Baloch Martyrs

UNREST IN BALOCHISTAN

By B. Raman

Two years after Bangladesh achieved independence from the Pakistani rule in 1971, the Baloch’s of Balochistan rose in revolt against the Punjabi-dominated federal Government demanding an independent Baloch state.  Amongst the leaders of the independence movement were Nawab Khair Baksh Marri, Shero alias Tiger Marri and Attaullah Khan Mengal.

The revolt was triggered off by discrimination against the Baloch’s in matters such as educational facilities, recruitment to the Armed Forces and other Government departments, economic development etc.  There has been no worthwhile economic development in the area despite its being rich in oil, gas and other natural resources.

Another subsequent cause for anger is the large-scale influx of Pashtuns from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan and Afghanistan, officially encouraged by the Army, and re-settlement of Punjabi ex-servicemen in order to reduce the Baloch’s to a minority in their homeland.

The regime of Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, then in power in Islamabad, crushed the revolt ruthlessly, using the Army and the Air Force.  Nawab Khair Baksh Marri, Tiger Marri and their followers took shelter in Afghanistan, while Attaullah Khan Mengal went into political exile in the UK.  After the collapse of the Najibullah Government in Kabul in 1992, Nawab Marri, Tiger Marri and their followers returned to Pakistan. Tiger Marri died in 1993.  Attaullah Khan Mengal too returned to Balochistan, but subsequently went back to the UK.

The Baloch nationalist movement became dormant for some years.  However, since the beginning of last year, there are signs of a revival of the movement due to heightened anger amongst the Baloch’s against the Pakistani Army and the federal Government. While the feelings of alienation, which triggered off the revolt of the 1970s, remain as strong as they were 30 years ago, certain additional reasons have aggravated them.

The more important amongst them are the non-payment of adequate royalty to the people of Balochistan for the gas found in their territory, which has contributed to the economic development of Punjab, without any economic benefits for the Baloch’s; the displacement of a large number of poor Baloch’s by the construction of the Gwadar port and town with Chinese assistance without adequate compensation; the re-settlement of a large number of Punjabi and Pashtun ex-servicemen in Balochistan to work in the Gwadar port  and Mekran coastal highway projects, in violation of the Government assurances that preference would be given to the sons of the soil for work in the projects; violation of the labour rights of the people employed by the Chinese construction company which is building the port; and the setting-up of three new cantonments by the army in Balochistan.

The anger over the non-payment of adequate royalty for the gas being supplied to Punjab and Sindh has led to a number of incidents of sabotage of the gas pipelines and attacks involving the use of explosives and landmines directed against the staff employed for the protection of the pipelines.  As a result, there have been frequent incidents of disruption of gas supply. Despite the allocation of an additional sum of Rs.600 million by the federal Government for raising a new security force to guard the pipelines, acts of sabotage and other violent incidents continue to occur.  In the latest incident reported from a place near Sui on September 27,2003, at least 13 persons were injured, three of them critically, when a van ran over a landmine.

The construction of the Gwadar Port and the Mekran coastal highway has been expedited by the Army in order to complete the projects one year ahead of schedule.  These projects have resulted in the displacement of thousands of Baloch’s from their ancestral land and the forcible acquisition of their land by the Government without paying them adequate compensation and without giving them suitable land in return.  Moreover, fearing Indian attempts to sabotage the projects, the Government has forcibly removed the Hindus and many of the Baloch’s, whose loyalty was suspected, from the area, which has been declared a sensitive defence zone.

While the Hindus have been forced to migrate to Sindh, the Baloch’s, who are suspected of being sympathetic to India, have been removed far away from the site of the port.  A large number of Punjabi and Pashtun ex-servicemen, whose loyalty to Islamabad is beyond doubt, have been re-settled in the Mekran coastal area to work in these projects.

There is also growing anger against the Chinese company, which has been given the contract for the construction of the port, with many complaints of payment of less than the legal minimum wage to the Baloch workers employed by it, non-payment of wages for months at a time and ill-treatment of workers.

An article in the June 21, 2003, issue of the "Dawn", the prestigious daily of Karachi, said: " On the potholed road from the Gwadar airport to the city, scattered wall graffiti hails Pakistan-China friendship.  Much of this officially-sanctioned bonhomie is reserved for the Harbour Engineering Company (HEC), one of China's largest state-owned firms entrusted with the task of developing the Gwadar deep-sea port.  Even for an outsider, the company's larger than life presence is overwhelming.

