KARACHI - Events in the South Waziristan tribal
area in northern Pakistan have nearly monopolized media
headlines since President General Pervez Musharraf's
government initiated a major military operation there
this spring to hunt down al-Qaeda elements. The backdrop
provided by the US-led "war against terror" is fitting
enough for the global media to cover intensely the
exchanges between the tribesmen and the Pakistani army
over the past few months. Given the world's
post-September 11, 2001, fixations with al-Qaeda,
however, many may be overlooking another significant
challenge for the Musharraf regime.
No, we are
not looking east toward India, despite it being the
other major concern for the Pakistani establishment;
indeed, there is much camaraderie with the arch-rival
these days. Instead, it is the slow but steady spiral of
smoke signals arising from the southern province of
Balochistan that is beginning to alarm many in the
country's power corridors.
Not since the rule of
Pakistan's first elected and subsequently hanged prime
minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1971-78), has the
province generated such a charged political atmosphere.
Bhutto was the only Pakistani leader who dared to make
the fiercely independent Balochi
tribal-Marxist-nationalist groups fall in line with the
federalist center, by waging a military and air campaign
against them in 1973, which continued for five years.
That was a time of grave national insecurity after the
loss of East Pakistan in 1971 (now Bangladesh), and the
Balochis - alleging the Punjab-dominated center to be
oppressing the province's rights - had declared an armed
rebellion. But at the cost of hundreds of lives, Bhutto
quelled the bloody uprising, which in the annals of
history earned him negative marking for his otherwise
impressive democratic and socialist credentials.
Bhutto's snuffing of the Balochi flame was
effective to the extent that during the next two decades
or so the province remained not only socially and
economically backward, but also politically impotent.
The post-1978 status quo comprised an uneasy truce
between Islamabad and local groups, while the remaining
traces of local agitation were buried under the weight
of General Zia ul-Haq's martial law and, more important,
the Cold War's jihad of the 1980s waged in neighboring
Afghanistan.
It was not until the early 1990s,
when democratic governments began to shuffle between
Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, that Islamabad decided
to take the next step in bringing the backward province
into the national mainstream. For successive
governments, Balochistan has largely remained the second
"final frontier" for state writ to be effectively
enforced and exercised, the first being the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas in the north, currently
serving as the gaming zone for the al-Qaeda hunt,
notably South Waziristan.
The South Waziristan
operation may, perhaps, be the last round of the great
game first conceived of and launched by the European
colonial powers in the 19th century, albeit with new
local and foreign actors playing out its epilogue. It is
Balochistan, however, where the scene has quietly but
steadily been laid for a "great game" of the 21st
century. And for the players, the stakes are mighty
high.
The province is endowed with some of the
world's richest reserves of natural energy (gas, oil,
coal); minerals (gold, copper), and geostrategic locales
comprising mountainous borders and passes adjoining Iran
and Afghanistan on the west and miles of precious
maritime coast stretching from the Persian Gulf to the
Arabian Sea in the south. In other words, Balochistan
has all the potential to catapult Pakistan into the new
century riding high on economic wealth and strategic
advantage.
Since the 1990s, in particular, these
prospects have been fully realized not only by the
Pakistani establishment but also by several foreign
governments and corporations eager to exploit the
province's potential for their own geopolitical and
economic interests. At the cost of millions of US
dollars, successive Pakistani governments - with the
help of Chinese and US governments and several other
Western interest groups - initiated a number of
mega-development projects, such as the Ormara naval
base, Gwadar Deap Sea Port, Saindak Gold-Copper Project,
Coastal Highway, and Mirani Dam, besides expanding work
on old ones such as the gas reserves in Sui.
China's active role in the development of the
Gwadar port is the first of its kind, and is indicative
of its desire to play a greater geostrategic and
economic role in the Persian Gulf, to counter the US
control of the region since the first Gulf War in 1991.
On the other hand, landlocked Afghanistan and the
Central Asian republics are the smaller players with
direct interest in developing trade routes to the warm
waters of Pakistan.
Yet development of such
visions has been impeded with a worsening law-and-order
situation, hostile resistance of the political and
tribal groups, and shortage of labor in Balochistan. In
1998, Pakistan's nuclear tests conducted at the Chaghai
site in the province's heartland further increased its
political uncertainty and developmental inertia.
Since assuming power through a bloodless coup in
1999, Musharraf's government has taken up "Project
Balochistan" with gusto. Furthering work on the projects
launched by the civilian governments, Musharraf has gone
several steps further by setting up military bases and
cantonments in the province. Post-September 11, the
establishment of the Pasni air base - financed by the US
Central Command - has facilitated the US Air Force to
conduct its anti-terror operations in Afghanistan, while
the Pakistani army has also set up cantonments in the
Kohlu-Kahan, Dera Bugti and Gwadar areas. These
developments have set off a new political storm in the
province.
Opposition to the megaprojects is not
new in Balochistan. The local sardars (tribals)
and nationalist-Marxist groups have always perceived
them as a conspiracy by Islamabad to exploit the
province's rich natural resources for its own parochial
interests, while the locals complain of not receiving
their due share of the dividends, thus maintaining the
status quo. The nature of these grievances is evident in
the continuous demand for greater provincial autonomy,
increased budgetary allocations and enhanced royalties
from the corporations working on the natural reserves,
which the locals put forward to the federal government
to allow its work on the projects without any local
resistance and disturbance.
But the center
remains stubbornly opposed to the idea of provincial
autonomy. Two weeks ago, Balochi Senator Sanaullah
Baloch's bid to move a bill on provincial autonomy in
the Senate was thwarted by the government-dominated
treasury benches, terming it "repugnant" to the
constitution. The current civilian government -
engineered by Musharraf and his Pakistan Muslim League
Qauide Azam (PML-Q) party - has taken steps to enhance
Balochistan's share in this year's fiscal allocations;
the provincial assembly passed a hefty Rs42 billion
(US$721 million) for the province's development, while
Islamabad has promised to create labor and economic
opportunities for the locals in the ongoing projects.
But the tribal-nationalist anger remains far
from appeased. It is not helped by the fact that the
current government has come down hard on a number of
political leaders and activists by arresting them and
trying them on charges of treason, while some others
have fled abroad seeking self-imposed exile.
The
worrisome aspect is that this anger is increasingly
being unleashed in the form of violence. Balochistan has
long been the Wild West of Pakistan, where local
unhappiness with any given occurrence is shown
immediately by resorting to arms. Since the launching of
the megaprojects, foreign engineers and workers -
particularly the Chinese - have come under several
attacks from firearms, rockets and missiles, not to
mention incidents of kidnapping for ransom. Of late,
these out-of-the-blue ambushes have begun to target
civilian settlements as well as law-enforcement agencies
stationed to overlook the hostile territory. Fields
surrounding the oil and gas reserves have been sown with
land mines, which are a frequent cause of casualties of
workers and law-enforcement personnel traveling to these
sites. Moreover, attacks on gas pipelines and other
project sites have become routine . In June and July
alone, bomb blasts and rocket attacks have been carried
out in the provincial capital Quetta, the
under-construction Mirani Dam, Uch gas pipeline
installations, and Frontier Corps headquarters in Kohlu,
causing infrastructure damage and some casualties.
No group has ever owned the responsibility for
these subversive measures. Information on these
incidences is seldom released by the government, while
access to this difficult terrain and its harsh tribals
is no mean feat either. By several accounts, these
developments remain more or less under an information
blackout, save the fiery political statements released
periodically by prominent leaders representing the
tribal-nationalist groups, and official versions
provided by government functionaries.
In the
face of Balochi allegations of oppression of local
rights, the government has vowed to carry out what it
terms "development" to bring Balochistan at par with the
rest of the country. It has stated in no uncertain terms
that no amount of "terrorism" would be tolerated in the
way of its projected schemes, and it has offered the
tribal-nationalist groups to resolve all outstanding
issues through "dialogue".
Analysts are of the
opinion that as with many other problems faced by
Pakistan, the solution to Balochistan's quagmire has to
be a political one. Megaprojects, launched to the tune
of millions of dollars and touted as the gateway to the
province's prosperity, will not address long-standing
grievances of the locals unless Islamabad engages them
on the basis of constructive equality.
Musharraf's political solutions for the
province, however, seem only to backfire. Appointing
ex-prime minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, hailing
from the province, was largely seen as a move to win
local support for Musharraf's measures in the region.
Jamali's exit this month, however, has added to local
cynicism and distrust. Moreover, the provincial
government formed together by the six-party religious
alliance of Muttahida Majlise Amal and PML-Q also rubs
the locals the wrong way, who have long detested the
appointment of "outsiders" to run provincial affairs.
Adding fuel to the local fire of resentment is the
influx of large groups of Afghan refugees, Pashtuns from
North-West Frontier Province, and the appointment of
Pashtun and Punjabi officers to run provincial affairs;
not to mention the alleged doling out of precious Gwadar
lands to government cronies at throwaway prices.
It seems that after years of political dormancy,
Balochi political groups are set to take on Islamabad by
forging a political unity. A recent formation of the
United National Front, comprising the province's major
political parties, including the Jamhoori Watan Party
(JWP), the Balochistan National Party-Mengal, the
Balochistan National Movement, and the Baloch Students
Organization, is indicative of the politics of
resistance, which these groups are preparing to
undertake in the near future.
Lashing out
against the alleged military activities being carried
out in the Kohlu-Kahan region, firebrand JWP chief and
veteran politician Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti warned this
month that no military operation would be tolerated in
the province by the locals - echoes of South Waziristan
here. Bugti categorically ruled out government denial of
such allegations, saying that it was "deceiving" the
people and that citizens did not believe in such
statements of the authorities as ex-prime minister
Jamali and Sindh Chief Minister Ali Mohammed Mahar had
also denied reports about their stepping down until the
last minute.
Some successes in South Waziristan
- notably the killing of al-Qaeda go-between Nek
Mohammed - may have given the Musharraf regime a certain
confidence to turn its attention to the southern
frontier. It seems that the government has adopted
almost the same carrot-and-stick policy vis-a-vis
Balochistan, which it has been implementing in the
north, sans direct military action, however. For
some time, analysts have been advising the government to
win the northern tribesmen by bringing development and
socio-economic opportunities to their region. A similar
approach is also advocated for the backward and troubled
Balochistan.
But given the current political
climate in the province, it would take Musharraf some
time before Balochistan started functioning in
accordance with its managers' desires. A confrontation
with the resistant groups - military or otherwise - does
not look impossible.
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