David Charter, Europe Correspondent of The Times
October 26, 2007
Vladimir Putin called for patience over Kosovo’s fate before today’s EU/Russia summit, but time is running out for tough decisions on the future of the breakaway Serbian province.
The Russian leader solidly backs Serbia’s strong opposition to Kosovan independence but the tide of opinion is against him as international talks near their December 10 deadline.
There seems to be little room for compromise between Kosovan demands for independence and Serbian arguments that the territory, while 90 per cent inhabited by ethnic Albanians, contains some of its key historical sites and must remain under Belgrade's authority.
But Kosovo’s determination to win the same rights as other former Yugoslav states such as Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro has ramifications far beyond its borders.
For a start, radical Serb nationalists are already talking up the possibility that the Bosnian Serb half of Bosnia-Herzegovina could vow allegiance to Serbia and break away if Kosovo gets fed up with international deadlock and decides to declare independence unilaterally.
That could trigger another period of upheaval and bloodshed in the Balkans, where the worst fighting in Europe since the Second World War took place during the 1990s.
Moreover, the province of two million people, which is currently under United Nations supervision with a devolved local government, has become the focus of international power play between Russia on the one hand and the EU and United States on the other.
Its importance as a touchstone for EU/Russian relations was emphasised by the Kremlin, which made it the key foreign policy issue for today’s summit in Portugal, ahead of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Mr Putin is worried about setting a precedent for other breakaway regions under Russian governance, saying yesterday: “Why upset the principles of international law by encouraging separatism in Europe?”
But he has frustrated attempts to draft a United Nations resolution while the international talks on Kosovo’s future have dragged on beyond several deadlines. December 10 is widely viewed as a last chance to broker a compromise but it seems almost impossible and the US has already indicated that it would support a unilateral declaration of independence.
Wolfgang Ischinger, the EU mediator for Kosovo, acknowledged that UDI was a real possibility but said that Kosovan leaders knew it was “not good enough to lead them into paradise”.
He added: “The two sides have to realise they cannot get 100 per cent of their demands. They have to realise that if they settle for just 50 per cent, it is a much more desirable outcome for both than no agreement at all.
“They do not live on an island in the Pacific. Where will they be, for example, if the day after independence Serbia decides to close its border with Kosovo? This is why an agreement is important for Kosovo’s prosperity.”
Source: The Times online
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2746678.ece
Friday, October 26, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
A self-defeating hegemony
Francis Fukuyama
October 25, 2007
When I wrote about the End of History almost 20 years ago, one thing that I did not anticipate was the degree to which American behaviour and misjudgments would make anti-Americanism one of the chief fault lines of global politics. And yet, particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, that is precisely what has happened, owing to four key mistakes made by the Bush administration.
First, the doctrine of "preemption", which was devised in response to the 2001 attacks, was inappropriately broadened to include Iraq and other so-called "rogue states" that threatened to develop weapons of mass destruction. To be sure, preemption is fully justified vis-a-vis stateless terrorists wielding such weapons. But it cannot be the core of a general non-proliferation policy, whereby the United States intervenes militarily everywhere to prevent the development of nuclear weapons.
The cost of executing such a policy simply would be too high (several hundred billion dollars and tens of thousands of casualties in Iraq and still counting). This is why the Bush administration has shied away from military confrontations with North Korea and Iran, despite its veneration of Israel's air strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, which set back Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme by several years. After all, the very success of that attack meant that such limited intervention could never be repeated, because would-be proliferators learned to bury, hide, or duplicate their nascent weapons programmes.
The second important miscalculation concerned the likely global reaction to America's exercise of its hegemonic power. Many people within the Bush administration believed that even without approval by the UN security council or Nato, American power would be legitimised by its successful use. This had been the pattern for many US initiatives during the cold war, and in the Balkans during the 1990s; back then, it was known as "leadership" rather than "unilateralism".
But, by the time of the Iraq war, conditions had changed: the US had grown so powerful relative to the rest of the world that the lack of reciprocity became an intense source of irritation even to America's closest allies. The structural anti-Americanism arising from the global distribution of power was evident well before the Iraq war, in the opposition to American-led globalisation during the Clinton years. But it was exacerbated by the Bush administration's "in-your-face" disregard for a variety of international institutions as soon it came into office - a pattern that continued through the onset of the Iraq war.
America's third mistake was to overestimate how effective conventional military power would be in dealing with the weak states and networked transnational organisations that characterise international politics, at least in the broader Middle East. It is worth pondering why a country with more military power than any other in human history, and that spends as much on its military as virtually the rest of the world combined, cannot bring security to a small country of 24 million people after more than three years of occupation. At least part of the problem is that it is dealing with complex social forces that are not organised into centralised hierarchies that can enforce rules, and thus be deterred, coerced, or otherwise manipulated through conventional power.
Israel made a similar mistake in thinking that it could use its enormous margin of conventional military power to destroy Hizbullah in last summer's Lebanon war. Both Israel and the US are nostalgic for a 20th century world of nation-states, which is understandable, since that is the world to which the kind of conventional power they possess is best suited.
But nostalgia has led both states to misinterpret the challenges they now face, whether by linking al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or Hizbullah to Iran and Syria. This linkage does exist in the case of Hizbullah, but the networked actors have their own social roots and are not simply pawns used by regional powers. This is why the exercise of conventional power has become frustrating.
Finally, the Bush administration's use of power has lacked not only a compelling strategy or doctrine, but also simple competence. In Iraq alone, the administration misestimated the threat of WMD, failed to plan adequately for the occupation, and then proved unable to adjust quickly when things went wrong. To this day, it has dropped the ball on very straightforward operational issues in Iraq, such as funding democracy promotion efforts.
Incompetence in implementation has strategic consequences. Many of the voices that called for, and then bungled, military intervention in Iraq are now calling for war with Iran. Why should the rest of the world think that conflict with a larger and more resolute enemy would be handled any more capably?
But the fundamental problem remains the lopsided distribution of power in the international system. Any country in the same position as the US, even a democracy, would be tempted to exercise its hegemonic power with less and less restraint. America's founding fathers were motivated by a similar belief that unchecked power, even when democratically legitimated, could be dangerous, which is why they created a constitutional system of internally separated powers to limit the executive.
Such a system does not exist on a global scale today, which may explain how America got into such trouble. A smoother international distribution of power, even in a global system that is less than fully democratic, would pose fewer temptations to abandon the prudent exercise of power.
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/francis_fukuyama/2007/10/a_selfdefeating_hegemony.html
October 25, 2007
When I wrote about the End of History almost 20 years ago, one thing that I did not anticipate was the degree to which American behaviour and misjudgments would make anti-Americanism one of the chief fault lines of global politics. And yet, particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, that is precisely what has happened, owing to four key mistakes made by the Bush administration.
First, the doctrine of "preemption", which was devised in response to the 2001 attacks, was inappropriately broadened to include Iraq and other so-called "rogue states" that threatened to develop weapons of mass destruction. To be sure, preemption is fully justified vis-a-vis stateless terrorists wielding such weapons. But it cannot be the core of a general non-proliferation policy, whereby the United States intervenes militarily everywhere to prevent the development of nuclear weapons.
The cost of executing such a policy simply would be too high (several hundred billion dollars and tens of thousands of casualties in Iraq and still counting). This is why the Bush administration has shied away from military confrontations with North Korea and Iran, despite its veneration of Israel's air strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, which set back Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme by several years. After all, the very success of that attack meant that such limited intervention could never be repeated, because would-be proliferators learned to bury, hide, or duplicate their nascent weapons programmes.
The second important miscalculation concerned the likely global reaction to America's exercise of its hegemonic power. Many people within the Bush administration believed that even without approval by the UN security council or Nato, American power would be legitimised by its successful use. This had been the pattern for many US initiatives during the cold war, and in the Balkans during the 1990s; back then, it was known as "leadership" rather than "unilateralism".
But, by the time of the Iraq war, conditions had changed: the US had grown so powerful relative to the rest of the world that the lack of reciprocity became an intense source of irritation even to America's closest allies. The structural anti-Americanism arising from the global distribution of power was evident well before the Iraq war, in the opposition to American-led globalisation during the Clinton years. But it was exacerbated by the Bush administration's "in-your-face" disregard for a variety of international institutions as soon it came into office - a pattern that continued through the onset of the Iraq war.
America's third mistake was to overestimate how effective conventional military power would be in dealing with the weak states and networked transnational organisations that characterise international politics, at least in the broader Middle East. It is worth pondering why a country with more military power than any other in human history, and that spends as much on its military as virtually the rest of the world combined, cannot bring security to a small country of 24 million people after more than three years of occupation. At least part of the problem is that it is dealing with complex social forces that are not organised into centralised hierarchies that can enforce rules, and thus be deterred, coerced, or otherwise manipulated through conventional power.
Israel made a similar mistake in thinking that it could use its enormous margin of conventional military power to destroy Hizbullah in last summer's Lebanon war. Both Israel and the US are nostalgic for a 20th century world of nation-states, which is understandable, since that is the world to which the kind of conventional power they possess is best suited.
But nostalgia has led both states to misinterpret the challenges they now face, whether by linking al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or Hizbullah to Iran and Syria. This linkage does exist in the case of Hizbullah, but the networked actors have their own social roots and are not simply pawns used by regional powers. This is why the exercise of conventional power has become frustrating.
Finally, the Bush administration's use of power has lacked not only a compelling strategy or doctrine, but also simple competence. In Iraq alone, the administration misestimated the threat of WMD, failed to plan adequately for the occupation, and then proved unable to adjust quickly when things went wrong. To this day, it has dropped the ball on very straightforward operational issues in Iraq, such as funding democracy promotion efforts.
Incompetence in implementation has strategic consequences. Many of the voices that called for, and then bungled, military intervention in Iraq are now calling for war with Iran. Why should the rest of the world think that conflict with a larger and more resolute enemy would be handled any more capably?
But the fundamental problem remains the lopsided distribution of power in the international system. Any country in the same position as the US, even a democracy, would be tempted to exercise its hegemonic power with less and less restraint. America's founding fathers were motivated by a similar belief that unchecked power, even when democratically legitimated, could be dangerous, which is why they created a constitutional system of internally separated powers to limit the executive.
Such a system does not exist on a global scale today, which may explain how America got into such trouble. A smoother international distribution of power, even in a global system that is less than fully democratic, would pose fewer temptations to abandon the prudent exercise of power.
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/francis_fukuyama/2007/10/a_selfdefeating_hegemony.html
The Case for Restraint
Comments and Responses
by Francis Fukuyama
I find myself agreeing with Barry Posen’s outline for a strategy of “restraint” much more than I expected. We are at an important juncture in the history of American foreign policy, at the denouement of a disastrous war that has undermined American prestige and poisoned our relations with much of the world. There are many efforts to define a “not-Bush” foreign policy, but Posen is right that both Democrats and Republicans are stuck in frameworks left over from the Cold War, and that the present situation begs for a more radical rethinking of many of the premises on which U.S. foreign policy has been based. While I agree with much of the logic of his analysis, however, his specific suggestions for how to implement “restraint” in policy are very unrealistic and need to be reformulated if they are to carry weight in the policy debate.
The central driver of American policy since September 11, 2001 is an overestimation of the threat posed both by al-Qaeda, and by rogue state proliferators like Iraq, Iran and North Korea. These two kinds of threats were, incidentally, quite distinct, but were deliberately amalgamated in the Bush Administration’s effort to sell the Iraq war. Posen hits it exactly right in saying that while both of them pose serious problems, they do not pose the kind of apocalyptic challenges to our way of life that earlier totalitarian threats did. We answered the post-September 11 question—“Why do they hate us?”—too readily with the response that they “hate us for what we are”, or they “hate freedom.” In fact, a great deal of anti-Americanism in the Middle East is generated by the way we have inserted ourselves into that region, and it will die down if we assume a lower profile.
The four factors Posen cites as changing the nature of the environment we face—unipolarity, identity politics, the diffusion of power and globalization—all make, as he argues, the present world rather different from that of the 1914–89 period. And he is indubitably right about the underlying point, that America is not nearly as powerful as it thinks it is, and therefore is unlikely to succeed in its ambitious plans to transform global politics through a hyper-activist policy.
I would emphasize, perhaps, a somewhat different set of factors than the military ones Posen cites. One of the things that makes the arc from North Africa through the Middle East and on into Central Asia so difficult to deal with is not just identity politics and the diffusion of military power, but state weakness in places like Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. State weakness means that conventional military power, which was the coin of the realm in 20th-century power politics, is much less usable. We cannot coerce these states into doing things they are incapable of doing, like cracking down on armed militias, sealing borders or chasing terrorists in a way that would be possible with strong states. What we need is stronger and more capable governments, but for now we have few tools or usable concepts for how to get them. So even if the United States had significantly larger military forces, it would still be unable to use them effectively to achieve the political goals it sets for itself.
Globalization also works differently than Posen suggests. As Josef Joffe noted in Überpower (2006), the countries that have most successfully integrated into the global economy (for example, China and India) are among the least anti-American countries in the world. It is those that get left behind by globalization, or those that can’t cope with globalization’s substantial political challenges, that feel the most resentful. It is above all the lack of reciprocity in levels of influence between the United States and much of the rest of the world that creates a high level of structural anti-Americanism, a fact we need to get used to, for it’s not going away anytime soon.
Two of Posen’s specific suggestions for how to implement “restraint” seem to me particularly unrealistic. Ending all aid to Israel over a ten-year period is a political non-starter. Whether one could justify this in theory is irrelevant; it simply isn’t going to happen, and particularly will not happen if not put in the context of some conditionality that links aid to progress in the peace process.
The second problematic analysis concerns Japan. It is the nationalist Right in Japan that argues that the United States is an unreliable ally. Reducing our commitment to them will not force them to come to terms with historical issues; it will drive them to acquire nuclear weapons and adopt a much more confrontational posture with regard to Korea and China.
“Restraint” in current circumstances can also be interpreted very differently from the Posen approach. Restraint may mean no big destabilizing shifts in American behavior. The United States has undermined political order in an important part of the world over the past few years because it was overly activist in a clumsy and incompetent way. While we can afford to pull back in Iraq and other places, we risk destabilizing the world if we move too quickly to reduce our core international commitments. It might be fine to think in terms of ten-year adjustment periods, but not to announce them in advance.
Source: The American Interest Online
http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=332&MId=16
by Francis Fukuyama
I find myself agreeing with Barry Posen’s outline for a strategy of “restraint” much more than I expected. We are at an important juncture in the history of American foreign policy, at the denouement of a disastrous war that has undermined American prestige and poisoned our relations with much of the world. There are many efforts to define a “not-Bush” foreign policy, but Posen is right that both Democrats and Republicans are stuck in frameworks left over from the Cold War, and that the present situation begs for a more radical rethinking of many of the premises on which U.S. foreign policy has been based. While I agree with much of the logic of his analysis, however, his specific suggestions for how to implement “restraint” in policy are very unrealistic and need to be reformulated if they are to carry weight in the policy debate.
The central driver of American policy since September 11, 2001 is an overestimation of the threat posed both by al-Qaeda, and by rogue state proliferators like Iraq, Iran and North Korea. These two kinds of threats were, incidentally, quite distinct, but were deliberately amalgamated in the Bush Administration’s effort to sell the Iraq war. Posen hits it exactly right in saying that while both of them pose serious problems, they do not pose the kind of apocalyptic challenges to our way of life that earlier totalitarian threats did. We answered the post-September 11 question—“Why do they hate us?”—too readily with the response that they “hate us for what we are”, or they “hate freedom.” In fact, a great deal of anti-Americanism in the Middle East is generated by the way we have inserted ourselves into that region, and it will die down if we assume a lower profile.
The four factors Posen cites as changing the nature of the environment we face—unipolarity, identity politics, the diffusion of power and globalization—all make, as he argues, the present world rather different from that of the 1914–89 period. And he is indubitably right about the underlying point, that America is not nearly as powerful as it thinks it is, and therefore is unlikely to succeed in its ambitious plans to transform global politics through a hyper-activist policy.
I would emphasize, perhaps, a somewhat different set of factors than the military ones Posen cites. One of the things that makes the arc from North Africa through the Middle East and on into Central Asia so difficult to deal with is not just identity politics and the diffusion of military power, but state weakness in places like Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. State weakness means that conventional military power, which was the coin of the realm in 20th-century power politics, is much less usable. We cannot coerce these states into doing things they are incapable of doing, like cracking down on armed militias, sealing borders or chasing terrorists in a way that would be possible with strong states. What we need is stronger and more capable governments, but for now we have few tools or usable concepts for how to get them. So even if the United States had significantly larger military forces, it would still be unable to use them effectively to achieve the political goals it sets for itself.
Globalization also works differently than Posen suggests. As Josef Joffe noted in Überpower (2006), the countries that have most successfully integrated into the global economy (for example, China and India) are among the least anti-American countries in the world. It is those that get left behind by globalization, or those that can’t cope with globalization’s substantial political challenges, that feel the most resentful. It is above all the lack of reciprocity in levels of influence between the United States and much of the rest of the world that creates a high level of structural anti-Americanism, a fact we need to get used to, for it’s not going away anytime soon.
Two of Posen’s specific suggestions for how to implement “restraint” seem to me particularly unrealistic. Ending all aid to Israel over a ten-year period is a political non-starter. Whether one could justify this in theory is irrelevant; it simply isn’t going to happen, and particularly will not happen if not put in the context of some conditionality that links aid to progress in the peace process.
The second problematic analysis concerns Japan. It is the nationalist Right in Japan that argues that the United States is an unreliable ally. Reducing our commitment to them will not force them to come to terms with historical issues; it will drive them to acquire nuclear weapons and adopt a much more confrontational posture with regard to Korea and China.
“Restraint” in current circumstances can also be interpreted very differently from the Posen approach. Restraint may mean no big destabilizing shifts in American behavior. The United States has undermined political order in an important part of the world over the past few years because it was overly activist in a clumsy and incompetent way. While we can afford to pull back in Iraq and other places, we risk destabilizing the world if we move too quickly to reduce our core international commitments. It might be fine to think in terms of ten-year adjustment periods, but not to announce them in advance.
Source: The American Interest Online
http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=332&MId=16
Monday, October 22, 2007
Pakistan: The Forgotten Conflict in Balochistan
Update Briefing
Asia Briefing N°69
Islamabad/Brussels, 22 October 2007
I. OVERVIEW
Violence continues unabated in Pakistan’s strategically important and resource-rich province of Balochistan, where the military government is fighting Baloch militants demanding political and economic autonomy. President Pervez Musharraf’s government insists the insurgency is an attempt to seize power by a handful of tribal chiefs bent on resisting economic development. Baloch nationalists maintain it is fuelled by the military’s attempts to subdue dissent by force and the alienation caused by the absence of real democracy. Whether or not free and fair national and provincial elections are held later this year or in early 2008 will determine whether the conflict worsens.