"For the desperately poor people of the area, however, the air-conditioned enclaves of our Chinese friends have become symbols of mass alienation.  It is their unethical business practices that evoke much more bitter discontent though. On the rare occasions that local services are hired, salary payments can often take several months.  The alleged high-handedness of the HEC staff often leads to strikes and protests by employees.

"For Gwadar's ills, one cannot find fault with the Chinese alone.  They are only pursuing their strategic national interests. Nothing really wrong with that.  And in disregarding the local population's needs and sentiments, Pakistani authorities fare no better.  In the agreement signed with the Chinese, the Government is believed to have ignored even the legitimate share of jobs that are reserved for locals.

"The highway authority building the Gwadar-Karachi coastal highway has recruited hundreds from outside the area. The residents allege that the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) does not even consider their applications for jobs.  Since most construction and development work is outsourced, contractors from Karachi, Lahore and other parts of the country often hire their own people.  No doubt, technical skills are locally in short supply.  But not much of the manual work involved requires complex techniques.

"Allegations that the military authorities have bought most of the prime land at throw-away prices are rife.  According to local officials, over 80 per cent of the plots in the Gwadar Singhar Housing Scheme have been arbitrarily allotted to outsiders, many of them senior army and civilian officials.

"Gwadar's woes do not stop there. The much-touted devolution of powers remains a farce in the face of centralised control over the area's resources.  The Gwadar Port Authority (GPA), for instance, is run by a retired Admiral based in Karachi. The city's Master Plan, prepared by the National Engineering Service of Pakistan (NESPAK), is another no-go area for the local authorities.  Even provincial authorities were virtually bypassed in its formulation.

"The controversial plan betrays NESPAK's complete disregard for local sensitivities or socio-economic conditions. For one, locals fear that the under-estimation of the present and future population may lead to their conversion into a minority in the future.  The plan envisages the relocation of a large chunk of the old city's population, but without any concrete, stated resettlement plan, lending credence to public fears of mass dislocation.

"The secrecy surrounding what should be a public document has made matters even worse.  The district assembly has rejected the plan after several requests that it be taken into confidence fell on deaf ears.  Even the provincial Assembly's motions have failed to elicit a response from the concerned authorities.

"It is hardly surprising that deep nationalist resentment fuelled by what is largely perceived as the Centre's attempts to appropriate provincial resources are growing.  Shutter-down strikes in Gwadar and throughout the Makran area are now common.  Baloch nationalist parties are in the process of forging a broad new alliance to press for their demands.  During a well-attended meeting in Khuzdar in late May, their leaders lambasted Islamabad for denying the people of Balochistan their due rights.  They had a valid point to make. If the people of Makran do not demand their rights now, who will pay heed to their protests once the Gwadar port has been completed?

"Repeated bunglings of fragile inter-ethnic relations have only further exacerbated provincial fears of majoritarian rule. Gross neglect of their development needs, denial of provincial autonomy and the lack of participatory institutions have encouraged resort to extreme means.  Lest we forget, the last time regional demands for economic and political rights were ignored in East Pakistan, it culminated in a bloody civil war and the dismemberment of the country.

"The people of Balochistan and their elected leaders must be taken into confidence on all issues that concern them.  The Centre must treat them with the respect all citizens of the Federation deserve, not as a second rate minority.  The decision to use their resources as Baloch’s see fit is simply not Islamabad's to make. The sooner it sheds its colonial hangover, the better." (End of citation from the article).

These complaints have led to a demand by the Baloch nationalist elements for the stoppage of the construction of the port.  Addressing a press conference at his native village of Dera Bugti on August 10, 2003, Nawab Muhammad Akbar Khan Bugti, chief of the Bugti tribe, described the Gwadar port project as a plan to divide Balochistan and bring destruction, instability and poverty to the Baloch people.  He said that in his view the plans to build the Gwadar port with Chinese assistance and a big air base at Pasni with financial assistance from the US Central Command, the allotment of land to army soldiers and civil bureaucrats in Gwadar and the declaration of Gwadar as a sensitive defence zone were directed against the Baloch’s.

He demanded the formation of an authority by the National Assembly, with 60 per cent of the posts in the authority held by the Baloch’s, for supervising the development and construction of the projects in Gwadar, Pasni and other areas of Balochistan.  He added: “We welcome foreign investors, traders, industrialists, oil and gas explorers and mining companies in Balochistan, but demand 51 per cent share of locals in the profit made by the foreigners.”

He stressed the need for proper legislation to regulate investors and to protect the rights and interests of the local people and said that his tribe would support the residents of Gwadar if they began a campaign to achieve their rights.  His attitude has subsequently further hardened and he has started opposing the Gwadar project in Toto as anti-Baloch.

