Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [204]
THE BALOCH INSURGENCY AFTER 2000
Initially, this also seemed to be the case with the recent round of violent unrest which began after General Musharraf took power in 1999. Baloch fears were aroused by what may have been basically well-intentioned projects on the part of the Musharraf administration for the construction of the new deep-water port at Gwadar in south-western Balochistan near the Iranian border, and for the construction of new military cantonments in the province. These were intended to increase ethnic Baloch recruitment into the armed forces and spread employment in their neighbourhoods. Things were made worse by the high-handed way in which local land was bought for these projects and distributed to workers and officials from elsewhere in Pakistan.
Lack of consultation and intelligence meant that the administration was unaware of the risk that many Baloch would see these projects as increasing Punjabi immigration into Balochistan and threatening them with new ‘swamping’. Islamabad seems to have been unsympathetic to Baloch demands that many of the jobs in these projects be reserved in advance for ethnic Baloch.
The result was a growth in armed protest – which was initially limited to some of the Marri tribe, and was led by a younger member of its Sardari family, Balach Marri. He later based himself in Afghanistan, where he was killed in obscure circumstances, probably by Pakistani intelligence, possibly by a misdirected US air strike, or – a remoter possibility – by an accurately directed US strike at Pakistan’s request.
The insurgency took on a more serious aspect when it spread to parts of the Bugti tribe, led by their Sardar, Nawab Akbar Bugti. Nawab Bugti was not an inveterate enemy of Pakistan. On the contrary, he pursued throughout his life an opportunist course. After spending many years in gaol under Ayub Khan, in 1973 he sided with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in dismissing the moderate nationalist government of Balochistan – thereby sparking the Baloch rebellion of that year – and was rewarded with the post of governor, which he held for a year before falling out with Bhutto. In 1989 – 90 he was chief minister. Bugti therefore demonstrates not implacable nationalist separatism, but rather the old tribal tradition of alternating between rebellion and participation in government, depending on circumstances. The old Italian principle that ‘he who draws sword against his king should throw away the scabbard’ has never applied in Balochistan, at least as the tribes see things.
Much of the Pakistani army, however, does not see rebellion simply as another form of legitimate political pressure, and this has led to what one might call fatal misunderstandings. They certainly proved fatal in the case of Nawab Bugti. The details of Bugti’s rebellion after 2005 have been obscured by rival propaganda and myth-making, but the two main versions are as follows. According to Baloch nationalists, Bugti launched increasingly strong protests against the Musharraf administration’s policies and in favour of a greatly increased share of revenues from Sui Gas for Balochistan. When these were rejected, he eventually took to the hills with his armed followers, where he was killed by the military in August 2006.
Alternatively, according to officials of Sui Gas, officers of the Pakistan army and rival Baloch politicians, Bugti was interested only in increased money and favours for his immediate family, and opposed a new military cantonment in Sui because it would threaten his control of the Bugti tribe. He ordered his men to start