Instead of redressing Baloch political and economic grievances, the military is determined to impose state control through force. The killing of the Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti by the army in August 2006 was followed by the incarceration of another, Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal, who has been held on terrorism-related charges without due process since December. Law enforcement agencies have detained thousands of Baloch nationalists or those believed to be sympathetic to the cause; many have simply disappeared. With the nationalist parties under siege, many young activists are losing faith in the political process and now see armed resistance as the only viable way to secure their rights.
Relying also on divide-and-rule policies, the military still supports Pashtun Islamist parties such as Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) in a bid to counter secular Baloch and moderate Pashtun forces. The JUI-F is the dominant member of the six-party Islamist alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Musharraf’s coalition partner in the provincial government since October 2002. It is also a key patron of the Afghan Taliban. Using Balochistan as a base of operation and sanctuary and recruiting from JUI-F’s extensive madrasa network, the Taliban and its Pakistani allies are undermining the state-building effort in Afghanistan. At the same time, U.S. and other Western support for Musharraf is alienating the Baloch, who otherwise could be natural partners in countering extremism in Pakistan.
Although the military has retained control through force, it is fast losing the campaign to win hearts and minds. The insurgency now crosses regional, ethnic, tribal and class lines. Musharraf appears oblivious to the need to change course if the insurgency is to be contained and political stability restored. Islamabad has yet to implement any of the recommendations on Balochistan’s political and economic autonomy made by a Senate (upper house) committee in November 2005. The federal government has also disregarded the Balochistan provincial assembly’s unanimous resolutions against unpopular federal development plans. The government’s inadequate response to the cyclone and floods that devastated the area in June and July 2007 has further worsened alienation.
Although the crisis in Balochistan is assuming threatening dimensions, it is not irremediable provided the national and provincial elections are free and fair. The restoration of participatory representative institutions would reduce tensions between the centre and the province, empower moderate forces and marginalise extremists. In the absence of a transition to meaningful democracy, however, the military’s strong-arm tactics are bound to further fuel the insurgency, at great cost to the Baloch people and Pakistan’s enfeebled federal framework.
II. THE MILITARY’S POLICY
The conflict in Balochistan, as in the past, is rooted in Islamabad’s unwillingness to cede political and economic autonomy to the resource-rich but most neglected and under-developed of Pakistan’s four federal provinces. Again as in the past, the attempt to crush the insurgency is feeding Baloch alienation.
A. TARGETING THE SARDARS
Almost two years after the military operation was launched in Balochistan, President Musharraf and his army insist they must, in the national interest, eliminate the handful of “terrorists” who are attempting to “hamper the developmental efforts of the government”. His rhetoric has been uncompromising: “These elements should be wiped out of the country…. Nobody will be allowed to challenge the writ of the government. This would not be allowed at any cost”.
In July 2006, out of Balochistan’s 77 sardars (tribal chiefs), Musharraf identified “only three [Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri and Sardar Ataullah Mengal]” as “anti-development and anti-democracy; they do not want democracy, rather they want to exercise their complete dictatorship and control in their areas”. Ruling out dialogue, he declared, “we have to go for an operation to change this situation. We have to establish the writ of the government, and end the writ of [these] sardars”.
The 79-year-old Akbar Bugti, the head of the Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP), was killed by the military at his mountain hideout in Kohlu district in August 2006. By some accounts, this action was taken because the intelligence agencies and the head of a gas company believed that Bugti, whose home base of Dera Bugti contains the country’s largest gas fields, was head of the banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and hence a main impediment to gas exploration. If the intention was indeed to clear the way for such exploration, it has not succeeded.
The Oil and Gas Development Corporation Limited (OGDCL), Pakistan’s state-owned energy company, was granted an exploration license in December 2004 but prevented from using it because of Bugti’s conflict with Islamabad. In February 2007, a senior government official reportedly said his death would open Kohlu district’s untapped reserves for exploration. These are estimated at 22 trillion cubic feet, with a potential commercial value of $110 billion over 100 years. Akbar Bugti’s death, however, has made him the most visible symbol of Baloch resistance to the military, and as the insurgency continues to rage, Islamabad’s ambition to exploit Balochistan’s energy riches is unlikely to be achieved.
Bugti’s grandson and chosen heir, Brahamdagh, was with him when he was killed but escaped and is reportedly leading the insurgency. The dead man’s sons are now targets of the government’s wrath and have not been allowed to inherit his property. Two days before his death, a handpicked jirga (tribal assembly) of rival tribesmen declared Bugti a “proclaimed offender”, removed him as chief of the tribe and took over his property. With state support and protection, his tribal rivals have been resettled in Dera Bugti district, including Sui, the site of Pakistan’s largest gas fields. The Baloch opposition says that intelligence agencies are “propping up” the leaders of the rival Bugti sub-tribes, Kalpars and Masuris, “and providing them millions of rupees to run tribal affairs in the region”.
A Bugti son, Jamil Bugti, was arrested on treason charges for “speaking against the army and the government” at a press conference in October 2006 at which he had said that the “fighters on the mountains” were waging a war for the Baloch people, and “it is the responsibility of every Baloch to support them according to his capability”. Female members of the family have not been spared; in November 2006, two granddaughters were accused of links with the BLA and their bank accounts frozen.
The two surviving sardars that General Musharraf vowed to “fix” in mid-2006, Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri and Sardar Ataullah Mengal, are no longer politically active and only issue occasional statements denouncing the military’s policies. However, as veterans of the Baloch nationalist movement since the 1960s and having led the insurgency in the 1970s, they remain influential in nationalist circles and a source of inspiration for militants.
Marri and Mengal have ceded their political authority to their sons, Mir Balaach Khan Marri and Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal, who, as leaders of the nationalist cause, are now the military’s primary targets. Balaach Marri, a member of the Balochistan provincial assembly, is in hiding. The government accuses him of heading the BLA and spearheading the insurgency from a sanctuary in Afghanistan. “It is alleged that the government is pressuring people to incriminate Balaach Marri. It is a fact that [he and the BLA] are carrying out activities of sabotage”, a government spokesman said. “Please don’t deny the reality”.
Akhtar Mengal, who heads the Balochistan National Party (BNP) and is, like his father, a former Balochistan chief minister, was imprisoned in November 2006. He is being tried by an anti-terrorism court in camera within the premises of the Karachi Central Prison, charged with kidnapping and confining two security men for several hours, whom, he says, his security guards temporarily detained after they tried to abduct his children in April 2006. An anti-terrorism court convicted four of his security guards in December 2006, a month after he was arrested on the eve of a BNP protest rally against military operations and the illegal detention of Baloch activists. Initially placed under house arrest in Balochistan, Mengal was handed over to the Sindh police in December.
The first court hearing took place on 8 January 2007. Iqbal Haider, secretary general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), who was initially allowed to witness, said Mengal was kept in an “iron cage” inside the courtroom, apart from his counsel, and not permitted to meet with family members. On 19 January, the judge barred HRCP from the hearings. “Why should Mengal be tried inside a prison? Why is an anti-terrorism court hearing his case when he has committed no act of terrorism? This is simply yet another instance of political victimisation and harassment of the Baloch leadership”, Haider said. Demanding “an open, free and speedy trial”, BNP Senator Sanaullah Baloch said, “in the last five years, the Baloch people have not been treated according to national or international laws, and neither constitutional guarantees nor courts have helped them in the protection of their fundamental rights….Misuse of power and use of force [will only] broaden the gap between the province and the central government”.
B. DISAPPEARANCES
The military government’s coercive tactics extend beyond the nationalist leaders and their families. Security agencies have targeted hundreds of Baloch dissidents, including political activists, students, doctors, lawyers, journalists and even shopkeepers. In 2006, HRCP cited numerous instances of intimidation, arbitrary arrests, torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings by security forces and intelligence agencies. As the insurgency continues, these practices have worsened.
Perhaps the most disturbing trend is the sharp rise in disappearances of those suspected of nationalist sympathies or links with the militants. While hundreds allegedly linked to terrorist activities have disappeared countrywide, Baloch dissidents have been the main victims of what the HRCP secretary general describes as a “barbaric and inhuman practice”. According to HRCP figures, 69 of 92 reported disappearances countrywide in 2006 were in Balochistan. As of December 2006, there were 242 persons on HRCP’s list of the disappeared, 170 from Balochistan. Other sources cite 600 disappearances in 2006.
In a constitutional petition filed before the Supreme Court of Pakistan in March 2007, HRCP submitted a verified list of 148 missing persons, the overwhelming majority from Balochistan, and asserted that the law enforcement and intelligence agencies were responsible. The petition stated that some who had disappeared but were subsequently released had told HRCP they were held incommunicado and physically and mentally tortured by intelligence personnel to extract confessions and other evidence against themselves, their family or friends. Some were allegedly coerced into spying for the intelligence agencies. The mistreatment was said to have included sleep deprivation, severe beatings, electric shocks and humiliations such as being stripped naked.
At a hearing on the petition in July, the government informed the court that it had traced 113 of a total of 254 missing persons, and efforts were underway to locate the rest. HRCP asked that the government’s figures be verified and that the court hold it accountable for breaking the law. According to Haider, it also insisted that the court demand sworn affidavits from officials, so that on that basis they “could be charged with perjury if the information they provided turned out to be false….What they have presented so far are mostly oral statements and occasionally a few written ones but they have yet to file a formal affidavit”. Already in May, the Supreme Court had ordered the government to submit affidavits identifying the recovered persons, the locations where they were detained, the charges filed against them, whether they had been brought before a court and whether they had been released. But, Haider said, “the authorities have filed no such affidavits to date, and the Supreme Court has yet to compel them to do so”.
The courts have, however, pressured the executive into releasing some of the missing persons. In an unprecedented display of judicial activism, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, has also taken the intelligence agencies to task for violating constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights, asserting that there was “incriminating evidence…to establish that they [missing persons on the list] were in the custody of the intelligence agencies”. In August, two missing persons were released after the court threatened to have the director general of the Federal Investigation Agency arrested if he failed to produce those on the list.
In August, Chaudhry, who comes from Balochistan, issued notices to senior government officials in the province to explain why hundreds of political workers had been “picked up by intelligence agencies in violation of the law”. While this judicial activism is promising, it has yet to restrain the intelligence agencies. For instance, Munir Mengal, director of a proposed Baloch television channel, was illegally detained in April 2006, was released in September 2007 on orders of the Balochistan High Court after he was exonerated of all charges but, according to his family, is again being detained by the intelligence agencies at an unknown location.
Baloch nationalists claim that 8,000 to 12,000 Baloch dissidents have disappeared. “The interior minister himself admitted to having arrested around 5,000 Baloch a couple of years ago. Since then, another 7,000 males have been picked up and around 200 to 300 women”, said a Baloch politician. While the HRCP believes these numbers are inflated, it concedes that its own figures are likely much too low, since many cases have not been reported. “The problem we face while trying to get to the actual number of disappearances is that when the government bans access to information and creates an atmosphere of fear, very few people have the courage to come to us with their stories”, said Ejaz Ahsan, program coordinator of HRCP’s Karachi chapter.
Denying any responsibility of the intelligence agencies, Musharraf placed all blame on jihadi organisations that “lure innocent people to fight for their misplaced causes in Afghanistan, Kashmir and beyond”. He did not explain why secular Baloch and Sindhi nationalists with no affiliation to any religious group constitute the majority of missing persons. “The Baloch are not and have never been jihadis”, said a Balochistan Students Organisation (BSO) activist. Only two religious radicals have been detained from the Baloch majority areas of the province, and both were subsequently released, yet scores of Baloch nationalists are still missing, said Zahoor Shahvani, head of HRCP’s Balochistan chapter, who described the role of the intelligence agencies as “diabolical”.
According to HRCP’s Ejaz Ahsan, “all those who are raising their voices [against the government] are in danger”. Saleem Baloch, senior vice-president of the Jamhoori Watan Party, who was arrested in Karachi, detained for eight months and released in October 2006, was picked up again and is still missing after he told a press conference he had been tortured. “What jihad did Saleem Baloch undertake?”, Ahsan asked. “These are just lame excuses made by the government to cover up its own iniquities”.
C. CONFLICT-INDUCED DISPLACEMENT
Since December 2005 when military operations began, at least 84,000 people have been displaced by the conflict in Dera Bugti and Kohlu districts alone. According to a UNICEF internal assessment in July-August 2006 that was leaked to the press, the displaced persons, mostly women (26,000) and children (33,000), were living in makeshift camps without adequate shelter in Jafarabad, Naseerabad, Quetta, Sibi and Bolan districts. 28 per cent of five-year-old children were acutely malnourished, and more than 6 per cent were in a state of “severe acute malnourishment”, with their survival dependent on receiving immediate medical attention. Over 80 per cent of deaths among those surveyed were among children under five.
The government initially dismissed the UNICEF assessment as exaggerated, claiming that almost all the internally displaced (IDPs) had gone home. However, it denied aid agencies and media access to the areas to which they had supposedly returned. In December 2006, in the first official acknowledgement of the gravity of the humanitarian crisis, the government gave UN agencies permission to conduct relief efforts, albeit with preconditions, including that aid would have to be disbursed under the supervision of local authorities. UN officials were also reportedly told not to speak to the media. Soon after, the government reportedly backtracked and blocked access to the UN and other aid agencies. Local non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs) efforts, including that of the Edhi Foundation, were also halted.
In May 2007, addressing a public meeting in Sui subdistrict of Dera Bugti, President Musharraf claimed that 65,000 of a total of 90,000 IDPs from Dera Bugti had returned home. A regional human rights organisation, however, believes some 200,000 persons are still displaced. Local estimates are even higher. Abdul Wahab Baloch, head of the Baloch Rights Council, an NGO, insists that more than 200,000 have been displaced from Kohlu district alone, and government neglect has resulted in many deaths. “You don’t hear a word about them but the fact is that whole caravans simply disappeared. If and when a fact-finding mission is sent to the area, it may well discover mass graves”.
The media is denied access to the IDPs and their homes in the conflict zones, so it is impossible to verify the conflicting claims. “The father does not know where the son is, the sister does not know where the brother is and the wife does not know where the husband is”, said a nationalist leader in Karachi. “Only when [the areas are reopened] can real figures emerge”.
Conditions at the makeshift camps remain a concern. The absence of clean drinking water and medicines, for instance, has reportedly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of children from diseases. “This is all part of the government’s overall campaign to convey to the Baloch that they are second-rate citizens”, claimed the HRCP’s Haider.
III. DIVIDE-AND-RULE TACTICS
By rigging national elections in 2002 to marginalise its civilian opponents, the military government facilitated the rise to power of the six-party Islamist alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), not just in Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) but also in Balochistan, where elections were manipulated to sideline secular Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties. Musharraf’s Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q) formed a coalition government with the MMA in Balochistan.
Jam Muhammad Yusuf, Balochistan’s chief minister since 2002, has had little control over a cabinet in which most of the important portfolios were given to Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), the MMA’s largest component. On 2 October, JUI-F parliamentarians resigned from the provincial assembly, ostensibly to protest Musharraf’s re-election. Coming so close to the end of the provincial assemblies’ terms on 15 November, however, this was more likely the opening salvo of the Islamist party’s election campaign, a bid to reestablish democratic credentials and regain legitimacy lost by its alliance with the military. With Baloch nationalist parties besieged, their leaders imprisoned and their workers harassed, the electoral playing field in the province will in any event be uneven. Given that the military still believes Baloch dissent must be forcibly subdued, it will likely rig the election.
The military’s support for Islamist parties to counter the Baloch and Pashtun nationalist opposition has been accompanied by attempts to divide and rule the Pashtuns and Baloch, the two main ethnic groups in the province. The Baloch are concerned that the JUI-F, which mainly has support in Balochistan’s Pashtun belt, will exploit its alliance with the military to increase its power. “The Pashtuns are being [supported] by the regime at the expense of the Baloch”, said a Quetta-based journalist. “Several new districts have been created, all in the Pashtun areas, and most of the two million or so [mainly Pashtun] Afghan refugees in Balochistan have been provided shelter, property and even identity cards” which would allow them to vote.
Although Pashtun nationalist parties in Balochistan, such as Mahmood Khan Achakzai’s Pashtoon Khwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP), oppose military operations and back the Baloch struggle for political and economic rights, they also want a separate province for the Pashtuns in Balochistan or the merger of Pashtun-majority areas with the NWFP. In 2007, the two major Pakistani Pashtun nationalist parties, the PKMAP and the Awami National Party (ANP), forged the Pakhtoonkhwa National Democratic Alliance (PNDA). It demands equal rights for the Baloch and Pashtuns within Balochistan and also supports creation of a new Pashtun-majority province, which would merge Punjab’s Pashtun majority districts of Attock and Mianwali and eleven Pashtun-majority districts in Balochistan with NWFP. Baloch nationalists reject the latter.
Even if the Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties manage to resist the military’s divide-and-rule tactics in the province, they appear to have succumbed at the national level. In July 2007, the PKMAP and ANP and the two main Baloch nationalist parties, the National Party and the BNP, joined the MMA in an opposition alliance, the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM). Baloch leaders insist this will not undermine their credibility. “The APDM has a huge purpose, which is the restoration of democracy and the termination of the military’s involvement in politics; all parties should be welcomed into the fold to achieve this purpose”, said National Party leader Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch. Neither he nor leaders of other moderate APDM parties can explain, however, how their alliance with the MMA, their main political opponent and the military’s ally in Balochistan, will help restore democracy in their province or create an even playing field for the nationalist parties in the elections.
The JUI-F has benefited from its hold over the provincial government. “The number of [Deobandi] madrasas in Balochistan has increased steadily, thanks to generous financial support by the provincial government”, said an HRCP official. The resultant rise in extremist Deobandi sentiment, which has also manifested itself in increased sectarian violence, has helped the JUI-F to expand its influence, particularly within Balochistan’s Pashtun belt.
JUI-F political and material support has also helped the Taliban to recoup, rearm, recruit and launch attacks into Afghanistan from Balochistan. In September 2006, General James Jones, Commander of the U.S. European Command, told a U.S. Senate panel it was “generally accepted” that the Taliban headquarters was somewhere in Quetta district. On 3 August 2007, President George W. Bush signed anti-terrorism legislation that, noting “the continued operation of the Taliban’s Quetta Shura”, called for progress “to end the use of Pakistan as a safe haven for terrorist groups, including those associated with al-Qaeda or the Taliban”. Dismissing U.S. claims, the Pakistan government maintains that the Taliban in Quetta are so few that “you can count them on your fingers”. Nevertheless, in June 2007, a leading Taliban commander in Afghanistan delivered an audio address to thousands of Taliban and their Afghan and Pakistani supporters at a gathering organised by the JUI-F at a madrasa 35km from the city.