Meeting at Dera Bugti on September 14, 2003, the representatives of three Baloch nationalist parties formed a new alliance called the Baloch Ittehad, under the chairmanship of Nawab Akbar Bugti, to resist "anti-Balochistan projects". The meeting was attended by Akbar Khan Bugti of the Jamhoori Wattan Party (JWP), Sardar Akhtar Jan Mangal of the Balochistan National Party (BNP) and Dr. Abdul Hayee Baloch of the Balochistan National Movement (BNM).

Later, the formation of the new alliance was announced at a big public meeting in Sui.  Addressing the meeting, Bugti said that under the banner of the new alliance, a meaningful struggle would be launched to secure the rights of the people of Balochistan. He described the Gwadar port project as not "in the interests of Balochistan" and added that   it would not be allowed to be completed at any cost.

He warned that the Government would face a tough resistance if it tried to establish cantonments at Kohlu, Gwadar and Dera Bugti and that the Government would not be able to implement any project at gunpoint and it would meet a tit-for-tat response.  He pointed out that all contracts for the exploration of natural gas had been disregarded, though the Sui area met 70 per cent of the natural gas demands of the country. "We are not being given royalty, nor employment to the area peoples," he said.

Bugti alleged that the Musharraf government was busy coaxing only one province (Punjab).  He said that the three other provinces had rejected the Kalabagh Dam and the Sindh Assembly had also passed a resolution against the Thal Canal, but the Government still insisted on going ahead with these controversial projects.  He promised that the Baloch nationalist leaders would extend all-out support to the Sindhis against the Thal Canal.

Other Baloch nationalist leaders alleged that since the creation of Pakistan, the precious natural resources of Balochistan were being looted. They said that the oppressing forces now wanted to occupy the 770-kilometre coastal belt of the province and pledged that the Baloch nationalist parties would foil their designs.  They said that the new alliance would be a turning point in the struggle of the Baloch nationalists.

Balach Khan Marri, a leader of the Marri tribe, speaking on the occasion, announced his support for the Baloch Ittehad and said that it was time for the Baloch nation to be awakened to fight for their interests. Others who spoke included Ghulam Haider Bugti, member of the National Assembly, Sardar Balkh Sher Mazari, former Prime Minister, and Hannan Baloch.

Faced with the growing resentment of the Baloch’s, Gen. Pervez Musharraf sacked Lt. Gen. (Retd) Abdul Qadir, a son of the soil, whom he had appointed as the Governor of Balochistan only a few months earlier after he had retired as the Corps Commander, Quetta, due to suspicion that his sympathies were with the nationalists and appointed Owais Ahmad Ghani, a Pashtun from the adjoining NWFP, as Balochistan’s 19th Governor.

He became a provincial minister in the NWFP under the military regime and was later elevated to the Federal Cabinet. He is very close to Musharraf and had strongly supported Musharraf's continuing as the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) and the various constitutional amendments arbitrarily introduced by him. Like Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, a Baloch, he is also viewed as close to the US and as the blue-eyed favourite of the US intelligence community. His appointment is meant partly to ensure that effective action was taken against the Baloch nationalists and partly to reassure the US and China of effective law enforcement in the province. He was sworn in on August 11, 2003.  Even though this is not the first time that an outsider has been appointed as the provincial Governor, his appointment at this sensitive juncture has added to the resentment of the local people, who view themselves as a virtual colony of Punjab.

Balochistan, which is now ruled by a coalition of six Islamic fundamentalist parties and the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Qaide Azam), is an area of growing concern and interest for the US. US aircraft operating from the Pasni air base have been playing an active role in the US-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan. Large sections of the increasing local Pashtun population, many of them Afghan refugees who were given Pakistani citizenship by the military in order to reduce the Baloch’s to a minority, have been sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda and have given protection and shelter to the dregs of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Gulbuddin Heckmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami (HEI), who have been operating from these sanctuaries against the troops of the US and Hamid Karzai's Government in Afghanistan, with the complicity of the provincial Government and serving and retired officers of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The influx of the dregs of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF) into the province has injected the anti-Shia poison, hitherto absent from Balochistan, into the province, with frequent massacres of the Shias, particularly the members of the Hazara tribe, who are targeted by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, because of their suspected sympathy for the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan.

