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INSURGENCY IN BALOCHISTAN,
PAKISTAN
The Militarized State and
Continuing Economic Deprivation
Adeel Khan
Abstract
A mini-war is going on between the military and ethnic nationalists in Balochistan,
Pakistans territorially largest province. The military claims that violence is the
result of tribal chiefs opposition to the Pakistani governments development
projects, whereas the militants believe that the Punjabi-dominated military is
colonizing their land and exploiting its resources. This article argues that the
violence is unlikely to subside, absent a comprehensive change in the governments approach to the conflict.
Keywords: nationalism, ethnicity, military, violence, militancy
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houses, and a cantonment were built for British troops, the neglected economic sector could not remain unaffected. At the same time, when railway
lines boosted coal mining, a market economy appeared that led to migrations from peripheral areas to economically developed ones.
The changes that were solely aimed at establishing strategic routes for
supplying British troops naturally did not improve the lot of the Baloch
people, leading instead to economic deterioration. The astronomical increase in taxation that was collected in kind (wheat) for the British troops
led to the landlessness of many peasants.7 This resulted in the emergence
of a large number of tenants and landless laborers. To meet the needs of
the British garrison, a new mercantile class was imported from Punjab
and Sindh. Thus, these settlers monopolized whatever modern economic
relations developed in Balochistan. This triggered nationalist sentiments
among the locals. Before the independence and partition of India, Baloch
nationalists demanded their own state, whereas after the creation of Pakistan, they first refused to be part of the new state. Later, when the Pakistan
army forcibly annexed the region, the nationalists started a struggle for regional autonomy.
According to the 1998 census (the most recent one to date), Balochistan
has an area of 347,190 square kilometers, and its population is 6.5 million,
making it the largest province of Pakistan but with the smallest number of
people.8 It has the highest unemployment rate, 33.48%, compared to 19.1%
for Punjab and 19.68% for Pakistan overall.9 Balochistans literacy rate is
26.6% as against the national average of 47%; only 20% of the people have
reliable access to drinking water as compared to 86% of Pakistan; and
47% of the population lives below the poverty line.10
Although the government has launched mega-development projects,
like Gwadar Port, there is no road map for the social development of a
region whose social indicators are the most challenging in South Asia.11
There is short or no supply of infrastructure such as roads, communications, and water supply. Balochistans remote areas continue to present a
medieval picture with donkey fans (handheld fans made of cane) used
7. During 187980 and 190203, there was an 82% tax increase in Sibi, and between 1882
and 1895 a 350% increase in the Quetta region. Yu V. Gankovsky, The Peoples of Pakistan: An
Ethnic History (Moscow: Nauka Publishing House, 1971), pp. 20305.
8. Population Census Organization, Pakistan, <http://www.census.gov.pk/Demographic
Indicator.htm>.
9.Ibid.
10. Senate of Pakistan, Report of the Parliamentary Committee on Balochistan, no. 7
(November 2005).
11. Syed Fazl-e-Haider, Social Development in Balochistan, Dawn (Karachi), January
23, 2006.
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on hot summer nights and long distances covered on camels. Barely 20%
of the population has access to electricity. In the absence of sanitation and
health care facilities, the incidence rate per 100,000 population for tuberculosis is 177 and for malaria 6.56, respectively, which is 30 times the average
for the country. The province also has the highest child mortality rate.12
Yet, Balochistan, Pakistans poorest province, is the richest in such natural resources as natural gas, copper, uranium, gold, coal, silver, platinum,
as well as potential oil reserves. It provides 36% of Pakistans total gas
production. Gas was discovered at Sui in the Dera Bugti region in 1952. It
was piped to Punjab, Sindh, and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP)
and became a major revenue earner for the federal government. But gas
was made available to Balochistans own capital, Quetta, only in the 1980s
and even today, piped gas is available to a mere four out of 28 districts.13
Not surprisingly, only 17% of the gas total is consumed by Balochistan
and 83% by the rest of the country.