While Islamabad turns a blind eye at best to support given by its JUI-F ally to the Taliban, the military, the beneficiary of more than $10 billion in U.S. aid since 2001, is more focused on curbing Baloch dissent than countering Afghan insurgents. The staunchly anti-Taliban and secular Baloch believe the international community has yet to understand the threat the military’s Islamist allies pose, domestically and externally. “Balochistan is the only secular region between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and has no previous record of religious extremism but Pakistan has now radicalised this area simply to counter Baloch nationalism”, said a BSO activist. Through support for Musharraf, the U.S. and its Western partners are alienating the Baloch, who could be natural partners in countering extremism. “No religious extremist has ever been captured from the Baloch areas but U.S.-supplied weapons are still being used against us in the name of the war against terror”, a Baloch leader said.
IV. BALOCH GRIEVANCES AND ISLAMABAD’S RESPONSE
A. POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE DISEMPOWERMENT
The Parliamentary Committee on Balochistan’s recommendations on political and administrative autonomy, which were devised after consultation and with the support of all major stakeholders, could have helped create a favourable environment for solving the crisis. By disregarding them and retaining the military option, Islamabad has alienated the Baloch further. An activist said Musharraf consigned the report and its recommendations to “that dustbin of history” which contains “all the broken promises that Pakistan has made to the Baloch”.
Responding to Baloch demands, the committee recommended retention of the Balochistan levies, a mostly local force, to maintain law and order. Districts in the province are divided into two categories. The regular police operate in the “A” districts, the levies in the “B” areas. The government intends to convert all “B” areas into “A” areas. From policing 95 per cent of Balochistan just five years ago, the levies now operate in only five districts; in the other 22, they have been merged with the local police. Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties argue that the levies are familiar with and serve the community, unlike the predominantly non-Baloch police, who are seen as brutal, corrupt and ill-disciplined. In the past three years, there has been a marked increase in crime in recently converted “A” areas; public unrest is also far more visible in “A” areas.
The report recommended a temporary end to the construction of new military cantonments in Balochistan. Musharraf, however, inaugurated a new cantonment at Sui in May 2007, while work continues on two others, at Kohlu and Gwadar. “When the government keeps announcing that it is spending countless billions on Balochistan’s development, it fails to mention that the enormous sums spent on constructing new cantonments are also labelled development expenditure”, said the JWP’s Jamil Bugti.
Military operations, which have now extended beyond Dera Bugti and Kohlu to Khuzdar and Awaran districts, feed Baloch perceptions that the massive security presence and cantonments are aimed at perpetuating “colonial rule”. Baloch opponents are justified in pointing out that the cantonments, which are largely in Balochistan’s interior, have little to do with protecting Pakistan “against external aggression or threat of war”, the military’s primary constitutional role, but are aimed primarily at subduing Baloch dissent and enabling the centre to exploit the province’s natural resources.
The government’s insistence on constructing new cantonments is also heightening inter-provincial tensions, since the predominantly Punjabi military is seen as an instrument of that province, the most populous and politically dominant in Pakistan. Denouncing the Punjab as a “colonial” power and the army as the “Punjab army,” Baloch militants are now targeting Punjabi settlers. Following Bugti’s death many Punjabi settlers, some of whose families have lived in Balochistan for over a century, were threatened or attacked. “Resentment against Punjabis has reached extreme levels”, said a Quetta-based journalist. “Since Bugti’s death, there is also a visible social segregation between the Baloch and the Punjabis; even in schools and universities”.
B. LOSING HEARTS AND MINDS
1. Humanitarian neglect
While General Musharraf has frequently referred to his government’s efforts to transform Balochistan into a vale of prosperity, it remains the poorest and least developed of the four federal units. The military government’s neglect was more than evident in inadequate relief efforts following the cyclone and floods that also ravaged Sindh in June-July 2007. In July, the death toll was 180; by September, it had risen to 420. “This cyclone was several times more devastating than the earthquake of 2005 [in NWFP and Pakistan-administered Kashmir] yet it has received several times less attention from the government”, said National Party (NP) leader Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch. The government is “totally apathetic to the plight of the Baloch people”. While the federal government obtained foreign help for earthquake relief in 2005-2006, it has yet to respond to the Balochistan chief minister’s call to convene a donor’s conference.
Describing Islamabad’s response a month after the calamity as ineffective, insufficient and slow, the Rural Development Policy Institute (RDPI), using the National Disaster Management Authority’s data, reported only seven relief camps were set up in Balochistan in June and July compared to 108 in Sindh, though Balochistan was harder hit. Over 5,000 villages in Balochistan (and 1,400 in Sindh) were affected. Losses in Balochistan amounted to $417 million (Rs.24 billion). The agricultural sector was almost completely wiped out, with more than 320,000 hectares of crops and orchards destroyed; most people lost their livestock, while 5,000 kilometres and $43 million (Rs.2.6 billion) of roads were washed away in the province.
The disaster included breaches of the controversial Mirani dam. Cited by General Musharraf as another symbol of Balochistan’s development when it was inaugurated in 2006, the dam was ostensibly designed to facilitate agriculture. Many in Baloch political circles and civil society, however, believe it was built to provide potable water to Gwadar, whose population is expected to increase substantially over the next decade with the influx of several million workers. Opposition parliamentarians in the Senate have called for a high-level inquiry into the breaches, reportedly caused by design errors, which produced flash floods in Turbat, Naseerabad, Kharan and several other southern districts. The federal minister for water and power, Liaqat Jatoi, has conceded the dam will have to be redesigned but has refused to hold the government accountable or to pay damages.
2. Fiscal decay and executive disconnect
Balochistan’s gas fields provide large revenues for the federal government but not the province, which is heavily in debt to the centre. That debt has declined somewhat, not because of an increase in revenues but thanks to an Asian Development Bank soft loan for the purpose. The provincial government acknowledges that Balochistan’s overall debt burden, including an overdraft to the State Bank of Pakistan, could soon reach $417 million (Rs.25 billion), drastically reducing already scarce resources for development. The PML-Q-MMA coalition government has had a budget deficit every year since its formation in 2002. “Balochistan is the only province whose total budget is [based] on loans”, said a prominent journalist. “Provincial budgets are prepared purely on the basis of imagination and presumption; there is not even a modicum of reality in them”.
According to the ministry of finance’s 2007 economic survey, Balochistan has the lowest literacy rate countrywide, the fewest educational institutions and the lowest ranking in the Gender Parity Index. Unemployment is increasing; a 2007 study on demographic transition, education and youth employment found that young people in Balochistan were twice as likely to be without a job as their Punjab counterparts.
Nevertheless, the federal and provincial governments seem unconcerned about the province’s financial plight and lack of human development. “The provincial government is corrupt to its core”, charged a Baloch political analyst. “80 per cent of development funds are pocketed by politicians and officials, which also explains why the mullahs are so reluctant to resign from the government in spite of their oft-stated opposition to Musharraf”.
C. MEGA-PROJECTS OR MEGA-PROBLEMS?
The Chinese-built Gwadar port project on Balochistan’s Makran coast is the largest and most controversial of the federal government’s major development projects. These schemes have aroused wide scepticism in the province. “Balochistan’s resources are being utilised but not for the welfare of the people of Balochistan”, a trade union leader claimed. “There is an ever-increasing demand for provincial autonomy as our people wish to develop, manage and control their own resources”. Many Baloch fear that far from improving their lives, the projects will impoverish them further and reduce them to a minority in their land. Nationalists and even some members of Musharraf’s ruling PML-Q complain Islamabad ignores local stakeholders in planning and implementation.
Musharraf insists the Gwadar project shows the government’s commitment to developing Balochistan. Since they are not stakeholders, however, many Baloch would rather see it fail. To subvert it and deter investment, militants have attacked government installations and officials, local and foreign, at the port. “Gwadar is very unlikely to take off”, said a political analyst in Karachi. “Six months or a year down the road, the insurgents are going to ambush a busload of Chinese and kill them, and that will spell the end of Gwadar”. Instead of dispelling opposition, Islamabad still excludes locals from decisions. In February 2007, it granted a 40-year lease for the port’s administration and a twenty-year tax exemption to the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA), reportedly without consulting even its allies in the Balochistan provincial government or parliament.
Acting on complaints that the provincial government had illegally allotted hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Gwadar to civil and military bureaucrats, serving and retired judges and others, the Supreme Court ruled on 5 October 2006 that there was no authority for the transfers and cancelled them. Informed sources in Quetta, however, are doubtful that the provincial authorities are implementing the court’s orders.
With the Gwadar controversy still unresolved, Musharraf has announced construction of another port in Balochistan – at Somiani, 70km from Karachi, Sindh’s capital and the country’s main port city. Once again, local stakeholders have not been consulted, provoking resentment and raising concern that Somiani, too, may only benefit outsiders. The project could also provoke ethnic conflict, since many Baloch see it as part of a plan by Musharraf’s Muhajir partners in Sindh, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), to merge Somiani with Karachi. In May 2007, the Balochistan assembly unanimously passed a resolution opposing the port’s construction.
“Mega-projects have created nothing but mega problems”, said Nawab Aslam Raisani, a member of the provincial assembly for the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s party). “Eight million people from outside will be settled in Gwadar and a similar number in Somiani. Where will we Baloch go?” Strongly opposing the project, even a member of Musharraf’s PML-Q complained that “local representatives are never taken into confidence when these projects are devised”.
Islamabad, which ignored an earlier unanimous resolution against the construction of new military bases, is unlikely to abandon the Somiani port project or rethink policy towards Gwadar. Indeed, the military has reportedly sought to acquire more than 11,000 acres of land in Gwadar to construct what it calls a “combined defence complex”. “When such resolutions are ignored, it is not our credibility that is weakened but that of the institution we represent”, said Kachkol Ali Baloch, leader of the opposition in the Balochistan assembly. “This is regrettable; it inevitably makes people lose faith in the political process and resort to violent means to bring about change”.
V. THE NATIONALIST CHALLENGE
To counter the Baloch opposition, the Musharraf government has attempted, with some success, to create discord within the nationalist parties through co-optation and coercion. Since Akbar Bugti’s death, those parties have been systematically targeted, and intelligence agencies have played a key role in dividing and weakening the Baloch opposition. “Balochistan is completely under the thumb of the intelligence agencies”, said a journalist in Quetta. “They make and break political parties, manipulate elections and even allot cabinet portfolios”.
A. BALOCH NATIONALIST PARTIES
The unity of Baloch Ittehad, the four-party alliance of Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch’s National Party, Sardar Akhtar Mengal’s Balochistan National Party, Akbar Bugti’s Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) and Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri’s Baloch Haq Talwar, has come under considerable strain. Some observers question its capacity to defend Baloch interests. “Divide and rule has worked well”, said a Quetta-based journalist. “The opposition is fragmented”.
Bereft of its leader and under severe pressure from the government and security agencies, Bugti’s party is deeply divided and no longer poses a credible challenge to Islamabad’s authority. Even while Bugti was alive, the intelligence agencies had succeeded in sowing internal dissent. In July 2006, while Bugti was battling the army from his mountain hideout in Kohlu, his nephew, Mir Ghulam Haider Khan Bugti, JWP’s sole representative in the National Assembly, suddenly distanced himself from the party and expressed support for the government’s development projects in Balochistan. A month later, Haji Juma Khan Bugti, JWP party leader in the provincial legislature, attended a government-sponsored jirga in Dera Bugti, held to remove his uncle as head of his tribe.
Internal discord became all too evident when JWP national and provincial legislators refused to agree to Jamil Bugti’s demand that they resign their posts to protest his father’s death. “They kept procrastinating”, Jamil said, “so I eventually had to ask them to leave the party if they could not resign from the assemblies”. Seven senior members and office-bearers left the party; some of JWP’s national and provincial legislators apparently have remained in the party only to avoid losing their seats.
Baloch nationalists believe that most JWP legislators are now pro-government. A party activist said the legislators were “either bought off by the intelligence agencies or else coerced into ditching the party in its darkest hour”. A former office-bearer who left the party in 2006 conceded that the intelligence agencies had played a major role in dividing JWP parliamentarians and added, “officially [JWP] legislators remain members [of the party] in order to retain their seats but unofficially they are all members” of Musharraf’s PML-Q. This became clear in September 2007, when JWP’s provincial parliamentarians said they would support Musharraf’s presidential candidacy. “We have no choice except to vote for President Musharraf, as military intelligence personnel have been hounding us, directing us to follow their instructions or face the consequences”, one said.
The government has also sown discord among Akbar Bugti’s family, reportedly helping one of his sons, Talal Bugti, to take over the party leadership. In May 2007, a hastily called convention elected him as party chief, after which he vowed to “continue the struggle for complete autonomy for Balochistan within the parameters of the constitution”. Akbar Bugti’s loyalists, however, denounced Talal’s faction as “Musharraf’s JWP”, insisting that it has “been created and is being sponsored by the government and its intelligence agencies”. They also said that Brahamdagh Bugti, Akbar Bugti’s grandson and political heir, now heads the party. Jamil Bugti denounced the Talal faction as a “one-man show that does not have the support of any of the close confidants of my father or the central executive committee of the party. Even those who had resigned from the party last year did not attend Talal’s convention”. Jamil supports his nephew, Brahmadagh.
These problems have reduced the JWP to a shadow of the political force it was under Akbar Bugti. Until military operations end in Balochistan and democracy is restored in the country, Brahamdagh, who is believed to have sought refuge in Afghanistan, from where he reportedly plays an active part in guiding the insurgency, will not be in a position to revive the party’s fortunes.
In sharp contrast to the JWP, Akhtar Mengal’s BNP has stayed united and in opposition to the military government. Since the BNP, which has won previous provincial elections, could pose the strongest electoral challenge to the PML-Q and its MMA allies, the party and its leadership have been systematically targeted by the security agencies. As noted above, Mengal has been imprisoned since November 2006 on terrorism charges and denied a fair trial.
There are periodic crackdowns on BNP workers. In December 2006, hundreds of party members and supporters were arrested to prevent them from holding a protest rally against disappearances, killings, displacements and military operations. In April and May 2007, the BNP announced but was forcibly prevented from holding protest rallies after scores of party leaders and workers were arrested. In June, too, a massive crackdown prevented the party from holding province-wide protests. According to BNP Secretary General Habib Jalib Baloch, “we are targeted because we oppose the Punjab’s colonial domination, mega-projects and cantonments….Our struggle will continue until this colonialism ends….People now know that we will not ditch them and become traitors when the going gets tough”.
Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch’s National Party also insists it will not compromise with the military government. In a free and fair electoral contest, it could pose a credible challenge in southern Balochistan. Unlike BNP members, NP delegates did not resign from parliament after Bugti’s death, fuelling suspicions the party was secretly negotiating with the government. NP leaders insist those rumours were “designed by the government to fracture the unity of the Baloch nationalist alliance”. One said, “there are people intending to cut deals [with Musharraf] but we – the people of Balochistan – will never coexist with dictatorship”.
The BNP and the NP believe that elections held under Musharraf’s watch would be rigged but they have not yet lost faith in the ballot box as a means of political change. Khair Bakhsh Marri’s Baloch Haq Talwar, now led by his son Balaach, appears, however, to have abandoned parliamentary politics for armed resistance to military rule. A member of the provincial legislature, Balaach went underground soon after the insurgency began. “Balaach Marri does not believe in the existing political process”, said a Quetta-based journalist. “The only reason why he contested the election in 2002 was to prevent his ancestral seat going to a non-Baloch or a mullah”. The government maintains that Balaach heads the BLA and, like Brahamdagh Bugti, is leading the insurgency from a safe haven in Afghanistan.
B. THE BALOCH INSURGENCY
By targeting the Baloch leadership, marginalising secular nationalist parties, sidelining the provincial legislature, forging ahead with contentious development plans and using military force to subdue dissent, the government has shown a disregard for the political process that is now widely mirrored in Balochistan. Many young Baloch have lost faith in politics and picked up the gun.
Soon after the Bugti killing, Baloch nationalist forces held a grand Baloch jirga; more than 380 leaders, including 85 sardars, participated, exposing Musharraf’s claim that he enjoyed the support of all except three sardars. Condemning Bugti’s killing, the jirga appealed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague against the “violation of…territorial integrity, exploitation of Balochistan’s natural resources, denial of the Baloch right to the ownership of their resources and the military operation in the province”. While the ICJ has no jurisdiction to take up the petition, Baloch nationalists maintain that the jirga succeeded in its twin objectives: to raise the Baloch cause internationally and to unite Baloch tribes and factions. A sardar who participated said that armed BLA fighters had dominated the proceedings with calls for Balochistan’s independence. “It is these youth, and not the sardars, who are now leading the resistance”. The hatred for Pakistan voiced at the jirga, he said, “would have left the intelligence agencies aghast”.
Marri and Bugti tribesmen may have dominated the insurgency at first but the ranks of the fighters now include hundreds of educated, middle-class Baloch. An observer noted: “Previous insurgencies were led by sardars but today’s insurgency is spearheaded by ordinary, middle-class Baloch”. Nationalist fervour, he said, is driving it; factors such as poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment are of secondary importance. “The insurgents”, he said, include “doctors, lawyers, traders and teachers. They can all make a living but they have chosen to fight because they see their rights violated and [Balochistan’s] resources plundered”.
Akbar Bugti’s death was a turning point. “The dictator thought that by killing my father, he would extinguish the whole movement”, said Jamil Bugti. “He has been proved wrong; the intensity of the insurgency has increased”. According to another Baloch nationalist, the military cannot crush the insurgency, since “there is no single messianic leader whose removal will end it. This movement is based on an ideology that cannot be wiped out, and that ideology is Baloch nationhood”.
In May 2007 Musharraf claimed that 65 “terrorist camps” in Balochistan had been destroyed, and the remaining “three or four” would be “eliminated soon”. His government insists that military operations have weakened the insurgency and that there has been a marked decline in insurgent attacks. There is, however, little evidence to support these claims. Attacks on government personnel, installations and other infrastructure still occur province-wide. Even Quetta, the provincial capital and a major army cantonment, is not spared. In June, ten soldiers were killed; Raziq Bugti, official spokesman of the provincial government, was killed in broad daylight in July in the capital.
Independent observers believe the insurgency may gain even greater force if the root causes of the conflict are not urgently addressed. “[All] Baloch now support the BLA’s cause, if not practically then at least morally. The lava is brewing and when it erupts, it will be devastating”. The Baloch insurgents cannot defeat the army but they can certainly, as they have demonstrated, defy the writ of the state.
The Musharraf government still insists that the insurgency in Balochistan is externally supported and has on several occasions accused India and Afghanistan. At the first meeting of the Pakistan-India Joint Mechanism on Terrorism in March 2007, for instance, it reportedly gave India a dossier on “the involvement of Indian spy agencies in terrorist acts on Pakistani soil and especially acts of sabotage in Balochistan”. Balochistan chief minister Jam Yusuf has accused the Afghan government of providing sanctuary and a base of operations to insurgent leaders, including Brahamdagh Bugti and Baalach Marri, and of refusing to hand them over despite repeated requests.