About 30 per cent of the oil and gas interests in the province are controlled by American companies from Texas. The safety of their investments and property and of the lives of the US citizens associated with these projects is another area of concern for Washington. The US is also greatly concerned over the increasing presence of the Chinese in this sensitive area. The completion of the Gwadar project and the likelihood of Chinese naval ships being stationed in the local naval base could pose a threat to US oil and naval interests in the Gulf region. However, it has not openly expressed its concerns so far.

The Baloch’s in the bordering areas of Iran constitute a major Sunni segment of the Iranian population.  In the past, the US intelligence community had maintained close relations with them and in the years when Saddam Hussein was the frontline ally of the US in its attempts to destabilise the Islamic regime in Iran, Baloch assets in Iran were eagerly sought after by the intelligence agencies of both the US and Iraq, who looked upon each other as brothers-in-arms.

Now things have changed. Large sections of the Sunni Baloch’s of Iran have thrown in their lot with the dregs of the Al Qaeda and the other constituents of the IIF. Many leading figures of Al Qaeda have taken shelter in the Baloch areas of Iran, which have become an important transit point for the clandestine movement of the jihadis of the Al Qaeda, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and others to Iraq to participate in the jihad against the US troops there.

Under US pressure to restore law and order in Balochistan, Musharraf, with financial assistance from the US Central Command, has embarked upon a plan for the construction of three more cantonments in Balochistan at Dera Bugti, Kohlu and Gwadar.  Though these cantonments have been projected by the Pakistan Army as meant to enable the Army deal more effectively with the dregs of the IIF, the Baloch nationalists fear that Musharraf has been exploiting the US concerns to get money for strengthening the Army presence in the province to enable him to crush the nationalists at an opportune moment.

On September 23, 2003, the Balochistan provincial Assembly unanimously passed a resolution demanding that military cantonments should not be established in Dera Bugti, Kohlu and Gwadar and calling for the withdrawal of the Army from the bordering areas.  The Assembly also demanded an end to the "harassment" of the local people in the name of the US-led operation against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Different sections of the House supported the resolution for different reasons. While the Baloch nationalists opposed the cantonments due to fears of their possible use against them, the members of the pro-bin Laden and pro-Taliban Islamic fundamentalist parties opposed them due to fears that the cantonments would help the US in its war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Speaking during the debate, Balochistan's Senior Minister and leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the coalition of the six pro-bin Laden fundamentalist parties, Maulana Abdul Wasey said that the majority of the people in Balochistan were deprived of basic amenities, while billions of rupees were being spent for the establishment of military cantonments, which were not required.  He strongly criticised the Federal Government and demanded that the Centre should recognise the rights of the province.

After being strongly pulled up by Musharraf for not preventing this resolution from being adopted and threatened with dismissal of his Government, the provincial Chief Minister Jam Mohammad Yousuf issued a statement the next day stating that no one could stop the Army from establishing cantonments in the province. He has claimed that anti-Army elements in the Assembly had taken advantage of the absence of a number of members of his PML in the House to have the resolution adopted. He has taken action to have the resolution set aside by another. He said that the provincial Assembly should run the affairs keeping in view its jurisdiction and desist from meddling in federal subjects. He asked that if cantonments could be established in Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore, Quetta, and Khuzdar, then why they could not be established in other parts of the country.

In their first action to silence the Baloch nationalists, the military authorities have forced the local police register a case of treason against six Baloch nationalist leaders on the ground that a calendar brought out by them two years ago had carried the photographs of Baloch nationalists killed by the army in the anti-Islamabad revolts of the past and glorified their deaths as sacrifices in the Baloch nationalist cause. Among Baloch nationalist leaders sought to be implicated in the case are Abdur Rauf Mengal, member of the National Assembly, Senator Sanaullah Baloch of the Balochistan National Party (BNP), former senator Javed Mengal, who is a son of former Chief Minister of Balochistan Sardar Attaullah Mengal, and brother of former Chief Minister Akhtar Mengal. The controversial calendar of the BNP contained a big cartoon conveying a message to the Baloch nation that the "military was occupying their resources while they were dying of hunger."

The Governor of the province has justified the deployment of a large number of security forces in the province as meant to protect the large number of Chinese nationals employed in the Gwadar port and other projects in the province from any violent attacks directed against them. He has also claimed that Islamabad was aware of the local grievances against the Gwadar project and promised that action to redress their legitimate grievances would be taken.

Concerned over the mounting anger against them, the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad has reportedly advised its nationals to avoid unnecessary movements in the province and social interactions with the families of the security forces deployed in the area. A senior diplomat of the Chinese Embassy has reportedly visited the area to make an assessment of likely threats to the Chinese workers because of the local anger against them. October 03

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com)

Baloch Martyrs