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By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
DERA BUGTI, Pakistan — Explosions at gas pipelines
and railroad tracks are common in this remote desert region. Now, roadside
bombs and artillery shells are, too. More than 100 civilians have been
killed in recent months, along with dozens of government security forces,
local residents and Pakistan's Human Rights Commission say.
This is the other front of Pakistan's widening civil
unrest, not the tribal areas along the Afghan border where the United
States would like the government to press a campaign against Islamic
militants, but the restive province of Baluchistan, home to an
intensifying insurgency.
It is here, say local leaders and opposition
politicians, that Pakistan, an important ally in the United States'
campaign against terrorism, has diverted troops from the fight against
Al Qaeda and the
Taliban to settle old scores as it seeks to develop the region's
valuable oil and gas reserves.
One visit makes it clear that, despite official
denials, the government is waging a full-scale military campaign here.
Rebel leaders say they have several thousand men under arms, fighting what
they estimate are 23,000 Pakistani troops.
During a 24-hour trek on camel, horse and foot
across the rugged, stony terrain in early March, the fighting was plain to
see. Military jets and surveillance planes flew over the area, and
long-range artillery lighted up the distant night sky.
This fight is altogether separate from the Taliban
insurgency on Afghanistan's border or the Shiite-Sunni violence that
sporadically flares in and around the provincial capital, Quetta, and it
threatens to dwarf the nation's other conflicts.
It is about the ethnic rights and self-rule of the
Baluch people, who are distinct among Pakistanis. They speak their own
language, Baluchi, which has its roots in Persian, and are probably the
oldest settlers in the region.
In particular, tensions have been aggravated by
President
Pervez Musharraf's determination to develop the area's oil and gas
fields, the largest in the country, as well as his aim to build a pipeline
across the region to carry oil from Iran and a strategic deep sea port to
expand trade with China, local residents say.
They charge that General Musharraf has shown little
regard for their concerns and that for years their province has received
paltry royalties on its resources, while remaining one of the country's
poorest regions.
The government has branded two of the rebel leaders,
Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, nearly 80, and Balach Marri, 40, "miscreants,"
outlaws who oppose economic development to retain a hold over their
tribes.
In an interview under the shade of a rocky overhang,
Mr. Bugti and Mr. Marri, who share the names of the tribes they lead,
dismissed the charges. They are not opposed to economic development, they
said, but rather to the Pakistani government's military campaign to
suppress them.
"The military government has imposed military rule
and this has forced the Baluch to defend their land and resources against
the might of the armed forces of Pakistan assembled in our area," Mr.
Bugti said, perched in a carved wooden armchair as tribesmen sat around
him cradling Kalashnikov rifles.
"The dispute is about the national rights of the
Baluch," he added, "and if the government accepted these rights then there
would be no dispute."
Mr. Bugti and others said that the government was
using its American-supplied jets and helicopter gunships against them.
They said they had found bomb fragments with "Made in U.S.A." stamped on
them.
Indeed, huge craters and fragments from
American-designed MK-82 bombs lay beside a badly damaged school in the
village of Mararar, the results of a bombing raid that the Baluch fighters
said had occurred at the beginning of March.
Another bombing raid on or around March 14 hit two
bulldozers building a road, the fighters said. A collection of bomb
fragments gathered by tribesmen from other raids revealed a "valve
solenoid" made in New York, and part of a gas generator made in Mesa, Ariz.
Last year, the Baluch political leaders presented a
15-point agenda to the central government. The demands included greater
control of the province's resources, protection for the Baluch minority
and a halt to the building of military bases that local residents say have
proliferated here.
Concern over the issues had been building for years,
said Suret Khan Marri, a historian living in Quetta, the provincial
capital, and the concerns and violence reach far beyond the Bugti and
Marri tribes.
"The movement is there," he said in an interview.
"Sometimes it is crushed. Now it is the fifth insurgency, and it has
spread all across the Baluch area."
Armed resistance by Baluch nationalists has been a
repeating occurrence since the birth of Pakistan in 1947, when tribal
leaders, Mr. Bugti among them, only grudgingly joined Pakistan after
having ruled independent territories under the British.
The bitterness today is such that the tribal leaders
compare the situation to the 1970's, when Bangladesh broke from Pakistan.
"If grievances have come to this level— that we do not mind if Pakistan
disintegrates— then things are bad," Mr. Marri, the rebel leader, said.
The terrain here is marked by harsh, rocky desert,
rising into craggy mountains and cut through with narrow gorges that
supply many hiding places for shepherds, or guerrilla fighters. In the
summer, temperatures soar to more than 120 degrees.
The shadowy Baluchistan Liberation Army, one of
three armed resistance groups born in the 1970's, has claimed
responsibility for many of the recent attacks, including the killing of
three Chinese engineers working on the deep sea port, at Gwadar. Mr. Marri
said that he did not know who was leading the group, but that it was
neither a Bugti nor a Marri.
