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Musharraf blusters as Balochistan
boils
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - A battle lasting several
hours on Tuesday between Pakistani security forces
and insurgent tribals in Balochistan province's
Sui region, famous for its natural-gas reserves, is
likely to turn into a full-scale insurgency as all
the powerful oligarchs of Baloch society support
this insurgency. Although President General Pervez
Musharraf, speaking on a local television channel,
gave a clear warning of a major military operation
in retaliation, this is likely only to lead to
further troubles.
According to
officials, eight paramilitary security men were killed
and four were seriously wounded on Tuesday night
when armed tribesmen attacked the Sui gas fields,
the biggest in Pakistan. Authorities say the
tribesmen want more royalties from the gas taken
from their lands.
Heavy
fire was exchanged, during which Bugti
tribals, numbering about 10,000, used rocket launchers,
mortars and automatic weapons. The armed men seized
control of some buildings in Sui field for several
hours, oil managers said. Damage to a
compressor interrupted the gas flow to customers in Punjab
and Sindh provinces. In a press release issued
late Tuesday, Pakistan Petroleum Ltd
announced the suspension of gas supplies.
Behind the insurgency
Insurgency
in the region in the past has been attributed to
the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA). Its name cropped
up in the 1980s as a pro-Moscow underground
militant organization committed to the
establishment of an independent greater
Balochistan state comprising all Baloch lands in
Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.
However,
in the past few years the BLA's activities have
been restricted to firing rockets into Quetta army
cantonment. The reason for this extremely low
profile is the group's unpopularity among the
masses. In the mid-1980s, a few dozen students of
the Baloch Student Organization carried out terror
actions under the BLA tag. However, later on a
very small faction with strong pro-Moscow leanings
used this platform to raise the call for a
separate Baloch state.
Balochistan is
geographically the largest of Pakistan's
provinces, but population-wise it is the smallest.
However, the province is endowed with some of the
world's richest reserves of natural energy (gas,
oil, coal); minerals (gold, copper), and it has
strategic 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 the last week
of December, the federal government granted
four petroleum-exploration licenses, two jointly to Oil &
Gas Development Co (OGDC) and Mari Gas Co, and two
exclusively to OGDC. The two companies plan to
invest US$29.32 million initially, with a further
investment of $16.5 million if needed, in the four
blocks.
The Baloch regions of the province
can be divided into three sub-regions, each with its
own dynamics, culture and social conditions:
The belt comprising Hub, Lasbella and Khizdar
is heavily influenced by the cosmopolitan city of
Karachi, which is just a 45-minute drive away. Hub
is heavily industrialized, but while most
industries are owned by Karachiites, the labor
force is local, and industrialization has brought
major changes in their lifestyle. This influence
goes up to Khizdar, where except for a few
pockets, people by and large have moved away from
the influence of tribal leaders. Rather than
nationalist parties, the ruling Pakistan Muslim
League and the Pakistan People's Party led by
Benazir Bhutto are the two main popular forces.
The coastal belt comprising Makran and Gwadar,
where foreign influences (non-Baloch) have always
been strong. For instance, in some areas the
rulers in the past were of Iranian descent. Many
powerful tribes migrated here from Sindh. The
region is characterized by powerful underworld
mafias that rule the sea and dominate trafficking
activities, ranging from gold to narcotics.
The political trends are
mixed: the religious Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam led
by Maulana Fazlur Rehman; the nationalist
Jamhori Watan Party; the Balochistan National
Front; the Pakistan People's Party and the
ruling Pakistan Muslim League all have their separate
pockets of influence. However, the real power lies
with the big-wigs of the coastal mafia, although
in recent times their influence has been curbed
to some extent, notably after the killing of
two Chinese workers last year. Gwadar is being
turned into a modern port city, with the help of
China, and already real-estate prices have skyrocketed.
Sites have been earmarked and purchased for
business centers, warehouses, factories and
international hotel franchises. In private
conversations, Baloch tribal leaders express their
doubts over urbanization as they fear another
Karachi or Hub will emerge, which, among other
things, will reduce the influence of the tribal
leaders.
