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Pakistan is accusing India of interference in its restive Balochistan Province bordering Afghanistan and tricked Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh into making a small one line mention in the joint statement he and Prime Minister Gilani issued after their talks in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh. Observers say that ever since then it has become a sort of Albatross round the neck of the Manmohan Singh Government with even the Congress being forced to distance itself from what he committed at his meeting with Gilani. Next to Dr. Singh agreeing to debracket the holding of talks from the stopping of terror attacks on India, Balochistan has emerged as the most damaging issue emanating from his meeting with Mr. Gilani. Instead of being thankful for Dr. Singh to delink talks from terror, Gilani on his return home, tried to take advantage of it saying India has practically acknowledged its interference in Balochistan which has to be stopped. The Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Kayani went a step further to tell the US that Islamabad would cooperate with it in fighting Taliban insurgency only if America stopped India from interfering in Baluchistan. In his July 29 statement, the Prime Minister was seen to be on the defensive saying he agreed to a reference to Balochistan in the joint statement because our hands were clean and we have nothing to hide. But, the question is why such a reference should have been made at all when India had nothing to do with it. After having made a big concession of delinking talks from terror, Pakistan could have been made to forget all other issues, especially those with which it has nothing to do. Pakistan leaders are stressing so forcefully that Gilani handed over a dossier of Indian interference in Balochistan to Dr. Singh that the Indian denial is appearing to be weak.

The Pakistani ire is, in fact, equally directed at both India and Afghanistan. Islamabad is also accusing the Karzai Government of allowing India to set up its Consulates at places such as Kandahar and Jalalabad which, it alleges, have emerged centres of spying and interference in the neighbouring Balochistan. Pakistan Interior Minister, Rehman Malik even told Parliament last week that he personally handed over a dossier to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai when he visited Kabul. Former President Musharraf also repeatedly accused India of supplying weapons to Baluch insurgents and funds to Sindhi separatist groups, but provided no evidence to back up these charges.

India brushes aside suggestions that it might be tempted to help Sindhi and Baluch insurgents if the situation in Pakistan continues to unravel. Indian leaders say that on the contrary, New Delhi wants a stable Pakistan so that both sides can wind down their costly arms race. India should be happy to see the Zardari-Gilani tied down in Balochistan, Swat and South Waziristan and hope that the crisis will force Islamabad to reduce Pakistani support for extremist Islamic insurgents in Kashmir.

The history of discrimination against the people of the mineral resources rich Balochistan by the successive Governments, however, makes it clear that the step-motherly treatment of the province by the Punjab-dominated Pakistani regime was responsible for insurgency in Balochistan and not alleged outside interference by India. After the Baluch rebels' demand for simple autonomy to run their own affairs, pressure for independence is growing in this region bordering Iran and Afghanistan, which challenges Pakistan's authority.

What Baluchs, along with Pashtuns and Sindhis want above all is an end to the blatant economic discrimination by the dominant Punjabis. Most of Pakistan's natural resources are in Balochistan, including natural gas, uranium, copper and potentially rich oil reserves. Although 36% of the gas produced in Pakistan comes from the province, Balochistan consumes only a fraction of production because it is the most impoverished area of the country. For decades, Punjabi-dominated central Governments have denied Balochistan a fair share of development funds and paid only 12% of the royalties due to it for its gas. Similarly, the Sindhi and Pashtun areas have consistently been denied fair access to the waters of the Indus River by dam projects that channel the lion's share of the water to the Punjab.

Islamabad dismisses the Baluch charges of economic discrimination. The "real exploiters" of the Baluch, it said, are the tribal chieftains, known as sardars, who "have stolen development funds for themselves".

In most proposals for a devolution of powers to the provinces, Baluch and Sindhi leaders have argued that taxes collected by the Central Government should not be allocated, as at present, solely on a population basis, which favours Punjab; instead, the half of the taxes should be allocated on a population basis, while the rest should be distributed in accordance with the amount collected in each province. Since the provinces have equal representation in the Senate, even under the 1973 constitution, the Upper Chamber should be given greater powers.

They also want constitutional safeguards to prevent the Central from arbitrarily removing an elected provincial government, as Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did in 1973. The issue of safeguards against arbitrary Central intervention is likely to be a non-negotiable one for the minorities, since they are seeking not only the substance, but also the feeling, of autonomy.

