Baloch National Insurgency

RAFI A. PERVAIZ BHATTI
-----------
DAILY DAWN 7th January 2006

The current state of militancy

THE impression one gathers from the media reports
about a crackdown of law enforcing agencies on
tribesmen in Kohlu area is that there exists a popular
resistance movement in Balochistan and that it is
being crushed with brutal force. The facts are
contrary to this impression.

It all began with a rocket fired at the public meeting
addressed by President Pervez Musharraf in Kohlu. A
few days later, there was an attack on a helicopter in
which the inspector-general of the Frontier Corps was
travelling. Earlier, there was a rocket attack on the
residence of the chief minister. The question arises:
What message were the attackers sending across?

Even if one ignores these incidents, how can the
killings of innocent citizens in terrorist activities
in the province since 1999 be ignored? An explosion at
the busy Mezan Chowk in Quetta on December 10, 2004
killed 11 persons. Earlier on July 22, 2000, seven
persons were killed in a bomb blast in Jinnah Market.
Two persons were killed in an explosion in a moving
public bus in Quetta on October 28, 2001. Police
officers, and even judges who dare to challenge the
terrorist network, are threatened with death. Justice
Nawaz Marri, a judge of the Balochistan High Court who
resisted the tribal sway of the sardars, was gunned
down in the vicinity of the high court.

Investigations have revealed that a certain sardar and
his sons were involved in the planning and execution
of these terrorist acts. The uniforms, badges and
propaganda material of the so-called Balochistan
Liberation Army (BLA) were also recovered in good
quantity in police raids.

But things have not remained confined to Balochistan
alone. On November 15, 2005, multiple blasts shook the
high security zone around PIDC house in Karachi. The
BLA claimed responsibility for the explosion.
Inquiries show that a blast in Icchra, Lahore, a few
months earlier was also the work of this group. In a
way, terrorism was being exported to other parts of
the country.

The current wave of lawlessness in Balochistan was
originally started by tribal elements in 1999 but
lacks any credible rationale and is not based on
popular discontentment. In stark contrast to this,,
the insurgency in 1970s was backed by strong political
causes. One may note that only five years ago the
nationalist political parties were themselves in power
in Balochistan when Sardar Akhtar Mengal (son of
Sardar Attaullah Mengal) was chief minister. Mir
Humayun Marri was also in that government. They had
every opportunity at the time to solve the problems of
the people of Balochistan, if they so desired.

Since then no new development generally affecting the
people of Balochistan has taken place. On the other
hand, the funding of Balochistan's special projects of
Gwadar and Saindak has been increased. Gwadar project,
which has been highlighted in the media as a source of
discontentment, too was initiated while the
nationalists were in power in Balochistan. If Gwadar
was the reason, the nationalists should have been
popular in that area and won at least one assembly
seat from there on that basis. But ironically they
have never secured a single seat of national or
provincial assemblies from there, even in the 1997
polls which gave them the chief ministership of
Balochistan.

The nationalist political parties were rejected by the
electorate in the 2002 elections. These parties, all
put together, could win only 12 out of the 65
Balochistan Assembly seats, which reduced their
representation in the house to a mere 18 per cent.
Sardar Attaullah Mengal's Balochistan National Party
(BNP), which in the 1997 elections had emerged as the
single largest party, could bag only two seats. The
Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) of Nawab Akbar Bugti could
secure only three seats. Nawab Khair Bux Marri's Haq
Tawar won only one seat.

Compared to that, Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA), which
rejects nationalism, emerged as the single largest
political party winning 14 seats, while the PML-Q and
its allies bagged 28 seats. The election results gave
a clear message. Nationalist politics had exhausted
its limits and was now reaching a dead-end.

The insurgency in Quetta started on May 27, 1999, with
planting of explosives below the electricity generator
of the Governor's House. This device was detected and
defused. Since then the province has been reeling from
one wave of terrorism to the next. In the year 2000
there were 16 bomb explosions and eight rocket attacks
in Quetta in which 12 persons were killed. There were
239 rocket attacks in 2003, 626 in 2004 and 663 in
2005 (during the first four weeks only) in
Balochistan. Similarly, there were 37 bomb blasts in
2003 and 122 in 2004.

Balochistan is ethnically divided into two distinct
regions: the Baloch belt and the Pashtoon belt. The
Pashtoon belt is spread over the districts of Quetta,
Ziarat, Pishin, Killa Abdullah, Killa Saifulah, Sibi
and Loralai (excluding Barkhan area). About 40 per
cent of Balochistan's population is Pashtun, which is
indifferent to Baloch nationalists' activities.

In the Baloch belt itself, the PML-Q and its moderate
allies represent Balochs more effectively than the
nationalists do. The chief minister of Balochistan,
Jam Mohammad Yousaf, is also the Jam Sahib of Lasbela.
Because of his family's political hold in the region,
Lasbela district is clearly outside the pale of Baloch
nationalism. The people of Gwadar have traditionally
remained away from militant Baloch nationalism.

The areas consisting of Barkhan, Jafferabad,
Nasirabad, Kharan and Kachi District had never been
attracted to nationalist politics and were quiet
during the 1973 insurgency. In the current political
scenario the main political strength of the PML-Q,
(some leading figures being Mrs Nasreen Khetran, Mir
Zafarullah Jamali, Mir Zulfiqar Magsi, Asim Kurd
Gailoo, Sardar Yar Mohd Rind and Sardar Shoaib
Nosherwani) is drawn from these areas.

In the remaining Baloch belt itself, Baloch
nationalism has silently but inevitably changed its
direction from militancy to political activism. The
Baloch Nationalist Movement (BNM) is the single
largest party in the 12-member opposition in
Balochistan Assembly. Its leaders Kackol Ali, Dr Abdul
Hayee Baloch and Hasil Bizenjo, all coming from the
middle class have never supported militancy.

They represent the younger generation of Baloch
leadership, which does not bank on tribal loyalties
but political organizations for popular support. The
veteran tribal leaders Nawab Marri, Nawab Bugti and
Sardar Mengal may have been out of step with the
forces of transition but the younger Baloch leadership
pays great respect to them and is not prepared to
abandon them in the political field.

Militant nationalism today revolves around the trio of
Mengal, Bugti and Marri tribal chiefs. But the area of
influence of these veterans, and also the support base
of militant nationalism, is confined to Dera Bugti,
Kohlu and Wadh. Sardar Ataullah Mengal, who dominates
the Wadh area, has, however, not been as much active
in the current wave of militancy as he had been in the
past ones. The main theatres of activity, therefore,
happen to be Dera Bugti and Kohlu.