Pakistan- the Balochistan Conundrum

by Tilak Devasher

  Despite the ceasefire, the Parraris assumed that the renewal of hostilities with Islamabad, sooner or later, would be unavoidable. As such, the organizational infrastructure was kept intact, many cadres went underground and continued to train, garner equipment and organize resistance. The Parrari is significant not only because its military force would grow to over a thousand during the 1960s but also because it would be responsible for establishing parallel governments in many areas of Balochistan that built schools and provided medical services.13

  Fanned by the waves of separatist propaganda that these developments inspired, the Baloch Student Organization (BSO) was formed in 1967. Efforts were made to homogenize the Baloch language and the Baloch press became more prominent than ever before. Nationalist publications such as the Chingari prospered and the Balochistan People’s Liberation Front grew stronger. The Baloch no longer viewed themselves as a series of individual tribes; a cohesive ethnic identity was beginning to develop.

  The 1973–77 Insurgency

  The fourth insurgency broke out in 1973. It was provoked by Bhutto’s dismissal of the ten-month-old Balochistan government led by Attaullah Mengal of the NAP on 12 February 1973. The dismissal was followed by the arrest of Baloch leaders Mengal, Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo, Khair Baksh Marri and others. The banning of the NAP and the way its leaders were treated reinforced the perceptions of the nationalists that they would not be able to secure their rights through democratic means alone. The dismissal of the Mengal government became another milestone in the history of Pakistan’s betrayal of Balochistan.

  Pakistan, and especially the army, was still recovering from the shock of the vivisection of the country in 1971 and was unwilling to countenance even legitimate nationalist demands. The fear was that Balochistan could well become another Bangladesh in the making and so it sought to crush any signs of ethno-nationalist demands.

  The Mengal government had been sworn in on 1 May 1972 amid high hopes and expectations but from the first day encountered hurdles in its path. An immediate cause of friction between the Centre and the province was the desire on the part of the latter to empower the Pashtuns and the Baloch. It sought to do this by appointing them to key positions in the provincial administration, a move that the Centre viewed with suspicion. The provincial government also sought a greater share in the natural resources of the province. It accused the Centre of discrimination in the allocation of industries. The dehi muhafiz (rural police), established by the Mengal government in 1973, was viewed by Islamabad as a ‘NAP army’ though subsequently, the succeeding PPP government maintained this force, renaming it the Balochistan Reserve Force. Clearly, the Baloch leadership, like political leadership elsewhere, was keen to consolidate its political base. This, however, was disliked by the PPP–dominated Centre that had virtually no base in the province.

  Matters were made worse by Bhutto’s arrogance that could not stand the assertion of provincial rights by the nationalist government of Balochistan. Bhutto accused the provincial government of repeatedly exceeding its constitutional authority and entering into a conspiracy with foreign powers.

  Two other events are noteworthy. The first was the bickering between the Baloch. Thus, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, who had developed differences with Governor Bizenjo, accused the NAP of hatching what became known as the ‘London Plan’ to separate Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province from Pakistan. The charge of treason was raised against NAP leaders Attaullah Mengal and Pashtun leader Wali Khan claiming that they had met with the then Bangladesh prime minister Mujibur Rahman to ‘plan the disintegration of Pakistan … into several autonomous states’.14

  The second was the extraordinary discovery of a large cache of 300 Soviet-made sub-machine guns and 48,000 rounds of ammunition in the house of the Iraqi defence attaché in Islamabad. Though it was claimed that they were meant for Baloch leaders, it was subsequently revealed that the arms had actually been found in Karachi. They were meant for the Iranian Baloch in retaliation for Iran’s support to Iraqi Kurds.15

  Even without these two levers, there were several reports about PPP–led disruption of the provincial government. Provincial government employees who were mostly non-Baloch and who owed their allegiance to the Centre were ‘instructed to put every possible obstruction’ and they ‘acted in complete disregard of their minister’s instructions’. Furthermore, ‘They were made to believe … that the NAP ministries were only for a short period. Hence they should not ruin their future by becoming loyal to them.’16

  Following the dismissal of the Mengal government, several Baloch militant organizations sprang up after April 1973 to ambush army convoys. The main force was the left-wing Balochistan People’s Liberation Front (BPLF) led by Mir Hazar Khan Marri. It operated largely from the Marri territory and from sanctuaries in Afghanistan. Bhutto retaliated by sending the army into Balochistan. The armed struggle continued over the next four years with varying degrees

  of severity.

