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If you
can’t find Balochistan on a map, you’re not alone.
Here are
some clues: It’s next to Iran and Afghanistan. It’s
the biggest province in Pakistan, the one where the
most of the oil and gas rigs are. Lots of Chinese can
be found there, because they are building an enormous
commercial and military port in Gwadar, at the mouth
of the Persian Gulf. There are two military bases from
which US forces fight the war on terrorism.
Don’t plan a trip to Balochistan any time soon,
though. It’s recently come under fire from troops,
helicopter gunships and fighter bombers – sent by the
West’s favourite military ruler, Gen Pervez Musharraf.
Balochistan, which has a literacy rate of 25 percent
(3 percent for women), has never been integrated into
Pakistan. Neither Balochistan’s rough tribal leaders
nor the Punjabi-dominated elites of Pakistan have been
able to rise beyond an uneasy colonial relationship.
The current Baloch insurgency is the fourth in 67
years.
Since
9/11, the US government has downplayed the importance
of democratic reform in Pakistan, and Balochistan
shows why this is a dangerous mistake. Repression by
the military-dominated central government will only
exacerbate Pakistan’s instability and economic
problems. The two US bases in Balochistan – and
cooperation needed in combating terrorism in
Afghanistan – could be compromised. Chaos in
Balochistan could also aggravate competitive Sino-US
relations in the region.
The
Baloch have three main grievances that all reflect a
general sense of being exploited as a colony by
Punjab, the most powerful and populated province of
Pakistan.
They
demand a fairer share of royalties generated by the
production of natural gas in their province. The
federal government pays a much lower price for each
unit of gas produced in Balochistan than it does for
gas produced in other provinces. Moreover, Balochistan
receives no more that 12.4 percent of the royalties
generated for supplying gas.
The
people of Balochistan want to be included, rather than
marginalized, in the huge development projects the
central government has brought to the coast,
particularly the Gwadar port. There is no technical
school or college in the area to train locals for
future participation in the development projects.
Those employed so far have been only daily wage
labourers.
They
also reject the Punjabi-dominated army’s establishment
of new military cantonments in their province, and the
selling at nominal prices by the central government of
choice coastal property to out-of-province developers.
In
other words, the Baloch want Balochistan for Balochis,
not for others.
The
government replies that Balochistan’s resources are
national property and has made only nominal
concessions. The conflict, it says, is the fault of a
few greedy obscurantist tribal leaders opposed to the
development of the province.
This
argument resembles that which the Punjabi-dominated
central government made in the early 1970s towards
East Pakistan before massive violence and war with
India erupted, leading to the creation of Bangladesh.
Similarly the Musharraf regime has responded with
military force, air strikes, and – according to some
reports – the use of napalm.
The
military rulers are more fearful of the situation than
they admit, and have tried to conceal the real nature
of the conflict in different ways. Balochistan is an
anti-clerical province whose tribes have nothing to do
with the sort of Islamism of the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Yet the Pakistani government has tried to tar the
Baloch with the Islamist brush, in part to keep the
international community from paying more attention to
the real problems in the province.
The
central government in Islamabad also has sought to
blame the unrest on ‘foreign hands’, with the main
culprits being India, Iran and the US, depending on
who the audience is. Lately, the government says
‘criminal elements’ lay behind the insurgency.
The
truth is that the development level is abysmal
throughout the province. Many of the Balochis’ claims
could have been satisfied without jeopardizing the
country’s territorial integrity. The leaders of the
Baloch nationalist movement have made it known that
they would be satisfied with a generous version of
autonomy. Instead, the conflict is now spreading.
Reconciling conflicting interests and seeking fair
allocations of the costs and benefits of development
is what governments are supposed to do. And history
suggests that democratic governments, for all their
drawbacks, tend to produce fairer allocations that
dictatorships do.
By
contrast, the manipulation of the 2002 elections,
which gave the provincial government to a coalition of
conservatives and Islamists, deprived the Baloch
nationalists of any say in the allocation of
resources.
Balochistan is yet another example of the risks of
postponing democratization in Pakistan. The outcome
could be a major civil war, whose consequences on
regional stability and the war against terrorism are
likely to be unpredictable – and anything but
positive. |
