Pak troops kill Nawab Bugti : Violence across Baluchistan,Indian Subcontinent, News Analysis, India News Online

Baluchistan is up in arms against the Government of Gen. Musharraf and violence has sparked across the province and neighbouring Sindh after Pakistani troops last week bombed a cave killing the prominent Baluch tribal leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti. The 79-year-old Bugti was leading a violent campaign against the overexploitation of the province’s rich natural resources by the Federal Government which was not spending enough on the development of Baluchistan. Even helicopter gunships were used to fire missiles on the cave which killed Bugti and 58 others in the Bhambore Hills, an area between the cities of Kohlu and Dera Bugti. The Army had launched special operations against Bugti, who was the President of the Jamhoori Wattan Party and served in the past as the Governor and Chief Minister of Baluchistan. Some say was betrayed by some of his own tribesmen who informed the military where he was hiding. His loyalists reject the Government explanation that Nawab Bugti died in the collapse of his cave hideout. They say the armed forces had targeted him with gunship helicopters and jet fighters and that cluster bombs were used to kill him and other tribesmen in the military operations in the Kohlu Hills. Military spokesman Shaukat Sultan, however, insisted that the Bugti killing was an accident. He said a commanding officer had gone into the cave to negotiate with Nawab Akbar Bugti for his arrest as the Government intended to take him into custody. Instead, the troops were fired upon and in the exchange of fire there were casualties on both sides in the three days of engagement. For several days Bugti’s body could not be retrieved and when it was recovered, it was buried quietly by the Government so that the occasion could not be used by his followers to stir up trouble. Bugti’s body was carried into the cemetery in a padlocked wooden coffin and was lowered into an unmarked grave in the presence of Army Commanders and about 5 to 20 pro-Pakistan tribesmen. The Army said they found Bugti’s body pinned under a boulder.

The killing of the veteran Baluch leader in the operations that left 38 armed rebels and 21 security personnel dead, triggered massive rioting in the capital of Baluchistan, Quetta, and elsewhere including the neighbouring Sindh where a large number of Baluchs have settled. The two grandsons of the Baluch leader, Hamdad Bugti and Ali Nawaz Bugti, who were earlier feared dead, have surfaced and declared a war against Islamabad. Three people died and hundreds were arrested after violent rioting in Quetta which was placed under curfew. Paramilitary forces were deployed as angry demonstrators torched buses and buildings, exchanged fire with police and set off a bomb at a government office on August 28. Violence continued the next day when more than ten thousand mourners attended the funeral of Nawab Akbar Bugti. The funeral service was held even though Pakistani authorities refused to hand over Bugti’s body to his family. Quetta’s Mayor was chased away from the venue. Bugti’s son, Talal, refused to accept the Government’s explanation that Bugti’s body was still lying trapped in the cave and alleged that it had been taken to a hospital before giving it a quiet burial. Chants of “Death to Pakistan Army” rose up from the crowd as a military helicopter hovered overhead. A complete shutdown was observed in Baluchistan on the day the funeral service was held. After the service, groups of young men smashed windows throughout the stadium while in the Baluchistan towns of Khuzdar, Turbat and Gwadar, hundreds of protesters, armed with clubs, burned shops, banks and cars. Protesters blocked traffic to Hub ensuring that the industrial town was crippled. Many shops run by Punjabis have been destroyed. Shops also remained closed in Karachi’s Baluch populated areas on August 8 where youths burnt tyres and pelted vehicles with stones. Police have arrested 500 people so far. The movement of all trains towards Baluchistan from other parts of Pakistan has been suspended. The main RCD highway connecting Baluchistan with the rest of Pakistan was sealed by protesting Baluchis on August 30.

In a telephone address from abroad, former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told the Opposition parliamentarians to step up pressure on the Government, suggesting that they and members of all Provincial Assemblies should submit their resignations immediately. This will create a constitutional and political crisis. Baluchistan itself may be heading for Federal (Central) rule as reports say lawmakers from many parties have handed over their resignations from the Provincial Assembly to their party chiefs.

India condemns Bugti killing

India described the killing of the Baluch leader as “unfortunate” which was criticized by Pakistan as an interference in its internal affairs. The Foreign Office spokesman said the unfortunate killing of the veteran Baluch leader is a tragic loss to the people of Baluchistan. His killing underlines the need for a peaceful dialogue to address the grievances and aspirations of the people of Baluchistan. “Military force can never solve political problems”, the spokesman said.

The cautious and remarkably restrained Indian reaction suggests that the Government has chosen to merely register its view and not ruffle Pakistani feathers. Yet, strongly rejecting India’s comments, Pakistan said, New Delhi’s “ill-advised concern amounted to interference in the internal affairs” of a neighbouring country. Hours after Foreign Office spokesman said Islamabad should address the “grievances and aspirations” of the people of Baluchistan through dialogue rather than military force, the Pakistan Foreign Office said India should rather focus on “putting its own house in order” and do the same in its areas afflicted by insurgencies.

