[Reader-list] Whither Balochistan?

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Whither Balochistan?

By Kaiser Bengali


THE murder of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti at the hands of
state security forces is both a human and a national
tragedy, with consequences of unimaginably perilous
scale. That such disproportionate force was used to
kill a 79-year old ailing man and that his bereaved
family has been denied the opportunity to offer their
last respects and accord him a proper burial is
deplorable.

There may be many questions about Akbar Bugti’s
conduct as a tribal leader. Today, however, he stands
tall as a man who forsook the comforts of his home in
Dera Bugti and took up abode in mountain caves to
fight for the rights of his people. The same cannot be
said of many of his detractors living in the comforts
of official residences and in cantonments and defence
housing schemes in Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi.

The calamity and the sordid handling of the aftermath
reflects General Musharraf’s arrogant faith in
military solutions to the patently political problems
that the country faces, including those that have been
created by the perpetuation of the current military
dictatorship since October 1999. The generals have
certainly not learnt any lessons from Pakistan’s
unfortunate history of a quarter of a century ago, nor
from the current failure of the world’s sole
superpower to enforce its writ in Iraq, or of the
mighty Israeli army’s failure to write its agenda in
Lebanon.

In 1971, the then generals opted to lay down their
arms before the Indian army rather than negotiate and
arrive at a compromise with the leaders of the people
of the eastern wing of Pakistan. This attitude appears
to be pervasive even today. And general Musharraf’s
chest-thumping speech in Murree, hurling threats at
the people of Balochistan, as well as of Pakistan, is
likely to stoke more defiance rather than scare
anyone.

The policy drift that the country has suffered under
General Musharraf’s leadership portends disaster for
the country. Questions about the general’s judgment
had arisen immediately after the inane militarily
untenable Kargil misadventure. He also made a foreign
policy U-turn, hours after the tragedy of 9/11, and
Pakistan shifted from being the most pro-Taliban
country in the world to the most ardent ‘terrorist’
busting country in the US camp. The slogan that was
then trumpeted as a rationale for the U-turn was that
Pakistan must come first.

The implications of the principle of this simplistic
justification are disturbing. Extended further, it
could imply that, under external pressure, the Kashmir
cause or the nuclear status could be abandoned on the
grounds that ‘Pakistan has to come first’. After all,
it could be perceivably argued that there can be no
struggle for the freedom of the Kashmiri people if
there was no Pakistan or of what use will the nuclear
arsenal be if there was no Pakistan?

Now General Musharraf has proclaimed that the writ of
the government will be enforced ‘at all costs’. One
hopes that ‘all costs’ does not imply that the writ of
his government — of questionable legitimacy — will be
imposed even at the cost of Pakistan. These questions
are not frivolous, given the increasingly apparent
absence of any degree of political intellect in
general Musharraf’s policy decisions. After all, the
legacy of disastrous policy decisions by the coterie
of Generals headed by Yahya Khan did not provide any
assurance of intelligent conduct. And, given the
current military regime’s paramount and almost
exclusive objective of clinging on to power, there can
be no confidence in the quality of decision-making on
national, regional or international issues.

General Musharraf has tried to present the conflict in
Balochistan as one where a mere three sardars, out of
about 75, are attempting to sabotage development. The
argument holds no water. Several facts need to be
taken into account. Balochistan is a very
heterogeneous province. The sardari system is a Baloch
institution. Out of 26 districts, one-third of them in
the north/north-east are populated by Pukhtuns and, as
such, not subject to the sardari system. The system
also does not prevail in the Mekran coast and
adjoining districts.

It appears, therefore, that the sardari system is
prevalent only in about one-third of the districts in
the eastern/central part of the province. This is the
part over which up to about 75 sardars are said to
hold sway. As such, the area controlled by the three
‘anti-development’ sardars is likely to be rather
small. The question that arises, is: why has
development not blossomed in the rest of the province?

An overview of the development scene in Balochistan is
discomforting and the extent of relative deprivation
in the province is appalling. Eighteen out of the 20
most infrastructure-deprived districts in Pakistan are
in Balochistan. The percentage of districts that are
classified as high deprivation stands as follows: 29
per cent in Punjab, 50 per cent in Sindh, 62 per cent
in the NWFP, and 92 per cent in Balochistan. If Quetta
and Ziarat are excluded, all of Balochistan falls into
the high deprivation category. And Quetta’s ranking
would fall if the cantonment is excluded from the
analysis. The percentage of population living in a
high degree of deprivation stands at 25 per cent in
Punjab, 23 per cent in urban Sindh, 49 per cent in
rural Sindh, 51 per cent in the NWFP, and 88 per cent
in Balochistan.

Measured in terms of poverty, the percentage of
population living below the poverty line stands at 26
per cent in Punjab, 38 per cent in rural Sindh, 27 per
cent in urban Sindh, 29 per cent in the NWFP, and 48
per cent in Balochistan. Yet another stark measure of
Balochistan’s relative deprivation is that while the
country boasts of a 50-per cent-plus literacy rate,
the same for rural women in Balochistan is a mere
seven per cent.

Balochistan’s relative decline is also indicated by
provincially disaggregated national accounts data.
Estimates for the period 1973-2000 show that Punjab
alone has increased its share of national GDP by two
percentage points from 52.7 per cent to 54.7 per cent.
Sindh — on account of Karachi — and the NWFP have
maintained their share. Balochistan’s share has
declined by nearly one percentage point from 4.5 per
cent to 3.7 per cent. Resultantly, the annual rate of
growth of per capita GDP has been 2.4 per cent in
Punjab and 0.2 per cent in Balochistan.

Statistics tell only a part of the story. In fact,
given the conditions in Balochistan, Pakistan’s
national statistics do not tell the full story. This
is because no enumerator of the official statistics
collecting department makes the effort to visit a
settlement that is two days walking distance away.
Conditions in such settlements are so dire that, if
half the children born in a family survive, it is
considered lucky. The absence of such data has tended
to show national statistics in a better light than it
actually is — and has tended to conceal Balochistan’s
real plight.

Apart from chronic underdevelopment, the insurgency is
also a product of the exclusion of the Baloch from the
mainstream national political process. After all, in
the period since independence to date, how many of the
corps commanders or lieutenant-generals or brigadiers
have been Baloch? How many of the ambassadors or high
commissioners in Pakistan missions abroad have been
Baloch? How many of the federal secretaries or
additional secretaries have been Baloch? How many of
the heads of public organisations — a la Wapda — have
been Baloch? How many of the heads of the Federation
of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry have
been Baloch? How many of the members of Pakistan’s
national cricket or hockey teams have been Baloch? And
so on. Perhaps General Musharraf or his prime minister
or his more garrulous ministers would venture to
answer some of the above questions, at least with
respect to the current situation.

Admittedly, Balochistan’s underdevelopment is a
product of over half a century of exploitation and
neglect. Unfortunately, however, General Musharraf’s
seven years in power has merely seen an extension of
the past record. The fact is that, not unlike any
previous governments, the Musharraf regime has never
had any development agenda for Balochistan. The few
mega projects that have been undertaken, a la Gwadar,
are actually motivated by strategic considerations.
They are more likely to bypass the local population
and, worse still, turn the Baloch into a minority in
their home province.

The Baloch intelligentsia has seen through Islamabad’s
colonisation game and the general insurgency is merely
a response. The military’s operation in Balochistan is
a counter response, not to the insurgency per se, but
to the challenge posed to Islamabad’s colonisation
agenda.

Resultantly, the situation is extremely precarious.
With the army possibly embroiled in Balochistan, the
defence of the eastern frontier is likely to be
compromised. There are likely to be serious impacts on
the national economy as well. Without security across
the vast province, Gwadar port’s planned position as
the third port of the country and a transshipment
point for central Asia and western China will go up in
smoke. So will the under-discussion
Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. The rest of
the country too will not remain unaffected. Unlike in
the case of East Pakistan, Balochistan is not a
thousand kilometers away.

Given Karachi’s geographical proximity to Balochistan,
the presence of large Baloch settlements in the city,
and the sympathetic Sindhi nationalist element, any
civil war-like situation in Balochistan will
inevitably envelope Karachi in the theatre of
conflict. And, given that Karachi and neighbouring
Port Qasim are the only seaports of the country and
handle the entire shipping of export and import cargo,
the situation will impact the economy in all parts of
the country.

The postponement of the National Assembly session,
scheduled for March 3, 1971, in Dhaka, finally snapped
the tenuous emotional thread that had bound the
eastern province with the rest of the country. Today,
the killing of Akbar Bugti has severely frayed the
emotional thread linking Balochistan with Pakistan.

The withdrawal of Baloch nationalist legislators from
the parliamentary process is an ominous signal that
cannot and should not be ignored. If the damage to the
federation is to be repaired, the military
establishment will need to withdraw from the
political, economic and commercial arenas and a
genuinely elected government will need to take
effective charge of the country to assuage the deep
wounds that have been inflicted on Balochistan.

http://www.dawn.com/2006/09/14/op.htm#1


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