Some Baloch insurgents with ethnic kin and sympathisers in Afghanistan have obtained refuge there. The governor of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province admits that a number of Baloch nationalists are in his province to “escape excesses by the Pakistan government”. India, following a long pattern of mutual interference in each other’s affairs, may be providing the insurgents some assistance. Baloch nationalists reject such allegations as “malicious governmental propaganda” aimed at damaging the credibility of “a voluntary, indigenous struggle for emancipation”. An analyst observes, however, that “when you are fighting a whole army, you are not likely to turn down help from any quarter”. Nevertheless, Crisis Group believes any such support is limited, and Islamabad should recognise that its policies are primarily responsible for the conflict in Balochistan.
VI. CONCLUSION
The insurgency is unlikely to subside as long as the military relies on repression, killings, imprisonment, disappearances and torture to bend the Baloch to its will. “Why is the government pushing the Baloch to the wall?”, asked HRCP Secretary General Haider, warning that repression of the Baloch “might push them so hard the federation might collapse”. Unless the federal government also cedes meaningful political and economic autonomy, Baloch alienation is bound to grow, undermining the province’s stability and heightening centre-provincial tensions.
Islamabad, however, is unlikely to abandon coercion for cooperation so long as the government remains undemocratic. The 1973 constitution, a former Balochistan Chief Secretary (senior-most bureaucrat) said, “sets the limits to the powers that the provinces can exercise. If democracy is absent and the constitution is a piece of paper that could be disregarded at the convenience of a dictator, then the whole debate regarding autonomy becomes meaningless”. The conflict in Balochistan could, however, be reversed if the military government were to be replaced by a genuinely democratic order through free, fair, transparent and democratic elections. The restoration at the centre and in the province of participatory democratic institutions willing to accommodate the legitimate political demands of the Baloch would assuage dissent and restore trust in constitutionalism and rule of law.
Democratically elected national and provincial governments and the presence of representative, participatory institutions ensured the peace in Balochistan during the 1990s. That peace could be restored if the election process were indeed free and fair. The election process will, however, lack credibility unless the federal government:
immediately ends all military operations and withdraws the army to the barracks;
releases all political prisoners, including those in the unlawful custody of intelligence agencies, and accepts the Supreme Court’s directive to end the disappearances of political opponents; immediately produces those charged with criminal offences before competent civilian courts, which should be responsible for any trials; and drops terrorism charges against BNP leader Akthar Mengal, transfers his kidnapping trial to a sessions court and releases him on bail; and
ensures freedom of speech, movement, association and assembly, removing all restrictions on Baloch nationalist parties.
A free and fair election would empower the moderate, secular Baloch nationalists and their Pashtun allies. It would also marginalise the pro-Taliban Islamist forces that have had the run of the province with the military’s
Asia Briefing N°69
Islamabad/Brussels, 22 October 2007
I. OVERVIEW
Violence continues unabated in Pakistan’s strategically important and resource-rich province of Balochistan, where the military government is fighting Baloch militants demanding political and economic autonomy. President Pervez Musharraf’s government insists the insurgency is an attempt to seize power by a handful of tribal chiefs bent on resisting economic development. Baloch nationalists maintain it is fuelled by the military’s attempts to subdue dissent by force and the alienation caused by the absence of real democracy. Whether or not free and fair national and provincial elections are held later this year or in early 2008 will determine whether the conflict worsens.
Instead of redressing Baloch political and economic grievances, the military is determined to impose state control through force. The killing of the Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti by the army in August 2006 was followed by the incarceration of another, Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal, who has been held on terrorism-related charges without due process since December. Law enforcement agencies have detained thousands of Baloch nationalists or those believed to be sympathetic to the cause; many have simply disappeared. With the nationalist parties under siege, many young activists are losing faith in the political process and now see armed resistance as the only viable way to secure their rights.
Relying also on divide-and-rule policies, the military still supports Pashtun Islamist parties such as Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) in a bid to counter secular Baloch and moderate Pashtun forces. The JUI-F is the dominant member of the six-party Islamist alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Musharraf’s coalition partner in the provincial government since October 2002. It is also a key patron of the Afghan Taliban. Using Balochistan as a base of operation and sanctuary and recruiting from JUI-F’s extensive madrasa network, the Taliban and its Pakistani allies are undermining the state-building effort in Afghanistan. At the same time, U.S. and other Western support for Musharraf is alienating the Baloch, who otherwise could be natural partners in countering extremism in Pakistan.
Although the military has retained control through force, it is fast losing the campaign to win hearts and minds. The insurgency now crosses regional, ethnic, tribal and class lines. Musharraf appears oblivious to the need to change course if the insurgency is to be contained and political stability restored. Islamabad has yet to implement any of the recommendations on Balochistan’s political and economic autonomy made by a Senate (upper house) committee in November 2005. The federal government has also disregarded the Balochistan provincial assembly’s unanimous resolutions against unpopular federal development plans. The government’s inadequate response to the cyclone and floods that devastated the area in June and July 2007 has further worsened alienation.
Although the crisis in Balochistan is assuming threatening dimensions, it is not irremediable provided the national and provincial elections are free and fair. The restoration of participatory representative institutions would reduce tensions between the centre and the province, empower moderate forces and marginalise extremists. In the absence of a transition to meaningful democracy, however, the military’s strong-arm tactics are bound to further fuel the insurgency, at great cost to the Baloch people and Pakistan’s enfeebled federal framework.
II. THE MILITARY’S POLICY
The conflict in Balochistan, as in the past, is rooted in Islamabad’s unwillingness to cede political and economic autonomy to the resource-rich but most neglected and under-developed of Pakistan’s four federal provinces. Again as in the past, the attempt to crush the insurgency is feeding Baloch alienation.
A. TARGETING THE SARDARS
Almost two years after the military operation was launched in Balochistan, President Musharraf and his army insist they must, in the national interest, eliminate the handful of “terrorists” who are attempting to “hamper the developmental efforts of the government”. His rhetoric has been uncompromising: “These elements should be wiped out of the country…. Nobody will be allowed to challenge the writ of the government. This would not be allowed at any cost”.
In July 2006, out of Balochistan’s 77 sardars (tribal chiefs), Musharraf identified “only three [Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri and Sardar Ataullah Mengal]” as “anti-development and anti-democracy; they do not want democracy, rather they want to exercise their complete dictatorship and control in their areas”. Ruling out dialogue, he declared, “we have to go for an operation to change this situation. We have to establish the writ of the government, and end the writ of [these] sardars”.
The 79-year-old Akbar Bugti, the head of the Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP), was killed by the military at his mountain hideout in Kohlu district in August 2006. By some accounts, this action was taken because the intelligence agencies and the head of a gas company believed that Bugti, whose home base of Dera Bugti contains the country’s largest gas fields, was head of the banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and hence a main impediment to gas exploration. If the intention was indeed to clear the way for such exploration, it has not succeeded.
The Oil and Gas Development Corporation Limited (OGDCL), Pakistan’s state-owned energy company, was granted an exploration license in December 2004 but prevented from using it because of Bugti’s conflict with Islamabad. In February 2007, a senior government official reportedly said his death would open Kohlu district’s untapped reserves for exploration. These are estimated at 22 trillion cubic feet, with a potential commercial value of $110 billion over 100 years. Akbar Bugti’s death, however, has made him the most visible symbol of Baloch resistance to the military, and as the insurgency continues to rage, Islamabad’s ambition to exploit Balochistan’s energy riches is unlikely to be achieved.
Bugti’s grandson and chosen heir, Brahamdagh, was with him when he was killed but escaped and is reportedly leading the insurgency. The dead man’s sons are now targets of the government’s wrath and have not been allowed to inherit his property. Two days before his death, a handpicked jirga (tribal assembly) of rival tribesmen declared Bugti a “proclaimed offender”, removed him as chief of the tribe and took over his property. With state support and protection, his tribal rivals have been resettled in Dera Bugti district, including Sui, the site of Pakistan’s largest gas fields. The Baloch opposition says that intelligence agencies are “propping up” the leaders of the rival Bugti sub-tribes, Kalpars and Masuris, “and providing them millions of rupees to run tribal affairs in the region”.
A Bugti son, Jamil Bugti, was arrested on treason charges for “speaking against the army and the government” at a press conference in October 2006 at which he had said that the “fighters on the mountains” were waging a war for the Baloch people, and “it is the responsibility of every Baloch to support them according to his capability”. Female members of the family have not been spared; in November 2006, two granddaughters were accused of links with the BLA and their bank accounts frozen.
The two surviving sardars that General Musharraf vowed to “fix” in mid-2006, Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri and Sardar Ataullah Mengal, are no longer politically active and only issue occasional statements denouncing the military’s policies. However, as veterans of the Baloch nationalist movement since the 1960s and having led the insurgency in the 1970s, they remain influential in nationalist circles and a source of inspiration for militants.
Marri and Mengal have ceded their political authority to their sons, Mir Balaach Khan Marri and Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal, who, as leaders of the nationalist cause, are now the military’s primary targets. Balaach Marri, a member of the Balochistan provincial assembly, is in hiding. The government accuses him of heading the BLA and spearheading the insurgency from a sanctuary in Afghanistan. “It is alleged that the government is pressuring people to incriminate Balaach Marri. It is a fact that [he and the BLA] are carrying out activities of sabotage”, a government spokesman said. “Please don’t deny the reality”.
Akhtar Mengal, who heads the Balochistan National Party (BNP) and is, like his father, a former Balochistan chief minister, was imprisoned in November 2006. He is being tried by an anti-terrorism court in camera within the premises of the Karachi Central Prison, charged with kidnapping and confining two security men for several hours, whom, he says, his security guards temporarily detained after they tried to abduct his children in April 2006. An anti-terrorism court convicted four of his security guards in December 2006, a month after he was arrested on the eve of a BNP protest rally against military operations and the illegal detention of Baloch activists. Initially placed under house arrest in Balochistan, Mengal was handed over to the Sindh police in December.
The first court hearing took place on 8 January 2007. Iqbal Haider, secretary general of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), who was initially allowed to witness, said Mengal was kept in an “iron cage” inside the courtroom, apart from his counsel, and not permitted to meet with family members. On 19 January, the judge barred HRCP from the hearings. “Why should Mengal be tried inside a prison? Why is an anti-terrorism court hearing his case when he has committed no act of terrorism? This is simply yet another instance of political victimisation and harassment of the Baloch leadership”, Haider said. Demanding “an open, free and speedy trial”, BNP Senator Sanaullah Baloch said, “in the last five years, the Baloch people have not been treated according to national or international laws, and neither constitutional guarantees nor courts have helped them in the protection of their fundamental rights….Misuse of power and use of force [will only] broaden the gap between the province and the central government”.
B. DISAPPEARANCES
The military government’s coercive tactics extend beyond the nationalist leaders and their families. Security agencies have targeted hundreds of Baloch dissidents, including political activists, students, doctors, lawyers, journalists and even shopkeepers. In 2006, HRCP cited numerous instances of intimidation, arbitrary arrests, torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings by security forces and intelligence agencies. As the insurgency continues, these practices have worsened.
Perhaps the most disturbing trend is the sharp rise in disappearances of those suspected of nationalist sympathies or links with the militants. While hundreds allegedly linked to terrorist activities have disappeared countrywide, Baloch dissidents have been the main victims of what the HRCP secretary general describes as a “barbaric and inhuman practice”. According to HRCP figures, 69 of 92 reported disappearances countrywide in 2006 were in Balochistan. As of December 2006, there were 242 persons on HRCP’s list of the disappeared, 170 from Balochistan. Other sources cite 600 disappearances in 2006.
In a constitutional petition filed before the Supreme Court of Pakistan in March 2007, HRCP submitted a verified list of 148 missing persons, the overwhelming majority from Balochistan, and asserted that the law enforcement and intelligence agencies were responsible. The petition stated that some who had disappeared but were subsequently released had told HRCP they were held incommunicado and physically and mentally tortured by intelligence personnel to extract confessions and other evidence against themselves, their family or friends. Some were allegedly coerced into spying for the intelligence agencies. The mistreatment was said to have included sleep deprivation, severe beatings, electric shocks and humiliations such as being stripped naked.
At a hearing on the petition in July, the government informed the court that it had traced 113 of a total of 254 missing persons, and efforts were underway to locate the rest. HRCP asked that the government’s figures be verified and that the court hold it accountable for breaking the law. According to Haider, it also insisted that the court demand sworn affidavits from officials, so that on that basis they “could be charged with perjury if the information they provided turned out to be false….What they have presented so far are mostly oral statements and occasionally a few written ones but they have yet to file a formal affidavit”. Already in May, the Supreme Court had ordered the government to submit affidavits identifying the recovered persons, the locations where they were detained, the charges filed against them, whether they had been brought before a court and whether they had been released. But, Haider said, “the authorities have filed no such affidavits to date, and the Supreme Court has yet to compel them to do so”.
The courts have, however, pressured the executive into releasing some of the missing persons. In an unprecedented display of judicial activism, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, has also taken the intelligence agencies to task for violating constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights, asserting that there was “incriminating evidence…to establish that they [missing persons on the list] were in the custody of the intelligence agencies”. In August, two missing persons were released after the court threatened to have the director general of the Federal Investigation Agency arrested if he failed to produce those on the list.
In August, Chaudhry, who comes from Balochistan, issued notices to senior government officials in the province to explain why hundreds of political workers had been “picked up by intelligence agencies in violation of the law”. While this judicial activism is promising, it has yet to restrain the intelligence agencies. For instance, Munir Mengal, director of a proposed Baloch television channel, was illegally detained in April 2006, was released in September 2007 on orders of the Balochistan High Court after he was exonerated of all charges but, according to his family, is again being detained by the intelligence agencies at an unknown location.
Baloch nationalists claim that 8,000 to 12,000 Baloch dissidents have disappeared. “The interior minister himself admitted to having arrested around 5,000 Baloch a couple of years ago. Since then, another 7,000 males have been picked up and around 200 to 300 women”, said a Baloch politician. While the HRCP believes these numbers are inflated, it concedes that its own figures are likely much too low, since many cases have not been reported. “The problem we face while trying to get to the actual number of disappearances is that when the government bans access to information and creates an atmosphere of fear, very few people have the courage to come to us with their stories”, said Ejaz Ahsan, program coordinator of HRCP’s Karachi chapter.
Denying any responsibility of the intelligence agencies, Musharraf placed all blame on jihadi organisations that “lure innocent people to fight for their misplaced causes in Afghanistan, Kashmir and beyond”. He did not explain why secular Baloch and Sindhi nationalists with no affiliation to any religious group constitute the majority of missing persons. “The Baloch are not and have never been jihadis”, said a Balochistan Students Organisation (BSO) activist. Only two religious radicals have been detained from the Baloch majority areas of the province, and both were subsequently released, yet scores of Baloch nationalists are still missing, said Zahoor Shahvani, head of HRCP’s Balochistan chapter, who described the role of the intelligence agencies as “diabolical”.
According to HRCP’s Ejaz Ahsan, “all those who are raising their voices [against the government] are in danger”. Saleem Baloch, senior vice-president of the Jamhoori Watan Party, who was arrested in Karachi, detained for eight months and released in October 2006, was picked up again and is still missing after he told a press conference he had been tortured. “What jihad did Saleem Baloch undertake?”, Ahsan asked. “These are just lame excuses made by the government to cover up its own iniquities”.
C. CONFLICT-INDUCED DISPLACEMENT
Since December 2005 when military operations began, at least 84,000 people have been displaced by the conflict in Dera Bugti and Kohlu districts alone. According to a UNICEF internal assessment in July-August 2006 that was leaked to the press, the displaced persons, mostly women (26,000) and children (33,000), were living in makeshift camps without adequate shelter in Jafarabad, Naseerabad, Quetta, Sibi and Bolan districts. 28 per cent of five-year-old children were acutely malnourished, and more than 6 per cent were in a state of “severe acute malnourishment”, with their survival dependent on receiving immediate medical attention. Over 80 per cent of deaths among those surveyed were among children under five.
The government initially dismissed the UNICEF assessment as exaggerated, claiming that almost all the internally displaced (IDPs) had gone home. However, it denied aid agencies and media access to the areas to which they had supposedly returned. In December 2006, in the first official acknowledgement of the gravity of the humanitarian crisis, the government gave UN agencies permission to conduct relief efforts, albeit with preconditions, including that aid would have to be disbursed under the supervision of local authorities. UN officials were also reportedly told not to speak to the media. Soon after, the government reportedly backtracked and blocked access to the UN and other aid agencies. Local non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs) efforts, including that of the Edhi Foundation, were also halted.
In May 2007, addressing a public meeting in Sui subdistrict of Dera Bugti, President Musharraf claimed that 65,000 of a total of 90,000 IDPs from Dera Bugti had returned home. A regional human rights organisation, however, believes some 200,000 persons are still displaced. Local estimates are even higher. Abdul Wahab Baloch, head of the Baloch Rights Council, an NGO, insists that more than 200,000 have been displaced from Kohlu district alone, and government neglect has resulted in many deaths. “You don’t hear a word about them but the fact is that whole caravans simply disappeared. If and when a fact-finding mission is sent to the area, it may well discover mass graves”.
The media is denied access to the IDPs and their homes in the conflict zones, so it is impossible to verify the conflicting claims. “The father does not know where the son is, the sister does not know where the brother is and the wife does not know where the husband is”, said a nationalist leader in Karachi. “Only when [the areas are reopened] can real figures emerge”.
Conditions at the makeshift camps remain a concern. The absence of clean drinking water and medicines, for instance, has reportedly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of children from diseases. “This is all part of the government’s overall campaign to convey to the Baloch that they are second-rate citizens”, claimed the HRCP’s Haider.
III. DIVIDE-AND-RULE TACTICS
By rigging national elections in 2002 to marginalise its civilian opponents, the military government facilitated the rise to power of the six-party Islamist alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), not just in Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) but also in Balochistan, where elections were manipulated to sideline secular Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties. Musharraf’s Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q) formed a coalition government with the MMA in Balochistan.
Jam Muhammad Yusuf, Balochistan’s chief minister since 2002, has had little control over a cabinet in which most of the important portfolios were given to Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), the MMA’s largest component. On 2 October, JUI-F parliamentarians resigned from the provincial assembly, ostensibly to protest Musharraf’s re-election. Coming so close to the end of the provincial assemblies’ terms on 15 November, however, this was more likely the opening salvo of the Islamist party’s election campaign, a bid to reestablish democratic credentials and regain legitimacy lost by its alliance with the military. With Baloch nationalist parties besieged, their leaders imprisoned and their workers harassed, the electoral playing field in the province will in any event be uneven. Given that the military still believes Baloch dissent must be forcibly subdued, it will likely rig the election.
