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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Anti-government violence in Balochistan |
| 2004-06-22 |
| The pre-dawn rocket attack in the town of Sui in Balochistan on June 20 is another reminder, if one were still needed, that all is not hunky-dory with Pakistan’s geographically largest resource-rich province. The attack, which has destroyed Sui’s airport and for which a Baloch nationalist group, Balochistan Liberation Army, has taken responsibility, has come in retaliation to reports that the federal government wants to have military cantonments in the three Balochistan towns of Sui, Kuhlu and Gwadar. The record shows that over 150 rockets have been fired into this area in the last two months. Why should the Baloch nationalists be opposed to cantonments in the province? There are two broad cross currents in Balochistan. One relates to a general sense, not without reason, that the province has been given a bad deal by the federal government since independence; the second relates to the peculiar socio-economic, tribal and political set-up of the province that has remained unchanged in the past 56 years. Both in tandem have resulted in a situation where the province has been left on the periphery of the federation, squeezed for its natural resources but never quite integrated into the national mainstream. According to General Pervez Musharraf himself, over 90 percent of Balochistan’s area is classified as ‘B’ grade as far as law and order is concerned. The leftist seperatist movement in Baluchistan in the 70’s was put down by the Army. The army has since resettled Afghan refugees and retired Punjabi and Pushtun servicemen into the province, causing the Baluch’s to become a minority in their howeland. The Baluch’s have hardly any presence in the Jihadi groups, with the notable exception of the Ramzi Yousef/Khalid Sheikh Mohammad clan. No one in Balochistan is happy with Islamabad. This includes cadres of the mainstream parties as much as the nationalists on the fringe. On the issue of the cantonments, leaders of PONM (Pakistan Oppressed Nationalities Movement) have already warned Islamabad of dire consequences. The same sentiment was voiced by tribal leader and politician Nawab Akbar Bugti after the latest attack when he said that military cantonments were planned in Sui and Kohlu to ‘suppress the local people’. The question is: What can Islamabad do to bring the situation under control? Its strategy clearly should be linked to the two broad strands we have mentioned above. It needs to convince the people of Balochistan concretely that they are an important component of the federation; and it needs to formulate economic and political policies that can freely and without coercion integrate the province into the federation. In this regard it is vital to take a hard look at the social, economic and political structures of the province that demand sensitive and direct handling of the people of the province as opposed to the sardars. Such a policy would need a major political rethink not just in relation to Balochistan but also in relation to general political structures overall. The military in Pakistan has not allowed viable political processes to take root. Every week or so the gas pipeline in some part of Balochistan is blown up but nothing seems to stir. This apathy needs to go and the people need to be given a sense of political and economic participation for Islamabad’s grand dreams to materialise. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |