Last week, Satribune.com, a web-based newspaper covering issues
pertaining to South Asia, featured a special report on Balochistan.
Claiming that Baloch students and second-generation tribal leaders
have been particularly susceptible to the call for taking up arms
against Islamabad, Satribune.com thought the principal reason was
that the local Balochi population, particularly its middle class, has
been left out of the development loop. The special report said the
BLA movement has developed sinews because of donations from the expat
Baloch underclasses working in the Gulf, and the concerted attempt of
foreign powers (read India) to fish in the troubled waters of Gwador.
31/05/2005
Between Gas & Guns - Secessionist trends surface in flare-up of
Balochi unrest
MARIANA BAABAR
Balochistan has always been a blip on the radar screen of those who
rule Pakistan. But last week the country’s largest province sent
strong signals of discontent as people in the nwfp found the pressure
in their gas pipes too low to light their kitchen stoves. In Karachi,
harassed drivers returned from gas stations, unable to refill the cng
tanks of their cars; and major industrial units in Punjab and Sindh
ground to a halt.
Alarmed, the rulers in Islamabad turned to peer at their radar
screen. And what they saw on it was that Balochistan was threatening
to veer off its track. There were palpable signs of it: two dozen
paratroopers had been killed, and the gas pipeline from Sui, about
480 km northeast of Karachi and which boasts of the country’s largest
gas reserve, had been sabotaged.
In a jiffy, thousands of army troops were ordered into Balochistan,
and helicopter gunships requisitioned.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf appeared on GEO TV to threaten,
"This isn’t the ’70s, we will not climb mountains behind them. They
will
not even know what has come from where to hit them." (The ’70s had
seen the Balochis wage a guerrilla war.) Musharraf also said a
country across the border was funnelling weapons and money to fuel
unrest in Sui. He did not name India, yet people understood who he
meant. Earlier, when sectarian violence had rocked Quetta, chief
minister Jam Yusuf had accused India’s external espionage agency RAW
for training militants in camps located in Afghanistan and Iran.
But Musharraf’s threats elicited a sharp riposte from Sardar
Attaullah Mengal, who heads the Mengal tribe. "Yes," he said, "2005
isn’t the ’70s. We will not talk at gunpoint. In case a military
operation is launched, we will have no option but to protect
ourselves and our people." Is a full-blown secessionist movement then
waiting to happen in Balochistan?
The immediate provocation for the sabotage was the rape of a lady
doctor, Dr Shazia Khalid, who works at a Pakistan Petroleum Limited
hospital in the Sui tehsil of Dera Bugti district. On the night of
January 2-3, an army captain and his accomplices barged into her
bungalow in the ppl colony, and gang-raped her. Initially, ppl denied
the report, roiling sentiments in the area. Nawab Akbar Bugti, head
of the Bugti tribe, thundered, "Rape on our soil is something that we
will not tolerate. The army captain and his accomplices have to be
brought to justice." As the police were pressured into recording Dr
Shazia’s statement in Karachi, the pipelines from Sui had been
already sabotaged.
Beyond the immediate, there are many who wonder at the long-term
implications of the incident. For one, they thought it had reinforced
India’s concerns about the proposed Iran-India gas pipeline passing
through Balochistan. Second, was the sabotage an isolated incident or
symptomatic of the alienation the Balochis feel from the Pakistani
state?
As political analyst Ayaz Amir says, "The Balochis in general, and
the Bugtis in particular, are a warlike people with a strong sense of
grievance against the perceived injustices of the
military-bureaucracy oligarchy—#Pakistan’s permanent ruling party."
He then adds, "It would be a folly of the gravest kind to do anything
more which invites an army operation against the Bugtis."
It would be a folly because Balochistan is simmering. There is
already in existence the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a militant
outfit born of a decades-old desire for an independent Balochistan. A
military operation would provide the BLA a rich, fresh catchment of
discontent to thrive upon. By contrast, there are what are called
Baloch nationalists, leaders and groups committed to fighting for
political rights and control over the natural resources within
Pakistan.
The Balochis have harboured grievances against the Centre through
much of Pakistan’s history, taking to arms intermittently, and
inviting the retribution of the government.Before this round of
crisis, the Balochis had retreated into the mountains to wage a
guerrilla war against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government, which had
passed a new constitution in 1973 without taking Balochistan into
confidence. The new constitution had adversely affected the
province’s autonomy and its share in the national revenue.
Partly, the alienation of Baloch nationalists has its roots in
economics. Though 6,000 million cubic feet of gas is pumped out of
Sui daily, the bulk of it is diverted to Punjab and Sindh, much to
the chagrin of the Balochis who shiver in freezing temperatures every
winter. Lack of alternative fuel has denuded whatever forest cover
the barren terrain had. As one Baloch leader told Outlook, "It was
only when an army cantonment was built in Quetta that some residents
got gas from Sui for the first time." Much of the province still
wasn’t linked to the pipelines.
For all its sufferings, Balochistan was not paid gas royalties from
1952 till the mid-’80s. Now it receives an amount after Islamabad
subtracts the cost of exploiting and pumping out the gas from the
fields. Estimates are that Balochistan should legitimately receive Rs
5 billion in gas royalties, as against the Rs 1 billion it received
in the last financial year.
Fuelling the economic discontent is Islamabad’s decision to develop
Balochistan’s Gwador port as a proximate sea link for the Central
Asian republics. The Baloch nationalists say they are not against the
Gwador project, but the manner in which the port is being developed.
Land has been appropriated from the tribal population for a pittance,
and the influx of ‘outsiders’ threatens to swamp the local
population.
The outcry against Gwador compelled the government to form a
parliamentary committee to look into Baloch grievances. A member of
the committee told Outlook, "We were amazed that there is no
documentation of the land in Gwador, which is a goldmine. The poor do
not have ownership papers. When the ‘strong’ and ‘foreign’
(non-resident Pakistanis) want to buy land, it’s offered for a
pittance. Overnight the same buyer becomes a millionaire as he
resells the land, only to look for a fresh prey."
The population influx could reduce the local tribes to the ‘Red
Indians’ of Balochistan. This fear has prompted Sardar Mengal to
demand that these ‘foreign’ Pakistanis shouldn’t enjoy voting rights
in the province. As Imtiaz Alam, current affairs editor, The News,
points out, "No less threatening to the Balochis is the demographic
imbalance first caused by the settlement of Afghan refugees and now
in anticipation of outsiders settling in and around the Gwador port."
The anger against Gwador has been cited as the reason behind the
killing of Chinese engineers working on the port project.
Last week, Satribune.com, a web-based newspaper covering issues
pertaining to South Asia, featured a special report on Balochistan.
Claiming that Baloch students and second-generation tribal leaders
have been particularly susceptible to the call for taking up arms
against Islamabad, Satribune.com thought the principal reason was
that the local Balochi population, particularly its middle class, has
been left out of the development loop. The special report said the
BLA movement has developed sinews because of donations from the expat
Baloch underclasses working in the Gulf, and the concerted attempt of
foreign powers (read India) to fish in the troubled waters of Gwador.
Most political parties feel the military should douse the smouldering
fire before it becomes a raging conflagration. As Najam Sethi,
editor, Daily Times, points out, "The province has remained outside
the governmental writ for too long.Integrating it into the federation
will take political will and not military might." Are the generals
listening?
http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050131&fname=Pakistan&sid=1&pn=2
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