Without naming India, a Pakistan Minister said a “neighbouring country” had supplied a large quantity of ammunition and money to the slain Baluch nationalist leader for his campaign against the Government. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afghan Khan Niazi told the National Assembly that a “huge quantity of ammunition and currency” had been found from the cave in which Bugti was killed. The ammunition and money, he said, were “provided by our neighbouring country to Akbar Bugti via Kabul”. The Army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, too spoke about the involvement of an “external hand” in the campaign by Baluch nationalists.

Musharraf’s offer of dialogue with rebels

Faced with widespread violence, President Musharraf has warned that strict action would be taken against anyone who harmed the country. “Whosoever wants to harm Pakistan nationally or internationally would have to fight with me first”, he said in his first public comment since violence broke out last week-end following Bugti’s killing in a military encounter. He has offered to hold talks with Baluch rebels. “Doors for a negotiated settlement are always open”, he said.

Bugti : A nationalist-turned-rebel

The British-educated tribal chieftain of Baluchistan had emerged as a “big thorn” in President Musharraf’s scheme of “modernization of the much-neglected province with heavy investment, especially his plans to build a Chinese-aided strategic port at the sleepy coastal village of Gwadar near the Iranian border. Bugti also joined issue with Musharraf over the General’s allegation that his movement received support from India. Displaying his irritation over Bugti, Musharraf in one of his recent addresses to the nation told him that “You won’t know what hit you”. To this, Bugti retorted: “If I’ll give you a war you won’t forget it and it will send you back to the barracks where you belong”.

Although Musharraf believes that a big thorn has been removed in his modernization plan for Baluchistan, political observers say the killing of articulate English-speaking champion of greater rights for ethnic Baluch tribe people is a “great tragedy” that will further alienate ordinary Pakistanis from the military led by President Musharraf. A villain has been made a martyr of the Baluch nationalist movement – one he has never been a part of, except when he took to the hills of Baluchistan to fight back the Pakistan Army. Analysts believe, Gen. Musharraf’s lack of understanding about the Baluch issue, his underestimation of the growing sense of alienation in smaller provinces, and the attack on his helicopter by Baluch rebels last December led him to take the decision to kill Bugti. The widespread protests against the killing of the chief of the largest Bugti tribe point to the radical turn the Baluch national movement is going to take. It will create sympathy for the Baluchistan Liberation Army [BLA] that is engaged in raining missiles around the province.

Ironically, in the early days of his career, Bugti did not join the Baluch nationalist movement or the various alliances of national groups formed in the country. After forming his own party, the Jamhoori Wattan Party, Bugti became Chief Minister in 1989 and ran the province like an authoritarian patriarch. But, he developed differences with the Oil and Gas Development Authority in Islamabad and the Sui Gas Company that ran gas wells in his home town, Dera Bugti, over the issue of rent and perks which he wanted to be raised. Bugti’s survival was in making a larger nationalist cause out of his dispute with the gas authorities, especially when he was battling his rival clan, the Kalpar Bugtis. Bugti was pushed into the conflict with law-enforcement agencies by the BLA which attacked gas and military installations.

Born on July 12, 1927 at Barkhan in Baluchistan, Akbar Bugti was the grandson of Sir Shahbaz Khan Bugti. He was educated in Lahore, Karachi and England. Enjoying absolute loyalty from so many tribals, he ruled in Baluchistan for many decades and was considered to be running a parallel government. In August 1990, Bugti formed his Democratic Nation Party or Jamhoori Wattan Party to try to advance the Baluch cause. But the 1992 killing of his youngest son, Salal, by pro-Government tribesmen saw him advocate armed struggle against the authorities and moved from Quetta to Dera Bugti to establish his base. He was known to most people as the Tiger of Baluchistan. He owned many gasfields and his assets are estimated to run into billions of dollars. He used to receive Rs. 670 million per annum from a “deal” that he had signed with certain oil and gas companies. Bugti was also believed to be the mentor of the Baluchistan Liberation Army, a banned guerilla organisation which fought for the rights of Baloch people.

Government-Baluch violence flared in 2005 after Pakistani forces were deployed in Dera Bugti. Fighting escalated in December when militants fired rockets that landed about 300 feet from President Musharraf who was visiting the nearby town of Kohlu. Bugti went into hiding soon after in the Kohlu mountains where he was killed.

Baluchistan is the largest of four Pakistani provinces. South-western Baluchistan borders Iran, Afghanistan and the Arabian Sea. Mountainous and arid, it covers 350,000 sq. km or 44 per cent of Pakistan’s land mass and 70 per cent of its coastline. Some 45 per cent of the total of seven million people in the province live below the poverty line, making it Pakistan’s poorest province. Yet, it is rich in natural resources. The Sui natural gas field in the Bugti tribal area produces about 45 per cent of Pakistan’s natural gas. The province is also rich in uranium and copper.