The military’s support for Islamist parties to counter the Baloch and Pashtun nationalist opposition has been accompanied by attempts to divide and rule the Pashtuns and Baloch, the two main ethnic groups in the province. The Baloch are concerned that the JUI-F, which mainly has support in Balochistan’s Pashtun belt, will exploit its alliance with the military to increase its power. “The Pashtuns are being [supported] by the regime at the expense of the Baloch”, said a Quetta-based journalist. “Several new districts have been created, all in the Pashtun areas, and most of the two million or so [mainly Pashtun] Afghan refugees in Balochistan have been provided shelter, property and even identity cards” which would allow them to vote.
Although Pashtun nationalist parties in Balochistan, such as Mahmood Khan Achakzai’s Pashtoon Khwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP), oppose military operations and back the Baloch struggle for political and economic rights, they also want a separate province for the Pashtuns in Balochistan or the merger of Pashtun-majority areas with the NWFP. In 2007, the two major Pakistani Pashtun nationalist parties, the PKMAP and the Awami National Party (ANP), forged the Pakhtoonkhwa National Democratic Alliance (PNDA). It demands equal rights for the Baloch and Pashtuns within Balochistan and also supports creation of a new Pashtun-majority province, which would merge Punjab’s Pashtun majority districts of Attock and Mianwali and eleven Pashtun-majority districts in Balochistan with NWFP. Baloch nationalists reject the latter.
Even if the Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties manage to resist the military’s divide-and-rule tactics in the province, they appear to have succumbed at the national level. In July 2007, the PKMAP and ANP and the two main Baloch nationalist parties, the National Party and the BNP, joined the MMA in an opposition alliance, the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM). Baloch leaders insist this will not undermine their credibility. “The APDM has a huge purpose, which is the restoration of democracy and the termination of the military’s involvement in politics; all parties should be welcomed into the fold to achieve this purpose”, said National Party leader Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch. Neither he nor leaders of other moderate APDM parties can explain, however, how their alliance with the MMA, their main political opponent and the military’s ally in Balochistan, will help restore democracy in their province or create an even playing field for the nationalist parties in the elections.
The JUI-F has benefited from its hold over the provincial government. “The number of [Deobandi] madrasas in Balochistan has increased steadily, thanks to generous financial support by the provincial government”, said an HRCP official. The resultant rise in extremist Deobandi sentiment, which has also manifested itself in increased sectarian violence, has helped the JUI-F to expand its influence, particularly within Balochistan’s Pashtun belt.
JUI-F political and material support has also helped the Taliban to recoup, rearm, recruit and launch attacks into Afghanistan from Balochistan. In September 2006, General James Jones, Commander of the U.S. European Command, told a U.S. Senate panel it was “generally accepted” that the Taliban headquarters was somewhere in Quetta district. On 3 August 2007, President George W. Bush signed anti-terrorism legislation that, noting “the continued operation of the Taliban’s Quetta Shura”, called for progress “to end the use of Pakistan as a safe haven for terrorist groups, including those associated with al-Qaeda or the Taliban”. Dismissing U.S. claims, the Pakistan government maintains that the Taliban in Quetta are so few that “you can count them on your fingers”. Nevertheless, in June 2007, a leading Taliban commander in Afghanistan delivered an audio address to thousands of Taliban and their Afghan and Pakistani supporters at a gathering organised by the JUI-F at a madrasa 35km from the city.
While Islamabad turns a blind eye at best to support given by its JUI-F ally to the Taliban, the military, the beneficiary of more than $10 billion in U.S. aid since 2001, is more focused on curbing Baloch dissent than countering Afghan insurgents. The staunchly anti-Taliban and secular Baloch believe the international community has yet to understand the threat the military’s Islamist allies pose, domestically and externally. “Balochistan is the only secular region between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and has no previous record of religious extremism but Pakistan has now radicalised this area simply to counter Baloch nationalism”, said a BSO activist. Through support for Musharraf, the U.S. and its Western partners are alienating the Baloch, who could be natural partners in countering extremism. “No religious extremist has ever been captured from the Baloch areas but U.S.-supplied weapons are still being used against us in the name of the war against terror”, a Baloch leader said.
IV. BALOCH GRIEVANCES AND ISLAMABAD’S RESPONSE
A. POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE DISEMPOWERMENT
The Parliamentary Committee on Balochistan’s recommendations on political and administrative autonomy, which were devised after consultation and with the support of all major stakeholders, could have helped create a favourable environment for solving the crisis. By disregarding them and retaining the military option, Islamabad has alienated the Baloch further. An activist said Musharraf consigned the report and its recommendations to “that dustbin of history” which contains “all the broken promises that Pakistan has made to the Baloch”.
Responding to Baloch demands, the committee recommended retention of the Balochistan levies, a mostly local force, to maintain law and order. Districts in the province are divided into two categories. The regular police operate in the “A” districts, the levies in the “B” areas. The government intends to convert all “B” areas into “A” areas. From policing 95 per cent of Balochistan just five years ago, the levies now operate in only five districts; in the other 22, they have been merged with the local police. Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties argue that the levies are familiar with and serve the community, unlike the predominantly non-Baloch police, who are seen as brutal, corrupt and ill-disciplined. In the past three years, there has been a marked increase in crime in recently converted “A” areas; public unrest is also far more visible in “A” areas.
The report recommended a temporary end to the construction of new military cantonments in Balochistan. Musharraf, however, inaugurated a new cantonment at Sui in May 2007, while work continues on two others, at Kohlu and Gwadar. “When the government keeps announcing that it is spending countless billions on Balochistan’s development, it fails to mention that the enormous sums spent on constructing new cantonments are also labelled development expenditure”, said the JWP’s Jamil Bugti.
Military operations, which have now extended beyond Dera Bugti and Kohlu to Khuzdar and Awaran districts, feed Baloch perceptions that the massive security presence and cantonments are aimed at perpetuating “colonial rule”. Baloch opponents are justified in pointing out that the cantonments, which are largely in Balochistan’s interior, have little to do with protecting Pakistan “against external aggression or threat of war”, the military’s primary constitutional role, but are aimed primarily at subduing Baloch dissent and enabling the centre to exploit the province’s natural resources.
The government’s insistence on constructing new cantonments is also heightening inter-provincial tensions, since the predominantly Punjabi military is seen as an instrument of that province, the most populous and politically dominant in Pakistan. Denouncing the Punjab as a “colonial” power and the army as the “Punjab army,” Baloch militants are now targeting Punjabi settlers. Following Bugti’s death many Punjabi settlers, some of whose families have lived in Balochistan for over a century, were threatened or attacked. “Resentment against Punjabis has reached extreme levels”, said a Quetta-based journalist. “Since Bugti’s death, there is also a visible social segregation between the Baloch and the Punjabis; even in schools and universities”.
B. LOSING HEARTS AND MINDS
1. Humanitarian neglect
While General Musharraf has frequently referred to his government’s efforts to transform Balochistan into a vale of prosperity, it remains the poorest and least developed of the four federal units. The military government’s neglect was more than evident in inadequate relief efforts following the cyclone and floods that also ravaged Sindh in June-July 2007. In July, the death toll was 180; by September, it had risen to 420. “This cyclone was several times more devastating than the earthquake of 2005 [in NWFP and Pakistan-administered Kashmir] yet it has received several times less attention from the government”, said National Party (NP) leader Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch. The government is “totally apathetic to the plight of the Baloch people”. While the federal government obtained foreign help for earthquake relief in 2005-2006, it has yet to respond to the Balochistan chief minister’s call to convene a donor’s conference.
Describing Islamabad’s response a month after the calamity as ineffective, insufficient and slow, the Rural Development Policy Institute (RDPI), using the National Disaster Management Authority’s data, reported only seven relief camps were set up in Balochistan in June and July compared to 108 in Sindh, though Balochistan was harder hit. Over 5,000 villages in Balochistan (and 1,400 in Sindh) were affected. Losses in Balochistan amounted to $417 million (Rs.24 billion). The agricultural sector was almost completely wiped out, with more than 320,000 hectares of crops and orchards destroyed; most people lost their livestock, while 5,000 kilometres and $43 million (Rs.2.6 billion) of roads were washed away in the province.
The disaster included breaches of the controversial Mirani dam. Cited by General Musharraf as another symbol of Balochistan’s development when it was inaugurated in 2006, the dam was ostensibly designed to facilitate agriculture. Many in Baloch political circles and civil society, however, believe it was built to provide potable water to Gwadar, whose population is expected to increase substantially over the next decade with the influx of several million workers. Opposition parliamentarians in the Senate have called for a high-level inquiry into the breaches, reportedly caused by design errors, which produced flash floods in Turbat, Naseerabad, Kharan and several other southern districts. The federal minister for water and power, Liaqat Jatoi, has conceded the dam will have to be redesigned but has refused to hold the government accountable or to pay damages.
2. Fiscal decay and executive disconnect
Balochistan’s gas fields provide large revenues for the federal government but not the province, which is heavily in debt to the centre. That debt has declined somewhat, not because of an increase in revenues but thanks to an Asian Development Bank soft loan for the purpose. The provincial government acknowledges that Balochistan’s overall debt burden, including an overdraft to the State Bank of Pakistan, could soon reach $417 million (Rs.25 billion), drastically reducing already scarce resources for development. The PML-Q-MMA coalition government has had a budget deficit every year since its formation in 2002. “Balochistan is the only province whose total budget is [based] on loans”, said a prominent journalist. “Provincial budgets are prepared purely on the basis of imagination and presumption; there is not even a modicum of reality in them”.
According to the ministry of finance’s 2007 economic survey, Balochistan has the lowest literacy rate countrywide, the fewest educational institutions and the lowest ranking in the Gender Parity Index. Unemployment is increasing; a 2007 study on demographic transition, education and youth employment found that young people in Balochistan were twice as likely to be without a job as their Punjab counterparts.
Nevertheless, the federal and provincial governments seem unconcerned about the province’s financial plight and lack of human development. “The provincial government is corrupt to its core”, charged a Baloch political analyst. “80 per cent of development funds are pocketed by politicians and officials, which also explains why the mullahs are so reluctant to resign from the government in spite of their oft-stated opposition to Musharraf”.
C. MEGA-PROJECTS OR MEGA-PROBLEMS?
The Chinese-built Gwadar port project on Balochistan’s Makran coast is the largest and most controversial of the federal government’s major development projects. These schemes have aroused wide scepticism in the province. “Balochistan’s resources are being utilised but not for the welfare of the people of Balochistan”, a trade union leader claimed. “There is an ever-increasing demand for provincial autonomy as our people wish to develop, manage and control their own resources”. Many Baloch fear that far from improving their lives, the projects will impoverish them further and reduce them to a minority in their land. Nationalists and even some members of Musharraf’s ruling PML-Q complain Islamabad ignores local stakeholders in planning and implementation.
Musharraf insists the Gwadar project shows the government’s commitment to developing Balochistan. Since they are not stakeholders, however, many Baloch would rather see it fail. To subvert it and deter investment, militants have attacked government installations and officials, local and foreign, at the port. “Gwadar is very unlikely to take off”, said a political analyst in Karachi. “Six months or a year down the road, the insurgents are going to ambush a busload of Chinese and kill them, and that will spell the end of Gwadar”. Instead of dispelling opposition, Islamabad still excludes locals from decisions. In February 2007, it granted a 40-year lease for the port’s administration and a twenty-year tax exemption to the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA), reportedly without consulting even its allies in the Balochistan provincial government or parliament.
Acting on complaints that the provincial government had illegally allotted hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Gwadar to civil and military bureaucrats, serving and retired judges and others, the Supreme Court ruled on 5 October 2006 that there was no authority for the transfers and cancelled them. Informed sources in Quetta, however, are doubtful that the provincial authorities are implementing the court’s orders.
With the Gwadar controversy still unresolved, Musharraf has announced construction of another port in Balochistan – at Somiani, 70km from Karachi, Sindh’s capital and the country’s main port city. Once again, local stakeholders have not been consulted, provoking resentment and raising concern that Somiani, too, may only benefit outsiders. The project could also provoke ethnic conflict, since many Baloch see it as part of a plan by Musharraf’s Muhajir partners in Sindh, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), to merge Somiani with Karachi. In May 2007, the Balochistan assembly unanimously passed a resolution opposing the port’s construction.
“Mega-projects have created nothing but mega problems”, said Nawab Aslam Raisani, a member of the provincial assembly for the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s party). “Eight million people from outside will be settled in Gwadar and a similar number in Somiani. Where will we Baloch go?” Strongly opposing the project, even a member of Musharraf’s PML-Q complained that “local representatives are never taken into confidence when these projects are devised”.
Islamabad, which ignored an earlier unanimous resolution against the construction of new military bases, is unlikely to abandon the Somiani port project or rethink policy towards Gwadar. Indeed, the military has reportedly sought to acquire more than 11,000 acres of land in Gwadar to construct what it calls a “combined defence complex”. “When such resolutions are ignored, it is not our credibility that is weakened but that of the institution we represent”, said Kachkol Ali Baloch, leader of the opposition in the Balochistan assembly. “This is regrettable; it inevitably makes people lose faith in the political process and resort to violent means to bring about change”.
V. THE NATIONALIST CHALLENGE
To counter the Baloch opposition, the Musharraf government has attempted, with some success, to create discord within the nationalist parties through co-optation and coercion. Since Akbar Bugti’s death, those parties have been systematically targeted, and intelligence agencies have played a key role in dividing and weakening the Baloch opposition. “Balochistan is completely under the thumb of the intelligence agencies”, said a journalist in Quetta. “They make and break political parties, manipulate elections and even allot cabinet portfolios”.
A. BALOCH NATIONALIST PARTIES
The unity of Baloch Ittehad, the four-party alliance of Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch’s National Party, Sardar Akhtar Mengal’s Balochistan National Party, Akbar Bugti’s Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) and Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri’s Baloch Haq Talwar, has come under considerable strain. Some observers question its capacity to defend Baloch interests. “Divide and rule has worked well”, said a Quetta-based journalist. “The opposition is fragmented”.
Bereft of its leader and under severe pressure from the government and security agencies, Bugti’s party is deeply divided and no longer poses a credible challenge to Islamabad’s authority. Even while Bugti was alive, the intelligence agencies had succeeded in sowing internal dissent. In July 2006, while Bugti was battling the army from his mountain hideout in Kohlu, his nephew, Mir Ghulam Haider Khan Bugti, JWP’s sole representative in the National Assembly, suddenly distanced himself from the party and expressed support for the government’s development projects in Balochistan. A month later, Haji Juma Khan Bugti, JWP party leader in the provincial legislature, attended a government-sponsored jirga in Dera Bugti, held to remove his uncle as head of his tribe.
Internal discord became all too evident when JWP national and provincial legislators refused to agree to Jamil Bugti’s demand that they resign their posts to protest his father’s death. “They kept procrastinating”, Jamil said, “so I eventually had to ask them to leave the party if they could not resign from the assemblies”. Seven senior members and office-bearers left the party; some of JWP’s national and provincial legislators apparently have remained in the party only to avoid losing their seats.
Baloch nationalists believe that most JWP legislators are now pro-government. A party activist said the legislators were “either bought off by the intelligence agencies or else coerced into ditching the party in its darkest hour”. A former office-bearer who left the party in 2006 conceded that the intelligence agencies had played a major role in dividing JWP parliamentarians and added, “officially [JWP] legislators remain members [of the party] in order to retain their seats but unofficially they are all members” of Musharraf’s PML-Q. This became clear in September 2007, when JWP’s provincial parliamentarians said they would support Musharraf’s presidential candidacy. “We have no choice except to vote for President Musharraf, as military intelligence personnel have been hounding us, directing us to follow their instructions or face the consequences”, one said.
The government has also sown discord among Akbar Bugti’s family, reportedly helping one of his sons, Talal Bugti, to take over the party leadership. In May 2007, a hastily called convention elected him as party chief, after which he vowed to “continue the struggle for complete autonomy for Balochistan within the parameters of the constitution”. Akbar Bugti’s loyalists, however, denounced Talal’s faction as “Musharraf’s JWP”, insisting that it has “been created and is being sponsored by the government and its intelligence agencies”. They also said that Brahamdagh Bugti, Akbar Bugti’s grandson and political heir, now heads the party. Jamil Bugti denounced the Talal faction as a “one-man show that does not have the support of any of the close confidants of my father or the central executive committee of the party. Even those who had resigned from the party last year did not attend Talal’s convention”. Jamil supports his nephew, Brahmadagh.
These problems have reduced the JWP to a shadow of the political force it was under Akbar Bugti. Until military operations end in Balochistan and democracy is restored in the country, Brahamdagh, who is believed to have sought refuge in Afghanistan, from where he reportedly plays an active part in guiding the insurgency, will not be in a position to revive the party’s fortunes.
In sharp contrast to the JWP, Akhtar Mengal’s BNP has stayed united and in opposition to the military government. Since the BNP, which has won previous provincial elections, could pose the strongest electoral challenge to the PML-Q and its MMA allies, the party and its leadership have been systematically targeted by the security agencies. As noted above, Mengal has been imprisoned since November 2006 on terrorism charges and denied a fair trial.
There are periodic crackdowns on BNP workers. In December 2006, hundreds of party members and supporters were arrested to prevent them from holding a protest rally against disappearances, killings, displacements and military operations. In April and May 2007, the BNP announced but was forcibly prevented from holding protest rallies after scores of party leaders and workers were arrested. In June, too, a massive crackdown prevented the party from holding province-wide protests. According to BNP Secretary General Habib Jalib Baloch, “we are targeted because we oppose the Punjab’s colonial domination, mega-projects and cantonments….Our struggle will continue until this colonialism ends….People now know that we will not ditch them and become traitors when the going gets tough”.
Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch’s National Party also insists it will not compromise with the military government. In a free and fair electoral contest, it could pose a credible challenge in southern Balochistan. Unlike BNP members, NP delegates did not resign from parliament after Bugti’s death, fuelling suspicions the party was secretly negotiating with the government. NP leaders insist those rumours were “designed by the government to fracture the unity of the Baloch nationalist alliance”. One said, “there are people intending to cut deals [with Musharraf] but we – the people of Balochistan – will never coexist with dictatorship”.
The BNP and the NP believe that elections held under Musharraf’s watch would be rigged but they have not yet lost faith in the ballot box as a means of political change. Khair Bakhsh Marri’s Baloch Haq Talwar, now led by his son Balaach, appears, however, to have abandoned parliamentary politics for armed resistance to military rule. A member of the provincial legislature, Balaach went underground soon after the insurgency began. “Balaach Marri does not believe in the existing political process”, said a Quetta-based journalist. “The only reason why he contested the election in 2002 was to prevent his ancestral seat going to a non-Baloch or a mullah”. The government maintains that Balaach heads the BLA and, like Brahamdagh Bugti, is leading the insurgency from a safe haven in Afghanistan.
