But What of the Balochs?

The New York Times recently ran an article questioning why the West was so concerned about the plight of the Palestinians yet cared not a whit about the suffering of the Balochs at the hands of the Pakistani military.

It seemed curious when I read it.   The Balochs, after all, have been going through this for a long time, well before the Americans showed up to turf the Talibs from Afghanistan.   We were pretty indifferent to their persecution for more than a decade.   Now, it seems, they've popped up on our radar.   What gives?

It's been reported in Asia Times Online that the CIA, MI5 and the Mossad have taken a sudden interest in Balochistan and supporting Baloch separatists/nationalists against Pakistan.   This comes at the same time when State Secretary Hillary Clinton is reading Islamabad the Riot Act over Iran.

What has Israel and the West up in arms is something discussed on this blog several times in recent years, the prospects of an oil pipeline connecting Iran to China, linked through Pakistan.   That pipeline would pass through the Baloch region of southern Pakistan.  It would create a direct and powerful link between South Asia and Southwest Asia and anchor Chinese hegemony in the region.  It could also expand the sphere of influence of the Sino-Russian Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) right to the Persian Gulf.

Israel and the West are determined to block that linkup at almost any cost, even to supporting and arming an anti-Pakistan Baloch insurgency.   That's an insanely high-stakes/high-risk gambit for the West which is already flailing in Afghanistan.  It's the sort of adventure the Americans rarely do well and could wind up turning Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan squarely against the West.   Turning on Pakistan will virtually guarantee Pakistan will strongly back the Taliban in retaking control of Afghanistan.

Besides, should we really be working to destabilize Pakistan?

Get Out of Afghanistan. We've Seen This Movie Before

It's like a geo-political take on one of those slasher movies in a haunted house.  Danger lurks behind every door.

The haunted house is Pakistan.  Danger lurks everywhere - along its border with Afghanistan, in the disputed Kashmir region, along its border with China and in the Baloch territory in the south.

Not many of us Westerners like to watch more than one game at the same time.  It's not surprising then that we've become fixated on our war with the Pashtun home team, the Taliban, to the exclusion of all the other nationalist conflicts, insurgencies and uprisings in the neighbourhood.   One of these is the Baloch liberation movement that, until recently, had been simmering along in the most resource rich part of otherwise impoverished Pakistan.

Asia Times reports that the low-level insurgency in Balochistan has picked up and is turning into a civil war between the Baloch people and the Pakistan military sent to suppress them.

Balochistan has historically had a tense relationship with the central government, mainly due to the touchy issues of provincial autonomy, control of mineral resources and a consequent sense of deprivation.


A recently-released fact-finding report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated that "The Pakistani security services are brazenly disappearing, torturing and often killing people because of suspected ties to Baloch nationalist movement". Another fact-finding report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) observed, "In the cases of enforced disappearance of the Baloch men which were brought before the commission, there were credible allegations of the involvement of the state security forces." 

For the past few years, the number of missing persons in Balochistan has increased alarmingly. Tortured and bullet-riddled bodies of Baloch nationalists are often found dumped randomly. The victims are usually shot in the temple once. Known locally as "mutilated bodies", the signs of torture are often hard to determine because many of the bodies have already begun to decompose when discovered.

According to HRW's report:

The inability of the Pakistani law enforcement agencies and the criminal justice system to tackle the problem of disappearances is exacerbated by the continuing failure of the Pakistani authorities at the national and provincial level to exert political will to address the issue of disappearances in Balochistan. The authorities have failed so far to send a strong message to the security forces and intelligence agencies and to implement a set of concrete measures that would put an end to the practice of enforced disappearances.

This is exactly what the Baloch nationalists have been saying for years. No one is willing to take action against the security forces and the intelligence agencies for the abuses being carried out in the name of "national interest". 
...Almost prophetically, noted writer and scholar Abul Maali Syed, while writing on evolving scenarios for Pakistan almost 20 years ago, predicted in his book The Twin Era of Pakistan: Democracy and Dictatorship:

Who would have believed that Balochistan, once the least populated and poorest province of unified Pakistan, would become independent and the third richest oil-producing country after Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? ... Development in Balochistan was neglected and whenever a tribal chief spoke about the plight of their people, the Pakistan government shoved the barrel of a gun at him and silenced him. Today, having lost East Pakistan [now Bangladesh], Balochistan, Sindh and part of the Seraiki belt [in Punjab province], Pakistan is still entangled with Pashtun tribes on her northern border and is no more in a strong position to hold onto the Pashtun area much longer.

