have fallen victim to this contemporary dialectic. Our own Pakistan’s current “internal upheaval” is very much the result of so-called “national security” policies followed in the decades since the 80s. The prosecution of jihad in Indian-held Kashmir and west in Afghanistan eroded the Pakistani state’s “monopoly of violence” by enabling private parties to acquire the means and rationale for violence. This has undermined the maintenance of the “internal sovereignty” of the country. Balochistan has especially suffered from this loss of sovereignty. Its internal polity has been shaped by an influx of Pakhtuns and Afghans following the war against the Russians in Afghanistan and lately by the influx of militant jihadis, Taliban and Al Qaeda elements. The 2002 elections conducted by General Musharraf in Pakistan solidified the situation by ousting the Baloch nationalists from the power equation and entrenching an alienated Pakhtun votebank.

There are additional external factors. Iran is no longer the friendly country that it was in the 1970s when the Shah was its ruler. Apart from a bitter conflict of interests with Pakistan over Afghanistan during the Taliban era, the Iran of today is suspicious of the Pakistan-US axis, especially in view of Washington’s hostility to Iran’s mullahs and its budding nuclear programme. Similarly, Kabul is still influenced by an anti-Pakistan, anti-Pakhtun component that the Taliban ousted in 1996. Finally, there is an entire underworld of jihad that has vowed to reverse Pakistan’s post-9/11 policy and has resorted to terrorism all over the country. In Balochistan this element is embedded with the Taliban who have been allowed by Islamabad to live comfortably in Quetta. This is the larger backdrop to the rise of the Balochistan Liberation Army.