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Tribals looking down a barrel in
Balochistan
By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
KARACHI - With its deep, warm sea
waters, extremely rich mineral resources and most
vital strategic position, southwestern Pakistan's
Balochistan province has been the home of many
regional and international intrigues for almost
half a century. With the Cold War over, new
players, including Iran, Oman, the United Arab
Emirates, Afghanistan, India, Iran and the United
States have new agendas in the region, ranging from a
proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, oil and
gas exploration, a deepsea port to military
bases.
In the
past, Pakistan adopted different strategies, which included its
role as a frontline state in the Cold War
to prevent the former USSR from
reaching Balochistan's deep waters, as well as land-adjustment
agreements with Iran and Oman. In the post-Cold War era,
Pakistan is again playing a frontline-state role in the
US-led "war on terror" by providing bases and
facilities for the US in Balochistan to monitor
Taliban and al-Qaeda activities along the border
with Afghanistan. Now, with this alliance with the
US, Pakistan does not want any more arrangements
with any other country - it wants Balochistan for
itself once and for all.
Balochistan is
in the news again after skirmishes between
Pakistani security forces and insurgent Bugti
tribals in the province's Sui region, famous for
its natural-gas reserves, in which eight
paramilitary security men were killed and four
were seriously wounded. Authorities say that the
tribesmen want more royalties from the gas taken
from their lands.
The latest troubles have
persuaded Islamabad to wipe out all rebels once
and for all with force and re-establish its writ
through permanent army positioning. For the
rebels, they desperately want to use this chance,
too, to deliver a knockout blow to Pakistan's
ruling establishment and its close friend - the US
- and change the power nucleus in Balochistan.
China is assisting in building a deepwater
port at Gwadar in Balochistan that would be able to
cater to large ships. The port would be the nearest
one to the Central Asian states with the potential
to attract international traffic, which previously
went to Port Abbas in Iran, to Oman, or
to the UAE.
The main figures in
Balochistan are known for their varied leanings:
Nawab Khair Bux Mari and his son, Balaach Mari,
tilt toward Moscow and India; and the most
powerful Baloch leader and chief of the Jamhuri
Watan Party, former chief minister of Balochistan
Nawab Akbar Baloch, has interests with Iran.
Over the past 50 years Islamabad has tried
to balance these conflicting interests, such as by
granting royalties, and concessions or through
political bargains in the corridors of power.
However, the situation has reached the
point where the status quo cannot continue:
visible military training camps for rebels are an
example. In this environment, any friction becomes
an excuse for a bigger reaction than would be
expected. This is exactly what happened in the
recent insurgency in Balochistan when a rape case
was quickly grabbed by several groups as a reason
to instigate a war against Pakistan's
establishment.
Islamabad now believes that it
has no option but to wield the big stick: the days
of dialogue and payouts are ended. The thinking in
Islamabad is that now is the right time as
Pakistan has US backing and Afghanistan is not in
a position to help the Balochis or even allow them
to go there. India has been known to supply arms
and ammunition through Afghanistan, but the
Pakistani army believes that such weapons will not
be enough against the full force of its men. 
Asia Times Online spoke to one of the
main characters, Nawab Akbar Bugti, the leader of
the Bugti tribe, by telephone. The Sui gas fields
are situated in the areas dominated by Bugti, who
is viewed as a "moderate" as he has apparently
dissociated himself from any insurgency, yet he is
known to pull the strings of 10,000 powerful
insurgent tribals in Dera Bugti and Sui.
Bugti and his party hold a few
seats in the Balochistan assembly and in
the central government in Islamabad, but because of enormous
enmities he has not traveled out of his area of
Dera Bugti for a long time. Bugti, who was
educated in the United Kingdom, speaks several
international and regional languages. He lost all
of his sons in feuds, and at present the son of
his slain son Saleem Bugti is being trained as his
successor.
Asia Times
Online: What are the reasons for the
insurgency in your area of Sui?
