The Devil’s Advocate admits its sins, in fear of disintegration of Pakistan
In an article by Retired Air Marshal and former chief of Pakistan Air Force Mohammad Asghar Khan admits Punjabs guilt in exploitation, depravation and oppression of Baloch, Balochistan and other Nations in Pakistan by Punjabis. Article in 2 parts
Balochistan in a federation

By Mohammad Asghar Khan

As the election planned for October draws nearer, the government should give a serious thought to the creation of a federal structure in which the provinces should be given their rightful place in a true federation. The importance of this should not be minimized and the history of these provinces as well as their experience of the last fifty years should not be ignored.

Of the four provinces of Pakistan, Balochistan has a special geographical and historical position. Because of its location, it has been isolated culturally, socially and economically from the areas that constitute Pakistan today. Its location and history give it a distinctive character and position, an understanding of which is essential for a realistic appreciation of the federal character of the state.

Punjab, even when it was not the largest province of Pakistan, enjoyed power and influence far more than its size and number would have justified. The fact that the armed forces were largely from this province and that they had begun to exercise political power further reduced the political influences of the other provinces including the majority province of East Pakistan. Of the four remaining provinces of Pakistan, each has a distinctive character.

The 50 years of Pakistan have to some extent changed the situation and the NWFP and Punjab have come closer economically and politically. This inter-action is greater between these two provinces than that between Punjab and Sindh or between Punjab and Balochistan. In fact, the sense of alienation could be said to be greater between Punjab and the other two provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. Each has its own history and culture and deserves an understanding of its historical background and political individuality.

With an area of 134,000 square miles, roughly about 40 per cent of the total area of the country, Balochistan is the largest of Pakistan's four provinces. Its area and population is comparable to that of Norway. It is known to have unexplored mineral resources of copper, fluorite, limestone and oil. It is estimated that gold deposits in Balochistan exceed the value of 12 billion dollars and the proven iron-ore deposits are in excess of 23 million tonnes.

It has the reserves to expand considerably its existing production of natural gas, coal, limestone, magnelite, marble, sulphur and barite. Balochistan has a coastline of 750 miles and its port of Gwadar, which because of Chinese help in its development, has acquired greater importance, is barely some 250 miles from the Straits of Hormuz the focal point in the oil route from the Persian Gulf to western Europe and the East. Its frontiers in the north and west, border on Afghanistan and Iran, which have Baloch populations of 100,000 and 1,000,000 respectively.

The province of Balochistan has three broad ethnic groups, which differ racially and linguistically. The Pakhtuns who are about a third of the population, are racially and linguistically akin to the people of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and eastern Afghanistan. The Punjabi settlers who are of relatively recent domicile, number less than 5 per cent of the population of the province. Both the Pakhtuns and the Punjabis are relatively more prosperous than the Baloch and have proportionately greater representation in lucrative jobs in Balochistan.

The Baloch are a collection of some five hundred tribes and clans who have lived in these parts for almost 2000 years. There are various theories about their origin. The one which is widely held is that they were living in the southern coast of the Caspian at the time of Christ. There is evidence to suggest that the Balochi language is derived from a lost language, which flourished in the Caspian area in the pre-Christ era. It is closely related to the Kurdish language in the area south of the Caspian at the conflux of Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Another theory of relatively recent origin is that they are of Semitic origin and came from Aleppo in present day Syria.

Except for relatively brief periods in their history, the Baloch tribes have not been united in one national entity; the process having been rendered difficult by the unusually inhospitable terrain and vast distances separating sparsely populated centres of population. Mir Chakar Khan Rind with his capital at Sibi, ruled over a Baloch tribal confederacy from 1487 until his death in 1511.

Subsequently, the tribes of Balochistan, though they managed to preserve their independence from India's Moghul rulers' attempts to subdue them, remained disunited until a century and a half later, when the Ahmadzai tribe established the Kalat confederacy in 1666. It remained a loosely knit confederacy until Nasir Khan, the Sixth Khan of Kalat, who ruled for 50 years in the eighteenth century, formed effective bureaucratic administrative machinery and unified army.

The boundaries of Nasir Khan's confederacy spilled over into the southern districts of Afghanistan and Dera Ghazi Khan district of Punjab and parts of present-day Sindh. Nasir Khan paid tributes to the Persian emperor Nadir Shah until the latter's death in 1747 and then to Ahmad Shah Durrani of Afghanistan for eleven years.In 1758, Nasir Khan, after fighting against Ahmad Shah's forces, established his independence which he and his successors were able to maintain until the arrival of the British in the sub-continent.