Eastern Balochistan is completely tribal, and
chiefs such as Nawab Khair Bux Mari and Nawab
Akbar Bugti are the main movers and shakers. This
region is the nucleus of the insurgency. Eastern
Balochistan is notorious for its lawlessness, and
the writ of the state is weak in the face of the
tribal networks that have been established. The
Sui gas fields are situated in the areas dominated
by Nawab Akbar Bugti, while Kohlu is Nawab Khair
Bux Mari's domain.
Players in the
game
It is in eastern Balochistan, though,
where the real problems lie. Here, Sardar
Attaullah Khan Mengal, Nawab Akbar Bugti and Nawab
Khair Bux Mari are lined up on one side against
Pakistan's military on the other.
During
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s,
which saw anti-US Islamic Iran, pro-Moscow
Afghanistan and non-aligned but clearly Soviet
sympathizer India on the one side, Pakistan was
always reckoned by the former USSR as the
strongest US link in the region, but with
Balochistan as its Achilles' heel. The pro-Soviet
sentiments of Sardar Attaullah, Nawab Bugti and
Nawab Mari played an important role in influencing
Balochistan as anti-US in a heavily pro-US
Pakistan.
Sardar Attaullah played an
important role in instigating an armed rebellion
with Nawab Bugti and Nawab Mari in the mid-1970s,
during the administration of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
It was crushed with brute military force. All
three powerful tribal chiefs went into exile.
The most significant exile was that of
Mari, who went to Afghanistan, along with about
12,000 of his men. They established themselves in
Kandahar and Hilmand and were courted by the
communist government in Kabul and given military
training. Mari's son, Nawabzada Balaach Mari, was
sent to Moscow, where he graduated as an
electronics engineer.
After the fall of the
communist government in Kabul in the early 1990s,
the Mari tribes returned to their homes, but they
retained their connections with the pro-Moscow
world and sympathizers in India. Today, Balaach
Mari and his thousands of followers are the real
vanguard of the insurgency and carry the
ideological torch.
The most dangerous
region in eastern Balochistan is Kohlu, where, in
more than 30 camps, hundreds of Mari tribals are
engaged in military training and instruction in
guerrilla warfare. Special study circles have been
established under Balaach Mari's supervision to
indoctrinate Baloch youths with separatist
(Baloch) ideology and the two-nation theory (the
basis on which British India was partitioned in
1947 to create Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Hindu
India).
Nawab Akbar Bugti is viewed as a
"moderate" and has apparently dissociated
himself from any insurgency, yet he is pulling the
strings behind 10,000 powerful insurgent tribals
in Dera Bugti and Sui.
While Sardar
Attaullah Khan Mengal speaks for the rights of
Balochistan on the political forum, he does not
actively command a strong rebellious youth in his
domain of Wad (Khizdar).
The central
government reacts
On Tuesday night,
speaking on a local private channel, Musharraf
warned insurgents of a military operation and said
that this was not the 1970s when they could hide
in the mountains. "They will be struck with
weapons and they will not know what has happened
to them."
Later, on another channel,
Nawabzada Balaach warned the government, "I have
just heard Musharraf threatening us. I tell him,
it is not the 1970s either, that through military
force they can suppress us. They should learn a
lesson from Iraq where the world-best US army has
failed to overwhelm the local
resistance."
Behind Musharraf's threats,
though, and even though the tribals have seriously
challenged state writ, the government is extremely
hesitant to use the force it used in the South
Waziristan tribal area last year to flush out
foreign fighters, for several reasons:
Musharraf is already being pushed to the wall
by his military commanders on several issues,
especially in dealing with India and his pro-US
stance.
On the issue of Musharraf reneging on an
earlier pledge to shed his uniform at the end of
last year, political forces are already ganging up
against him.
With regard to the South Waziristan
operations, liberal forces such as the Pakistan
People's Party adopted a silent stance, but on
Balochistan all political parties can be expected
to vent their disapproval.
In such an overall negative environment, the
chances of a counter-military coup against
Musharraf increase. Musharraf came to power in a
1999 coup.
Despite all of this, Musharraf
appears to have little option other than military
force, the consequences be damned.
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau
Chief, Pakistan, Asia Times Online. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.)
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