Also, the gas price is much lower than in other provinces. For instance,
Balochistan gets $0.29 per thousand cubic feet, whereas Sindh gets $1.65
and Punjab $2.35.14 Balochistan receives merely a 12.4% royalty for supplying gas. The Saindak project for copper exploration has been given to
China, which gets 50% of the profit. Of the remainder, 48% goes to the
central government and only 2% to Balochistan.15
Provincial Autonomy
The major demand of the Baloch nationalists has always been provincial
autonomy and local control over their resources. This has been denied to
them since the creation of Pakistan. As mentioned above, during British
rule Balochistan was a political agency, ruled indirectly by the political
agent of the governor-general. After Partition, however, the new state
managers centralized the state system.
The founder and first governor-general of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, constituted an advisory council for Balochistan to be run directly by
him. In 1955, with the imposition of the One Unit Scheme, any territorial
identity Balochistan had was eliminated.16 In 1958 and the early 1960s when
12.Ibid.
13.International Crisis Group (ICG), Pakistan: The Worsening Conflict in Balochistan,
South Asia Report, no. 119 (September 14, 2006), p. 16, <http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/
index.cfm?id=4373&=1>.
14. Syed Fazl-e-Haider, Gas Subsidized at Balochistans Expense, Dawn, August 21,
2006.
15. Shamim-ur-Rehman, Nothing but Provincial Autonomy, an interview with nationalist
leader Mir Hasil Bizenjo, ibid., February 12, 2006.
16. Adeel Khan, Politics of Identity, pp. 11516.
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the nationalists were protesting against One Unit and asking for provincial
autonomy, the government launched military operations against them. It
took Pakistan 23 years to grant Balochistan provincial status in 1970.
The same year, when national and provincial elections were held, the
National Awami (Peoples) Party (NAP) won the largest block of seats in
both the NWFP and Balochistan and formed governments there in alliance with a religious party, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (Party of Scholars of
Islam). Because the region had been ruled by the central government since
Pakistan annexed Kalat in 1948, Punjabis and other non-Baloch dominated
the administration. The literacy rate was extremely low, and the central government exploited local resources, which led to overall impoverishment.
Figures collected by the economist Omer Noman for the 1970s are quite
staggering: Balochistans per capita monthly income was $54, only 60% of
the Punjabs level. Pakistans literacy rate was 18%, whereas Balochistans
was 6%. Eighty percent of Pakistans gas production was from Balochistan, which saved an estimated $275 million in foreign exchange, but royalties for the local government were only $1.2 million. Out of 830 higher
civil service personnel in Pakistan, only 181 were Baloch. In 1972, out of
20 provincial department heads only one was Baloch.17
When the NAP government came to power in Balochistan in 1972 it
started trying to rectify these imbalances. But the central government of
Pakistans first elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was not in
favor of such reforms, believing they would go against the interests of the
dominant ethnic groups, Punjabis, and other non-Baloch who controlled
business and Balochistans minimal industrial sector. Finally, the clash of
interests created so much bitterness between the central and provincial
governments that Bhutto, in alliance with the military and civil bureaucracy,
which is dominated by Punjabis and Mohajirs (North Indian Muslim immigrants), concocted a case of conspiracy against the NAP government.
In early 1973, in a well-orchestrated operation, Pakistani authorities
entered the Iraqi Embassy in Islamabad and discovered a cache of 300
Soviet submachine guns and 48,000 rounds of ammunition. The government alleged that the weapons were destined for Balochistan, some 1,300
kilometers south of the capital, although according to Hussain Haqqani,
the U.S. diplomats and Pakistani intelligence officials knew that the Iraqi
arms were meant for Baloch rebels in the Iranian part of Balochistan
Iraqs response to Irans support for Kurdish rebels in Iraq18 (my emphasis).
17.Omer Noman, Pakistan: A Political and Economic History since 1947, rev. and updated
ed. (London: Kegan Paul International, 1990), pp. 6465.
18. Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Lahore: Vanguard Books,
2005), p. 102.
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The elected NAP government was dismissed, and governors rule was
imposed. Hence, the Baloch were not even allowed a year to run their own
affairs.
The Baloch response to the action was to launch an armed struggle that
soon turned into a bloody war with the powerful Pakistan military. The
Bhutto government called out some 80,000 troops, with air cover from the
Pakistan Air Force. Irans government provided 30 Cobra helicopters with
their own pilots to fight 55,000 Baloch guerrillas.19 The conflict cost the
lives of an estimated 3,300 army troops, 5,300 guerrillas, and thousands of
civilians.20
The Bhutto government was toppled by the military in July 1977. The
chief of army staff and leader of the coup, General Zia ul-Haq, declared a
ceasefire, called back the troops, and as a gesture of goodwill released NAP
leaders and workers from prison. Nonetheless, most of the major Baloch
leaders, with their secular politics and contempt for military rule, saw Zia as
a religious-minded military dictator and could not accept his rule. They
therefore went into exile and returned to Pakistan only after Zias death in
1988.
For more than two decades, Balochistan was relatively calm; the nationalists realized they could not win a war against Pakistans powerful
army. But the bitter memories of the 1970s war lingered, for the army
had indiscriminately bombarded civilians, and thousands of families
lost almost everything they had.21 During Zias rule, nationalists were
less restive because the government had launched some development
schemesconstruction of roads and small dams and the expansion of
power transmission and grid stations, which boosted agriculture. Quetta
received piped gas from Sui for the first time since its discovery four decades earlier. Also, starting with Zias partyless elections in 1985 and
continuing with several elections from 198899, there was renewed political activity in which Baloch nationalists participated fully. Indeed, Attaullah Mengal, the NAP chief minister whose government had been dismissed
by Bhutto in the 1970s, was indirectly involved in this political process,
and Mengals son, Akhtar Mengal, became chief minister of Balochistan
in 1997.
19. The Iranian regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi feared that the insurgency
would spread across the border to 1.2 million Baloch of eastern Iran. Selig S. Harrison, Pakistans Baloch Insurgency, Le Monde Diplomatique [Diplomatic World] (October 2006),
<http://mondediplo.com/2006/10/05baluchistan>.
20. Ray Fulcher, Balochistans History of Insurgency, Green Left (Australia), November
30, 2006, <http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/693/35987>.
21. Siddiq Baloch, Baloch nationalist and senior journalist, telephone conversation with
author, September 2008.
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and uneducated Baluch [i.e., Baloch] population had been shut out. . . . Gwadar
became a lightning rod for Baluch hatred of Punjabi-ruled Pakistan.25
Though Pakistans army has been notorious for land grabbing in other
parts of the country, especially Sindh, in Gwadars case the armys tactics
of treating the land as a no-mans land seem to have broken its own record. Baloch nationalists believe:
The Pakistani army is the biggest land grabber. . . . It is giving away the coast of
Baluchistan [Balochistan] for peanuts, to the Punjabis. . . . In Gwadar, the army
is operating as a mafia, falsifying land records. They say we dont have papers to
prove our ownership of the land, though weve been there for centuries.26
The livelihood of the people of Gwadar for years has depended on the
fishing industry. But a key part of the city was allocated for construction
of the port. Since this started in 2002, there has been no improvement in
the living standard of the local people. Indeed, a parallel town is being
built close to the port to distinguish new settlements from the old town.27
A five-star hotel has been built on top of the hill, overlooking the port and
slum city of Gwadar, which provides food and accommodations to foreign
workers and well-to-do tourists from Karachi. The port, hotel, and surrounding area allocated for a naval base, an elite housing enclave, and a
high-class coastal resort are protected by paramilitary checkpoints. There
is no access for ordinary local people.
As far as the old Gwadar city is concerned, it still lacks basic amenities
such as health, education, and sanitation. There is a hospital, but it lacks
modern facilities. There is one intermediate college, which has two shifts,
morning and evening, one for boys, one for girls. There is no institution
for technical education. Garbage dumps are spread all over the town.
