Pakistan?s stalling tactics on taking strong anti-terrorism measures demanded by India are by now familiar. For example, the reluctance to appeal in the Supreme Court against the Lahore High Court?s order to release Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, chief of Jamaatud Dawa and one of the prime accused in the 26/11 terror attacks. Note that a day before the Punjab government sought to withdraw the appeal on July 14, the advocate-general of the province had told the court that there was ?confidential evidence? against Hafiz Saeed. Later, Inter-Services Intelligence sources told the US media on July 17 that ?there would be no effort to imprison Saeed again, in part because he was just an ideologue who did not have an anti-Pakistan agenda?.
Yet, what?s more remarkable is the country?s creativity in portraying the festering civil war in Balochistan as being sponsored by India. The military-intelligence establishment in Pakistan sees a great propaganda coup in an esoteric sentence in the India-Pakistan joint statement issued in Sharm el-Shaikh on July 16. It read: ?Pakistan has some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas.?
Three weeks ago, Pakistani media reported that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has handed over to his counterpart Manmohan Singh comprehensive evidence of Indian involvement in a number of terrorist acts on its soil during their meeting at Sharm el-Sheikh. ?A substantial part of the shared material deals with the Balochistan insurgency and Indian linkages with the insurgents,? Dawn reported on July 22. India has denied receiving any such dossier. Interior Minister Rehman Malik repeated the allegations on July 24, telling parliament that Indian intelligence agencies were running training camps in Afghanistan to foment unrest in Balochistan. By now, the Pakistani authorities level, with gay abandon, the charge that India is ?messing around in Balochistan?.
So, that?s Pakistan plan: get the composite dialogue moving again by applying the long-term calculus of another ?core issue??terrorism in Balochistan fuelled by India. Depending on your cynicism, it sounds like eating your cake and having it, or resorting to chop logic after losing an argument. Either way, Pakistan?s knockoff dossier stands on a shaky ground.
By appearing to give a clear concession in Sharm el-Shaikh, has India been diplomatically outwitted by Pakistan? Probably not. Faithfuls of Baloch nationalism, who are legion, are determined to keep the insurgency alive, no matter what. Balochistan is also an issue in which the Pakistani state has never picked up a civilised nation?s knack for winning hearts and minds of its own people. Balochistan?not only the biggest province comprising 44% of Pakistan?s landmass and richest in natural resources, but also the most economically backward?was never a natural component of the nation. In 1948, when the nominal ruler of Balochistan, the Khan of Kalat, showed diffidence over signing the Balochistan accession document with Pakistan, the Federal government in Islamabad gave diplomacy a short shrift; rather, it sent air force planes to strafe his palace and make him submit. This accession never enjoyed popular approval, and nationalist sentiments refused to die.
Now, the conflict stems from the sense of alienation produced by decades of neglect, exploitation, and a vicious military campaign conducted by the state security forces, frequently using helicopter gunships and F-16s. Months before he was killed in action in August 2006, politician-turned-resistance symbol Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, in an interview to The New York Times, prophetically said: ?The dispute is about the national rights of the Baloch and if the government accepted these rights then there would be no dispute? I don?t see it [the insurgency] ending.?
It?s certain that the Baloch people won?t tire of rebelling against the ruling elites in Islamabad that keep on building military bases in Gwadar, Dera Bugti and Kohlu as firewalls of repression. The state-owned Pakistan Petroleum Ltd?which owns the massive Sui gasfields?pays a pittance as royalty to the province; the deepwater port town of Gwadar is in the clutches of a Punjabi landgrab mafia (respected Pakistani newsmagazine, The Herald, in its June 2008 cover issue called Gwadar ?one of the biggest land scams in Pakistan?s history?). Numerous parliamentary panels and even a public apology by President Asif Zardari last year later, devolution of power remains on paper..
However, it?s the human rights abuses perpetrated by the security forces that provide a new spark for revolt across Balochistan every time. A new wave of the conflict was unleashed in April this year when three prominent leaders of nationalist political parties were abducted in Turbat and later murdered by the intelligence agencies. The Balochistan Liberation Army, which spearheads the insurgency, has ratcheted up the conflict, too; its attacks on gas pipelines and roadside bombings are indeed a red-rag for the security forces. Yet, the problem is it?s the military-intelligence establishment, and not the civilian government, that conceives and orchestrates the Balochistan operations; and it is bereft of any strategy other than that of brute force, extrajudicial killings, secret detention centres and torture.
?It is not the 1970s and we will not climb mountains behind them, they will even not know what and from where something has come and hit them,? President Gen Pervez Musharraf said famously in January 2005, referring to the fifth and latest phase of the Baloch insurgency. You may excuse the military dictator?s commando-style mindset, but wielding the sledgehammer to beat legitimate regional alienation has always been the preferred option of successive governments in Islamabad. Ironically, they have found it expedient to negotiate with the Taliban barbarians to sign ?peace deals? that were little more than appeasements.
Pakistan wielded the big hammer against what was once its eastern wing, but that ended in defeat and humiliation. It then used the big hammer against Balochistan in the 1970s, but the problem did not go away. Yet again, the Punjab-dominated army-intelligence establishment is pushing the province around with a sledgehammer solution. Civil strife in Balochistan, in fact, turns on the behaviour of the Pakistani state itself: its use of overwhelming force and refusal to do anything substantial to bring Baloch nationalists on board and redress their genuine grievances. If there is a core issue here, it is the rampant human rights violations.
With that disclaimer, India can leak the air out of Pakistan?s propaganda balloon.
rajiv.jayaram@expressindia.com