B. THE BALOCH INSURGENCY
By targeting the Baloch leadership, marginalising secular nationalist parties, sidelining the provincial legislature, forging ahead with contentious development plans and using military force to subdue dissent, the government has shown a disregard for the political process that is now widely mirrored in Balochistan. Many young Baloch have lost faith in politics and picked up the gun.
Soon after the Bugti killing, Baloch nationalist forces held a grand Baloch jirga; more than 380 leaders, including 85 sardars, participated, exposing Musharraf’s claim that he enjoyed the support of all except three sardars. Condemning Bugti’s killing, the jirga appealed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague against the “violation of…territorial integrity, exploitation of Balochistan’s natural resources, denial of the Baloch right to the ownership of their resources and the military operation in the province”. While the ICJ has no jurisdiction to take up the petition, Baloch nationalists maintain that the jirga succeeded in its twin objectives: to raise the Baloch cause internationally and to unite Baloch tribes and factions. A sardar who participated said that armed BLA fighters had dominated the proceedings with calls for Balochistan’s independence. “It is these youth, and not the sardars, who are now leading the resistance”. The hatred for Pakistan voiced at the jirga, he said, “would have left the intelligence agencies aghast”.
Marri and Bugti tribesmen may have dominated the insurgency at first but the ranks of the fighters now include hundreds of educated, middle-class Baloch. An observer noted: “Previous insurgencies were led by sardars but today’s insurgency is spearheaded by ordinary, middle-class Baloch”. Nationalist fervour, he said, is driving it; factors such as poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment are of secondary importance. “The insurgents”, he said, include “doctors, lawyers, traders and teachers. They can all make a living but they have chosen to fight because they see their rights violated and [Balochistan’s] resources plundered”.
Akbar Bugti’s death was a turning point. “The dictator thought that by killing my father, he would extinguish the whole movement”, said Jamil Bugti. “He has been proved wrong; the intensity of the insurgency has increased”. According to another Baloch nationalist, the military cannot crush the insurgency, since “there is no single messianic leader whose removal will end it. This movement is based on an ideology that cannot be wiped out, and that ideology is Baloch nationhood”.
In May 2007 Musharraf claimed that 65 “terrorist camps” in Balochistan had been destroyed, and the remaining “three or four” would be “eliminated soon”. His government insists that military operations have weakened the insurgency and that there has been a marked decline in insurgent attacks. There is, however, little evidence to support these claims. Attacks on government personnel, installations and other infrastructure still occur province-wide. Even Quetta, the provincial capital and a major army cantonment, is not spared. In June, ten soldiers were killed; Raziq Bugti, official spokesman of the provincial government, was killed in broad daylight in July in the capital.
Independent observers believe the insurgency may gain even greater force if the root causes of the conflict are not urgently addressed. “[All] Baloch now support the BLA’s cause, if not practically then at least morally. The lava is brewing and when it erupts, it will be devastating”. The Baloch insurgents cannot defeat the army but they can certainly, as they have demonstrated, defy the writ of the state.
The Musharraf government still insists that the insurgency in Balochistan is externally supported and has on several occasions accused India and Afghanistan. At the first meeting of the Pakistan-India Joint Mechanism on Terrorism in March 2007, for instance, it reportedly gave India a dossier on “the involvement of Indian spy agencies in terrorist acts on Pakistani soil and especially acts of sabotage in Balochistan”. Balochistan chief minister Jam Yusuf has accused the Afghan government of providing sanctuary and a base of operations to insurgent leaders, including Brahamdagh Bugti and Baalach Marri, and of refusing to hand them over despite repeated requests.
Some Baloch insurgents with ethnic kin and sympathisers in Afghanistan have obtained refuge there. The governor of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province admits that a number of Baloch nationalists are in his province to “escape excesses by the Pakistan government”. India, following a long pattern of mutual interference in each other’s affairs, may be providing the insurgents some assistance. Baloch nationalists reject such allegations as “malicious governmental propaganda” aimed at damaging the credibility of “a voluntary, indigenous struggle for emancipation”. An analyst observes, however, that “when you are fighting a whole army, you are not likely to turn down help from any quarter”. Nevertheless, Crisis Group believes any such support is limited, and Islamabad should recognise that its policies are primarily responsible for the conflict in Balochistan.
VI. CONCLUSION
The insurgency is unlikely to subside as long as the military relies on repression, killings, imprisonment, disappearances and torture to bend the Baloch to its will. “Why is the government pushing the Baloch to the wall?”, asked HRCP Secretary General Haider, warning that repression of the Baloch “might push them so hard the federation might collapse”. Unless the federal government also cedes meaningful political and economic autonomy, Baloch alienation is bound to grow, undermining the province’s stability and heightening centre-provincial tensions.
Islamabad, however, is unlikely to abandon coercion for cooperation so long as the government remains undemocratic. The 1973 constitution, a former Balochistan Chief Secretary (senior-most bureaucrat) said, “sets the limits to the powers that the provinces can exercise. If democracy is absent and the constitution is a piece of paper that could be disregarded at the convenience of a dictator, then the whole debate regarding autonomy becomes meaningless”. The conflict in Balochistan could, however, be reversed if the military government were to be replaced by a genuinely democratic order through free, fair, transparent and democratic elections. The restoration at the centre and in the province of participatory democratic institutions willing to accommodate the legitimate political demands of the Baloch would assuage dissent and restore trust in constitutionalism and rule of law.
Democratically elected national and provincial governments and the presence of representative, participatory institutions ensured the peace in Balochistan during the 1990s. That peace could be restored if the election process were indeed free and fair. The election process will, however, lack credibility unless the federal government:
immediately ends all military operations and withdraws the army to the barracks;
releases all political prisoners, including those in the unlawful custody of intelligence agencies, and accepts the Supreme Court’s directive to end the disappearances of political opponents; immediately produces those charged with criminal offences before competent civilian courts, which should be responsible for any trials; and drops terrorism charges against BNP leader Akthar Mengal, transfers his kidnapping trial to a sessions court and releases him on bail; and
ensures freedom of speech, movement, association and assembly, removing all restrictions on Baloch nationalist parties.
A free and fair election would empower the moderate, secular Baloch nationalists and their Pashtun allies. It would also marginalise the pro-Taliban Islamist forces that have had the run of the province with the military’s
Old Gripe Brings Turkey Face to Face With Iraq
After World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, world powers carved up the Middle East. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres would have partitioned Turkey and created an autonomous Kurdistan, but Turkish nationalists rejected that plan. The Treaty of Lausanne that followed in 1923 granted independence to Turkey, but not for Kurdistan – and ethnic Kurds instead are spread among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq fired up Kurdish hopes for independence. Since the invasion, Kurds in three northern Iraqi provinces have formed a regional government with a quasi-independence that alarms Turkey. Adding to the tension are attacks on Turkey by guerillas based in northern Iraq and subsequent Turkish authorization of military "cross-border operations." Author Dilip Hiro analyzes the complex history that has unfolded over the last century; examines the many challenges for the US, Iraq and Turkey in handling the confrontation; and details why the issue has shot to the top of an already packed agenda for the world. – YaleGlobal
American failure to rein in the restive Kurds reignites a long-simmering conflict
Dilip Hiro
YaleGlobal, 22 October 2007
LONDON: The Kurdish problem has been a running sore for Iraq and Turkey since their emergence as modern states, but was little more than a local irritant – until now. With US occupation forces encamped in Iraq and the Kurdish drive for independence appearing irreversible under Washington’s wings, the issue has shot up on the international agenda, threatening to upset the fragile regional balance of power and further delay US withdrawal from Iraq.
Several strands make the issue highly combustible: tapped and untapped hydrocarbon reserves in the Kurdish territories; strong extra-territorial Kurdish solidarity; the unresolved distribution of power between the center and the provinces in post-Saddam Iraq; Washington’s ongoing coddling of Iraqi Kurds, who consolidated their quasi-independent status, with support of the US and Britain for 12 years; and the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) in Turkey resorting to violence to achieve autonomy for the Kurdish-majority region.
Although Kurds in the region are citizens of Turkey, Iraq, Iran or Syria, their ethnic identity tends to supersede their loyalty to the central national authority. A major event concerning Kurds in one country quickly engages fellow Kurds in neighboring states.
The Kurds in the region envy those in Iraq. Consisting of three provinces, Iraqi Kurdistan has its own army, parliament and flag. Its schools impart education in the Kurdish language, akin to Persian, not Arabic. It passed its own hydrocarbon law. And, ignoring the warnings of the oil ministry in Baghdad, it signed exploration and production contracts with nine oil companies including the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, which is close to the Bush administration.
Recent events put the Kurdish issue on the front burner. Despite last month’s agreement between the prime ministers of Turkey and Iraq to stamp down Kurdish terrorism, and repeated pinprick forays by the Turkish army into northern Iraq, an estimated 3,500 PKK guerrillas, based in Iraqi Kurdistan, have killed 42 Turks, soldiers and civilians.
The Turkish parliament provided the government with a yearlong window to conduct cross-border operations against the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union. The vote was 507 to 19, with all negative votes cast by ethnic Kurds, highlighting the priority that Kurds give to their ethnicity over their nationality.
Against this volatile background came the ill-considered attempt by the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee to pass legislation that inflamed Turkish opinion. The resolution describes the massacres and deportations of 1 million Armenians during World War I – when Ottoman Turkey sided with Germany against the Allies – as genocide. This is a highly sensitive subject for Turkey, successor to the Ottoman Empire. Turkey has threatened, if the House adopts this resolution, to close its airspace and ports to the US, thus reducing Pentagon effectiveness in Iraq.
After securing parliamentary authorization for “cross-border operations” – a euphemism for invasion – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that such a move was not imminent.
That did not stop thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the regional capital of Irbil marching to the United Nations compound to demand intervention by the UN Security Council.
Nor did it dampen debate in Iraq as to how Iraqi authorities would respond to the Turkish army’s advance into northern Iraq. Will Kurdish militiamen – called “peshmergas,” or those ready to die – and US troops engage the Turkish soldiers? Or will the central government deploy forces to repel the incursion?
The second option is academic. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has upgraded the 75,000 peshmergas, belonging to the two ruling political parties – the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – to regular soldiers, and refused to let Iraqi troops enter its territory. Its armed forces guard the posts along the borders with Turkey and Iran.
Faced with the prospect of an onslaught by the Turkish army, the second largest in NATO, a spokesman of the KRG offered “honest dialogue” with Ankara to resolve the PKK problem without “the constant violation of Iraqi sovereignty.”
In his view, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki made a mistake by excluding the KRG from talks with his Turkish counterpart to forge an agreement on countering PKK terrorism.
But Turkey has shunned the government in Irbil – which repudiated the Erdogan-Maliki agreement – while loudly protesting its ever-expanding power and profile. It fears that even implicit recognition of this entity will encourage Turkish Kurds to demand autonomy as a preamble to independence.
The idea of independence for the Kurds in the region dates back to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, formalized in the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. Kurds feel that US President Woodrow Wilson failed to keep his promise of delivering to them an independent state as envisaged in the treaty. They ignore the fact that the Turkish parliament rejected that treaty and the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 made no mention of an independent Kurdistan.
More recently, heeding the call by US President George H.W. Bush at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurds in Iraq rebelled against Saddam Hussein’s regime, only to see their uprising crushed by Saddam’s forces. Washington and London created a safe haven in the north for Kurdish refugees and rebels by providing an air umbrella that continued until the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Kurdish leaders agreed in March 2004 to dissolve their militias or merge them into the new Iraqi army and then later said they were postponing the agreement “indefinitely.” The US, the occupying power, did nothing.
In the interim parliament, lacking proportionate Sunni representation due to the Sunnis’ boycott of the general election, conflict developed between Shiites and Kurds. The recently empowered, deeply religious Shiite majority wanted to establish a centralized Islamic republic. But, committed to secular Kurdish nationalism, the KDP and the PUK favored a federal Iraq with a weak center.
When Shiite leaders failed to get their Kurdish counterparts to agree to diminution of the autonomy Kurdistan had enjoyed, they approached Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for guidance. Noting Kurdish obstinacy, Sistani recommended a federalist system, allowing one or more of the 15 non-Kurdish provinces to form a regional government with powers comparable to Kurdistan’s.
This alarmed Ankara. In contrast, the Bush administration, beholden to the Iraqi Kurds, looked on benignly as the new Iraqi constitution sowed the seeds of the republic’s break-up.
Washington’s failure to pressure the Iraqi Kurdish leadership at a crucial moment alienated the Turkish government. Matters grew worse when Ankara’s repeated appeals to the US to use its forces to curb the PKK went unheeded.
Irked by Bush’s warnings against a military move into Iraqi Kurdistan, Erdogan said that he did not need to seek permission from any foreign entity: “Did they [the Americans] seek permission from anybody when they came from a distance of 10,000 km and hit Iraq?”
What puzzles the Turkish leaders is Bush’s failure to see that they, too, combat terrorism.
“Turkey is implementing the same international rules that were implemented by those who linked the attacks on the twin towers to some organization,” explained Turkish justice minister Mehmet Ali Sahin.
But payback inevitably follows. “If Turkey conducts any attack or operation against Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurds anywhere, we are prepared to defend ourselves,” said an unnamed PKK leader. “We will spread resistance throughout Turkey and Kurdish areas in Iraq, Iran and Syria.”
The Bush administration should have tempered its indulgence toward Iraqi Kurds with pressure during the drafting of the new constitution and gotten its leaders to scale down Kurdistan’s quasi-independence to re-establish a unitary republic. The failure to do so brings it to the point where the US is seen as soft on terrorists – albeit of non-Islamist variety – facing the prospect of the only peaceful Iraqi region turning into a battlefield.
Dilip Hiro is the author of “Secrets and Lies: Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ and After,” and, most recently, “Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources,” both published by Nation Books, New York.
Source: Yale Global Online
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=9855
American failure to rein in the restive Kurds reignites a long-simmering conflict
Dilip Hiro
YaleGlobal, 22 October 2007
LONDON: The Kurdish problem has been a running sore for Iraq and Turkey since their emergence as modern states, but was little more than a local irritant – until now. With US occupation forces encamped in Iraq and the Kurdish drive for independence appearing irreversible under Washington’s wings, the issue has shot up on the international agenda, threatening to upset the fragile regional balance of power and further delay US withdrawal from Iraq.
Several strands make the issue highly combustible: tapped and untapped hydrocarbon reserves in the Kurdish territories; strong extra-territorial Kurdish solidarity; the unresolved distribution of power between the center and the provinces in post-Saddam Iraq; Washington’s ongoing coddling of Iraqi Kurds, who consolidated their quasi-independent status, with support of the US and Britain for 12 years; and the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) in Turkey resorting to violence to achieve autonomy for the Kurdish-majority region.
Although Kurds in the region are citizens of Turkey, Iraq, Iran or Syria, their ethnic identity tends to supersede their loyalty to the central national authority. A major event concerning Kurds in one country quickly engages fellow Kurds in neighboring states.
The Kurds in the region envy those in Iraq. Consisting of three provinces, Iraqi Kurdistan has its own army, parliament and flag. Its schools impart education in the Kurdish language, akin to Persian, not Arabic. It passed its own hydrocarbon law. And, ignoring the warnings of the oil ministry in Baghdad, it signed exploration and production contracts with nine oil companies including the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, which is close to the Bush administration.
Recent events put the Kurdish issue on the front burner. Despite last month’s agreement between the prime ministers of Turkey and Iraq to stamp down Kurdish terrorism, and repeated pinprick forays by the Turkish army into northern Iraq, an estimated 3,500 PKK guerrillas, based in Iraqi Kurdistan, have killed 42 Turks, soldiers and civilians.
The Turkish parliament provided the government with a yearlong window to conduct cross-border operations against the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union. The vote was 507 to 19, with all negative votes cast by ethnic Kurds, highlighting the priority that Kurds give to their ethnicity over their nationality.
Against this volatile background came the ill-considered attempt by the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee to pass legislation that inflamed Turkish opinion. The resolution describes the massacres and deportations of 1 million Armenians during World War I – when Ottoman Turkey sided with Germany against the Allies – as genocide. This is a highly sensitive subject for Turkey, successor to the Ottoman Empire. Turkey has threatened, if the House adopts this resolution, to close its airspace and ports to the US, thus reducing Pentagon effectiveness in Iraq.
After securing parliamentary authorization for “cross-border operations” – a euphemism for invasion – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that such a move was not imminent.
That did not stop thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the regional capital of Irbil marching to the United Nations compound to demand intervention by the UN Security Council.
Nor did it dampen debate in Iraq as to how Iraqi authorities would respond to the Turkish army’s advance into northern Iraq. Will Kurdish militiamen – called “peshmergas,” or those ready to die – and US troops engage the Turkish soldiers? Or will the central government deploy forces to repel the incursion?
The second option is academic. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has upgraded the 75,000 peshmergas, belonging to the two ruling political parties – the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – to regular soldiers, and refused to let Iraqi troops enter its territory. Its armed forces guard the posts along the borders with Turkey and Iran.
Faced with the prospect of an onslaught by the Turkish army, the second largest in NATO, a spokesman of the KRG offered “honest dialogue” with Ankara to resolve the PKK problem without “the constant violation of Iraqi sovereignty.”
In his view, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki made a mistake by excluding the KRG from talks with his Turkish counterpart to forge an agreement on countering PKK terrorism.
But Turkey has shunned the government in Irbil – which repudiated the Erdogan-Maliki agreement – while loudly protesting its ever-expanding power and profile. It fears that even implicit recognition of this entity will encourage Turkish Kurds to demand autonomy as a preamble to independence.
The idea of independence for the Kurds in the region dates back to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, formalized in the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. Kurds feel that US President Woodrow Wilson failed to keep his promise of delivering to them an independent state as envisaged in the treaty. They ignore the fact that the Turkish parliament rejected that treaty and the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 made no mention of an independent Kurdistan.
More recently, heeding the call by US President George H.W. Bush at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurds in Iraq rebelled against Saddam Hussein’s regime, only to see their uprising crushed by Saddam’s forces. Washington and London created a safe haven in the north for Kurdish refugees and rebels by providing an air umbrella that continued until the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Kurdish leaders agreed in March 2004 to dissolve their militias or merge them into the new Iraqi army and then later said they were postponing the agreement “indefinitely.” The US, the occupying power, did nothing.
In the interim parliament, lacking proportionate Sunni representation due to the Sunnis’ boycott of the general election, conflict developed between Shiites and Kurds. The recently empowered, deeply religious Shiite majority wanted to establish a centralized Islamic republic. But, committed to secular Kurdish nationalism, the KDP and the PUK favored a federal Iraq with a weak center.
When Shiite leaders failed to get their Kurdish counterparts to agree to diminution of the autonomy Kurdistan had enjoyed, they approached Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for guidance. Noting Kurdish obstinacy, Sistani recommended a federalist system, allowing one or more of the 15 non-Kurdish provinces to form a regional government with powers comparable to Kurdistan’s.
