Pakistan's 'secret' war in Baluchistan

[DESERT FIGHTER]

Majeed lango

 

[Bhairava]

The comments of the IGFC indicate a realization that this is not the most effective means of dealing with the situation, but at the same time, the Army cannot reform the judicial and law enforcement systems so that they play their part.

The Security agencies are not exactly saints in this. Yes the civilian govt too needs to be pruned and made effective but its the violent nature and the ham handedness of the security forces, most notably the FC, which is causing the resentment among the Baloch and common Pakistanis would do well to note that instead of blaming the Indians or the Afghans.

At the moment, given the significant reduction in the killings of innocent people, I would argue that the strategy is worth it.

Who are the security people to decide that a certain man is innocent and another is not. What accountability is there ? Everyman who is unarmed irrespective of his political leanings is entitled to a trial.
As I said it may work in the short run, but it is bound to hit back in the long run.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

The Security agencies are not exactly saints in this. Yes the civilian govt too needs to be pruned and made effective but its the violent nature and the ham handedness of the security forces, most notably the FC, which is causing the resentment among the Baloch and common Pakistanis would do well to note that instead of blaming the Indians or the Afghans.

The report indicates that these 'target killings' started in 2010 - the settlers were being massacred, along with Baluch educationists and intelligentisa supportive of Pakistan, long before that.

I therfore don't really see how you can blame the FC for starting the violence.

Who are the security people to decide that a certain man is innocent and another is not. What accountability is there ? Everyman who is unarmed irrespective of his political leanings is entitled to a trial.
As I said it may work in the short run, but it is bound to hit back in the long run.

As the report indicates, the drastic drop in the number of terrorist attacks targetting settlers and others would support the argument that the policy inflicted significant damage on the terrorist groups. I agree that it is not a long term solution, but the security forces also have a responsibility to act to protect the lives and property of Pakistanis, and this is one way in which they have done so successfully (as the drop in killings and return of the settlers would indicate).

 

[macnurv]

The report indicates that these 'target killings' started in 2010 - the settlers were being massacred, along with Baluch educationists and intelligentisa supportive of Pakistan, long before that.

I therfore don't really see how you can blame the FC for starting the violence.

As the report indicates, the drastic drop in the number of terrorist attacks targetting settlers and others would support the argument that the policy inflicted significant damage on the terrorist groups. I agree that it is not a long term solution, but the security forces also have a responsibility to act to protect the lives and property of Pakistanis, and this is one way in which they have done so successfully (as the drop in killings and return of the settlers would indicate).

As of an year ago when I talked to friends living in Quetta, things gradually started to improve. The security forces started to target insurgents and their sympathizers in a systematic and effective manner which lead a dramatic decrease in violence. But I completely agree this is not a permanent solution to this problem, as a political solution can be long lasting. Many of the disgruntled youth is being mislead and used by BLA & Co. Those leading the insurgency itself are fighting to retain their status as Sardars and Nawab Zaddas. GOP must end the feeling of Balouch people as this will be the only solution to this problem, giving them their due rights. Sardars are a big hurdle and Pakistan should work towards elimination of these pests in a systematic manner.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Settlers — caught in crossfire​

By Nasir Jamal | From the Newspaper
(18 hours ago) Today


QUETTA: “They keep changing the menu,” a hotel attendant in Quetta sums up the scale and scope of the target killing of settlers in Balochistan. “Almost all non-Baloch are on their hit-list.”

Nearly 1,200 settlers are estimated to have been killed across Balochistan, mostly in what are referred to as hit-and-run incidents and grenade attacks on their businesses and homes. According to Balochistan Punjabi Ittehad, some 200,000 people have fled Balochistan since early 2008 when the violence against various ethnic groups excluding Pashtuns peaked. Other estimates put the number at 100,000. In any case the migration has been significant.

Muhammad Khalid of Balochistan Punjabi Ittehad says “the militants began to target the Punjabi settlers after Nawab Bugti was taken out by the military (in August, 2006). Before that there were occasional incidents in which Punjabis were targeted”.

The settler killings increased soon after the Feb 2008 elections. It was the time when the Baloch militant organisations such as Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) began to paint such slogans as ‘down with Punjabis’, ‘Long Live Azad Balochistan’, etc. “My own election billboards were sprayed by the BLA activists with these slogans,” says Anwaarul Haq Kakar, a young PML-N leader whose National Assembly constituency in Quetta mostly comprises Punjabi settlers.