Between 1805, when Nasir Khan died, and 1876 when the British succeeded in obtaining treaty rights to station troops in Kalat, the Baloch confederacy assumed special importance in the Big Game between Czarist Russia and the British. The British lost no time in establishing themselves in Balochistan after 1876, divided it into a centrally administered area, a reduced Kalat confederacy and smaller principalities with sardars owing allegiance directly to the British Raj through the British agent in Balochistan. The Khan of Kalat, the descendant of Nasir Khan, had special treaty rights with the British government.

When it was decided to partition India, the last ruler of Kalat, Mir Ahmad Khan opted for an independent Balochistan and in 1946 submitted a memorandum to the British Government, which had pledged to "respect the sovereignty and independence of Kalat'. The matter was not resolved by the British to the Khan's satisfaction and on August 15, 1947, the day after Pakistan emerged on the political map, the Khan of Kalat declared the independence of his state and formed lower and upper houses of the Kalat Assembly.

In the first meeting of the Lower House, in early September 1947, the Assembly confirmed the independence of Kalat, though it favoured an alliance on terms of equality with Pakistan. Amongst those who, in this meeting of the Kalat Assembly spoke in clear terms about the justification for an independent Balochistan was Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, who later became a leader of the National Awami Party and also the Governor of Balochistan for a short period. On April 1, 1948, the Pakistan Army moved into Kalat, forced the Khan to sign an instrument of accession and ended the 225 days' independence of the Kalat confederacy formed by Mir Ahmad Khan's ancestors almost 300 years earlier.

Although the flag of revolt was kept aloft by Mir Ahmad Khan's brother Mir Abdul Karim who moved into Afghanistan, there was no significant military activity in Balochistan for the next ten years. During this period the formation of One Unit uniting West Pakistan including Balochistan into one province in 1955, created resentment and unrest in Kalat and the political circles of Balochistan.

The Khan of Kalat became active in demanding the dissolution of One Unit and with the help of the sardars, organized an agitation against the central government. On October 6, 1958, only a day before Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan overthrew the civilian government of Feroze Khan Noon, the Khan of Kalat was arrested by the army, as were also a large number of other Baloch leaders. From 1958 for about a decade, military action in Balochistan continued until General Yahya Khan dissolved One Unit and set the stage for the 1970 general elections. 28.3.02
The rulers must act with wisdom: Balochistan in a federation-II

By Muhammad Asghar Khan

In the elections of 1970, the National Awami Party which maintained that Pakistan comprised five nationalities - Bengali, Punjabi, Pathan, Sindhi and Baloch - won three of the four National Assembly seats and eight of the 20 Provincial Assembly seats in Balochistan.

The NAP was able to form a coalition government in early 1972 with the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam and ran the affairs of the province until their government was dismissed by the federal government on February 12, 1973.

The military action that followed made the Baloch more conscious of their separate entity and hardened them in their belief that they could not expect justice at the hands of a non-Baloch majority personified in their eyes in a predominantly Punjabi bureaucracy and a non-Baloch army.

After the imposition of Zia-ul-Haq's martial law in 1977 and the tightening of his grip on the country, the fears of the nationalist elements amongst the Baloch increased and they began to look around for an opportunity to shake off the economic and social domination of their province by the non-Baloch.

The Soviet entry into Afghanistan in December, 1979, created a new situation and increased Soviet and United States interest in this area of now increased strategic importance.

By 1981, the Great Powers' policy towards Balochistan became clear. The United States, after the induction of President Reagan's Republican administration, decided to prop up Zia-ul-Haq's regime with military and economic aid and use Afghanistan as a lever to bleed the Soviet Union the way it had bled the United States in Vietnam. It did not wish to see the Soviets increase their influence in Balochistan and took comfort in the thought that communist cadres or communism had made no inroads into the feudal pattern of Baloch society.

Moreover, the Soviet Union, in spite of considerable discomfort in Afghanistan, did not appear to want to destabilize Pakistan. The Soviet Union appreciated that developments in Pakistan and the long term trend of its economic and political growth were likely to bring the whole of Pakistan into the Soviet sphere of influence. It was, therefore, not willing to take an initiative in Balochistan that might provoke the United States to move into greater support of Zia-ul-Haq's regime or into taking an independent initiative in this area.

The developments in Iran and the nature of the Iranian revolution also increased the interest of Arab countries in Balochistan. Some of these saw the situation in Iran and the Iraq-Iran war as an opportunity to destabilize the fundamentalist Iranian Shiite regime by encouraging separatist tendencies in Sunni Iranian Balochistan. However, the danger as a consequence of the development of a 'Greater Balochistan' move and its effect on Pakistani Balochistan restrained these Arab countries from taking any major initiative in the area.