This alarmed Ankara. In contrast, the Bush administration, beholden to the Iraqi Kurds, looked on benignly as the new Iraqi constitution sowed the seeds of the republic’s break-up.
Washington’s failure to pressure the Iraqi Kurdish leadership at a crucial moment alienated the Turkish government. Matters grew worse when Ankara’s repeated appeals to the US to use its forces to curb the PKK went unheeded.
Irked by Bush’s warnings against a military move into Iraqi Kurdistan, Erdogan said that he did not need to seek permission from any foreign entity: “Did they [the Americans] seek permission from anybody when they came from a distance of 10,000 km and hit Iraq?”
What puzzles the Turkish leaders is Bush’s failure to see that they, too, combat terrorism.
“Turkey is implementing the same international rules that were implemented by those who linked the attacks on the twin towers to some organization,” explained Turkish justice minister Mehmet Ali Sahin.
But payback inevitably follows. “If Turkey conducts any attack or operation against Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurds anywhere, we are prepared to defend ourselves,” said an unnamed PKK leader. “We will spread resistance throughout Turkey and Kurdish areas in Iraq, Iran and Syria.”
The Bush administration should have tempered its indulgence toward Iraqi Kurds with pressure during the drafting of the new constitution and gotten its leaders to scale down Kurdistan’s quasi-independence to re-establish a unitary republic. The failure to do so brings it to the point where the US is seen as soft on terrorists – albeit of non-Islamist variety – facing the prospect of the only peaceful Iraqi region turning into a battlefield.
Dilip Hiro is the author of “Secrets and Lies: Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ and After,” and, most recently, “Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources,” both published by Nation Books, New York.
Source: Yale Global Online
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=9855
Thursday, October 18, 2007
From Russia with pragmatism
Simon Tisdall
October 16, 2007
In typical he-man style, Russia's Vladimir Putin ignored an alleged plot to assassinate him and went ahead today with a visit to Tehran. Iran says the plot story was black propaganda fabricated by its enemies, which may well be true. Historically speaking, Russians need no outside help in doing away with their leaders. They manage perfectly well by themselves.
It is also true though that, over the centuries, Persian-Russian relations have been spattered with the blood of eminent men. During the Napoleonic wars, Iran turned to France, and then Britain, for help in fending off imperial Russia. But it was let down by both and in 1813, the treaty of Golestan effectively confirmed Russia's seizure of its Caucasus territories. Moscow's problems in Muslim Chechnya and Dagestan date from that period.
In 1826 the two countries went to war again, with Britain once more refusing to assist Iran. This unequal contest ended two years later with the humiliating treaty of Turkmenchai. Iran was forced to cede further territory and pay 20m roubles in reparations - a crippling sum. According to Ali Ansari in his recent book, Confronting Iran, Iran's betrayal and domination by the great powers of that time helps explain its present-day distrust of their successors.
Russian bullying continued into the modern era. In 1945, when the US and Britain agreed to end to their wartime occupation of Iran, the Soviet Union refused to withdraw its troops. Joseph Stalin sought instead to partition the country into two "people's democratic republics", one Azerbaijani, one Kurdish.
Stalin backed off only after intense pressure from Washington, in what is now seen as one of the first crises of the cold war. Ironically given later developments, Iran's future as an independent nation state had been guaranteed by the Americans - who like the British and French before them, then set about maximising their influence over the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Even the 1979-1981 siege of the US embassy in Tehran which lasted 444 days, following the Islamic revolution and the Shah's overthrow, has an echo in 19th century Persian-Russian relations. After the Russian ambassador, Alexander Griboedov, gave sanctuary to the chief eunuch of the Shah's harem, a valued spy, and two runaway Georgian concubines, an outraged mob surrounded his embassy. When guards fired on them, the crowd stormed the building. Griboedov and most of his staff were killed.
Speaking on Iranian television, Iran's current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, assured Mr Putin of a more friendly welcome to Tehran this time around - and diplomatically glossed over this long history of affronts. "Relations between Iran and Russia have been influenced by outside forces at times but today both countries are determined to expand their ties to the highest level," he said.
There was "natural unity" between the two, exemplified by their cooperation in building Iran's nuclear plant at Bushehr and their refusal to do the bidding of western powers, Mr Ahmadinejad added. What was also plain, although not stated, was the Iranian leader's gratification at the large hole blown by the visit in US-led attempts to isolate Tehran.
Mr Putin's approach to Iran, underpinned as ever by Russia's greater strength, is more canny. He insisted recently that there was no evidence that Iran was developing an atomic weapon and has cast himself as a Disraeli-style "honest broker" in the nuclear dispute with the US. He gave another warning today of the unacceptability of military action. And he knows his Tehran sojourn again demonstrates the revival of a central Russian role in global affairs.
Citing the North Korean case, Mr Putin said at the weekend that diplomatic engagement with Iran was the only way forward. "We were patient and looked for solutions and it looks like we are finding them. The same has to be done in the case of the Iranian nuclear programme ... Can we do it without having a dialogue with the Iranian people? I think it's impossible."
All the same, Mr Putin is hardly falling over himself to help Iran become a nuclear weapons state, if that is what Tehran is indeed trying to do. Completion of the Bushehr project has been repeatedly put back, nuclear fuel deliveries from Russia have been withheld and Moscow has infuriated Tehran by claiming not to have been paid.
In short, Russia is playing both sides against the middle, using current tensions with the west to advance its national interest. Mr Putin's pragmatism should not be mistaken for friendship. After all, Russia's power games in Iran are hardly new. Just look at the history.
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_tisdall/2007/10/from_russia_with_pragmatism.html
October 16, 2007
In typical he-man style, Russia's Vladimir Putin ignored an alleged plot to assassinate him and went ahead today with a visit to Tehran. Iran says the plot story was black propaganda fabricated by its enemies, which may well be true. Historically speaking, Russians need no outside help in doing away with their leaders. They manage perfectly well by themselves.
It is also true though that, over the centuries, Persian-Russian relations have been spattered with the blood of eminent men. During the Napoleonic wars, Iran turned to France, and then Britain, for help in fending off imperial Russia. But it was let down by both and in 1813, the treaty of Golestan effectively confirmed Russia's seizure of its Caucasus territories. Moscow's problems in Muslim Chechnya and Dagestan date from that period.
In 1826 the two countries went to war again, with Britain once more refusing to assist Iran. This unequal contest ended two years later with the humiliating treaty of Turkmenchai. Iran was forced to cede further territory and pay 20m roubles in reparations - a crippling sum. According to Ali Ansari in his recent book, Confronting Iran, Iran's betrayal and domination by the great powers of that time helps explain its present-day distrust of their successors.
Russian bullying continued into the modern era. In 1945, when the US and Britain agreed to end to their wartime occupation of Iran, the Soviet Union refused to withdraw its troops. Joseph Stalin sought instead to partition the country into two "people's democratic republics", one Azerbaijani, one Kurdish.
Stalin backed off only after intense pressure from Washington, in what is now seen as one of the first crises of the cold war. Ironically given later developments, Iran's future as an independent nation state had been guaranteed by the Americans - who like the British and French before them, then set about maximising their influence over the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Even the 1979-1981 siege of the US embassy in Tehran which lasted 444 days, following the Islamic revolution and the Shah's overthrow, has an echo in 19th century Persian-Russian relations. After the Russian ambassador, Alexander Griboedov, gave sanctuary to the chief eunuch of the Shah's harem, a valued spy, and two runaway Georgian concubines, an outraged mob surrounded his embassy. When guards fired on them, the crowd stormed the building. Griboedov and most of his staff were killed.
Speaking on Iranian television, Iran's current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, assured Mr Putin of a more friendly welcome to Tehran this time around - and diplomatically glossed over this long history of affronts. "Relations between Iran and Russia have been influenced by outside forces at times but today both countries are determined to expand their ties to the highest level," he said.
There was "natural unity" between the two, exemplified by their cooperation in building Iran's nuclear plant at Bushehr and their refusal to do the bidding of western powers, Mr Ahmadinejad added. What was also plain, although not stated, was the Iranian leader's gratification at the large hole blown by the visit in US-led attempts to isolate Tehran.
Mr Putin's approach to Iran, underpinned as ever by Russia's greater strength, is more canny. He insisted recently that there was no evidence that Iran was developing an atomic weapon and has cast himself as a Disraeli-style "honest broker" in the nuclear dispute with the US. He gave another warning today of the unacceptability of military action. And he knows his Tehran sojourn again demonstrates the revival of a central Russian role in global affairs.
Citing the North Korean case, Mr Putin said at the weekend that diplomatic engagement with Iran was the only way forward. "We were patient and looked for solutions and it looks like we are finding them. The same has to be done in the case of the Iranian nuclear programme ... Can we do it without having a dialogue with the Iranian people? I think it's impossible."
All the same, Mr Putin is hardly falling over himself to help Iran become a nuclear weapons state, if that is what Tehran is indeed trying to do. Completion of the Bushehr project has been repeatedly put back, nuclear fuel deliveries from Russia have been withheld and Moscow has infuriated Tehran by claiming not to have been paid.
In short, Russia is playing both sides against the middle, using current tensions with the west to advance its national interest. Mr Putin's pragmatism should not be mistaken for friendship. After all, Russia's power games in Iran are hardly new. Just look at the history.
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/simon_tisdall/2007/10/from_russia_with_pragmatism.html
Iran and Russia: friends reunited?
Dilip Hiro
October 18, 2007
History has a habit of repeating itself. Consider the case of relations between
Moscow and Iran. In November 1978, as the anti-shah movement gathered momentum in Iran amid rumours of impending American military intervention on the shah's behalf, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev publicly warned America against interference in Iran's internal affairs. This compelled Washington to deny that it had plans to that effect. Such a statement inadvertently worked for the revolutionaries and against the shah, whose regime fell three months later.
Fast forward. On October 16 2007, during his visit to Tehran, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "We should not even think of making use of force in this region [of the Caspian Sea]." This was an undisguised warning to the United States against military strikes on Iran at a critical moment in the Tehran-Washington relations.
Since the overthrow of the pro-American shah, the Kremlin has maintained a benign stance towards the post-shah regime in Tehran.
Describing Iran's revolution as "a major event on the international scene in recent years", Brezhnev said: "However complex and contradictory, the Iranian revolution is essentially an anti-imperialist revolution, though reaction at home and abroad is seeking to change this feature".
That assessment has been the bedrock of the policies that the Kremlin has followed since then.
When relations between the US and Iran, ruled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, soured after American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran in November 1979, Moscow aided Tehran materially and diplomatically.
Active economic cooperation between the two neighbours sharing a long frontier started the following month. There was a dramatic increase in railway traffic at the border town of Julfa, with 300 freight cars arriving daily from the Soviet Union.
In January 1980 when Washington's resolution calling for economic sanctions against Iran at the United Nations security council won 10 votes out of 15, Moscow vetoed it.
Eight months later when Iraq, ruled by President Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran, the Kremlin deplored its action. Pravda, the official organ of the ruling Communist party, said that the Iran-Iraq war was "undermining the national liberation movement in the Middle East in its struggle against imperialism and Zionism".
Moscow stopped supplying arms and spares to Iraq. It reversed its position only in June 1982 when Iran gained the upper hand in the war and seized Iraqi territory. The end of that conflict six years later provided Soviet diplomacy greater flexibility in its relations with Iran.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its state-sponsored religion of scientific atheism in 1991, Iran's list of two "arrogant powers" (a code phrase for superpowers) came down to one: America.
Its relations with Russia, the successor state to the Soviet Union, warmed considerably. They signed agreements on commercial, economic, scientific and technical cooperation.
In the latter fields, nuclear technology was one of Russia's most successful exports; it had made inroads in several countries, including China and India. It now considered the proposal of rehabilitating and finishing a nuclear power plant near the Iranian port of Bushehr, originally started during the shah's rule and interrupted by the revolution and war.
In 1994 Iran signed an $800m contract with Moscow to rebuild two 1,000MW light water, nuclear-fuelled generators. To expedite the project, the initial plan of Iran being a partner in the construction was changed in 1998 to a turnkey arrangement.
By then Iran and Russia had cooperated actively to bring about the end of the five-year civil war in Tajikistan, a former Soviet central Asian republic, in 1997. Then they went on supply arms to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
The Bushehr power plant is almost ready, but the nuclear fuel has yet to arrive from Russia for it to start functioning. Apparently, the shipment of the Russian fuel is tied to Tehran answering satisfactorily half a dozen questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency - a process expected to end by December.
But that did not stop Putin from declaring in Tehran that Russia and Iran planned to cooperate on space, aviation and energy issues. "Russia is the only country that is helping Iran to realise its nuclear programme in a peaceful way", he added.
In sum, the Kremlin's bear hug of Iran is a long-established posture.
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dilip_hiro/2007/10/iran_and_russia_friends_reunit.html
October 18, 2007
History has a habit of repeating itself. Consider the case of relations between
Moscow and Iran. In November 1978, as the anti-shah movement gathered momentum in Iran amid rumours of impending American military intervention on the shah's behalf, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev publicly warned America against interference in Iran's internal affairs. This compelled Washington to deny that it had plans to that effect. Such a statement inadvertently worked for the revolutionaries and against the shah, whose regime fell three months later.
Fast forward. On October 16 2007, during his visit to Tehran, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "We should not even think of making use of force in this region [of the Caspian Sea]." This was an undisguised warning to the United States against military strikes on Iran at a critical moment in the Tehran-Washington relations.
Since the overthrow of the pro-American shah, the Kremlin has maintained a benign stance towards the post-shah regime in Tehran.
Describing Iran's revolution as "a major event on the international scene in recent years", Brezhnev said: "However complex and contradictory, the Iranian revolution is essentially an anti-imperialist revolution, though reaction at home and abroad is seeking to change this feature".
That assessment has been the bedrock of the policies that the Kremlin has followed since then.
When relations between the US and Iran, ruled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, soured after American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran in November 1979, Moscow aided Tehran materially and diplomatically.
Active economic cooperation between the two neighbours sharing a long frontier started the following month. There was a dramatic increase in railway traffic at the border town of Julfa, with 300 freight cars arriving daily from the Soviet Union.
In January 1980 when Washington's resolution calling for economic sanctions against Iran at the United Nations security council won 10 votes out of 15, Moscow vetoed it.
Eight months later when Iraq, ruled by President Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran, the Kremlin deplored its action. Pravda, the official organ of the ruling Communist party, said that the Iran-Iraq war was "undermining the national liberation movement in the Middle East in its struggle against imperialism and Zionism".
Moscow stopped supplying arms and spares to Iraq. It reversed its position only in June 1982 when Iran gained the upper hand in the war and seized Iraqi territory. The end of that conflict six years later provided Soviet diplomacy greater flexibility in its relations with Iran.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its state-sponsored religion of scientific atheism in 1991, Iran's list of two "arrogant powers" (a code phrase for superpowers) came down to one: America.
Its relations with Russia, the successor state to the Soviet Union, warmed considerably. They signed agreements on commercial, economic, scientific and technical cooperation.
In the latter fields, nuclear technology was one of Russia's most successful exports; it had made inroads in several countries, including China and India. It now considered the proposal of rehabilitating and finishing a nuclear power plant near the Iranian port of Bushehr, originally started during the shah's rule and interrupted by the revolution and war.
In 1994 Iran signed an $800m contract with Moscow to rebuild two 1,000MW light water, nuclear-fuelled generators. To expedite the project, the initial plan of Iran being a partner in the construction was changed in 1998 to a turnkey arrangement.
By then Iran and Russia had cooperated actively to bring about the end of the five-year civil war in Tajikistan, a former Soviet central Asian republic, in 1997. Then they went on supply arms to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
The Bushehr power plant is almost ready, but the nuclear fuel has yet to arrive from Russia for it to start functioning. Apparently, the shipment of the Russian fuel is tied to Tehran answering satisfactorily half a dozen questions from the International Atomic Energy Agency - a process expected to end by December.
But that did not stop Putin from declaring in Tehran that Russia and Iran planned to cooperate on space, aviation and energy issues. "Russia is the only country that is helping Iran to realise its nuclear programme in a peaceful way", he added.
In sum, the Kremlin's bear hug of Iran is a long-established posture.
Source: The Guardian
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dilip_hiro/2007/10/iran_and_russia_friends_reunit.html
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Beyond the Wall: Sources of Iran’s Terror Campaign in Balochistan
by Belaar Baloch
The decades-old and artificial division of Balochistan between Iran and Pakistan is bringing yet new grief to its population. Amid speculation that the United States may take coercive measures to forestall Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, the regime in Tehran is heavily fortifying its border regions, especially its “vulnerable” southeastern frontier known as Sistan-va-Balochistan, where it connects with Pakistani-controlled eastern Balochistan, its other half. While the international community is focused upon the most pressing issues, i.e., the war on terror and the boiling crisis over Iran’s nuclear activities, the voice of the Baloch people—repressed by both Iran and Pakistan—is either unheard or, for political reasons, deliberately ignored.
Unlike other ethno-national groups that fell victim to the decolonization process, Baloch miseries began early, when rival imperial forces confronted each other in a long game of geopolitics. This game ultimately cost the Baloch people their sovereign statehood and resulted in the arbitrary division of their homeland. Those who are familiar with the history of the “Great Game” will know how imperial Britain appeased Iran by serving up the western part of Balochistan in an effort to stem the feared Russian advance towards the warm waters of the Arabian Sea. Locked in its intense geopolitical rivalry with Russia, Britain had left untouched the semi-sovereign status of the eastern part of Balochistan, hoping eastern Balochistan would serve as a buffer to help preserve its richest colony, India. In the aftermath of the First World War, a confident British foreign secretary Lord Curzon, then assuming the control of Iraq as a protectorate under the League’s mandate, and realising the great importance of this region, summed up the Imperial forward strategy in this way:
“Now, that we are about to assume the mandate for Mesopotamia, which will make us conterminous with the western frontiers of Asia, we cannot permit the existence between the frontiers of our Indian Empire and Balochistan and those of our new protectorate, a hotbed of misrule, enemy intrigue, financial chaos and political disorder. Further, if Persia were to be alone, there is every reason to fear that she would be overrun by Bolshevik influence from the north. Lastly, we possess in the south-western corner of Persia great assets in the shape of oil fields, which are worked for the British navy and which give us a commanding interest in that part of the world.”
With partition of the subcontinent in 1947, however, Britain colluded with the founders of the newly created state of Pakistan to force eastern Balochistan to join Pakistan.
The Baloch living in these forcibly annexed territories, however, never accepted the new status quo. From the outset, the Baloch perceived this division and arbitrary rule of their homeland by the Persians and Punjabis as illegitimate. The Baloch refused to abandon their socio-cultural identity and adopt the alien values imposed by the Persians. Despite the creation of the unnatural border known as the Goldsmith Line, the Baloch from both sides not only maintained their socio-cultural ties, but even strengthened these links in order to counter the threats of assimilation they felt emanate from both Pakistan and Iran.