Since construction of the port, there has been a rapid increase in the population as people from surrounding areas moved in seeking jobs and better
living standards; but there has been no increase in resources allocated for
them.28 As a high city official put it in an interview with the author:
Gwadar used to be a poor but peaceful town with no class differences. With the
development of the port and new township, however, that is changing. The gap
between the locals and non-locals is in fact the gap between the poor and the
rich. Its a gap between development and the locals. The development should
25. The Great Land Robbery, Herald (Karachi), June 2008, quoted in Robert D. Kaplan,
Pakistans Fatal Shore, Atlantic (May 2009), <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200905/
kaplan-pakistan>.
26. Quoted in ibid.
27. The author visited Gwadar in January 2008.
28. Abdul Ghaffar Hoth, deputy mayor of Gwadar City, interview with author in Gwadar,
January 2008.
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have been for us and then others could come and have a share. But unfortunately
that is not the case. With the building of Gwadar Port, the locals, naturally,
hoped that it would bring prosperity to them. But what we see today is quite
disappointing. Gwadar land has been allocated to the personnel of military and
civil bureaucracy. As if that was not enough, now people of the old Gwadar town
are threatened [with having] to leave their ancestral land and move elsewhere.29
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The Pakistan military, however, does not seem to agree. As pointed out
earlier, the Pakistan army has always been more inclined to find military
solutions to political and administrative issues. The attitude of the Mu
sharraf regime toward the Balochistan problem may well have been the
worst in Pakistans history. Soon after coming to power, Musharraf started
talking about the construction of Gwadar Port and two cantonments.
When Baloch nationalists expressed their resentment, the presidents argument was not different from that of his predecessors, including President
Ayub Khan and Prime Minister Bhutto, but his tone was widely perceived
as stubborn and aggressive. Musharrafs point was that tribal chiefs were
anti-development because they feared losing control over their people. Later
amending his stance, he insisted that only three out of 78 tribal chiefs,
namely, Nawab Akbar Bugti, Nawab Khair Bux Marri, and Sardar Ataullah Mengal, were troublemakers.34 Musharraf, on local private TV channels, warned Baloch militants that it was not the 1970s and that if they did
not get in line, they will be struck with weaponsthey will not know what
happened to them.35
The Baloch nationalists largely laughed off this attitude, apparently agreeing that it was not the 1970s, when they were neither properly organized nor
adequately armed. How a simmering insurgency of over two decades with no
open armed conflict was turned into a bloody armed conflict by the Mushar
raf regime becomes clear with a look at the HRCP report. This chronicled the
major events after Musharraf took power on October 12, 1999.
In January 2000, unknown assailants assassinated a judge of the Baloch
istan High Court. The central government responded by arresting an octogenarian nationalist leader, Nawab Khair Bux Marri, and keeping him
in solitary confinement for 18 months. Soon after the arrest, the Baloch
Liberation Army (BLA) emerged. Although it has largely cloaked its identity, the organization claimed responsibility for a number of bomb blasts,
acts of sabotage, and rocket attacks on government installations.
In June 2002, army troops were deployed in the gas region of Dera
Bugti to besiege and blockade the town. Nawab Akbar Bugti, chief of the
Bugti tribe, and his tribesmen were given a deadline to surrender. Bugti
and others were accused of providing protection to criminals and terrorists responsible for rocket attacks on gas installations in Sui. Incidents of
violence increased steadily with the pace of construction in Gwadar, the
expansion of cantonments, and the acquisition of land for cantonments
and other military enterprises.
34. Report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistans (HRCP) Fact-Finding Missions, Conflict in Balochistan (December 2005-January 2006), p. 37.
35.Ibid.
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As violence increased in Balochistan, so did the number of missing persons. With the military regimes change of tactics from a low intensity approach to one of full frontal attacks, a large number of Baloch citizens
started disappearing. According to one Baloch nationalist, some 8,000 to
12,000 Baloch have disappeared. He said that a couple of years ago the interior minister acknowledged that around 5,000 Baloch had been arrested but
added that the figure has gone up.40 It is a measure of the seriousness of the
matter that in August 2007, provincial opposition leaders moved three identical motions in the Balochistan Parliament asking the government to take
notice of the violation of the constitution by intelligence agencies and arrest
of political activists without fulfilling legal requirements.41
The military also employed an ideological push to counter secular nationalism with religious fanaticism. The Baloch are deeply religious people in their social lives, but their politics has always been secular. The
reason is simple: they have fears about the loss of their ethnic identity but
have never felt a threat to their religious beliefs. Baloch nationalists are
strongly opposed to mixing religion with politics and therefore have no
sympathy for the Taliban. Despite a ban on madrasas (seminaries) as part
of Pakistans contribution to the U.S. War on Terror, the Pakistani federal government, through the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MRA), continued to support their establishment. In a region where the lack of secular
education is more striking than any other province, and where 50% of
children are compelled to attend these religious schools, it is not surprising
that the national budget for the MRA is $15.4 million while the allocation
for the secular education ministry is only $2.56 million.42 Baloch nationalists see the governments support for fundamentalist parties as the Talibanization of Balochistan.43
In the Musharraf regimes national and provincial elections in 2002, the
government and its intelligence agencies actively supported the conservative religious alliance Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (United Action Forum,
MMA) against secular nationalists. Subsequently, the ruling party in alliance with the MMA formed the government in Balochistan in 2003. The
MMA was dominated by a Sunni (the majority sect in Pakistan) party,
Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, Fazl-ul-Rehman group, (JUI-F). JUI-F is widely
believed to be a staunch supporter of the Taliban. It has a wide network
of madrasas throughout Pakistan, but the majority of them are in the
40.ICG, Pakistan: The Worsening Conflict in Balochistan, p. 5.
41. Amanullah Kasi, Motions on Missing Persons Disposed Of: Matter Sub Judice, Says
Balochistan Minister,Dawn, August 10, 2007.
42. Ray Fulcher, Balochistans History of Insurgency.
43.Ibid.
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tribal chiefs were responsible for Balochistans problems. Instead, the party
placed the blame for the crisis squarely on the militarys shoulders.53
The second factor that distinguishes the new insurgency from the previous ones is the easy availability of sophisticated arms and ammunition.
The long war (197992) by Afghan mujahideen (holy warriors of Islam)
against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the communist regime in
Kabul was covertly but heavily supported by the West and Middle Eastern
states via the Pakistani army. A large amount of foreign arms and ammunition made their way to the local markets in Pakistan, particularly to the
western and northern border areas. Balochistan, after the NWFP, was the
major pipeline for the flow of arms to the Afghan Islamist groups. Sophisticated arms flooded the province as army officers sold to local buyers.54
Baloch leaders claim that financial contributions to the nationalist cause
by rich Baloch compatriots and sympathizers have made it easy for militant nationalists to buy weapons in the flourishing black market along
the Afghan frontier.55
The third factor is the unity among various tribes and classes for the
cause of provincial autonomy and local control over resources. The central
government used to play one tribe against another to weaken the nationalist
movements in the past. This time, however, the military is confronted with a
united nationalist movement comprising a majority of the tribes.
The unity among the tribes has more to do with demographic changes
in the province and a change in the nature of nationalist leadership and its
tactics than with a change of heart on the part of tribal leaders. In previous conflicts, certain tribes, namely, the Marri, Mengal, and Bugti, would
confront the central government demanding provincial autonomy and
control over local resources. But most of the other tribes would either stay
out of the conflict or side with the government.
In the new insurgency, the three radical tribes are not directly involved,
or at least have not claimed to be involved. According to available information, the new movement is led and supported by a young, educated
middle-class leadership and cadre.56 The attacks of the insurgents are not
restricted to certain regions and localities but are carried out throughout
the province. Under the circumstances, the tribal leaders who would be
inclined to side with the government feel threatened by the insurgents,
whereas the nationalist tribal leaders seem to be quite happy with the
53.ICG, Pakistan: The Worsening Conflict in Balochistan, p. 10.
54. Baloch telephone conversation.
55. Selig S. Harrison, Pakistans Baloch Insurgency.
56. Baloch telephone conversation.
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militant nationalists activities. Thus, uniting with other tribes and not appearing to look like government sympathizers seem to be tactical moves.
The fourth factor is that Pakistans law and order and security situation
has deteriorated so badly that the military is in no position to concentrate
on Balochistan. Pakistans military is deeply engaged in the NWFP-Afghanistan border areas as part of the U.S. War on Terror and also faces
its own conflict in Kashmir. In the 1970s conflict, when the military concentrated on Balochistan with no other distractions, it still lost over 3,000
of its personnel.
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Musharraf regime. Not surprisingly, in the report itself, the armys misdemeanors in Balochistan were not taken into account, except one: acquisition of vast lands for housing and commercial purposes by the armed
forces. Another important point is that the report tended to address legalistic and constitutional matters rather than political and administrative ones.
As military intervention in Balochistan has become the major cause of
violence in the region, its withdrawal needs to be addressed on a priority
basis. That is why both the ICG and the HRCP have recommended that
reliance on a military solution should be ended by immediately stopping
army action, sending troops back to their barracks, and restricting their
role to guarding the provinces land and nautical borders. The ICG recommended that to de-escalate the situation, the government should withdraw
the FC, replacing it with provincial security forces that are firmly under
provincial control; dismantle all check posts manned by paramilitary and
other federal security agencies; halt construction of cantonments and end
plans to construct additional military or paramilitary facilities.
Taking note of the widespread disappearances, the report demanded
immediate production of all detainees before the courts and release of political prisoners; an end to the political role of intelligence agencies, military and civil, barring them from detaining prisoners; withdrawal of travel
restrictions, internal and external, on Baloch opposition leaders and activists; ending of intimidation, torture, arbitrary arrests, disappearances, and
extrajudicial killings; allowing all political parties to function freely, respecting the constitutionally guaranteed rights of speech and expression,
assembly, association and movement; and respect for the constitutional
obligation to preserve and promote distinct language and culture.58
The Baloch demands are not very different from the recommendations
of the ICG and HRCP. They demand the following: an end to construction of military and paramilitary cantonments, and redirection of funds
toward the socioeconomic development of the provinces conflict-stricken
districts; immediate assessment of damage caused to the displaced populations of Dera Bugti and Kohlu Districts and arranging the repatriation
of displaced people and compensation to them; cancellation of all allotments of civil/military lands made in 19992008 in Gwadar and Lasbela
Districts; a policy of paying equal wellhead prices for gas and a 30% royalty to Balochistan; an end to the intelligence agencies role in Balochistans political, social, and tribal affairs (the agencies are regarded by the
majority in the province as a source of instability, which provokes conflict
among the tribes and the political parties).59
58.ICG, Pakistan: The Worsening Conflict in Balochistan, p. 3.
59. Sanaullah Baloch, Undoing the Damage, Dawn, March 31, 2008.
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Conclusion
What lies at the heart of the Balochistan crisis is the insensitivity and
shortsightedness of successive governments, starting from the inception of
the Pakistani state. The real issue in Balochistan was, and continues to be,
political and administrative. A political solution to the problem has not
been sought because Pakistans civil and military establishment has always
been unwilling to accommodate elective politics and representative rule.
The history of Pakistan is one of bureaucratic and military subversion of
democracy. So much so that even the first democratically elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto tended to depend on that establishment, eventually causing its own downfall and disruption of elected rule.
Repeated interventions of the military in politics and its subversion of
representative rule have left Pakistan at the mercy of its armed forces.
60. Abdul Hayee Baloch, cited in Adeel Khan, Politics of Identity, p. 123.
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