In the Power Game the attitude of the more influential Baloch Sardars had, over the years, crystallized. Ataullah Mengal, the former chief minister of Balochistan and Khair Bakhsh Marri, the former head of the NAP in the province, went into self-imposed exile, and spoke of an independent Balochistan. They appeared to have given up all hope of an adjustment within Pakistan. They appear to have been convinced that no arrangement with the Islamabad government, consistent with the honour and interests of the Baloch, was possible.

Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, a more flexible politician, though an equally ardent nationalist, however, did not abandon hope of a settlement within a federal structure. As the head of the Pakistan National Party, he advocated a place for Balochistan within Pakistan just short of a confederation. The main features of this proposal were the keeping of all residuary powers, except defence, foreign affairs, communications and currency by the federating units. He also advocated enhanced powers for the Senate comprising equal representation of the four federating units.

Bizenjo suggested that the federal government should have no right to interfere in the affairs of the provinces except by a majority vote in the Senate. It was, therefore, significant that the sanctity of the 1973 Constitution - to which not all the Baloch leaders elected in the 1970 elections were signatories - had in their eyes eroded. This had happened because of the unjustified dismissal of the Balochistan ministry in 1973 which was a flagrant violation of the Constitution by the Bhutto government, military action in Balochistan between 1973 and 1977 and the imposition of an unrepresentative and despotic martial law regime.

Despite the hardened position of these and some other Baloch leaders, there were certain factors, which kept the centrifugal forces in check.

The secessionists among the Baloch found no support for an independent Balochistan among the world powers, who found their interests better served by maintaining the unity of Pakistan. Moreover, Arab countries for similar reasons were not willing to encourage secessionist tendencies in Iranian Balochistan.

However, it does not necessarily mean that this will always remain so and some of the Arab countries may under certain circumstances find the temptation to encourage separatist tendencies amongst the Iranian Baloch on Iran's eastern frontier too great to resist.

The Soviet Foreign Minister, Gromyko, speaking in New Delhi on February 12, 1980 had warned that, "If Pakistan continues to serve as a puppet of imperialism in the future; it will jeopardize its existence and its integrity as an independent state."

The United States, too, could in certain circumstances accept the dismemberment of Pakistan as it did in 1971.

Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State during President Nixon's administration, had said: "In my conversation with Ambassador Jha I reiterated my constant theme that we considered Indian and American long term interests as congruent .... I emphasized that the United States did not insist that East Bengal remain part of Pakistan.

On the contrary, we accepted autonomy as inevitable and independence as possible. A war was senseless; Bangladesh would come into being by the spring of 1972 if present procedures were given a chance. We differed over method, not aim.

"On October 7, I told WSAG meeting that if India would accept an evolutionary process, it would achieve most of its objectives with our assistance. If they would co-operate with us we could work out 90 per cent of their problems, like releasing Mujib or attaining some degree of autonomy for Bangladesh, and these steps would lead eventually to their getting it all."

With the return of a Republican administration and keeping United States global interests in mind, it would be prudent to assume that should the US interests in the future be better served by sacrificing Pakistan or a part of it, Henry Kissinger's successors would not hesitate to do so. Pakistan must, therefore, strive to keep itself together by weakening those forces that are pulling it apart and this cannot be done by force of arms. The use of strong arm methods has shown that the situation did not, to say the least, improve.

By trying to find military solutions to political problems, Balochistan was kept in a state of insurgency for over two decades. Its contacts with political thought outside its own area had therefore not developed. Wisdom would suggest that the situation should be handled in a manner that the people of Balochistan feel convinced that their future lies in Pakistan. The only sensible course appears to be to give all Pakistanis including the Baloch, an opportunity to live in freedom and allow all political parties to function so that the Balochs are woven into the political fabric of national politics.

It has been a sad political experience that the people's elected representatives have in the past, behaved in a highly irresponsible manner and nowhere has this been more apparent than in Balochistan. Billions have been squandered and misappropriated by so-called public representatives who have mercilessly looted the already impoverished people.

However, with the experience that the country has gone through, it can be hoped that in the new system that is being introduced they will show a greater sense of responsibility.

In any case, the views of those who enjoy the people's support must be given due weight through a constitutional process and if the elected representatives of the federating units want greater powers for the Senate, this must be done. It must be recognized that nations are not made in a day, nor necessarily in 50 years. Sometimes the process takes much longer and rushing through it can destroy the unity of the country. The interest that the world powers have in this area suggests that the rulers of Pakistan move with wisdom and restraint - qualities they have not always shown in their handling of this problem over the last 50 years.