While this scenario is still far from realization, a cursory glance at the Balochistan of 2011 clearly shows that the situation in this strategically important largest province - by area, constituting approximately 44% of the total land mass of the country - of Pakistan is following an ominous path, with Baloch nationalist violence escalating into what is becoming a major insurgency. 

So, why should we get out of Afghanistan because of a nascent  civil war in Pakistan's southernmost province?   Because, as the locals have known for centuries, in this region unrest fuels further unrest in a weird type of symbiosis.  We can't win anything in Afghanistan without a stable Pakistan next door and that isn't going to happen when the country is wracked with its own tribal rivalries among Baloch, Sindh, Punjabis and Pashtun.   Some things are just too damned broken to fix.  South Asia is one of them.

autonomy, control of mineral resources and a consequent sense of deprivation.

That Other Little Civil War Next Door - Balochistan

The previous post on Pakistani forces fighting alongside the Taliban reminded me of Pakistan's own troubling insurgency with the tribesmen of Balochistan, curiously enough called the Balochs (sometimes Baluchs).

The Balochs' homeland (shown in pink above), like that of the Pashtun, lies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Baloch territory lies south of Waziristan in the region where Pakistan meets the Indian Ocean. Qetta, a Taliban stronghold, lies in the northern part of Balochistan.

Like the Pashtun, the Balochs got divvied up in a two-state deal when the Brits drew the Duran Line to mark the Pakistan/Afghan border.

Pakistan has four major ethnic groups - Punjabi (the military), Sindhi (the economic and political), Pashtun or Pathan and Baloch. Like Afghanistan's ethnic melange, these players don't always see eye to eye and at times work at cross purposes. This is one of those moments for the Balochs.

Like other ethnic groups, such as the Kurds, the Balochs would really like the unification of their people (in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran) and the creation of an independent state. The Balochs have been waging insurrections against the Pakistanis almost since Pakistan was created by the Brits in 1947. There have been insurgencies in 1948, 1968, 1973, 1977, 2005, 2006, and right now.

Everybody has an interest in the Baloch region of Pakistan. The US sees it as an excellent staging area in the event of war with Iran. Tehran accuses the Americans of supporting a Baloch insurgency within Iran. And then there's the dual villains in much of today's global insecurity - oil and gas.

The region also holds large reserves of natural gas, oil and uranium critical to an energy starved Pakistan. The Balochs complain they're being exploited by Islamabad and demand greater prosperity from these resources.

Through the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, the Baloch territory offers a corridor for a commercial and energy corridor. Planning is underway for a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan and Iran both to the sea and north to China and possibly into India.

Look at the players - Pakistan, the United States, Afghanistan, India, Iran and China. If that mob doesn't give you a headache, it should.

The energy issue creates what American strategic analysts call an "energy-insurgency nexus." How Washington perceives that to be in American and Western strategic interests could reshape the geopolitical makeup of the entire region.

Pakistan, alienated by the recent American nuclear deal with India, is already toying with membership in the SCO, Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran also wants into that defensive alliance. That could bring both countries and the energy facilities of their region under the umbrella of Russia and China.

We've seen how determined the US has been to oust Soviet influence in the energy-rich Caucasus region, first Georgia and now Ukraine. Would the Americans be any less determined to deny Chinese influence over South Asian energy resources?

Like everything else in this region, it's all wheels within wheels. No two players' interests here are inevitably coterminous. So far the US hasn't had to take sides between Islamabad and the Balochs yet it may well come down to that. China, meanwhile, operates very quietly in this region. China is already planning to build a rail and highway route into northern Afghanistan where it has acquired the rights to that country's biggest copper reserves. China may find it worthwhile to try to pry Pakistan out of Washington's sphere of influence.

I suspect we won't have much chance of settling the Taliban issue while the Baloch insurgency stands unresolved. It's hard to conceive of America pulling its military forces out of Afghanistan for many years to come. There's far too much at stake, geo-politically, within Afghanistan and along its borders (Pakistan, China, Iran) and nowhere else for Washington to maintain a sizeable military presence. It's entirely unclear whether the Afghan tribes will tolerate a quasi-permanent American military force in their country or whether they will temporarily side with the Taliban as they united with the Pashtun two decades earlier to drive out the Soviets.