Bugti: What insurgency?
There is no insurgency in the area.
ATol: Okay, whatever you name
it, what is the main reason behind the present
trouble?
Bugti: According to
my knowledge, this is a reaction and resentment
because of an incident in which a lady doctor,
Shazia Khalid, was gang-raped by army personnel.
ATol: Can you elaborate?
Bugti: There was
a Captain Emad [Bugti spelled the name] and
three soldiers from the Defense Security Guards [DSG]
, they gang-raped the lady doctor for a night in
a room. [Dr Shazia Khalid is an employee
of Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) and her family
lives in the upscale Clifton neighborhood of
Karachi; she was posted to Sui to treat PPL employees.] Then
these army men kept her unconscious for several
hours. Since an army officer was involved in the
case, Major Mukhtar of the DSG hushed up the case
by influencing the PPL management. They shifted
the doctor to Karachi and she was not allowed to
meet anybody so that nobody would know the
reality. Even a first investigation report [FIR]
was not allowed to be registered with the police,
and when after 12 days it was registered, it was a
"blind" FIR in which unknown rapists were
mentioned. As I am privy to the information, the
case was spread all over the area and the Baloch
Liberation Front [Baloch Liberation Army] took
things into their own hands and they attacked DSG
camps and destroyed them and demanded that all
foreign elements should leave and not do these
nasty things in areas which originally belonged to
Baloch culture.
ATol: Were
you asked by the government to pacify this
conflict?
Bugti: No. They
never contacted me this time. There are activities
in the area which suggest that they intend only a
war against us. For the last two days there has
been a full military build-up in the area.
According to my information, 36 trucks loaded with
army men have reached [the area] and more are
coming from different [army] cantonments. At Sibi
air base, six gunship helicopters have landed.
Today [Thursday] aircraft and helicopters have
been flying in our skies for ground checks. They
have also brought tanks and 12 artillery pieces.
This kind of activity shows that they really mean
business.
ATol: It is your
area. You are the chief of the Bugti tribe and
your people are fighting against the army. What is
your role in this conflict? You have consistently
denied your role.
Bugti: It
is immaterial what I say. The government has
directly blamed me [laughs]. The interior minister
said that all harm was done by Nawab Bugti, and
that even shots were fired from Bugti's house.
ATol: But what will the end
result be? When there are no talks and only a
military buildup, what really are the
government's designs?
Bugti:
To eliminate dissenting voices once and
for all.
ATol: What dissent?
Bugti: They think that
natural resources are national assets, and we
think they are Baloch assets, and whoever wants to
use them must do so through us, not by direct
possession.
ATol: There is
an opinion that the root of the trouble is the
call for a Greater Balochistan movement.
Bugti: [Laughs] Where did
this Greater Balochistan issue come from? It is
just a reaction and resentment shown by the Baloch
nation to a heinous crime committed on our land.
ATol: Was Dr Shazia a
Baloch?
Bugti: Honestly, I
did not know about her ethnicity until somebody
told me that she was not a Baloch, but hailed from
Sindh. But it is beside the point. The Punjabi
cannot understand our culture and codes. What
respect we give to a women, irrespective of her
caste, religion or ethnicity, no Punjabi can
understand. The attack on the DSG camps was pure
resentment against the humiliation of a woman, and
nothing more. A Punjabi cannot understand these
sentiments because they are alien to these
concepts of the honor of a woman. You may have
read about many incidents that happened in Punjab,
reported in newspapers, that on the issue of
personal enmity somebody entered into the house of
his enemy and brought the women of his enemy naked
in public, and the Punjabi public, instead of
reacting or putting clothes on the naked women,
clapped. We are alien to this kind of culture, and
therefore when our men learned of the heinous
crime they bombed the criminals' nest [DSG] and we
say, "Get lost back to your Punjab and do whatever
you like, but not on our land."
Syed
Saleem Shahzad is Bureau Chief, Pakistan, Asia
Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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