Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [205]
Senator Mushahid Husain Syed, who led a parliamentary delegation which negotiated with Bugti on behalf of the Musharraf administration, told me that the administration and high command were divided between those who wished to go on negotiating with Bugti, and hardliners who had become exasperated with what they regarded as his blackmail and who were determined to crush armed rebellion by force. In the senator’s view, however, Bugti was not out for personal gain, but to defend his honour and his leadership of his tribe, which he regarded as threatened by the increasing military presence in his area; and to receive guaranteed jobs for Bugtis in the gas fields.
Two incidents pushed matters from skirmishing between the Bugtis and the military into full-scale revolt: in January 2005 a woman doctor in the military base in Bugti’s area was raped. The military immediately alleged that a Bugti tribesman was responsible. Bugti took this as a personal insult and broke off talks with the government. As with Bugti’s death, the actual facts of the case have been completely obscured by misinformation on all sides. The second critical incident came in December 2005, when Musharraf visited Kohlu in Balochistan (the first Pakistani leader to visit the region in many years), and rockets were fired at his helicopter. No one knows which Baloch group was responsible, but this attack in turn gave hardliners in the Pakistani military the chance to argue to Musharraf that no further concessions should be made to Bugti.
Fighting in the Bugti areas escalated, and on 26 August 2006 Bugti was killed, or died, along with three Pakistani officers when an explosion destroyed the cave where he had taken refuge. It is a mark of just how disastrous this was that every Pakistani officer with whom I have spoken has sought to absolve the army of responsibility. However, since they have come up with several different and incompatible accounts of what actually happened, it is difficult to attach too much credence to what they say.
What is certain is that senior Pakistani officials – including most probably Musharraf himself – had developed a deep personal contempt and loathing for Bugti. This is in part a matter of class and culture, and of a very different set of attitudes to the authority of the state. Representing both the Pakistani state and what they see as modernity, Pakistani generals were infuriated by Bugti’s mixture of aristocratic contempt for them, democratic posing, economic blackmail and authoritarian and retrograde rule over his own tribe.
The result of Bugti’s death was a surge of support for his even more radical grandson (and, in the view of the Pakistani military, evil genius) Baramdagh Bugti, who is now leading one wing of the Baloch insurgency from bases in Afghanistan. According to both Pakistani and Western intelligence sources, this is with the covert support of Indian intelligence. The resulting fighting in Balochistan has caused almost 1,000 deaths among militants, Pakistani soldiers and police, and local Punjabi and other ‘settlers’. Between 600 and 2,500 suspected militants were arrested and held without charge by the Pakistani intelligence services (the figures differ wildly depending on whom you listen to), and, while most were eventually released again, some have disappeared for good. Many of the militants supposedly killed in battles with the Frontier Corps have also undoubtedly been subjected to extra-judicial execution.
When it comes to the Bugtis themselves, the Pakistani military has done a pretty effective job of divide and rule – just as previously in the case of the Marris, who are