Balochistan: Bruised, Battered and Bloodied

By Francesca Marino

A time will come when children can play in the streets without the fear of being abducted, women in their homes can be sure that their husbands and sons will return, and young women will no longer feel afraid to go to their university or workplace. I hope that dawn will break one day on a free and peaceful land.

Balochistan is an account of the trials and tragedies suffered by this region, which has been forcefully annexed to Pakistan against the will of its people. The area is of fundamental strategic and geopolitical importance not only to Islamabad and to the Chinese CPEC project, but also to the numerous players that act as avatars of the powers in the long-running 'Great Game'. What is woefully ignored is that the lives of the locals are under stake. The Baloch people have long been trying to draw international attention to what is happening to them and their homeland. However, the world has turned a blind eye to the ethnic and cultural genocide carried out so far.

Starting from the history of Balochistan and the wrongs done to its people, along with detailed interviews with the lead actors in this struggle, acclaimed journalist Francesca Marino attempts to lend a voice to the Baloch people and speak for themselves about one of the most reprehensible and inexplicable silences of our times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Nov 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9789389867657

Book preview

Introduction

Why are you so interested in Balochistan?

This was the first question that the Pakistani secret service officers asked me when they detained me at Jinaah International Airport, Karachi, after the computer screens at the immigration showed a symbol next to my name usually used to indicate terrorists and spies. It is a question I have often been asked.

I was stopped, I learnt later, because I had been photographed at the United Nations in Geneva in the company of Mehran Marri, the Baloch people’s representative there. I am a journalist and a recognised part of my job is to interview those at the heart of the stories I cover. Indeed, when I met Hafiz Muhammad Saeed in Lahore, he was on the United Nations list of suspected terrorists in Lahore but I had the approval and the blessing of certain politicians and military leaders themselves.

To anyone curious to know why I keep on writing about a place hardly anyone could find on a map, be it secret services or friends, my answer is that I have a weakness for lost causes. I say this only half in jest. It has always been the case and remains so even as I grow older. My weakness is for lost causes; my sympathy with the underdog fighting an unequal battle for the freedom of the people. As my father taught me, the worst democracy is always preferable to the best dictatorship.

I fear that a reader hoping for a learned dissertation and a balanced, neutral assessment of the situation in Balochistan will be greatly disappointed. To tell the truth, in an attempt to seek objectivity, I did also try to approach Pakistani government sources for their official version of events but first was met only with vague promises and then a deafening silence. This book is not the work of a researcher, an analyst or a scholar but of a journalist, someone who enjoys storytelling. It is an attempt to give a voice to those who lack one. As far as possible, I have let the Balochs speak for themselves. It is based on long and detailed conversations with the leading actors in the events I describe. Some testimonies I have summarised, others I have included verbatim. Those speakers who are well known will not be harmed by the publication of their words or at least no more than they already have been. The others must remain anonymous. As I point out more than once in the following pages, involvement with Balochistan leads to death, literally, or else a very ugly fate. A good number of Pakistani journalists have been killed. Others, some of them famous, have survived attempts on their lives.

For years now, foreign journalists have been unable to get near the region, and those who have pointed this out have been expelled from the country, sometimes violently. The Pakistani press has been subjected to censorship, often self-imposed, and either declines to cover events or does so incompletely; unless something so significant happens that it cannot be covered up or shrugged off. It is not easy to write about a place one cannot visit. Verifying the facts and the data one is presented with is complicated since clear, sometimes considerable, discrepancies exist between information provided by the state and that published by civilians and humanitarian organisations.

The current insurrection in Balochistan is perhaps the most complex and bloody of any in its history since its forced annexation by Pakistan. It was born of the brutal, repressive policies and strategies of President Musharraf, and flared up in 2006 after the murder of Nawab Mohammad Akbar Shahbaz Khan Bugti. That act was described as Balochistan’s equivalent of 11 September by Malik Siraj Akbar in his The Redefined Dimension of Baloch Nationalist Movement. The killing of Bugti was a turning point in the shaping of regional dynamics, creating an irreparable fracture in relations between the Baloch people and the state. The flames of an independence movement had almost died out as a more restrained quest for autonomy took shape. But now they raged once more, fed further by the policies of the two democratic governments that followed Musharraf. In 2011, Akbar wrote, ‘Back in October 2005, when I started working on the issue of missing persons there were only two known families.... Today every Baloch district has its list of missing persons.’ From 2011 to the present, the situation has worsened. The number of missing persons is in thousands, and more disappear every day. Mass graves filled with unnamed corpses have been found. The people of Balochistan still suffer the effects of nuclear tests carried out in the past in their land, amidst widespread indifference at home and abroad. The revolt has already spiralled out of control, even for those who should be guiding it. Once respected categories, customs, norms and values are no longer valid. The older groups led by tribal leaders have been joined by new ones that acknowledge no authority, whether tribal or local. A new generation of educated youths from established families has appeared; they are social activists who are concerned with human rights, enraged at the systematic exploitation of local resources and the ferocious repression to which the region has been subjected. This ‘new’ revolt is now directed not only at the military but has also focused for a while now on the so-called ‘settlers’ from other regions who have come to live in Balochistan. It is also a revolt against the Chinese presence, considered a ‘colonial’ invasion carried out in the name of the CPEC (China Pacific Economic Corridor).