“A vast majority of settlers killed in the beginning were service providers from Punjab running barber shops, laundries and tailoring shops. Later the militants also began to target teachers, doctors, lawyers and other professionals,” says Mohammad Amir, who is also associated with the Balochistan Punjabi Ittehad.

The first ‘high-profile’ killing in Quetta was of the provincial education minister, Shafique Ahmed, in 2009, he says. It was followed by the killings of school and college teachers, university professors and others. Mostly Punjabis were the target but other ethnic groups were also hit — Urdu-speaking people from Karachi and Hindko-speaking settlers from Haripur in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In many cases, people tell this reporter, those hit by the insurgents had earlier received pamphlets warning them to leave immediately.

The target killing has created an atmosphere of fear and terror among the settlers in the entire Balochistan. While Quetta still hosts a substantially large population of Punjabi and other settlers, few remain in the Baloch areas of the province. Even in Quetta the settlers are afraid of going to areas such as Sariab Road, a Baloch-dominated neighbourhood. Many old Sariab Road dwellers, including Pashtuns, have sold their property and moved to non-Baloch quarters of the city for safety.

“The property prices in Baloch areas are at their lowest because of the exodus from there,” a Pashtun dealing in rice business in Quetta says.
Only those Punjabi settlers who had been assured of protection by Baloch tribes or those working on government projects under the watch of the security forces still remain in the Baloch areas.

Chacha Raheem came to Quetta from Rawalpindi in search of livelihood more than 22 years ago. He says “only people who don’t have anyone to fall back on or those who lack the financial means to relocate or have (provincial) government jobs are staying back”. Others say there are many who have actually given up their government jobs to return to Punjab.

Around 10 incidents of target killings have taken place in Quetta during 2011. This is a reduction in violence which is often linked by the officials and others to the ‘discovery’ of 170-odd bodies of Balochs believed to be ‘separatists’ involved in ‘murders’ and ‘terrorism’. Amir of Punjabi Ittehad says, consequently, “almost 50 per cent of the settlers who had left Quetta since the start of violence have come back.”

But many, such as Chacha Raheem, do not agree with Amir’s assessment. “Why would anyone come back?” Chacha asks. “To get killed or relocate in another six months or a year?” he wonders. “Who knows what is afoot? No one can guarantee that the Baloch rebels who have gone underground will not resurface and start killing the settlers again.”

It is difficult to put a number on them, but some, at least some of those who had left close relatives behind in the city, are returning to Quetta.

PML-N’s Kakar recalls how the Punjabi settlers “forced out by the government of Sardar Attaullah Mengal in the early 1970s” returned “because the Baloch or the Pashtuns did not have the skills or education to replace them”.

Are we going to see a repeat of that now? The Baloch associated with the ‘resistance’ do not think so. “We want all settlers, particularly the Punjabis and the Urdu-speaking, to leave our land. They are colonialists and our enemies. We don’t want collaborators of the Pakistan military on our soil,” says a former activist of the Balochistan Students Organisation (Azad) who is currently affiliated with the movement for an independent Balochistan. “We are being treated as Red Indian and our existence is in danger.”

He defends target killing of Punjabi and other settlers, saying it will soon lead to ‘freedom from Pakistan’. “How can you expect us to let your people live in peace when our own land has been turned into a hell for us,” he contends, adding that the killing and ‘mutilation’ of a couple of hundred ‘freedom fighters’ cannot quash their movement for liberation. “It won’t be very long before we come back for those who haven’t left our soil yet.”

For many moderate Baloch intellectuals and writers target killings of Punjabis and other settlers — though a ‘human problem’ — are a way for the insurgent groups of communicating to the world that ‘we want to be independent’.

“Punjabis came here to live and work under the British Raj as food suppliers, camp followers and providers of skilled labour and services. Now they have become chief justice, IG police and occupy senior positions in the government at our expense,” says a leading ‘moderate’ Baloch writer in Quetta.

“This is like speaking to a press conference for them,” he says and adds it becomes difficult to take a position against insurgency and killings of settlers when people speaking for the rights of the Baloch people are being abducted and their bodies dropped from the air by the security forces, in the presence of a media that is largely silent.

A pamphlet by the Balochistan Liberation Front delivered to several Quetta-based journalists some time ago warned the journalists against becoming a part of the ‘dirty game’ being played by Pakistan’s security forces against the Baloch freedom movement. “Do not try to cover up the Pakistani security forces’ black deeds against the Baloch. Do not also try to play down the forces’ losses at the hands of the BLF,” it said.

It is not Baloch insurgents alone who are speaking through target killings. The security forces are also using bullets and violence to send a ‘tough’ message across to them. Caught in the crossfire are the common people.

Settlers

=====================

Is there any doubt that these Baluch groups are 'terrorists'?

And then we have dishonest arguments by Americans such as S2 that 'the American Government had no warrant to arrest Brahamdegh Bugto' (Baluch terrorist leader) when he was being sheltered with complete official US knowledge by Afghanistan, in Afghanistan.

Pakistani blood is cheap for the US - OBL kills Americans and the US invades and occupies two countries resulting in hundreds of thousands of locals dead in the ensuing violence.

The Baluch terrorists kill 1200 innocent settlers, and the US arranges for a flight to Switzerland for Bugti, and its dishonest apologists argue 'no warrant' to excuse away their complicty in sheltering a wanted terrorist leader.

Of course, the fact that Bugti could have also highlighted the Indian role in supporting terrorism in Baluchistan, was probably one more reason the US and Afghans sheltered Bugti and did not want to hand him to Pakistan.

 

[a. hussain]

Situation in Baluchistan needs careful analysis as apparently both sides might have been making gross mistakes.
I read somewhere that a sentence which fits this situation precisely that 'if you want to stop leakage you must plug the hole'. If our agencies are aware that Mr. X and Mr. Y are involved in anti-state activities and are stooges of foreign powers who are anti-Pakistan then instead of crushing the mere ignorant misguided individual puppets, they need to grab & if not possible then eliminate those main culprits. See what CIA/ Mossad does.

I might have said something which might be wrong but Pakistan is suffering at the hands of few misleads & we don't expect our pathetic leaders to do anything since they have never done anything good for the nation nor the country. Ball in this matter should now be played by some sincere & far-sighted authority.

Thanks

 

[somebozo]

The deep water port project in the southern city of Gwadar is the clearest example of that "demographic threat." Native Baloch fear that once the place enjoys the benefits of a new infrastructure, it will attract a massive migration movement from other parts of the country, especially from Punjab region, something which may end up shifting the demographic balance in Balochistan province.

This is tribal sardari propaganda often repeated by the likes of bugti yet his men were celebrating his death and called for an end of sardari system. The purpose behind the propoganda is to keep the locals backward so the sardars can continue to rule vast swatches of land.

Baluch are as much welcome in any other city or provience to run their business so they should equally welcome the Pakistanis to. Otherwise the government should take action.

Why not Pakistan send rapid action teams to eliminate these tribal warlords? Send them on a fast trip to hell!

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

A weaker insurgency, but with new contours​

By Cyril Almeida | From the Newspaper
June 27, 2011 (3 days ago)

Abdul Qadir Baloch, vice chairman of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, claimed that there are “12,000 to 14,000” missing persons across the province. But the Balochistan High Court has only 34 petitions pending before it. Eighty persons have been recovered so far and 55 cases have been disposed of.

QUETTA: The decline in insurgent violence over the past year, at the cost of savage violence by the state, has produced a fragile recovery in Quetta and other insurgency-hit parts of Balochistan.

In the provincial capital, markets are open past sunset, rowdy traffic clogs streets well into the evening and the occasional park in the city has more visitors than a year ago.

But fear and apprehension are never far from the surface. The Baloch quarters in Quetta are accessible to non-Baloch visitors, but outsiders are still cautioned by residents against frequent or unnecessary visits. The modern and spacious Sheikh Zayed Hospital in the Sariab Road area is largely deserted. Doctors, mostly non-Baloch, are still unwilling to work in the Baloch neighbourhood.

“The no-go situation of earlier years is perhaps no more,” according to Dr Ishaque Baloch, a central vice president of the National Party, “But it’s still very tense. Similarly, you can travel outside Quetta now, but there are dangers.”In Mastung, a town south of Quetta, residents acknowledged that while insurgent violence was down, fear and uncertainty are still rife. Teachers bussed in from Quetta each day arrive irregularly and the local womenfolk return home before sunset. Locals reported that shops shut early, roads were deserted after sunset and few residents left their homes after dark.

