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By Peter Tatchell from Guardian Unlimited

August 15, 2007 8:00 AM

As Pakistan celebrates its 60th anniversary of independence from British colonial rule, the people of Baluchistan mourn the crushing of their free and independent nation by what they see as "Pakistani imperialism".

On August 11 1947, the British protectorate of Baluchistan declared its independence. Three days later, Pakistan also became an independent nation. But the two states coexisted for less than a year.

In March 1948, Pakistan invaded and seized Baluchistan. Under threat of imprisonment, the traditional Baluch leader, the Khan of Kalat, Mir Ahmed Yar Khan, was pressured to sign a treaty of integration. This treaty was, however, never agreed by the Baluchistan parliament and never mandated by the Baluch people.

Ever since, for six decades, Baluchistan has been subjected to Pakistani military occupation, political domination, economic exploitation and cultural hegemony. Pakistan is an oppressed nation turned oppressor nation. It now adopts the imperialist tactics of its former colonial overlords to subjugate and exploit the Baluch.

Baluchistan makes up the whole south-west of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan and Iran in the west and the Arabian Sea in the south. It accounts for nearly half of Pakistan's land mass and is immensely rich in natural resources, including oil, gas, coal, copper and gold. Despite this huge mineral wealth, Baluchistan is one of the poorest regions of Pakistan. Much of the population is malnourished, illiterate and semi-destitute, living in squalid housing with no electricity or clean drinking water.

Faced with Baluch resistance to annexation and occupation, the Pakistan armed forces have often resorted to extreme brutality, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In December 2005, Sardar Ataullah Mengal, Baluchistan's former chief minister, reported that Pakistani troops had used chemical weapons against Baluch tribespeople. He produced photographs of individuals bleeding from their mouths and noses, who he said were civilian victims of poison gas attacks. Other reports allege Pakistan's use of napalm and cluster bombs in civilian areas. Although such weapons violate the laws of war, Pakistan's crimes against the people of Baluchistan have, so far, escaped any serious international criticism.

Emboldened by the indifference of the UN, Pakistan has mounted indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas in a bid to crush Baluch rebellion and terrorise the population into submission.

On March 17 2005, the Pakistan military shelled the town of Dera Bugti, killing more than 70 civilians. In December that year, Islamabad launched a ruthless military operation against the Marri Baloch people, killing 86 and wounding 120. Many of the victims were women and young children.

A 2006 report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) documented arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, extra-judicial and summary executions, disappearances and the use of excessive and indiscriminate violence by Pakistan's police, military, security and intelligence forces. These findings were corroborated by Amnesty International.

Typical tortures include being hung upside-down, sleep deprivation, electric shocks and cigarette burns. Baluch torture victims talk about the abuses they suffered, here and here.

Kachkol Ali Baloch, an opposition leader in the Baluchistan assembly, has alleged there are about 4,000 people who are either missing or have been detained without trial. Those who have disappeared number around 1,000 students and political activists, including prominent nationalist leaders such as Ghulam Mohammed Baluch, president of the Baluch National Movement, and Saleem Baluch and Sher Mohammed Baluch, both leaders of the Jamhoori Watan party. The Balochvoice.com website lists over 260 people who have been abducted by the Pakistanis. (406 more abducted peoples list of July 2007).

Among those jailed are Akhtar Mengal, president of Balochistan National party, who is widely believed to have been framed on terrorism charges. Other nationalist leaders are dead. Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and 26 of his colleagues were killed in August 2006 by the Pakistani army in a targeted assassination plot to decapitate the nationalist leadership.

Pakistan's violent suppression has forced almost 100,000 Baluch civilians to flee their homes. They have become refugees in their own land. Pakistan ignores their plight, restricting media access and reportage and refusing to allow the UN and international aid agencies in to assist them.

To further subjugate and pacify Baluchistan, Islamabad is working on a sinister scheme to colonise the region with Punjabis (the largest and dominant ethnic group in Pakistan). The aim is to make the Baluch people a minority in their own homeland, as happened to the Native Americans in the US. This goal has already been achieved in major cities like Quetta, where colonist settlers now predominate.

Cultural imperialism is another weapon in Pakistan's bid to crush Baluchistan. Punjabi supremacists believe they have a sacred duty to "civilise" the "uncivilised" Baluch. They have imposed an alien language, Urdu, on the Baluchi-speaking people. In a similar fashion to the tactics of the apartheid regime in South Africa, which forced black children to be schooled in Afrikaans, Islamabad has dictated that Urdu is the compulsory language of instruction in Baluch educational institutions.

The cultural conquest of Baluchistan also involves the Islamification of the traditionally more secular Baluch nation. A large number of religious schools have been funded by the Pakistani state, with a view to imposing Pakistan's harsher, more narrow-minded interpretation of Islam. This is fuelling fundamentalism.

The west's attitude towards the plight of the Baluch is less than honourable. Because Britain and the US want Pakistan as an ally in the so-called war on terror, they have armed Pakistan and acquiesced with its suppression of the Baluch people.

Pakistan's war against Baluchistan is strengthening the position of the Taliban, who have exploited the unstable, strife-ridden situation to establish bases and influence in the region. From these bases, the Taliban terrorise the more liberal and secular Baluch people and seek to enforce the Talibanisation of Baluchistan. The Pakistani government mostly tolerates the Taliban, on the grounds that its presence acts as a second force to crush the Baluch people and weaken their struggle for independence.

If the foreign secretary, David Miliband, wants to strike a blow against the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalism, he should seek an end to Pakistan's repression in Baluchistan and support the Baluch people's right to self-determination.

* More information on the Baluch freedom struggle.

Read more about India and Pakistan 60 years after partition here