The CPEC, as if there had been any real need for it, has exacerbated an already difficult situation. No one can predict with certainty what will happen in the coming years or even the coming months. In Balochistan, for a long time now, there have been too many players in the game: the State, the tribal leaders, the ‘enforcers’ employed by the intelligence services, the armed forces, the Chinese and sundry guerrilla groups. Then, we have the Taliban brought into the region by the army, the Pashtun who are themselves revolting against Islamabad and various local terrorist groups regarded as strategically useful in one way or another by Islamabad. Balochistan is of fundamental strategic and geopolitical importance, not only to Islamabad and to the Chinese CPEC project, but also to the many other players in the region that act as avatars of the powers in the long-running ‘Great Game’. All of them are staking the lives of the locals. For years now, the world, to its shame, has silently ignored the ethnic and cultural genocide carried out in the region.

The Baloch people have long been trying to draw international attention to what is happening to them and their homeland: this book is another attempt to do so. It was written on purpose for readers of all types, but especially for those who have had little previous interest in geopolitics, politics or regional conflicts, but do have the desire and the time to learn more about of one of the most reprehensible and inexplicable silences of our times. The indifference accorded to Balochistan is perhaps comparable only to that shown towards the Sahrawi.

Over the years, every attempt to shed light on the situation there has ended in oblivion. This was true even in the 1970s when the international Left embraced all manner of revolutionary and humanitarian causes. Beniamino Natale, with whom I wrote Apocalypse Pakistan: An Anatomy of the World’s Most Dangerous Nation¹, once told me that while he was the editor of Lotta Continua someone turned up in his office. I am reasonably sure this was Mohammed Bhaba, who had led the London Group to Balochistan before leaving to seek financing and enlist the support of the press. Beniamino wrote a couple of articles that failed to elicit any response, let alone arouse any sign of indignation at the time. In the last few years, in both the United States and Britain, there have been one or two commissions of enquiry and reports but these too have fallen into the void. The divisions among local political leaders are not helpful, nor is the absence of a clear contact point for communications. Not having an official spokesperson who speaks in the name of all Balochs, rather than representing a particular party or tribe, is destabilising and renders every step towards reconciliation more difficult. Furthermore, China has recently cast its sinister shadow over Islamabad whenever the Balochs have tried to publicise their struggle against the central government and the genocide they are experiencing.

To be sure, this book will change none of this; it contains no shocking or unprecedented revelations but is simply a summary of facts known all too well. It is my duty and my honour to offer my warmest thanks to Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, without whose precious contribution this work would be a very different one. Our conversations enriched my understanding as a journalist and, more importantly, as a person. I also thank all the others who allowed me to share their information and experience. Some of those conversations have been reproduced in their entirety; as regards the others, names and voices remain in my memory and my heart. My sole wish is that a time will come when children can play in the streets without the fear of being abducted, that women in their homes can be sure that their husbands and sons will return and that young women will no longer feel afraid to go to their university or workplace. I hope that dawn will break one day on a free and peaceful land.

HISTORY AND THE PAST

Chapter 1

A bit of historical background

‘The present cannot be understood without knowing our history,’ argues Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur, a writer and intellectual who lost both his hands in combat in Balochistan, while we were talking. The history of Balochistan is one of infinite occupations and resistance. Knowing its history can shed light on the primary causes and the roots of present conflicts. In the case of Balochistan, history helps to clarify how the will for freedom of its peoples is so deeply embedded in its collective imagination and local cultures that it makes it difficult for any potential invader or coloniser to maintain control there or overcome their resistance. Its History, with a capital ‘H’, as recounted to me by Talpur, begins in the distant past, ‘We can trace the history of the region as far back as Alexander the Great and his disastrous march back to Babylon after his Indian campaign. At the time of the rise of Islam, the region was more or less controlled by the Sassanid Persian Empire and then by the Sindhi Rai Dynasty. Around 1,500, Balochistan was divided into two different areas, controlled by the Safavid Persian Empire to the east and by the Mughal Empire to the west. Various influential tribes that wielded authority were spread over Balochistan and around the mid-1600s, a Baloch confederacy took shape under the Khans of Kalat. This Baloch confederation prospered and strengthened under Naseer Khan Noori (1749–1794). The confederation thrived under his successors but with the entry of the British East India Company, the scenario changed as it started to exploit differences between people on the subcontinent and used force where it could to establish its rule. The British wanted to use Balochistan as a stepping-stone to Afghanistan, so the British army, returning from the First Anglo-Afghan War, attacked Kalat, where Mehrab Khan ruled, on 13 November 1839 on the pretext that Baloch tribes were harassing their forces. The Baloch resistance was unorganised and sporadic but persistent. In May and August 1840, British detachments were wiped out by the Marris in the battles of Sartaaf and Nafusk respectively. Again, in 1859 and 1862, the Marris fought decisive battles at Mawand and defeated the joint forces of Mir Khudadad Khan of Khalat and the British. Towards the end of First World War, the British, anxious for expendable cannon fodder, asked Baloch tribes for recruits but the Marris refused and that resulted in the battles of Gumbaz in 1917 and Harab in 1918.

