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| India-Pakistan |
| Baluchistan heading towards full insurgency |
| 2006-01-22 |
| Balochistan, a word that has little resonance for the ordinary American, may present yet another challenge for the United States as it increasingly becomes the launching pad in Pakistan for Islamic terrorism, according to a new paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Washington-based think tank has released a new paper, "Pakistan: The Resurgence of Baluch Nationalism", by visiting scholar Frédéric Grare, a former French diplomat stationed in Pakistan and also India. "...Baluchistan seems to be heading toward another armed insurrection," says Grare, one that comes 30 years after one of the most violent conflicts ever. A rising number of attacks against army and paramilitary forces during 2004 and 2005, signify rising frustration among a people whose nationalistic aspirations have been suppressed by Islamabad without any economic or social development, and an exclusionary policy, says Grare. The paper accuses the establishment in Pakistan of finding military rather than civil solutions. And warns that Islamabad must negotiate with leaders in that country otherwise an incendiary situation was developing that would have consequences not just for Pakistan, but for the world. "To achieve unity, the army rule of the country has almost always favoured military solutions over political ones and has tended to reinforce separatist tendencies", and concealed the real Baluch problem, says the author. The Baluch crisis is not just the unintended outcome of more or less appropriate decisions. The crisis epitomises the army's mode of governance and its relation with Pakistan's citizens and world public opinion. Balochistan, which straddles three countries (Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan) and borders the Arabian Sea, is a vast and sparsely populated province (6,511,000 people occupying 43 percent of Pakistan's territory) that contains within its borders all the contradictions that affect the region, including conflict between the United States and the Taliban, the paper points out. A large part of US military operations in Afghanistan are launched from the Pasni and Dalbandin bases situated on Baluch territory. The Taliban, backed by both Pakistan and Iran, also operate out of Balochistan. "If the pressure on Western forces in Afghanistan were to become unbearable, Washington and its allies could conceivably use the Baluch nationalists, who fiercely oppose the influence of the mullahs and also oppose the Taliban, to exert diplomatic pressure on Islamabad as well as Tehran." Balochistan also contains rich mineral resources, including 36 percent of its total gas production, large quantities of coal, gold, copper, silver, platinum, aluminium, and, above all, uranium and is a potential transit zone for a pipeline transporting natural gas from Iran and Turkmenistan to India. Meanwhile, the Baluch coast is critical not just to Pakistan but also China which is involved with the development of the important Gwadar port which is designed to bolster Pakistan's strategic defences by providing an alternative to the Karachi port. "Some even consider this isolated township in the southwest of Pakistan as a Chinese naval outpost on the Indian Ocean designed to protect Beijing's oil supply lines from the Middle East and to counter the growing US presence in Central Asia," the author notes. "Islamabad has always denied the existence of Baluch nationalism, but the Baluch lay claim to a history going back two thousand years," reminds the author, and have secretly campaigned for independence during the final days decades of the British Raj. And since 1947, the Baluch's have fought Pakistan's army on more than one occasion, the latest from 1973 to 1977 in a guerrilla war and similar to what is happening today. The author accuses Pakistan's press of constantly referring to a possible "foreign hand" in Baluchistan as a cause for the crisis today, including pointing at India which has opened consulates in neighbouring Afghanistan's Jalalabad and Kandahar cities, and sometimes accusing Iran or the United States. Charges by Pakistan that the Baluch rebels are financed abroad are part of Islamabad's efforts to discredit Baluch nationalism, the author contends. "Following the policies adopted by Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s, Pakistan's government continues through its Ministry of Religious Affairs to encourage the setting up of madrassas in the province in order to penetrate deeper into the ethnic Baluch areas stubbornly opposed to the mullahs," he says. Attempts to colour a largely secular environment in Balochistan as a risky fundamentalist bastion by the Pakistan government, says the author, is an attempt by Islamabad "to draw the attention of foreign powers to the risk of the spread of fundamentalism in the region and to launch a systematic disinformation campaign equating the Baluch resistance with Islamic terrorism." Pakistan's intelligence services have linked nationalist militancy to the terrorism of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, emphasizes the author. "The same attempt at disinformation dictates the identification of Baluch nationalism with Iran's Islamic revolution at a time when the United States and Western Europe are protesting Tehran's nuclear ambitions." He warns against any temptation India may have to see the dismemberment yet again of Pakistan expecting it to help toward resolving the Kashmir issue, "but a change of regional boundaries could revive fears of irredentism in Kashmir and in the territories of the Northeast that a vengeful Pakistan would be only too eager to exploit." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |