Pakistan's secret dirty war
By Declan Walsh The Guardian
In Balochistan, mutilated corpses bearing the signs of torture keep turning up, among them lawyers, students and farm workers. Why no one investigating is and what have they got to do with the bloody battle for Pakistan's largest province?
In Balochistan, mutilated corpses bearing the signs of torture keep turning up, among them lawyers, students and farm workers. Why no one
investigating is and what have they got to do with the bloody battle for Pakistan's largest province?
The bodies surface quietly, like corks bobbing up in the dark. They come in twos and threes, a few times a week, dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads,
bearing the scars of great cruelty. Arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are
singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognisable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the
head.
This gruesome parade of corpses has been surfacing in Balochistan,Pakistan's largest province, since last July. Several human rights groups, including
Amnesty International, have accounted for more than 100 bodies – lawyers, students, taxi drivers, farm workers. Most have been tortured. The last three
were discovered on Sunday.
If you have not heard of this epic killing spree, though, don't worry: neither have most Pakistanis. Newspaper reports from Balochistan are buried quietly on the
inside pages, cloaked in euphemisms or, quite often, not published at all.The forces of law and order also seem to be curiously indifferent to the plight of the dead men. Not a single person has been arrested or prosecuted; in fact, police investigators openly admit they are not even looking for anyone. The stunning lack of interest in Pakistan's greatest murder mystery in decade becomes more understandable, however, when it emerges that the prime suspect is
not some shady gang of sadistic serial killers, but the country's powerfulmilitary and its unaccountable intelligence men
This is Pakistan's dirty little war. While foreign attention is focused on theTaliban, a deadly secondary conflict is bubbling in Balochistan, a sprawling, mineral-rich province along the western borders withAfghanistan and Iran. On one side is a scrappy coalition of guerrillas fighting for independence from Pakistan; on the other is a powerful army that seeks to quash their nsurgency with maximum prejudice. The revolt, which has been rumbling for more than six years, is spiced by foreign interests and intrigues – US spy bases, Chinese business, vast underground reserves of copper, oil and gold.
And in recent months it has grown dramatically worse. At the airport in Quetta, the provincial capital, a brusque man in a cheap suit marches up to my taxi with a
rattle of questions. "Who is this? What's he doing here? Where is he staying?" he asks the driver, jerking a thumb towards me. Scribbling the answers, he waves
us on. "Intelligence," says the driver.
The city itself is tense, ringed by jagged, snow-dusted hills and crowded with military checkposts manned by the Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force in charge of security. Schools have recently raised their walls; sand-filled Hescobarricades, like the ones used in Kabul and Baghdad, surround the FC headquarters. In a restaurant the waiter apologises: tandoori meat is off the menu because the nationalists blew up the city's gas pipeline a day earlier.The gas company had plugged the hole that morning, he explains, but then the rebels blew it up again.
The home secretary, Akbar Hussain Durrani, a neatly suited, well-spoken man, sits in a dark and chilly office. Pens, staplers and telephones are neatly laid on the
wide desk before him, but his computer is blank. The rebels have blown up a main pylon, he explains, so the power is off. Still, he insists, things are fine. "The government agencies are operating in concert, everyone is acting in the best public interest," he says. "This is just a . . . political problem." As we speak, a smiling young man walks in and starts to take my photo; I later learn he works for the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.
We cut across the city, twisting through the backstreets, my guide glancing nervously out the rear window. The car halts before a tall gate that snaps shut behind us. Inside, a 55-year-old woman named Lal Bibi is waiting, wrapped in a shawl that betrays only her eyes, trembling as she holds forth a picture of her dead son Najibullah. The 20-year-old, who ran a shop selling motorbike parts, went missing last April after being arrested at an FC checkpost, she says. His body turned up three months later, dumped in a public park on the edge of Quetta, badly tortured. "He had just two teeth in his mouth," she says in a voice crackling with pain. She turns to her father, a turbaned old man sitting beside her, and leans into his shoulder. He grimaces.
Suspected members of the Baloch Liberation Army are paraded by Pakistani police. Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty ImagesBibi says her family was probably targeted for its nationalist ties –Najibullah's older brother, now dead, had joined the "men in the mountains" years earlier, she says. Now a nephew, 28-year-old Maqbool, is missing. She prays for him, regularly calling the hospitals for any sign of him and, occasionally, the city morgues.
Over a week of interviews in Karachi and Quetta, I meet the relatives of seven dead men and nine "disappeared" – men presumed tohave been abducted by the security forces. One man produces a mobile phone picture of the body of his 22-year-old cousin, Mumtaz Ali Kurd, his eyes black with swelling and his shirt drenched in blood. A relative of Zaman Khan, one of three lawyers killed in the past nine months, produces court papers. A third trembles as he describes finding his brother's body in an
orchard near Quetta.
Patterns emerge. The victims were generally men between 20 and 40 years old – nationalist politicians, students, shopkeepers, labourers. In many cases they were abducted in broad daylight – dragged off buses, marched out of shops, detained at FC checkposts – by a combination of uniformed soldiers and plain-clothe intelligence men. Others just vanished. They re-emerge, dead, with an eerie tempo – approximately 15 bodies every month, although the average was disturbed
last Saturday when eight bodies were found in three locations across Balochistan.
Activists have little doubt who is behind the atrocities. Human Rights Watch says "indisputable" evidence points to the hand of the FC, the ISI and its sister
agency, Military Intelligence. A local group, Voice for Missing Persons, says the body count has surpassed 110. "This is becoming a state of terror," says its
chairman, Naseerullah Baloch.
The army denies the charges, saying its good name is being blemished by impersonators. "Militants are using FC uniforms to kidnap people and malign our
good name," says Major General Obaid Ullah Khan Niazi, commander of the 46,000 FC troops stationed in Balochistan. "Our job is to enforce the law, not to break
it."
Despairing relatives feel cornered. Abdul Rahim, a farmer wearing a jewelled skullcap, is rom Khuzdar, a hotbed of insurgent violence. He produces court papers detailing
the abduction of his son Saadullah in 2009. First he went to the courts but then his lawyer was shot dead. Then he went to the media but the local press club
president was killed. Now, Rahim says, "nobody will help in case they are targeted too. We are hopeless."
Balochistan has long been an edgy place. Its vast, empty deserts and long borders are a magnet for provocateurs of every stripe. Taliban fighters slip back and forth
along the 800-mile Afghan border; Iranian dissidents hide inside the 570-mile frontier with Iran. Drug criminals cross the border from Helmand, the world's largest source of heroin, on their way to Iran or lonely beaches on the Arabian Sea. Wealthy Arab sheikhs fly into remote airstrips on hunting expeditions for the houbara bustard, a bird they believe improves their lovemaking. At Shamsi, a secretive airbase in a remote valley in the centre of the province, CIA operatives launch drones that attack Islamists in the tribal belt.
The US spies appreciate the lack of neighbours – Balochistan covers 44% of Pakistan yet has half the population of Karachi. The province's other big draw is its natural wealth. At Reko Diq, 70 miles from the Afghan border, a Canadian-Chilean mining consortium has struck gold, big-time. The Tethyan company has discovered 4bn tonnes of mineable ore that will produce an estimated 200,000 tonnes of copper and 250,000 ounces of gold per year, making it one of the largest such mines in the world. The project is currently stalled by a tangle legal dispute, but offers a tantalising taste of Balochistan's vast mineral riches, which also includes oil, gas, platinum and coal. So far it is largely untapped, though, and what mining exists is scrappy and dangerous. On 21 March,50 coal workers perished in horrific circumstances when methane gas flooded their mine near Quetta, then catastrophically exploded.
Two conflicts are rocking the province. North of Quetta, in a belt of land adjoining the Afghan border, is the ethnic Pashtun belt. Here, Afghan Taliban insurgents shelter
in hardline madrasas and lawless refugee camps, taking rest in between bouts of battle with western soldiers in Afghanistan. It is home to the infamous "Quettshura", the Taliban war council, and western officials say the ISI is assisting them. Some locals agree. "It's an open secret," an elder from Kuchlak tells me. "The ISI gave a fleet of motorbikes to local elders, who distributed them to the fighters crossing the border. Nobody can stop
them."
The other conflict is unfolding south of Quetta, in a vast sweep that stretches from the Quetta suburbs to the Arabian Sea, in the ethnic Baloch and Brahui area,
whose people have always been reluctant Pakistanis. The first Baloch revolt erupted in 1948, barely six months after Pakistan was born; this is the fifth. The rebels are splintered into several factions, the largest of which is the Balochistan Liberation Army. They use classic guerrilla tactics –ambushing military convoys, bombing gas pipelines, occasionally lobbing rockets into Quetta city. Casualties are relatively low: 152 FC soldiers died between 2007 and 2010, according to official figures, compared with more than 8,000 soldiers and rebels in the 1970s conflagration.
But this insurgency seems to have spread deeper into Baloch society than ever before. Anti-Pakistani fervour has gripped the province. Baloch schoolchildren
refuse to sing the national anthem or fly its flag; women, traditionally secluded, have joined the struggle. Universities have become hotbeds ofnationalist sentiment. "This is not just the usual suspects," says Rashed Rahman, editor of the Daily Times, one of few papers that regularly covers the
conflict.
At a Quetta safehouse I meet Asad Baloch, a wiry, talkative 22-year-old activist with the Baloch Students' Organisation (Azad). "We provide moral and political support to the fighters," he says. "We are making people aware. When they are aware, they act." It is a risky business: about one-third of all "kill and dump" victims were members of the
BSO.
Baloch anger is rooted in poverty. Despite its vast natural wealth, Balochistan is desperately poor – barely 25% of the population is literate (the national
average is 47%), around 30% are unemployed and just 7% have access to tap water. And while Balochistan provides one-third of Pakistan's natural gas, only a
handful of towns are hooked up to the supply grid.
The insurgents are demanding immediate control of the natural resources and, ultimately, independence. "We are not part of Pakistan," says
Baloch.
Well-armed Baloch insurgents in the contested region south of the capital Quetta. Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP
His phone rings. News comes through that another two bodies have been discovered near the coast. One, Abdul Qayuum, was a BSO activist. Days later, videos posted
on YouTube show an angry crowd carrying his bloodied corpse into a mortuary. He had been shot in the head.
The FC commander, Maj Gen Niazi, wearing a sharp, dark suit and with neatly combed hair (he has just come from a conference) says he has little time for the rebel
demand. "The Baloch are being manipulated by their leaders," he says, noting that the scions of the main nationalist groups live in exile abroad Hyrbyai Marri in London; Brahamdagh Bugti in Geneva. "They are enjoying the life in Europe while their people suffer in the
mountains," he says with a sigh.
Worse again, he adds, they were supported by India. The Punjabi general offers no proof for his claim, but US and British intelligence broadly agree, according to
the recent WikiLeaks cables. India sees Balochistan as payback for Pakistani meddling in Kashmir – which explains why Pakistani generals despise the nationalists so much. "Paid killers," says Niazi. He vehemently denies involvement in human rights violations. "To us, each and every citizen of
Balochistan is equally dear," he says.
Civilian officials in the province, however, have another story. Last November, the provincial chief minister, Aslam Raisani, told the BBC that the security forces
were "definitely" guilty of some killings; earlier this month, the province's top lawyer, Salahuddin Mengal, told the supreme court the FC was "lifting people
at will". He resigned a week later.
However, gross human rights abuses are not limited to the army. As the conflict drags on, the insurgents have become increasingly brutal and ruthless. In the past two
years, militants have kidnapped aid workers, killed at least four journalists and, most disturbingly, started to target "settlers"– unarmed civilians, mostly from neighbouring Punjab, many of whom have lived in Balochistan for decades. Some 113 settlers were killed in cold blood last year, according to government figures – civil servants, shopkeepers, miners. On 21 March, militants riding motorbikes sprayed gunfire into a camp of construction workers near Gwadar, killing 11; the Baloch Liberation Front claimed responsibility. Most grotesque, perhaps, are the attacks on education: 22 school teachers, university lecturers and education officials have been assassinated since January 2008, causing another 200 to flee their jobs.
As attitudes harden, the middle ground is being swept away in tide of bloodshed.Our politicians have been silenced," says Habib Tahir, a human rights lawyer in
Quetta. "They are afraid of the young." I ask a student in Quetta to defend the killing of teachers. "They are not teachers, they work for the intelligence agencies," on student tells me. "They are like thieves coming into our homes. They must go."
The Islamabad government seems helpless to halt Balochistan's slide into chaos. Two years ago, President Asif Ali Zardari announced a sweeping package of measures intended to assuage Baloch grievances, including thousands of jobs, a ban on new military garrisons and payment of $1.4bn (£800m) in overdue natural gas
royalties. But violence has hijacked politics, the plan is largely untouched, and anaemic press coverage means there is little outside pressure for
action.
Pakistan's foreign allies, obsessed with hunting Islamists, have ignored the problem. "We are the most secular people in the region, and still we are being ignored," says
Noordin Mengal, who represents Balochistan on the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In this information vacuum, the powerful do as they please. Lawyer Kachkol Ali witnessed security forces drag three men from his office in April 2009. Their
bodies turned up five days later, dead and decomposed. After telling his story to the press, Ali was harassed by military intelligence, who warned him his life
was in danger. He fled the country. "In Pakistan, there is only rule of the jungle," he says by phone from Lørenskog, a small Norwegian town where he won
asylum last summer. "Our security agencies pick people up and treat them like war criminals," he says. "They don't even respect the
dead."
Balochistan's dirty little war pales beside Pakistan's larger problems –the Taliban, al-Qaida, political upheaval. But it highlights a very fundamental danger – the ability of
Pakistanis to live together in a country that, under its Islamic cloak, is a patchwork of ethnicities and cultures. "Balochistan is a warning of the real
battle for Pakistan, which is about power and resources," says Haris Gazdar, a Karachi-based researcher. "And if we don't get it right, we're headed for a
major conflict."
Before leaving Quetta I meet Faiza Mir, a 36-year-old lecturer in international relations at Quetta's Balochistan University. Militants have murdered four of
her colleagues in the past three years, all because they were "Punjabi". Driving on to the campus, she points out the spots where they were killed, knowing she
could be next."I can't leave," says Mir, a sparky woman with an irrepressible smile. "This is my home too." And so she engages in debate with students, sympathising with their concerns. "I try to make them understand that talk is better than war," she
says.
But some compromises are impossible. Earlier on, students had asked Mir to remove a portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's founding father, from her office wall. Mirpolitely refused, and Jinnah – an austere lawyer in a Savile Row suit - still stares down from her wall.
But how long will he stay there? "That's difficult to say," she answer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/29/balochistan-pakistans-secret-dirty-war
In Balochistan, mutilated corpses bearing the signs of torture keep turning up, among them lawyers, students and farm workers. Why no one
investigating is and what have they got to do with the bloody battle for Pakistan's largest province?
The bodies surface quietly, like corks bobbing up in the dark. They come in twos and threes, a few times a week, dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads,
bearing the scars of great cruelty. Arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are
singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognisable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the
head.
This gruesome parade of corpses has been surfacing in Balochistan,Pakistan's largest province, since last July. Several human rights groups, including
Amnesty International, have accounted for more than 100 bodies – lawyers, students, taxi drivers, farm workers. Most have been tortured. The last three
were discovered on Sunday.
If you have not heard of this epic killing spree, though, don't worry: neither have most Pakistanis. Newspaper reports from Balochistan are buried quietly on the
inside pages, cloaked in euphemisms or, quite often, not published at all.The forces of law and order also seem to be curiously indifferent to the plight of the dead men. Not a single person has been arrested or prosecuted; in fact, police investigators openly admit they are not even looking for anyone. The stunning lack of interest in Pakistan's greatest murder mystery in decade becomes more understandable, however, when it emerges that the prime suspect is
not some shady gang of sadistic serial killers, but the country's powerfulmilitary and its unaccountable intelligence men
This is Pakistan's dirty little war. While foreign attention is focused on theTaliban, a deadly secondary conflict is bubbling in Balochistan, a sprawling, mineral-rich province along the western borders withAfghanistan and Iran. On one side is a scrappy coalition of guerrillas fighting for independence from Pakistan; on the other is a powerful army that seeks to quash their nsurgency with maximum prejudice. The revolt, which has been rumbling for more than six years, is spiced by foreign interests and intrigues – US spy bases, Chinese business, vast underground reserves of copper, oil and gold.
And in recent months it has grown dramatically worse. At the airport in Quetta, the provincial capital, a brusque man in a cheap suit marches up to my taxi with a
rattle of questions. "Who is this? What's he doing here? Where is he staying?" he asks the driver, jerking a thumb towards me. Scribbling the answers, he waves
us on. "Intelligence," says the driver.
The city itself is tense, ringed by jagged, snow-dusted hills and crowded with military checkposts manned by the Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force in charge of security. Schools have recently raised their walls; sand-filled Hescobarricades, like the ones used in Kabul and Baghdad, surround the FC headquarters. In a restaurant the waiter apologises: tandoori meat is off the menu because the nationalists blew up the city's gas pipeline a day earlier.The gas company had plugged the hole that morning, he explains, but then the rebels blew it up again.
The home secretary, Akbar Hussain Durrani, a neatly suited, well-spoken man, sits in a dark and chilly office. Pens, staplers and telephones are neatly laid on the
wide desk before him, but his computer is blank. The rebels have blown up a main pylon, he explains, so the power is off. Still, he insists, things are fine. "The government agencies are operating in concert, everyone is acting in the best public interest," he says. "This is just a . . . political problem." As we speak, a smiling young man walks in and starts to take my photo; I later learn he works for the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.
We cut across the city, twisting through the backstreets, my guide glancing nervously out the rear window. The car halts before a tall gate that snaps shut behind us. Inside, a 55-year-old woman named Lal Bibi is waiting, wrapped in a shawl that betrays only her eyes, trembling as she holds forth a picture of her dead son Najibullah. The 20-year-old, who ran a shop selling motorbike parts, went missing last April after being arrested at an FC checkpost, she says. His body turned up three months later, dumped in a public park on the edge of Quetta, badly tortured. "He had just two teeth in his mouth," she says in a voice crackling with pain. She turns to her father, a turbaned old man sitting beside her, and leans into his shoulder. He grimaces.
Suspected members of the Baloch Liberation Army are paraded by Pakistani police. Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty ImagesBibi says her family was probably targeted for its nationalist ties –Najibullah's older brother, now dead, had joined the "men in the mountains" years earlier, she says. Now a nephew, 28-year-old Maqbool, is missing. She prays for him, regularly calling the hospitals for any sign of him and, occasionally, the city morgues.
Over a week of interviews in Karachi and Quetta, I meet the relatives of seven dead men and nine "disappeared" – men presumed tohave been abducted by the security forces. One man produces a mobile phone picture of the body of his 22-year-old cousin, Mumtaz Ali Kurd, his eyes black with swelling and his shirt drenched in blood. A relative of Zaman Khan, one of three lawyers killed in the past nine months, produces court papers. A third trembles as he describes finding his brother's body in an
orchard near Quetta.
Patterns emerge. The victims were generally men between 20 and 40 years old – nationalist politicians, students, shopkeepers, labourers. In many cases they were abducted in broad daylight – dragged off buses, marched out of shops, detained at FC checkposts – by a combination of uniformed soldiers and plain-clothe intelligence men. Others just vanished. They re-emerge, dead, with an eerie tempo – approximately 15 bodies every month, although the average was disturbed
last Saturday when eight bodies were found in three locations across Balochistan.
Activists have little doubt who is behind the atrocities. Human Rights Watch says "indisputable" evidence points to the hand of the FC, the ISI and its sister
agency, Military Intelligence. A local group, Voice for Missing Persons, says the body count has surpassed 110. "This is becoming a state of terror," says its
chairman, Naseerullah Baloch.
The army denies the charges, saying its good name is being blemished by impersonators. "Militants are using FC uniforms to kidnap people and malign our
good name," says Major General Obaid Ullah Khan Niazi, commander of the 46,000 FC troops stationed in Balochistan. "Our job is to enforce the law, not to break
it."
Despairing relatives feel cornered. Abdul Rahim, a farmer wearing a jewelled skullcap, is rom Khuzdar, a hotbed of insurgent violence. He produces court papers detailing
the abduction of his son Saadullah in 2009. First he went to the courts but then his lawyer was shot dead. Then he went to the media but the local press club
president was killed. Now, Rahim says, "nobody will help in case they are targeted too. We are hopeless."
Balochistan has long been an edgy place. Its vast, empty deserts and long borders are a magnet for provocateurs of every stripe. Taliban fighters slip back and forth
along the 800-mile Afghan border; Iranian dissidents hide inside the 570-mile frontier with Iran. Drug criminals cross the border from Helmand, the world's largest source of heroin, on their way to Iran or lonely beaches on the Arabian Sea. Wealthy Arab sheikhs fly into remote airstrips on hunting expeditions for the houbara bustard, a bird they believe improves their lovemaking. At Shamsi, a secretive airbase in a remote valley in the centre of the province, CIA operatives launch drones that attack Islamists in the tribal belt.
The US spies appreciate the lack of neighbours – Balochistan covers 44% of Pakistan yet has half the population of Karachi. The province's other big draw is its natural wealth. At Reko Diq, 70 miles from the Afghan border, a Canadian-Chilean mining consortium has struck gold, big-time. The Tethyan company has discovered 4bn tonnes of mineable ore that will produce an estimated 200,000 tonnes of copper and 250,000 ounces of gold per year, making it one of the largest such mines in the world. The project is currently stalled by a tangle legal dispute, but offers a tantalising taste of Balochistan's vast mineral riches, which also includes oil, gas, platinum and coal. So far it is largely untapped, though, and what mining exists is scrappy and dangerous. On 21 March,50 coal workers perished in horrific circumstances when methane gas flooded their mine near Quetta, then catastrophically exploded.
Two conflicts are rocking the province. North of Quetta, in a belt of land adjoining the Afghan border, is the ethnic Pashtun belt. Here, Afghan Taliban insurgents shelter
in hardline madrasas and lawless refugee camps, taking rest in between bouts of battle with western soldiers in Afghanistan. It is home to the infamous "Quettshura", the Taliban war council, and western officials say the ISI is assisting them. Some locals agree. "It's an open secret," an elder from Kuchlak tells me. "The ISI gave a fleet of motorbikes to local elders, who distributed them to the fighters crossing the border. Nobody can stop
them."
The other conflict is unfolding south of Quetta, in a vast sweep that stretches from the Quetta suburbs to the Arabian Sea, in the ethnic Baloch and Brahui area,
whose people have always been reluctant Pakistanis. The first Baloch revolt erupted in 1948, barely six months after Pakistan was born; this is the fifth. The rebels are splintered into several factions, the largest of which is the Balochistan Liberation Army. They use classic guerrilla tactics –ambushing military convoys, bombing gas pipelines, occasionally lobbing rockets into Quetta city. Casualties are relatively low: 152 FC soldiers died between 2007 and 2010, according to official figures, compared with more than 8,000 soldiers and rebels in the 1970s conflagration.
But this insurgency seems to have spread deeper into Baloch society than ever before. Anti-Pakistani fervour has gripped the province. Baloch schoolchildren
refuse to sing the national anthem or fly its flag; women, traditionally secluded, have joined the struggle. Universities have become hotbeds ofnationalist sentiment. "This is not just the usual suspects," says Rashed Rahman, editor of the Daily Times, one of few papers that regularly covers the
conflict.
At a Quetta safehouse I meet Asad Baloch, a wiry, talkative 22-year-old activist with the Baloch Students' Organisation (Azad). "We provide moral and political support to the fighters," he says. "We are making people aware. When they are aware, they act." It is a risky business: about one-third of all "kill and dump" victims were members of the
BSO.
Baloch anger is rooted in poverty. Despite its vast natural wealth, Balochistan is desperately poor – barely 25% of the population is literate (the national
average is 47%), around 30% are unemployed and just 7% have access to tap water. And while Balochistan provides one-third of Pakistan's natural gas, only a
handful of towns are hooked up to the supply grid.
The insurgents are demanding immediate control of the natural resources and, ultimately, independence. "We are not part of Pakistan," says
Baloch.
Well-armed Baloch insurgents in the contested region south of the capital Quetta. Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP
His phone rings. News comes through that another two bodies have been discovered near the coast. One, Abdul Qayuum, was a BSO activist. Days later, videos posted
on YouTube show an angry crowd carrying his bloodied corpse into a mortuary. He had been shot in the head.
The FC commander, Maj Gen Niazi, wearing a sharp, dark suit and with neatly combed hair (he has just come from a conference) says he has little time for the rebel
demand. "The Baloch are being manipulated by their leaders," he says, noting that the scions of the main nationalist groups live in exile abroad Hyrbyai Marri in London; Brahamdagh Bugti in Geneva. "They are enjoying the life in Europe while their people suffer in the
mountains," he says with a sigh.
Worse again, he adds, they were supported by India. The Punjabi general offers no proof for his claim, but US and British intelligence broadly agree, according to
the recent WikiLeaks cables. India sees Balochistan as payback for Pakistani meddling in Kashmir – which explains why Pakistani generals despise the nationalists so much. "Paid killers," says Niazi. He vehemently denies involvement in human rights violations. "To us, each and every citizen of
Balochistan is equally dear," he says.
Civilian officials in the province, however, have another story. Last November, the provincial chief minister, Aslam Raisani, told the BBC that the security forces
were "definitely" guilty of some killings; earlier this month, the province's top lawyer, Salahuddin Mengal, told the supreme court the FC was "lifting people
at will". He resigned a week later.
However, gross human rights abuses are not limited to the army. As the conflict drags on, the insurgents have become increasingly brutal and ruthless. In the past two
years, militants have kidnapped aid workers, killed at least four journalists and, most disturbingly, started to target "settlers"– unarmed civilians, mostly from neighbouring Punjab, many of whom have lived in Balochistan for decades. Some 113 settlers were killed in cold blood last year, according to government figures – civil servants, shopkeepers, miners. On 21 March, militants riding motorbikes sprayed gunfire into a camp of construction workers near Gwadar, killing 11; the Baloch Liberation Front claimed responsibility. Most grotesque, perhaps, are the attacks on education: 22 school teachers, university lecturers and education officials have been assassinated since January 2008, causing another 200 to flee their jobs.
As attitudes harden, the middle ground is being swept away in tide of bloodshed.Our politicians have been silenced," says Habib Tahir, a human rights lawyer in
Quetta. "They are afraid of the young." I ask a student in Quetta to defend the killing of teachers. "They are not teachers, they work for the intelligence agencies," on student tells me. "They are like thieves coming into our homes. They must go."
The Islamabad government seems helpless to halt Balochistan's slide into chaos. Two years ago, President Asif Ali Zardari announced a sweeping package of measures intended to assuage Baloch grievances, including thousands of jobs, a ban on new military garrisons and payment of $1.4bn (£800m) in overdue natural gas
royalties. But violence has hijacked politics, the plan is largely untouched, and anaemic press coverage means there is little outside pressure for
action.
Pakistan's foreign allies, obsessed with hunting Islamists, have ignored the problem. "We are the most secular people in the region, and still we are being ignored," says
Noordin Mengal, who represents Balochistan on the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In this information vacuum, the powerful do as they please. Lawyer Kachkol Ali witnessed security forces drag three men from his office in April 2009. Their
bodies turned up five days later, dead and decomposed. After telling his story to the press, Ali was harassed by military intelligence, who warned him his life
was in danger. He fled the country. "In Pakistan, there is only rule of the jungle," he says by phone from Lørenskog, a small Norwegian town where he won
asylum last summer. "Our security agencies pick people up and treat them like war criminals," he says. "They don't even respect the
dead."
Balochistan's dirty little war pales beside Pakistan's larger problems –the Taliban, al-Qaida, political upheaval. But it highlights a very fundamental danger – the ability of
Pakistanis to live together in a country that, under its Islamic cloak, is a patchwork of ethnicities and cultures. "Balochistan is a warning of the real
battle for Pakistan, which is about power and resources," says Haris Gazdar, a Karachi-based researcher. "And if we don't get it right, we're headed for a
major conflict."
Before leaving Quetta I meet Faiza Mir, a 36-year-old lecturer in international relations at Quetta's Balochistan University. Militants have murdered four of
her colleagues in the past three years, all because they were "Punjabi". Driving on to the campus, she points out the spots where they were killed, knowing she
could be next."I can't leave," says Mir, a sparky woman with an irrepressible smile. "This is my home too." And so she engages in debate with students, sympathising with their concerns. "I try to make them understand that talk is better than war," she
says.
But some compromises are impossible. Earlier on, students had asked Mir to remove a portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's founding father, from her office wall. Mirpolitely refused, and Jinnah – an austere lawyer in a Savile Row suit - still stares down from her wall.
But how long will he stay there? "That's difficult to say," she answer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/29/balochistan-pakistans-secret-dirty-war
Echo of Baloch Question in Kabul
By Liaqat Negeban - Translated by Rakshaani Baloch from Urdu
How profoundly once Shaheed Mir Balach said: “Slavery is a state of sleep and forgetfulness, the complete opposite of wakefulness and freedom”, such enlightening words carry enormous hidden wisdom which comes to light by each passing day of Baloch defensive war of liberation. However, in this state of slavery when the realization of its dark impacts wakes a Baloch, then certainly he will search for happy and brighter days. Eastern Balochistan is completely out of such a state, they have woken, and those who are still sleeping, the thunder of guns have made them sleepless. They yawn and wake up with these words: “What is going on?” The Baloch defensive struggle for liberation has impacted Western Balochistan (Iranian Occupied Balochistan) long before. Fortunately now the pleasant influence of liberation has also started to appear in Northern Balochistan (Baloch land under Afghanistan’s control), which is admirable from all aspects.
The Baloch diaspora has been engaged in serious discussions since long time to highlight the Baloch genocide in Pakistan occupied Balochistan. They have come to the conclusion that Baloch should raise their voice in a very effective way because “if we (Baloch) are unable to highlight the atrocities and human rights violations, then there is no one else to raise our Nation’s plight.” The Baloch are also very well aware of the fact that if they (God forbid) lose the struggle this time, then no in world will support them to raise their heads again. Therefore, they believe whatever has to be done this is the right time – and the last chance.
Such great ideas were first time openly stated by Waja Abdul Sattar Pordali and Mir Khoda Nazar Sarmachaar during an Afghan TV talks show in March this year. The prominent Baloch leaders have made it crystal clear that Baloch land under Afghanistan’s control is historically part of united Balochistan and the British divided Balochistan in three parts against the will of Baloch Nation. The Durand and the Gold Smith line not only divided Balochistan in three parts but these artificial lines also separated many regions of Afghanistan against the will of Afghan people. The time has come for the world to redraw and fix these artificial and unnatural divisions of the land because both Baloch and Afghans have suffered enormously due to illegal lines which divided their sovereign states.
How profoundly once Shaheed Mir Balach said: “Slavery is a state of sleep and forgetfulness, the complete opposite of wakefulness and freedom”, such enlightening words carry enormous hidden wisdom which comes to light by each passing day of Baloch defensive war of liberation. However, in this state of slavery when the realization of its dark impacts wakes a Baloch, then certainly he will search for happy and brighter days. Eastern Balochistan is completely out of such a state, they have woken, and those who are still sleeping, the thunder of guns have made them sleepless. They yawn and wake up with these words: “What is going on?” The Baloch defensive struggle for liberation has impacted Western Balochistan (Iranian Occupied Balochistan) long before. Fortunately now the pleasant influence of liberation has also started to appear in Northern Balochistan (Baloch land under Afghanistan’s control), which is admirable from all aspects.
The Baloch diaspora has been engaged in serious discussions since long time to highlight the Baloch genocide in Pakistan occupied Balochistan. They have come to the conclusion that Baloch should raise their voice in a very effective way because “if we (Baloch) are unable to highlight the atrocities and human rights violations, then there is no one else to raise our Nation’s plight.” The Baloch are also very well aware of the fact that if they (God forbid) lose the struggle this time, then no in world will support them to raise their heads again. Therefore, they believe whatever has to be done this is the right time – and the last chance.
Such great ideas were first time openly stated by Waja Abdul Sattar Pordali and Mir Khoda Nazar Sarmachaar during an Afghan TV talks show in March this year. The prominent Baloch leaders have made it crystal clear that Baloch land under Afghanistan’s control is historically part of united Balochistan and the British divided Balochistan in three parts against the will of Baloch Nation. The Durand and the Gold Smith line not only divided Balochistan in three parts but these artificial lines also separated many regions of Afghanistan against the will of Afghan people. The time has come for the world to redraw and fix these artificial and unnatural divisions of the land because both Baloch and Afghans have suffered enormously due to illegal lines which divided their sovereign states.
After the historical TV show the 8 July 2012 seminar in Kabul is a milestone and clear proves of Baloch liberation struggle’s gaining momentum. Waja Abdul Sattar Pordali, Sulaiman Laiq a respected academic, Madam Naila Qaderi, Abdul Rasheed Wazeeri adviser regional Studies Centre, Ahmed Saeedi an ex-Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan and Mohammad Yaseen Habib a representative of Daily Balochi all of them have made presentations. All speakers particularly highlighted the five points below in their speeches.
1. Baloch nation has been divided by unnatural means. Historically, it is unjust.
2. Baloch struggle is a genuine national liberation movement and it should not be mixed with derogatory terms like “separatist struggle”.
3. Without resolving the Baloch national problem, there will be no peace in the region.
4. Pakistan as a state is supporting terrorists.
5. Pakistan’s secret agencies (ISI) are not only involved in genocide of Baloch nation but they are also supporting the Taliban to destroy peace in Afghanistan.
The speeches of Ms Naila and Waja Abdul Sattar Pordili and the resolution which was passed in the light of their speeches are of great importance. Naila Qadri has stated that understanding the Baloch national problem is very easy because Baloch consider their homeland as an occupied territory and Pakistan as the occupying state. She further said, before Pakistan occupied Baloch land it had its longstanding historical identity and sovereign status.
Baloch are struggling to regain their independence which was forcefully occupied. She also said Baloch have continuously been struggling against the British invaders and when the British left Pakistan occupied Balochistan at gunpoint. The Baloch struggle for national liberation is at full swing and continues till this day.
Waja Abdul Sattar Pordili in his historical speech said, “Every free human being wishes to live in a world free of difficulties, pain and hurdle of artificial borders. Europe has been successful in this where we can see one Swedish can freely travel entire Europe without any visa and faces no problems while travelling from East to West. Here the legitimate question arises why a Baloch [having his own environment, language, custom, history and tradition] who wishes to travel Eastern Balochistan to Western Balochistan needs to ask permission from a stranger Punjabi while he travels on his own land?”
British colonial powers, for their own self-interest divided the Baloch homeland in three pieces: East, West and North. Baloch nation from day one not only disapproved such British unjust decisions but they have been struggling against it. Baloch nation has given countless sacrifices to live free like other free nations and would like to prosper in their united Balochistan.
In 1992, the Pakistani Magazine called “Takbeer”, in an article has given the reference of one American general who has published a map. According to that map, it was predicted that in 2020 there will be large scale of changes in the region. That map had indicated the united Balochistan will be formed, which will include all three divided portions of Baloch land i.e. Iranian occupied Balochistan, Pakistan Occupied Balochistan and Northern Balochistan which currently under Afghanistan’s control. Baloch Nation has been struggling for a long time for such a united Balochistan and they have been sacrificing their precious lives for this purpose.
Evidently, the United Balochistan will be a secular state which is blessed with the God given wealth and resources, with plenty of people power, with enormous natural resources, with agriculture and livestock it has potential for airbases and solar energy. Having all these natural resources and strategic location, we are confident to say that after independence of Balochistan, it will be a self sufficient state. Later on, it will even be in a position and capable of helping its neighbors and contribute to world economy.
According to one report, Pakistan has 25 trillion natural gas resources from which 19 trillion natural gas are inside Balochistan, similarly 4 trillion of barrel oil resources are on land and in the sea of Baloch homeland.
Balochistan from its strategic point has always been one of the most important lands and locations. In the light of above facts, it is time for those who divided Balochistan in the past for their own interest, they should help Baloch Nation and they should fulfill their duty to reunite Balochistan which they have dived. A free and united Balochistan is not only the wish of Baloch nation but it is also in their interest too. The independent Balochistan will benefit the United States of America and the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.
How can an Independent Balochistan be beneficial for the United States of America and the International Community?
1- The United States of America can easily send logistic support to its army in Afghanistan. It can get have easy access to its Air bases in Arab countries from Balochistan with the consent and mutual understanding of Baloch Nation.
2- United States of America can reach to an agreement with the Baloch Nation and set up its naval bases in Konarak, Chahbahar and Gwader and through Gwader port it will be able to force stop Chinese influence in the region. Baloch nation has no agreement with China.
3- The central Asian states which don’t have access to Sea and are at complete mercy of Russia. The U.S could make agreements with them and offer transit facilities via Balochistan and help them get rid of Russian dependency.
4- United States with Baloch consent and mutual agreement could benefit from Balochistan’s natural resources.
5- In 1997, the vice president of the United States in a formal national security meeting said: “America needs to pay special attention to Caspian Sea and this task is only possible when a free united Balochistan comes into existence.” This will help America to succeed in one of its big missions which to prevent China’s desire to have control over Indian Ocean.
6- The establishment of secular Baloch will on one hand help the United States of America save it from future black mailing of Pakistan. On the other hand it (US) can have mutual agreements based on mutual interest to have access to the Ocean of Makuran and Balochistan’s sea routes - international trade routes from Hub (Kulaanchi) which starts 8Km distance from Karachi and goes all the way to Gumbaran (Bander Abbas). This also included Gawadar and Chahbahar ports with the Baloch Nation’s agreement and keeping in view the Baloch National interest US can benefit from entire Coastal belt of Balochistan.
The seminar had also passed the following six point resolution:
1- Pakistan should immediately stop the genocide of Baloch and stop ongoing human rights violations in Balochistan.
2- We appeal to the United Nations, European Union and the United States of America to take notice of Pakistani state’s terrorism in Balochistan and use their influence and act practically to end state atrocities against Baloch people.
3- We appeal to the United Nations, European Union, and United States of America to declare Pakistan ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) as terrorist organization and put it on blacklist.
4- 18,000 involuntarily disappeared Baloch they include the men, women and children must be immediately released.
5- Border restrictions in Baloch populated areas should be abolished and Baloch should be allowed to travel freely on their own land.
6- United Nations should make sure to immediately help the Baloch people.
This article was first published in DailyTawar, a Balochistan based Urdu language Newspapers. We are thankful to Rakhshaani Baloch for translating and sharing this article with us.
http://balochwarna.com/features/articles.27/Echo-of-Baloch-Question-in-Kabul.html