  For many nationalists, Bugti’s collaboration with the Central government and chronic factionalism among NAP leaders exemplified the destructive divisiveness of the tribal system. In the words of Shaista Khan Mengal, a nephew of Gul Khan Nasir and a leader in the insurgency, ‘Imagine if the five Baloch leaders of the NAP had stayed together instead of each having his own political agenda. They could not make an effective organization. If five leaders can’t stay together, how can a nation? I don’t blame the Pakistan intelligence services for what happened. The fault is with our tribal customs and politics.’17

  Selig Harrison describes the BPLF as ‘… an exotic amalgam of Baloch nationalists and independent Marxist–Leninist thought that rejected the primacy of either Moscow or Peking and had close ties with Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri.’18 The aims of the rebels were confined to immediate issues: the release of NAP leaders, restoration of their government and greater autonomy for Balochistan. There was no attempt to restructure Baloch society and neither was educating the populace a significant part of their strategy. Some sardars even opposed political education. A minority in the BPLF called for uniting all the Baloch in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan as Greater Balochistan.19

  Overall, the nationalist leadership’s reaction was impulsive and they lacked a political strategy. Hence, the insurgency started as a sporadic revolt, gained momentum when more and more tribes joined in, but had no clear goal to achieve.

  During the four-year insurgency, the fighting was more widespread than it had been in the 1950s and 1960s. There were 178 major engagements and 167 lesser incidents between the Pakistan forces and Baloch militants. The Baloch militants adopted classic guerilla tactics avoiding direct confrontation, instead ambushing army convoys and harassing its supply lines. By July 1974 some of its successes included: cutting off most of the main roads into Balochistan; periodic disruption of the Sibi–Harnai rail link, thereby blocking coal shipments from the Baloch areas to the Punjab; and attacks on drilling and survey operations that hampered oil exploration activities.20

  Gen. Tikka Khan led the military crackdown on the Baloch insurgency and came to be known by the moniker of ‘Butcher of Balochistan’.21 At the height of the war, Harrison notes that there were over 80,000 Pakistani troops in the province against 55,000 Baloch fighters. Unable to break the back of the insurgents, the military in 1974 brought in air power in the form of Mirage and F-86 fighters to bomb entire villages. The then Shah of Iran, apprehending trouble in Iranian Balochistan, supported the Pakistani forces in decimating the Baloch resistance. He provided US $200 million in aid and sent in thirty US Cobra Helicopters manned by Iranian pilots who pounded the Baloch pockets of resistance.22

  Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, who ousted Bhutto in a coup in July 1977, ended the insurgency by entering into a negotiated settlement. By then, more than 5,000 Baloch fighters and at least 3,000 military personnel had been killed. Zia did not accede to any of the demands raised by the rebels, but ended military operations and withdrew troops; released thousands of Baloch leaders an
d activists; granted a general amnesty to all those who had taken up arms; remitted all sentences; returned properties that had been confiscated. Zia dropped the Hyderabad Conspiracy Case23 against the Baloch leaders and sent Attaullah Mengal, a heart patient, to the UK for surgery at government expense. All this had a dramatic effect.24

  As a result, Balochistan did not trouble Zia and remained peaceful for the next two-and-a-half decades. Most of the Baloch leaders left Pakistan and went into exile in Afghanistan, the UK and other places outside Pakistan. Several Baloch groups migrated to Afghanistan where they were permitted to set up camps by President Mohammed Daoud Khan.

  Peace, however, was deceptive. The insurgency undoubtedly had ended but the Baloch conflict had not been resolved. The four-year-long insurgency had politicized the populace, aroused nationalist feelings, created more bitterness and hatred for Pakistan and above all instilled in the Baloch ‘… feelings of unprecedented resentment and widespread hunger for a chance to vindicate their martial honor’.25 According to Selig Harrison, when the Baloch started the insurgency in 1973, they were not looking for independence but regional autonomy within a restructured constitutional framework. However, when the insurgency ended, separatist feeling had greatly increased due to the excessive use of superior firepower, especially air strikes against civilians, by the state. The 1973–77 insurgency, he wrote, aroused a degree of psychological alienation from Islamabad that was ‘strikingly reminiscent of the angry climate that was developing in East Pakistan during the late 1960s.26

  In the end nothing had really changed in Balochistan. For, as Mir Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo said in his statement to the Supreme Court of Pakistan:

  I must accept that by use of superior force, it is possible to maintain state borders, even gain new territories, hold colonies or slaves in chains for certain historical periods, but you cannot create brotherhood by means of bayonets, butchery, death and destruction. You cannot create a united nation by force. Nations have risen and come into being in historical processes by feeling of common interests, by voluntary unions, by recognition of each other’s rights, by respect and brotherly love for one another. Bayonet and bullets cannot give birth to a united nation, they can only damage that objective irreparably.27

  The two important lessons the Baloch learnt from the insurgency was that they would have triumphed if they had better weaponry, and that their cause suffered from its disorganized character.28 Other reasons for the collapse of the resistance was the extensive use of air power, the Iranian military involvement in the conflict, lack of external support and the antagonistic attitude of the Western powers towards the Baloch national struggle given that the 1970s saw the cold war at its peak. Any national liberation struggle was seen by Western powers as an extension of Soviet influence.29

  Post-1970s

  By the 1980s, the Baloch nationalist movement showed signs of decline. There were growing differences between personalities on strategies and goals. One major difference was that a group of Baloch leaders led by Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo favoured a political struggle while others led by Attaulah Mengal and Khair Bakhsh Marri supported insurgency. Mengal and Marri believed that Pakistani political process was not worth any effort and instead the Baloch should work openly for independence. Bizenjo, on the other hand, believed that conditions were unfavourable for independence and so the Baloch should fight for their rights within the political system. These differences were irreconcilable and the leaders went their own way.30

  The differences between the Pashtun and Baloch leaders too widened as the Baloch leadership perceived the Pashtuns being favoured by the state. This led to a split in the NAP and the formation of a separate party, the Pakistan National Party (PNP) led by Bizenjo. Zia-ul-Haq exploited these differences and cultivated prominent Pashtuns to counter the influence of the Baloch sardars opposed to his policies. Influential tribal leaders like Prince Moinuddin Baloch (younger brother of the Khan of Kalat) were accommodated in the federal cabinet.31

  In the 1980s and 1990s, Balochistan’s stunted economic development continued. Additionally, the increased Pashtun migration into Balochistan during the Afghan war raised fears about the Baloch majority in the province. Politically, during the democratic interlude of the 1990s, Mengal and Bizenjo formed the Balochistan National Party (BNP) and Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti established Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP). They also entered into coalition governments. Musharraf’s coup in 1999 and his electoral engineering of sidelining mainstream political parties and catapulting the religious group Mutahidda Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) in the 2002 elections was a major setback for Baloch nationalism. The political vacuum during the Musharraf years would set the stage for the next and fifth insurgency in Balochistan.32

  III

  THE ROOTS OF ALIENATION

  8

  Political and Administrative Marginalization

  THE ROOTS OF BALOCH ALIENATION are multidimensional. The major cause, of course, goes back to the forced accession of the princely state of Kalat that the Baloch did not accept and considered illegal in 1948. This issue continues to be disputed even now. The sense of alienation has been exacerbated several notches due to the feeling among many Baloch that since the creation of Pakistan, Balochistan has been increasingly ‘colonized’ by the ethnically dominant Punjabis who control the Central government.

