Burning issues in troubled Balochistan
By Abubakar Siddique
While the world focuses on the end game in Afghanistan, multiple crises brewing
in a neighboring region have the potential to spoil international efforts to
stabilize the country.
Extremist groups, secessionist movements and grinding poverty and oppression
are all contributing to instability in the Balochistan region, a vast desert
area spanning western Pakistan, southwestern Afghanistan and southeastern Iran
along the Arabian Sea shoreline. Islamabad and Tehran face active insurgencies
in their parts of Balochistan. Developments in the region affect relations
between Pakistan, India, Iran and
Afghanistan, delaying plans for economic and energy cooperation.
It was not surprising, then, that a much-anticipated meeting on July 15 between
the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers ended without progress. The meeting
- the first high-level Indian visit to Islamabad since the deadly Mumbai
attacks in November 2008 - fell victim to public accusations over Balochistan,
proving that Pakistan's remote and impoverished province may have superseded
even Kashmir as the biggest thorn in bilateral relations.
Speaking to journalists after an exhausting day of official rounds in the damp
monsoon weather, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi called the
talks valuable and said the two sides would continue meeting. But he indicated
that the issue of New Delhi's support for ethnic Balochi secessionists had been
discussed.
Qureshi said he had asked his Indian counterpart, S M Krishna, to cancel the
Indian passport of Brahamdagh Khan Bugti, a Balochi rebel leader who is in
hiding after the 2006 killing of his grandfather, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, in
southwestern Pakistan.
"I think the interaction that one had with the [foreign] minister was very
encouraging," Qureshi said. "His response was, 'India is not interested in the
destabilization of Pakistan, and that includes Balochistan'."
Krishna instead demanded that Islamabad go after the planners of the 2008
Mumbai attacks, in which 10 gunmen killed 166 people. He urged Pakistan to act
on new leads provided by David Coleman Headley, a US citizen of Pakistani
origin who is now in US Federal Bureau of Investigation custody.
Krishna categorically denied Indian support for Balochi rebels. "We have been
waiting in India for some evidence to be provided by Pakistan of India's
involvement in Balochistan," he said.
Influencing events In Afghanistan
India and Pakistan are not the only countries in the region experiencing
difficulties in relations stemming from Balochistan.
When 27 people were killed on July 15 in two blasts near a Shi'ite mosque in
Zahedan, the capital of the southeastern Iranian province of
Sistan-Balochistan, Tehran turned a suspicious eye toward Pakistan. Tehran
believes the group that claimed responsibility for the attacks - the extremist
Sunni group Jundallah (God's Soldiers), which champions the cause of Iran's 1.5
million Balochi minority - operates out of the Pakistani part of Balochistan.
Iranian leaders have criticized Islamabad for not going after Jundallah in the
past.
Jundallah, in a statement posted on its website, claimed the attack was in
revenge for the hanging of its leader, Abdulmalik Rigi, who was arrested by
Tehran on a flight to Kyrgyzstan in February.
Discussing the situation in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province,
Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid says that as a nationalist insurgency has
simmered there over the past six years, the region has gained the potential to
influence events in Afghanistan.
"It has a very long border with Afghanistan. It is, of course, part of
Pakistan, but it is contested by Baloch dissidents who are very close to the
secular government in Kabul [and] who receive support perhaps also from the
Indians and the Iranians," Rashid says. "But Pakistan itself wants to use
Balochistan as a launching pad for the Afghan Taliban. And it's there that the
Afghan Taliban are based."
Hasten the nationalist struggle
Balochistan, Pakistan's largest but least-populated province, has been reeling
from protests since the assassination of senior nationalist leader Habib Jalib
Baloch on July 14. Thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have died in the
ongoing Balochi nationalist insurrection against Islamabad, which they see as
exploiting their hydrocarbon and mineral resources while keeping them
impoverished. This is the fifth rebellion by armed Balochi dissidents in
Pakistan's 63-year history. Earlier insurgencies in 1948, 1958, 1962 and
1973-77 were all suppressed militarily.
Rashid says recent events in Balochistan, such as the killings of Balochi
nationalist leaders and the large-scale arrests of nationalist cadres, will
hasten the nationalist struggle. He says the nationalists will step up their
war against Pakistan with the help of neighboring states.
Islamabad, Rashid suggests, will once again try to crush the Balochi insurgency
by force because the region is an important sanctuary for Taliban militants,
which it supports as a hedge against Indian influence in Afghanistan.
"Balochistan is going to become a very contested area, just as much as
Afghanistan is going to become a contested area as we enter into this whole
idea of American withdrawal [from Afghanistan starting] next year," Rashid
says.
Targets for insurgents
Instability in Balochistan has stalled economic cooperation. After 10 years of
negotiations, Tehran and Islamabad signed a US$7 billion gas pipeline project
last month that will provide gas to energy-starved Pakistan for 25 years,
beginning in 2015. Another pipeline project - the
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India route - even has support from the Asian
Development Bank. But both might become targets for Balochi insurgents who have
long targeted domestic gas pipelines.
Islamabad looks askance at a New Delhi-financed road network that links
Afghanistan to the southeastern Iranian port of Chabahar. Tehran hopes the
free-trade zone there will attract business from across Central Asia. China has
bankrolled a rival port in Gawadar along Pakistan's southwestern Arabian Sea
shores. Islamabad and Beijing want to turn it into a major industrial and
transport hub with links to Central Asia and western China.
The nearly million-square-kilometer Balochi territories spark intense
competition among states which see the region as prized real estate in the
heart of Asia.
"Baloch lands span South Asia, Central Asia and South Asia," says veteran
journalist Siddiq Baloch, who is based in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's
Balochistan province. "Thus, its presence in these regions makes it important
for regional states, and whoever controls it also dominates these regions."
But the more than 8 million predominantly pastoral Balochis are an impoverished
lot. They face state discrimination in Iran and Pakistan and wait for a day
when their lives will be more important to regional states than the mineral
resources and trade routes in their lands.
RFE/RL Radio Mashaal correspondent Abdul Hai Kakar contributed to this
report.
Copyright (c) 2010, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
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