‘The Marris, who had tied the end of their shirts together to prevent retreat, suffered heavy casualties as they faced machine guns with flintlocks and swords. In 1854, Balochistan became an associated state of the British Empire and in 1877 the British established the Balochistan agency to deal with the princely State of Balochistan. More or less, at the same time, Persia reconquered West Balochistan, and the West virtually disappeared from the maps, merging with Iran. The calls for independence from Iran were kept at bay until the fall of the Shah in 1979, by using intelligence services, the army and threats to make sure an organised nationalist movement would not be formed. The chiefs of such movements were forced to flee abroad, army bases were established in the area and a wide internal immigration would be encouraged to turn the ethnic Baloch into a minority. Until today, this area of former West Balochistan, along with Kurdistan, remains the poorest region of Iran.

‘The fate of East Balochistan, however, was completely different and the area never really merged into the British Empire but started a long history of resilience and dissent. Interestingly, of the total East India Company 350,358-man army in 1857, the British officers numbered only 37,719, while Indians numbered 311,038. They were never present in numbers sufficient to conquer a region as vast as the Indian subcontinent so they effectively used money and intrigue to make up for their lack of numbers.’

In 1876, the Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, signed a treaty with the Khan of Kalat, Mir Khudadad Khan, in which it was stated that ‘Great Britain is committed to respect the independence of Khalat’. The Khan of Kalat, for his part, pledged to cooperate with the British and to supply military aid in times of war. In his work, The Problem of a Greater Balochistan: A Study of Baloch Nationalism², Inayatullah Baloch relates how the position of the Khan of Kalat was further clarified in a letter written by Lord Lytton to Queen Victoria in 1877, pointing out that Khalat was not a fiefdom of the Crown but an independent kingdom. The status of the Khan is reaffirmed by army records and in the ceremony used in visits between the Viceroy and the Khan, appropriate for a head of state. At the end of the 19th century, however, the situation in the British Empire was changing. In short, the British began to undermine the authority and independence of Khalat. They replaced the Khan with his more malleable son and subsequently obliged Kalat to sign a new treaty with Britain that effectively established its subordination to the British Empire. This opened a new cycle of political and military struggle. In 1920, Abdul Aziz Kurd founded the ‘Young Baloch’ movement that remained clandestine until 1926. This was followed by the formation of the Anjuman-e-Itehaad-e-Balochan-wa-Balochistan and the Kalat State National Party. All these movements called for an independent Balochistan, although British law imposed severe restrictions on political activity and their leaders were forced into exile.

The British, at the beginning of the 1930s, attempted to bring an end to the independence of Khalat by trickery. They invited the Khan of the time to take his place in the Chamber of Princes, seated alongside rulers of the Crown’s vassal states. When the Khan refused, Britain responded by unilaterally including Kalat in the Government of India Act of 1935. But Mir Sir Ahmad Yar Khan Ahmedzai, who had ascended to the throne of Kalat in 1933, had no intention of renouncing the sovereignty of his kingdom. When he protested at Kalat’s inclusion in the Government of India Act, a unilateral violation of the 1876 treaty, the British responded by respecting the validity of the treaty in word but not in deed, since they continued to treat Kalat as a vassal state of the Crown. The Second World War brought about a standstill in the internal struggles of the British Empire.

Chapter 2

Forced annexation to Pakistan and Jinnah’s betrayal

With the end of the war, things changed. The Empire was in its twilight, the world had been changed forever and two separate states were about to be born—India and Pakistan. The destinies of peoples, cities and entire kingdoms were decided at conference tables, bartered like collectors’ cards or bottle tops. The fates of the independent states were clear and their freedom untouchable, but for those vassal states to the Crown, there were only two choices: remain a part of India or belong to nascent Pakistan. The issue of sovereignty and independence became more vital than ever at this point. Mir Sir Ahmad Yar Khan Ahmedzai had an exceptional legal representative in the controversies that now arose: Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The current Khan of Kalat, Suleman Khan, tells the story. Mir Suleman is the 35th Khan of Kalat. The Khan is said to have received his initial education in Lahore and Quetta. He became head of the erstwhile Kalat State following the death of his father, Mir Suleman Dawood Jan. Observers familiar with the politics and history of Balochistan say Mir Suleman shares many traits with his grandfather, Mir Sir Ahmad Yar Khan Ahmedzai, who was forced to accede to Pakistan in 1948. However, with the death of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in 2006 in a military operation, Mir Suleman’s stance seemed to change.

It is said that even before Nawab Bugti’s death, Mir Suleman had warned the then president, Pervez Musharraf, who was on a visit to Kalat at the time, not to adopt a hard line on Balochistan. Following Bugti’s death, the Khan of Kalat called a grand jirga of over 80 sardars and tribal elders from Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab, where it was decided that he should take the case of