  A section of the Baloch nationalists believe that the centralizing nature of the Pakistani federation is such that smaller nationalities like the Baloch are not accommodated within the federation. One reason is that representation in elected bodies and state institutions as also distribution of resources (till recently) were based upon population. Balochistan, despite having 44 per cent of Pakistan’s territory, has only 6 per cent of the country’s total population. Thus, the province is not proportionately represented within the federation. Additionally, given its geostrategic importance, the nationalists maintain that the federation is only interested in harvesting the strategic and economic potential of the province without paying much attention to its numerically small population. The actions of successive governments have instilled the belief that the social and economic uplift of the Baloch is not the priority of the federation.1

  The key elements in the political alienation are: lack of representation in politics, in the bureaucracy and in the armed forces; heavy military presence in the province; woeful condition of education; apathy of the rest of Pakistan at the plight of Balochistan; and the fear of becoming a minority in their own homeland.

  Political Under-representation

  Balochistan has been and continues to be grossly under-represented in state and Central government structures. In fact, in all the organs of the state, there are very few Baloch in the higher rungs of the Central and state governments, ministries or the armed forces of Pakistan. Not surprisingly, instead of identifying with the government, the people perceive the government and its organs as aliens lording over Baloch territory. Speaking from personal experience, Malik Siraj Akbar, a Baloch writer now based in the US who grew up in Balochistan during 1980s and ’90s, recalls: ‘We did not feel properly represented in any domain of life in Pakistan.’2

  One study revealed that during the thirty-year period from 1947 to 1977, only four out of the 179 persons who were members of the Central cabinets were ethnic Baloch. Only one of them (Akbar Bugti) was a Central minister prior to the 1970s.3

  Politically, till the 1990s, provincial governments with a semblance of Baloch representation were allowed to function for only three years in all. The first was the National Awami Party coalition in 1972-73 led by Sardar Attaullah Mengal that lasted about ten months before being dismissed by Z.A. Bhutto; second was the government of Nawab Akbar Bugti (1988–90) that was dismissed when Benazir Bhutto’s first government was sacked; and the third was a coalition government headed by Akhtar Mengal in 1997-98, which could function for fifteen months. This had bred the belief that Baloch governments were not allowed to complete their terms by the Punjabi establishment.

&n
bsp; It has been estimated that the average size of national constituencies in Punjab is 1,388 sq. km, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa it is 2,129 sq. km, in Sindh 2,310 sq. km. The average constituency size of the three provinces is about 1,942 sq. km. By comparison, the average constituency size in Balochistan is 12.8 times higher, at 24,799 sq. km. Average constituency size in Balochistan is eighteen times larger than in Punjab while its population is less than the area in absolute numbers. The provincial assembly constituencies too are much larger in area than in the other provinces. Average provincial constituency size in Balochistan is 6,808 sq. km, compared to 691 sq. km in Punjab, 752 sq. km in KPK and 839 sq. km in Sindh.4

  The absurdity of the electoral system in Balochistan can be gauged from a few examples of the newly-formed electoral constituencies after the provisional results of the 2017 census. Thus, NA-272 Gwadar-cum-Lasbela constituency comprises the entire 760-km-long coastline of Balochistan, starting from Karachi and going up to Iran. The mind boggles thinking how a candidate could possibly campaign or what distances a person would have to travel to cast his/her vote in the constituency. The geographical area of NA-270, encompassing four central Balochistan districts, Panjgur, Washuk, Kharan and Awaran, is a staggering 94,452 sq. km. To put this in perspective, it is bigger than the area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and is almost half the size of Punjab province. Legally, of course, the delimitation has been done as per the population but it does not account for the skewed land to population ratio of the province. Thus, while the population density in this constituency is eight persons per sq. km, in central Karachi the population density in constituencies NA 253–256 is 43,000. Is it possible that the population living in these areas can exercise their political rights with equal ease?5