A common account of Baluchi origin says that they were part of a Kurd migration from Syria over 1500 years ago. The Baluch moved to the southern reaches of the Caspian Sea, migrating later into Iran and Pakistani Baluchistan from the 6th to 14th centuries. They are Hanafi Sunni Muslims and moderate Muslims. Mullahs play a marginal role in Baluch society. Baluchistan was forcibly incorporated into Pakistan in 1948. The Baluch Parliament on August 11, 1947, had declared independence, but Islamabad subsequently sought its merger with Pakistan. Under the British, Baluch Sardars (chiefs) controlled internal tribal affairs so long as they did not interfere with British access to Afghanistan.

Musharraf’s blunder

Although the Pakistan Army is backslapping itself and Gen. Musharraf is celebrating that a big thorn has been removed from his flesh, political observers say the celebration could be short-lived and Musharraf could live to regret the military action that killed Bugti. The consequences of the killing may take a while to play out, but already rumblings of political discontent within Pakistan’s political mainstream have merged with the full-throated anger of the Baluch insurgents. Not only are Pakistan’s famous exiles in a state of high exultation, even Musharraf’s close political associate, Shujjat Hussain, appears to have distanced himself from the attack. The Pakistan Army may be very gung-ho over the assassination, but the Musharraf Government has had to tone down its rhetoric on the issue. It could be a moment that furthers the realization within Pakistan that stirring the ethnic pot is a strategy that is both dangerous and unwise.

As Pakistan’s influential newspaper DAWN has been prompt in pointing out, “Our troubled political history has shown that whenever force has been employed to solve a political problem”, it has recoiled with terrible consequences on Islamabad.. Gen. Musharraf may not wish to recall memories of 1970-71 but East Pakistan’s revolt and the subsequent crumbling of Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s “moth eaten” Pakistan has not been entirely forgotten. Deep within what remains of Pakistan knows that Islam shall never serve as a glue to keep together the country – Baluch nationalism and the tribal defiance in the NWFP only serve to highlight this fact.

Political observers say by making Bugti a martyr of the Baluch cause, the Pakistan Army might have galvanized the nationalist movement in the province for a prolonged struggle that could only weaken. But, in claiming victory over the death of Bugti and reaffirming the determination to expand the writ over the restive province, the Pakistan Army appears to have come to an entirely different conclusion. The elimination of Bugti, the Army hopes, will lead to division and dissipation of the Baluch national resistance and make it easier to co-opt sections of the Baluch elite.

Giving background of the restive Baluchistan trouble since the pre-Partition days, political analyst C. Raja Mohan says from Baluchistan in the South-West to the Federally Administered Tribal Area in the North-West, from Kashmir to the North East Frontier Agency and undivided Assam and Northern Burma in the East, British India exercised, by choice, only minimal sovereignty. As London sought to define British India’s borders in the 19th century, they came up with a unique three-fold framework. It included an “inner line” that defined the territories which were fully administered, an “outer line” that covered many tribal areas where they exercised only limited exercise, and the creation of buffer States all along the perimeter of British India. While the British saw the three-fold frontier as a device to address specific security concerns in the Great Game with other major powers, newly independent India and Pakistan claimed the “outer line” as the national boundary and invested it with extraordinary emotion and prestige. India and Pakistan, however, faced considerable difficulties in bringing the areas beyond the inner line into the national mainstream. India tried to bring the North East Frontier within the democratic and federal framework with limited success. Pakistan, in turn, inherited the British Frontier policy on the sub-continent’s western borders – in North-Western Frontier Agency, the FATA and Baluchistan. Having claimed territories over which sovereignty in a modern sense was never exercised by anyone in the past, Pakistan faced immediate trouble on its eastern borders, especially Baluchistan. The region had two parts – a British administered one headquartered in Quetta and the so-called Baluchistan States’ representing the historic tribal fiefs. In both areas there was considerable opposition to joining Pakistan. Having tethered loosely to British India, the Baluch nationalists and tribal leaders had no desire to be absorbed into the successor States of Pakistan. And if they were to be drawn, the Baluch insisted it should be only within a framework of substantive autonomy. With some help from the British, Islamabad got the British Baluchistan headquartered in Quetta to join Pakistan. But, in the Baluchistan States, the Khan of Kalat, Abdus Samad Khan Achakzai, widely seen as sitting at the apex of the loose tribal coalition, refused to join Pakistan. His forced integration into Pakistan in 1948 led to the first rebellion in the region for autonomy and since then sections of the Baloch have seen the Pakistan Army as an occupation force.

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