The most recent violence has included summary
killings of settlers from the Punjab, whom Baluch nationalists blame for
stealing jobs and land.
Hundreds of political party members, students,
doctors and tribal leaders have been detained by government security
forces, many disappearing for months, even years, without trials in
well-documented cases. Some have been tortured or have died in custody,
say officials of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission.
A Baluch doctor, Bari Langove, 36, said he had
examined a student leader, Dr. Allah Nasar Baloch, in a prison ward in
Quetta six months ago and found him so debilitated that he could neither
walk nor talk at first.
"He was mentally exhausted and wholly unable to
speak," Dr. Langove said in an interview in Quetta. "We examined him and
found he had post-traumatic stress disorder, symptoms of loss of
short-term memory, insomnia, loss of appetite and energy."
In places like Dera Bugti and Kohlu, government
forces have carried out reprisals against villagers, Baluch leaders and
human rights officials say. In a case documented by the Human Rights
Commission, the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force commanded by army
officers, killed 12 men from Pattar Nala on Jan. 11 after a mine explosion
near the village killed some of its soldiers.
Two old men from the village who went to the base to
collect the bodies were also killed. The next day, the 14 bodies were
handed over to the women of the village.
Local fighters say the Frontier Corps has carried
out 42 such reprisal killings in the last three months, the latest
involving six villagers during the week of March 6.
The government offensive began after a rocket attack
on President Musharraf as opened a military base in Kohlu on Dec. 17 — an
attack for which officials blamed Marri rebels, and Mr. Marri in
particular.
Shortly afterward, government forces stormed the
town of Dera Bugti, Mr. Bugti said, adding that they were burning shops
and houses there still, including his family home.
The government has played down the fighting, and
denies that the Pakistani Army is even deployed in Baluchistan, saying
that it is merely using the Frontier Corps to run a police operation to
stem violence.
In interviews, the police chief, Chaudhry Muhammad
Yakub, put the number of rebels at no more than 1,000. The provincial
governor Owais Ahmed Ghani, said 36,000 Frontier Corps soldiers were
deployed in Baluchistan, with two-thirds concentrated along the Afghan
border. Both predicted that the Baluchistan conflict would be over within
two months.
In all this, Mr. Bugti is an unexpected participant.
He has been a prominent player in regional politics for many years and was
governor of Baluchistan. He has spent time in detention on charges of
murder during a long and colorful life.
Educated under the British Raj, he is a man from a
bygone era, who said he attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in
London in 1953.
Now, forced to flee his home, he lives an austere
life, camping out under the stars with his loyal tribesmen, a Kalashnikov
propped by his aluminum walking stick.
"I have had a good and full life," he said,
unperturbed. "It is better to die quickly in the mountains than slowly in
your bed."
He warned that the government would be foolish not
to negotiate with the senior tribal leaders. "If we are removed from the
scene, I can guarantee the government will have a heck of a time from the
younger generation, because they are more extreme," he said.
One of his grandsons, Brahamdagh, 25, is commanding
the Bugti resistance fighters, and he appeared silently every so often to
brief his grandfather. He took to the mountains in 2002 with just 50 to 60
men.
Brahamdagh contended that he now had more than 2,000
fighters in Dera Bugti and thousands more civilian helpers. He said the
Marris had roughly the same number in Kohlu. In addition, small cells of
fighters are in every district of the province, he said.
"There are so many groups," he said. "Three to four
guys get together and decide what to do, to hit a railway or a bus. We are
showing our bitterness. We are fighting the government to show we are not
happy with you and you should leave our homeland."
Mr. Marri, who arrived unannounced one afternoon, on
foot and accompanied by a dozen armed fighters, is another of the younger
generation. The third son of the leader of the Marri tribe, he has spent
most of his life outside Pakistan.
In 2002, he returned to run for Parliament but spent
most of his time in his home in Kohlu, the capital of the Kohlu district,
until forced to flee by the government offensive. "If they think they can
pressure us like this, then they don' t know us," he warned. "The Baluch
people have woken up."
The Human Rights Commission and opposition political
parties have urged both sides to seek a political solution to the
conflict. Yet at the moment there is no dialogue.
Two parliamentary committees set up last year to
look into Baluch grievances have stalled, and General Musharraf has been
blunt in his determination to use force against anyone opposing his vision
for the region.
In their mountain stronghold, Mr. Bugti and Mr.
Marri, and a third leader, Ataullah Mengal, in his home in Karachi, are
disparaging about talks with the government.
"They are not worth sitting with at the table," Mr.
Marri said. "The general keeps offering peanuts when my rights are at
stake. We are not against negotiations, but only negotiations that are
worthwhile."
Mr. Bugti offered his own grim prognosis. "I don’t
see it ending," he said. 2.4.06 |
