There is serious turmoil in Balochistan, irrespective of whether the rest of the country is willing to acknowledge it. Over the last six months in particular, Baloch rebels have been hard at work 153 out of 156 working days, to be precise planting mines, firing rockets have, exploding bombs or ambushing military convoys. Their attacks have turned bloody on at least 25 occasions, killing over 40 persons including military and paramilitary personnel, levies, security agents, government officials and also some civilians. The Sui airport building has been blown up, gas pipelines and electricity grids have been repeatedly hit and bomb explosions have taken place close to the official's residence of the chief minister as well as the governor. Even military installations in Quetta have not been spared. Though many such attacks remain unclaimed to this day, a group called the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has claimed the responsibility for quite a few, demanding and end to garrisons and Mega-projects. For those who have seen the actors in this bloody confrontation take form, this ragtag group of rebellious nationalists may take a lot more force to dissipate then the ideologues from the mid-1970s required. The key to the events currently unfolding in Balochistan
perhaps lies in the early days of 2003, a year that will go down in Baloch political history as the year of mergers and coalitions between nationalist groups. By September, four Baloch parties had fallen together in an alliance called the Baloch Ithehad. Its two-point agenda, unsurprisingly, was exactly the same as the one professed by the armed rebels: opposition to military garrisons and Mega-projects in the province. Within a year, it became an active and violently articulated agenda in the province. As such, the Ittehad's significance as the de facto political front for armed struggle cannot be exaggerated.
Even more significant is the less visible face of BLA, scattered all across the province in the shape of training camps and infrastructure. Evidence of these camps first came to public light in the last week of July 2004, when a group of Sindhi and Baloch journalists visited Kahan, the native town of Balochistan's former strongman Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, in Kohlu district. The journalists found these camps manned by "mostly Marri tribesmen," equipped with wireless sets, walkie-talkies and satellite phones. Each camp had one or more electric generators as well as fleets of motorbikes and four wheel drive trucks. Their hosts claimed that there were 60 such camps in the Kohlu area alone.
Official sources in Quetta confirmed to the Herald that more than 150 camps, housing between 3000 to 5000 armed rebels, have been operating in different parts of Balochistan over the last two years. The camps are scattered wide across the province, from Kohlu and Sibi in the northeast to Kech and Gwadar in the southwest and from Khuzdar and Kalat in eastern and central Balochistan to Kharan and Chaghi in the northwest. The BLA's geographical spread is matched only by the diversity of its weapons: assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG's) mortars and even anti-aircraft guns.
Some residents of Makran's Dasht area who have relatives among the BLA camps in Makran told the Herald in Turbat that BLA members were paid monthly salaries ranging from 5,000 to 15,000 rupees. They added that a majority of BLA members in the Makran camps are educated Baloch youth having past or present links with the nationalist Baloch Students Organization. In addition, both government sources in Quetta and people from Dasht confirm that the rebels are led by the Marri and Mengal activists who had constituted the younger lot of the 1970s resistance and are now in their early or mid-fifties.
As for the source of their money, America tops the list of speculation, with a senior government official in Quetta pointing out that the US may want to put a damper on the growing Chinese presence in Balochistan. Some influential business groups in Dubai and Qatar are also said to be piqued over what they perceive as potentially adverse effects of the Gwadar port on business opportunities in the Gulf. The intelligence community in Islamabad believes Iran is another possible opponent of the Gwadar port because this project would compete with Iran's newly built Chahbahar Port on the Balochistan coast. India, of course, is an old time rival and would like to get even with Pakistan over Kashmir. But observers warn the Pakistani establishment against reading too much into this aspect of the conflict. "Much of what is happening in Balochistan today has a strong internal dimension that connects with its recent history and it will be a folly to ignore it any longer," says one analyst.
On the policy front, BLA's inception can be linked to Islamabad's attempts to explore oil and gas in Kohlu between 1999 and 2000. Armed Marri tribesmen led by Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, resisted this attempt. Islamabad retaliated by recruiting a 1000-strong levies force of the rival Bijarani tribe in Kohlu to contain Nawab Marri's influence... During this period, pressure from the so-called Bijarani Militia gradually pushed the Marri tribesmen underground, creating conditions for a militant backlash. This underground network soon proliferated to central Balochistan where Sardar Attaullah Mengal threw in his lot with Marri, his comrade-in-arms since the insurgency of the mid-1970s
The Bugti tribe was drawn into the conflict after a two-year lull in militant activity during 2001 and 2002 due to development in Afghanistan. The repeated bombing and rocketing of the gas pipelines in the Sui area in late 2002 and early 2003 worked as a catalyst
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By mid-2003, the scattered forces of another Baloch nationalist leader from the 1970s, the late Mir Ghaus Bux Bizenjo, were also closing ranks. The non-tribal, essentially middle-class groups such as the Balochistan National Democratic Party (BNDP), headed by Hasil Bizenjo and Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, and the main faction of the Balochistan National Movement (BNM) led by Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch announced a merger in October 2003 and re-christened the new party as the National Party (NP). The merger came a month after the four main Nationalist forces, namely BNP, JWP, Nawab Khair Baksh Marri and the elements that have now formed the NP, joined the Baloch Ittehad.
So where are things headed? A more sensible way to the future could be a serious effort on the part of Islamabad to lay the foundations of a truly participatory system of government in which provincial concerns are addressed in a constitutional framework. This has only a remote chance of happening, though. "It will be overoptimistic to expect the establishment to resolve the national and democratic question", says senior NP leader Dr Abdul Malik. Another way, and one that the ISI probably cannot resist, is to infiltrate the militant ranks anew, engineer greater "collateral damage" to discredit the struggle and effect a division in their ranks as it did by infiltrating the BSO ranks in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
On the political front, Islamabad has already launched efforts to draw Bugti into talks while instituting criminal cases against Marri and Mengal leaders. This strategy can ensure "friendly" government in Quetta, as it did during the past 30 years. But the fact remains that instead of the bringing the Baloch people forward of the path of progress and development, it has taken them full circle back to the dark ages of 1973. The future of this strategy cannot be any different. "The establishment can play its game as long as it likes, but it can never score a point in what is essentially a zero-sum game", concludes BNP leader Habib Jalib Baloch.