Iran’s recent decision to physically separate Balochistan with a hundreds of kilometre-long wall, turning it into two non-communicating halves, is an extraordinary affirmation of state power and one that reflects Iran’s general readiness to aggressively control the Baloch population. In justifying this move, Iran uses border infiltrations as a pretext.
From the Qajars to the Pahlavis and, in recent times, under its revolutionary idealogues, Persians have claimed jurisdiction over ethnic minorities on the basis of their racial “supremacy” and the “higher” values of their civilisation. These xenophobic attitudes towards ethnic minorities have a long history. In the heyday of his rule, Reza Shah who was desperately seeking an ideology to unite the “nation” chose fascism. Describing Shah’s fascination with fascist ideology, Stephen Kinzer notes in his book “All The Shah’s Men” that Mussolini, Franco and Hitler “seemed to him to be embarked on the same path he had chosen, purifying and uniting weak, undisciplined nations. He launched an oppressive campaign to obliterate the identity of minority groups, especially Kurds and Azeris and glorify his ideas and person.”
Unfortunately, this history of terror against minority populations does not end with Reza Shah. His son Muhammad Reza Shah chose to reinforce his father’s mission by giving a free hand to SAVAK, one of the most dreaded intelligence organizations of its time. SAVAK’s death squads conducted numerous overt and covert operations in Balochistan, driving ordinary people out of settled areas. Eventually facing a revolt by the Baloch, Iran became the first country to establish formal diplomatic ties with Pakistan in order to legitimize the Goldsmith Line—the border dividing Baloch territory into Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The Baloch members of the West Pakistan Assembly, however, did not recognize the conclusion of the boundary commission and challenged its recommendations in Pakistan’s apex court. Fears related to the integrity of the Iranian borders led Muhammad Reza to send a large contingent of Iranian forces armed with Huey Cobra attack helicopters to support the Pakistani army in its efforts to crush the Baloch insurgency in 1973 in eastern Balochistan.
In the aftermath of its recent revolution, the theocratic regime in Tehran became even more aggressive, particularly against its non-Shi’ite minorities. Soon after consolidating their grip on power, the revolutionary zealots embarked on a plan to accomplish “Imam’s” mission: “purifying” and “enlightening” the Sunni Baloch population. The revolutionary utopians were in search of an enemy and revenge. Just as Khomeini and his lieutenants found an external enemy, i.e., the United States—the most formidable “enemy” of Islam and its revolution, so did they identify an internal one, depicting the Baloch as a “proxy” of Iraq, bent on the destabilization of the revolutionary state. Under the Shah, as one astute observer put it, “Iranian sense of excellence and racial pride had expressed itself in snobbery and hauteur. In Khomeini’s crusade, and in the magnificent isolation of its embattled position, Iran evoked—and Khomeini has insisted on this—the solitude of the Prophet Mohammad’s mission donned a religious guise.” Nevertheless, the ideals of a modern-day Mahdi had serious limits; his appeal did not extend beyond the Persian realm as non-Shi’ite minorities rejected his design to establish a more “authentic” and “pure” social order based on the repressive Shi’ite sectarian doctrine invented by Khomeini and his faithful ideologues. Since then, Tehran has perceived the Baloch as a threat to its national security and has employed various methods—from state-led terror to the policy of assimilation—to counter this perceived threat.
At present, the Baloch are suffering a “second revolution.” Under the leadership of Khomeini’s faithful followers, there are those who vow to take the revolution back to its roots. This new generation of followers has recently renewed their hostility towards the Baloch and other ethnic groups, particularly those concentrated in bordering regions. This time Shi’ite totalitarian ideology is not the sole source of adventurism, but also a recently revived Persian nationalism. These two aggressive impulses derive from the regime’s increasing paranoia: that Baloch political groups are being “aided” by western states in order to create internal instability.
In search of the “enemy within,” the new revolutionaries, under the banner of Shi’ite authenticity and Persian nationalism, have reinforced their terror campaign in the towns and villages across the Baloch region. After a long and unsuccessful campaign to indoctrinate ordinary Baloch into Shi’itism, the regime recently revived old terror tactics used to intimidate innocent civilians. During the shah’s despotic rule, SAVAK’s clandestine agents ruled Baloch streets; under Khamenai, the task was given to the thugs of Marsad (Ambush). But methods and tactics remain the same and these include: systematic use of violence to eliminate political activists, extrajudicial killing of Baloch political activists and religious clerics, forced eviction of ordinary people, the destruction of houses and agricultural farms, thereby creating a general climate of fear in order to force the Sunni Baloch into submission.
With its failed attempt to garner support from the non-Persian population for its nuclear quest, the regime has also employed violent means to silence those who are unwilling to share in its euphoria over its nuclear program. Following a chilling defeat at the hands of the Baloch resistance fighters in the heart of Zahedan city, the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps turned their guns on innocent civilians and conducted barbaric public executions. In so doing, the Persian leadership proved to the world that even in this modern age, they are not ashamed to carry out the medieval and ruthless purges characteristic of their past.
Nevertheless, when it comes to the subject of moral stature, the Persian leadership never forgoes an opportunity to teach Persian “moral” values to the world. On the eve of releasing the British sailors the President of Iran, addressing a large media audience, seized this opportunity to deliver a lecture to a western audience, trying to claim the moral high ground. In his hypocritical speech, he demonised the western system, depicting it as unfair and unjust, especially with regards to women’s rights, notwithstanding the fact that the Islamic Republic is the only state in the world that permits the execution of children, most recently the barbaric hanging of Said Qmabarzai, a seventeen-year old teenager.
For the Baloch, Kurds, Awazis, Turkomen and Azeris, the sky will not fall when U.S. cruise missiles overwhelm Iranian nuclear sites, because the subjugated minorities do not share the agenda of the Persians: to make this state a regional hegemon. For generations, these minorities have been denied their basic rights under Persian rule. And the Baloch, with a distinctive history and character, were never, after all, a part of “Greater Persia.” Nor will they benefit if they choose to become a component of this Persian megalomaniac state. Similarly, the Baloch in Pakistan have no incentive to embrace a Punjabi regime that has converted Baloch eastern territory into a nuclear dumping ground: its hills are still covered with radioactive dust and its soil contaminated.
Now obsessed with Iran’s nuclear program, the West has failed to condemn the regime over its human rights abuses against the Baloch and other ethnic minorities. The strategic considerations of the West take priority over human suffering. It is true that the notion of justice has never been a popular feature in the realm of international politics, especially in that part of the world where hydrocarbon politics is central to the shrewd practitioners of realpolitik, who in their very tradition, are willing to overlook human suffering at the cost of “stability” and “order.” However, the obsession to preserve this order at the expense of human catastrophe has blinded policymakers to the fact that it is this very international order that is threatened by both Pakistan and Iran.
The former is armed with nuclear weapons and employs jihadi groups as a foreign policy tool in its efforts to gain strategic depth. It regards Afghanistan as part of its strategy to gain an economic foothold in the Central Asian republics. The later is vigorously meddling in an unstable Iraq, as well as pursuing the development of nuclear arsenals to dominate the region. Imagine a world with these two rogue states, both armed with nuclear weapons, and their foreign policies driven by militant Shi’ite and Wahabi ideologies.
Ironically, Washington has rediscovered its “reliable” ally in the war on terror. The nature of its “cooperation” with the Punjabi military regime provides the answer as to why the West is overlooking Pakistan’s policy of repression in eastern Balochistan. While America pours billions of dollars into Pakistan to appease its army, the whole region has been transformed into a military garrison, one in which the local Baloch have been driven out of their towns and villages and compelled to live as refugees on their own soil. America’s policy has brought neither stability to Afghanistan , nor has it helped dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.
Facing state-led ethnic cleansing by both Iran and Pakistan, the Baloch demand protection from the international society. While moral rhetoric in the foreign policy of civilized nations rarely overrides strategic interest, in this case, it is in their own interest to save the secular and tolerant Baloch, who are at present besieged in a heartland of extremists and fanatics.
(The writer is a Baloch academic living abroad. He is working in areas related to strategic and security issues. His E-mail address is: belaar3@yahoo.com)
Note: The above article originally appeared in the SAAG.
http://www.saag.org/papers25/paper2414.html
The decades-old and artificial division of Balochistan between Iran and Pakistan is bringing yet new grief to its population. Amid speculation that the United States may take coercive measures to forestall Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, the regime in Tehran is heavily fortifying its border regions, especially its “vulnerable” southeastern frontier known as Sistan-va-Balochistan, where it connects with Pakistani-controlled eastern Balochistan, its other half. While the international community is focused upon the most pressing issues, i.e., the war on terror and the boiling crisis over Iran’s nuclear activities, the voice of the Baloch people—repressed by both Iran and Pakistan—is either unheard or, for political reasons, deliberately ignored.
Unlike other ethno-national groups that fell victim to the decolonization process, Baloch miseries began early, when rival imperial forces confronted each other in a long game of geopolitics. This game ultimately cost the Baloch people their sovereign statehood and resulted in the arbitrary division of their homeland. Those who are familiar with the history of the “Great Game” will know how imperial Britain appeased Iran by serving up the western part of Balochistan in an effort to stem the feared Russian advance towards the warm waters of the Arabian Sea. Locked in its intense geopolitical rivalry with Russia, Britain had left untouched the semi-sovereign status of the eastern part of Balochistan, hoping eastern Balochistan would serve as a buffer to help preserve its richest colony, India. In the aftermath of the First World War, a confident British foreign secretary Lord Curzon, then assuming the control of Iraq as a protectorate under the League’s mandate, and realising the great importance of this region, summed up the Imperial forward strategy in this way:
“Now, that we are about to assume the mandate for Mesopotamia, which will make us conterminous with the western frontiers of Asia, we cannot permit the existence between the frontiers of our Indian Empire and Balochistan and those of our new protectorate, a hotbed of misrule, enemy intrigue, financial chaos and political disorder. Further, if Persia were to be alone, there is every reason to fear that she would be overrun by Bolshevik influence from the north. Lastly, we possess in the south-western corner of Persia great assets in the shape of oil fields, which are worked for the British navy and which give us a commanding interest in that part of the world.”
With partition of the subcontinent in 1947, however, Britain colluded with the founders of the newly created state of Pakistan to force eastern Balochistan to join Pakistan.
The Baloch living in these forcibly annexed territories, however, never accepted the new status quo. From the outset, the Baloch perceived this division and arbitrary rule of their homeland by the Persians and Punjabis as illegitimate. The Baloch refused to abandon their socio-cultural identity and adopt the alien values imposed by the Persians. Despite the creation of the unnatural border known as the Goldsmith Line, the Baloch from both sides not only maintained their socio-cultural ties, but even strengthened these links in order to counter the threats of assimilation they felt emanate from both Pakistan and Iran.
Iran’s recent decision to physically separate Balochistan with a hundreds of kilometre-long wall, turning it into two non-communicating halves, is an extraordinary affirmation of state power and one that reflects Iran’s general readiness to aggressively control the Baloch population. In justifying this move, Iran uses border infiltrations as a pretext.
From the Qajars to the Pahlavis and, in recent times, under its revolutionary idealogues, Persians have claimed jurisdiction over ethnic minorities on the basis of their racial “supremacy” and the “higher” values of their civilisation. These xenophobic attitudes towards ethnic minorities have a long history. In the heyday of his rule, Reza Shah who was desperately seeking an ideology to unite the “nation” chose fascism. Describing Shah’s fascination with fascist ideology, Stephen Kinzer notes in his book “All The Shah’s Men” that Mussolini, Franco and Hitler “seemed to him to be embarked on the same path he had chosen, purifying and uniting weak, undisciplined nations. He launched an oppressive campaign to obliterate the identity of minority groups, especially Kurds and Azeris and glorify his ideas and person.”
Unfortunately, this history of terror against minority populations does not end with Reza Shah. His son Muhammad Reza Shah chose to reinforce his father’s mission by giving a free hand to SAVAK, one of the most dreaded intelligence organizations of its time. SAVAK’s death squads conducted numerous overt and covert operations in Balochistan, driving ordinary people out of settled areas. Eventually facing a revolt by the Baloch, Iran became the first country to establish formal diplomatic ties with Pakistan in order to legitimize the Goldsmith Line—the border dividing Baloch territory into Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The Baloch members of the West Pakistan Assembly, however, did not recognize the conclusion of the boundary commission and challenged its recommendations in Pakistan’s apex court. Fears related to the integrity of the Iranian borders led Muhammad Reza to send a large contingent of Iranian forces armed with Huey Cobra attack helicopters to support the Pakistani army in its efforts to crush the Baloch insurgency in 1973 in eastern Balochistan.
In the aftermath of its recent revolution, the theocratic regime in Tehran became even more aggressive, particularly against its non-Shi’ite minorities. Soon after consolidating their grip on power, the revolutionary zealots embarked on a plan to accomplish “Imam’s” mission: “purifying” and “enlightening” the Sunni Baloch population. The revolutionary utopians were in search of an enemy and revenge. Just as Khomeini and his lieutenants found an external enemy, i.e., the United States—the most formidable “enemy” of Islam and its revolution, so did they identify an internal one, depicting the Baloch as a “proxy” of Iraq, bent on the destabilization of the revolutionary state. Under the Shah, as one astute observer put it, “Iranian sense of excellence and racial pride had expressed itself in snobbery and hauteur. In Khomeini’s crusade, and in the magnificent isolation of its embattled position, Iran evoked—and Khomeini has insisted on this—the solitude of the Prophet Mohammad’s mission donned a religious guise.” Nevertheless, the ideals of a modern-day Mahdi had serious limits; his appeal did not extend beyond the Persian realm as non-Shi’ite minorities rejected his design to establish a more “authentic” and “pure” social order based on the repressive Shi’ite sectarian doctrine invented by Khomeini and his faithful ideologues. Since then, Tehran has perceived the Baloch as a threat to its national security and has employed various methods—from state-led terror to the policy of assimilation—to counter this perceived threat.
At present, the Baloch are suffering a “second revolution.” Under the leadership of Khomeini’s faithful followers, there are those who vow to take the revolution back to its roots. This new generation of followers has recently renewed their hostility towards the Baloch and other ethnic groups, particularly those concentrated in bordering regions. This time Shi’ite totalitarian ideology is not the sole source of adventurism, but also a recently revived Persian nationalism. These two aggressive impulses derive from the regime’s increasing paranoia: that Baloch political groups are being “aided” by western states in order to create internal instability.
In search of the “enemy within,” the new revolutionaries, under the banner of Shi’ite authenticity and Persian nationalism, have reinforced their terror campaign in the towns and villages across the Baloch region. After a long and unsuccessful campaign to indoctrinate ordinary Baloch into Shi’itism, the regime recently revived old terror tactics used to intimidate innocent civilians. During the shah’s despotic rule, SAVAK’s clandestine agents ruled Baloch streets; under Khamenai, the task was given to the thugs of Marsad (Ambush). But methods and tactics remain the same and these include: systematic use of violence to eliminate political activists, extrajudicial killing of Baloch political activists and religious clerics, forced eviction of ordinary people, the destruction of houses and agricultural farms, thereby creating a general climate of fear in order to force the Sunni Baloch into submission.
With its failed attempt to garner support from the non-Persian population for its nuclear quest, the regime has also employed violent means to silence those who are unwilling to share in its euphoria over its nuclear program. Following a chilling defeat at the hands of the Baloch resistance fighters in the heart of Zahedan city, the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps turned their guns on innocent civilians and conducted barbaric public executions. In so doing, the Persian leadership proved to the world that even in this modern age, they are not ashamed to carry out the medieval and ruthless purges characteristic of their past.
Nevertheless, when it comes to the subject of moral stature, the Persian leadership never forgoes an opportunity to teach Persian “moral” values to the world. On the eve of releasing the British sailors the President of Iran, addressing a large media audience, seized this opportunity to deliver a lecture to a western audience, trying to claim the moral high ground. In his hypocritical speech, he demonised the western system, depicting it as unfair and unjust, especially with regards to women’s rights, notwithstanding the fact that the Islamic Republic is the only state in the world that permits the execution of children, most recently the barbaric hanging of Said Qmabarzai, a seventeen-year old teenager.
For the Baloch, Kurds, Awazis, Turkomen and Azeris, the sky will not fall when U.S. cruise missiles overwhelm Iranian nuclear sites, because the subjugated minorities do not share the agenda of the Persians: to make this state a regional hegemon. For generations, these minorities have been denied their basic rights under Persian rule. And the Baloch, with a distinctive history and character, were never, after all, a part of “Greater Persia.” Nor will they benefit if they choose to become a component of this Persian megalomaniac state. Similarly, the Baloch in Pakistan have no incentive to embrace a Punjabi regime that has converted Baloch eastern territory into a nuclear dumping ground: its hills are still covered with radioactive dust and its soil contaminated.
Now obsessed with Iran’s nuclear program, the West has failed to condemn the regime over its human rights abuses against the Baloch and other ethnic minorities. The strategic considerations of the West take priority over human suffering. It is true that the notion of justice has never been a popular feature in the realm of international politics, especially in that part of the world where hydrocarbon politics is central to the shrewd practitioners of realpolitik, who in their very tradition, are willing to overlook human suffering at the cost of “stability” and “order.” However, the obsession to preserve this order at the expense of human catastrophe has blinded policymakers to the fact that it is this very international order that is threatened by both Pakistan and Iran.
The former is armed with nuclear weapons and employs jihadi groups as a foreign policy tool in its efforts to gain strategic depth. It regards Afghanistan as part of its strategy to gain an economic foothold in the Central Asian republics. The later is vigorously meddling in an unstable Iraq, as well as pursuing the development of nuclear arsenals to dominate the region. Imagine a world with these two rogue states, both armed with nuclear weapons, and their foreign policies driven by militant Shi’ite and Wahabi ideologies.
Ironically, Washington has rediscovered its “reliable” ally in the war on terror. The nature of its “cooperation” with the Punjabi military regime provides the answer as to why the West is overlooking Pakistan’s policy of repression in eastern Balochistan. While America pours billions of dollars into Pakistan to appease its army, the whole region has been transformed into a military garrison, one in which the local Baloch have been driven out of their towns and villages and compelled to live as refugees on their own soil. America’s policy has brought neither stability to Afghanistan , nor has it helped dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.
Facing state-led ethnic cleansing by both Iran and Pakistan, the Baloch demand protection from the international society. While moral rhetoric in the foreign policy of civilized nations rarely overrides strategic interest, in this case, it is in their own interest to save the secular and tolerant Baloch, who are at present besieged in a heartland of extremists and fanatics.
(The writer is a Baloch academic living abroad. He is working in areas related to strategic and security issues. His E-mail address is: belaar3@yahoo.com)
Note: The above article originally appeared in the SAAG.
http://www.saag.org/papers25/paper2414.html
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