In at least four insurgencies, the last being during the Musharraf regime, they have fought to protest against economic and political discrimination. In the most bitter insurgency, from 1973 to 1977, some 80,000 Pakistani troops and 55,000 Baluchs were involved in the fighting. Much of the anger that motivates the Baluch Liberation Army (BLA) is driven by memories of Pakistani scorched earth tactics in past battles. In a climactic battle in 1974, Pakistani forces, frustrated by their inability to find Baluch guerrilla units hiding in the mountains, bombed, strafed and burned the encampments of some 15,000 Baluch families who had taken their livestock to graze in the fertile Chamalang Valley, forcing the guerrillas to come out from their hideouts to defend their women and children.

In the last fighting, which started in January 2005, the independent Pakistan Human Rights Commission reported that "indiscriminate bombing and strafing" by F-16s and Cobra gunships were used to draw the guerrillas into the open. Six Pakistani army brigades, plus paramilitary forces totalling some 25,000 men, were deployed in the Kohlu mountains and surrounding areas where the fighting is most intense.

Musharraf used new methods, more repressive than those of his predecessors, to crush the insurgency. In the past, Baluch activists were generally arrested on formal charges and sentenced to fixed terms in prisons known to their families. During the Musharraf era, Baluchs alleged large-scale kidnappings and disappearances, charging that Pakistani forces rounded up hundreds of Baluch youths on unspecified charges and took them to unknown locations. Akbar Bugti the Baluch nationalist leader was killed on 26 August, 2005 when the army blew up a cave where he was hiding. But the current insurgency is not being led by the tribal elders but by a new generation of politically conscious Baluch nationalists.

Iran too has its own Baluch minority and fears Baluch nationalism. But, apart from being smaller in number, the Baluchs in Iran are not as politically conscious or as well organised as those in Pakistan, and their principal leaders dismiss the idea of secession or of union with the Baluchs in Pakistan. The Balochistan People's party is part of a coalition with groups representing other disaffected minorities in Iran - the Kurds, Azeri Turks and Khuzestani Arabs - which is seeking a federal restructuring in which Iran would retain control over foreign affairs, defence, communications and foreign trade, but cede autonomy in other spheres to three minority autonomous regions.

Many Baluch nationalists have been radicalised by their periodic military struggles with Islamabad and their leaders believe that the goal of the insurgency should be an independent Balochistan, unless the Government is willing to grant provincial autonomy envisaged in the 1973 constitution, which successive regimes, including the present one, have nullified.

The Baluch are only 3.57% of Pakistan's 165.8 million population, and the three minorities combined claim only 33%. Yet they identify themselves with ethnic homelands that cover 72% of Pakistan's territory. To the Punjabis, it is galling that the minorities should advance proprietary claims over such large areas. For this reason, the prospects for a restoration of the 1973 Constitution appear bleak.

In the final analysis, the possibility of a constitutional compromise is inseparably linked with the overall course of the struggle for democratisation. With continued military suppression, the Baluch insurgency and the growing movement for Sindhi rights will be radicalised.

To go into a brief background of Balochistan history, the British first came to the region in 1839 on their way to Kabul when they sought safe passage. In the wake of Lord Auckland's disastrous invasion of Afghanistan, the British annexed Sind in 1843 from the Talpur Mirs a Balochi dynasty. After the formal surrender of the Sikhs on March 29, 1849, ten years after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and the annexation of Punjab, the British now had a long border with the Balochis. However, learning from their disastrous experience with the Afghans they generally preferred to keep out of harms way ad seemingly took cognizance of Balochi assurances of the inviolability of their borders.

The post-British origin of the conflict in Balochistan dates back to the independence of India. The Khan of Kalat, the monarch who ruled Baoochistan under the umbrella of the British empire, sought independence for his State in 1947. But, Pakistani troops marched into the province in March 1948 and its planes strafed Khan's palace when Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, Khan's grandfather refused to sign the legally necessary Document of Accession. In mid-1050s, the Prince of Kalat launched People's Party, representing a new Baloch nationalism that cut across tribal and linguistic lines The party which won election in 1972 pressed for greater representation of the ethnic Balochs in the Government and control over regional development. Islamabad rejected the demand. in 1973, Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto dismissed the Provincial Government of Sardar Ataullah Mengal, accusing it of smuggling arms from Iraq, which triggered a bitter insurgency. Led by the Marxist Balochi People's Liberation Front and the Balochi Student Organisation, some ten thousand guerillas took on the Pak Army. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the fighting. Since 2005, there has been renewed fighting in the region, fuelled by what Baloch leaders say discrimination by the ethnic Punjabi-dominated Federal Government and the Army.