A low-level insurgency

Gauging support for the fifth Baloch insurgency since Pakistan’s creation or assessing the number of active insurgents is particularly tough given the two-pronged threat confronting independent voices: from the security apparatus and from insurgents.

Meanwhile, official statements are often problematic because of stakes in the present set-up and because of the deep ethnic and tribal fault lines that characterise the province.

“Go around the province, visit the different Baloch belts and you’ll see that the insurgency does not have much support,” said Nawab Aslam Raisani, chief minister of Balochistan. But Raisani’s home district is Mastung, where insurgent and criminal activities have left residents fearful.

Aslam Bhootani, speaker of the provincial assembly, also tried to downplay the strength of the insurgents: “More people die in Karachi each day. When diplomats visit here, they urge us to tell the world more about the realities of Balochistan. Balochistan is more normal than people expect.”

But MPAs move in heavily guarded convoys in Quetta.

What seems relatively clear, though, is that the present insurgency is much less severe than the last one. “This isn’t like the insurgency of the ’70s when tens of thousands participated. There are only a few hundred now. The support just isn’t there,” claimed Anwarul Haq Kakar, a local PML-N politician.

That view was echoed by several journalists, notables and locals of Baloch areas who spoke off the record.

Mapping the insurgency

The present insurgency has three main components. The Baloch Republican Army focuses on Dera Bugti, Kohlu, Jaffarabad and Naseerabad. It is led by Brahmdagh Bugti, who left his base in Afghanistan for Switzerland earlier this year.

The Baloch Liberation Army is operationally headed by Hyarbyar Marri, who is in self-exile in London. Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri is the guiding force of the group and resides in Karachi.

The Baloch Liberation Front, with an ever-changing list of offshoots, BLUF, BLNF, Baloch Warna, etc, is largely the militant arm of the Balochistan Students Organisation (Azad).

According to a security official, “overall there are about 1,000 terrorists (sic) of which the high-quality ones are around 250.” The official added: “BLA has maybe 200 hardcore fighters, BLF 300-400 and the Bugti camps around 400.”

The IGFC Maj-Gen Obaidullah Khan also claimed that the insurgents “were not in the thousands, probably less than a thousand”. But there is a caveat, as pointed out by Gen Khan: “There are also sympathisers that need to be taken into account.”

Given tribal linkages, an armed insurgent can often rely on support from fellow tribesmen. Another security official mentioned the case of ‘Pahari Bugti’, an insurgent who recently surrendered along with 15 of his fighters after succumbing to inducements by officials. The official claimed that “around 400 others who support and owe loyalty” to Pahari Bugti had also been sidelined as a result.

Another, indirect, way of gauging the strength of the insurgency is the missing persons issue — Baloch men allegedly linked to the insurgency and illegally held by the security forces without charges.

Abdul Qadir Baloch, vice chairman of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, claimed that there are “12,000 to 14,000” missing persons across the province. But the Balochistan High Court, which has more forcefully taken up the missing persons issue in the last couple of years, has only
34 petitions pending before it. Eighty persons have been recovered so far and 55 cases have been disposed of.

A new phenomenon

While the latest armed insurgency may be relatively small, it has given rise to a new phenomenon: the educated, middle-class, non-tribal insurgent.

Forming the core of the BLF, this new breed of insurgent is epitomised by Dr Allah Nazar. The insurgent from Mashkey in the south of the province has increasingly become the face of the Baloch insurgency, in part, according to Ayub Tarin, a local journalist who interviewed Nazar last year, because of the departure of his rivals.

“Brahmdagh Bugti is in Geneva, Hyarbyar Marri in London, the people see that Allah Nazar is still here, still fighting himself. That has an impact,” Tarin said.

The details of Nazar’s life are murky. He appears to have embraced separatist politics as a member of the BSO during his days as a student at Bolan Medical College before taking up arms alongside the Marris and the Bugtis in the early to mid-2000s.Reportedly detained and released several times by the Pakistani security forces, he was again released some three years ago. Journalists claim that Nazar had been tortured so badly that he was on the verge of death at the time of his release and spent several months in hospital. When he recovered, he ‘left for the hills’ — a term used to describe Baloch insurgents.

A soft-spoken man, Allah Nazar’s views are uncompromising. In the interview with Tarin, Nazar repeatedly justified the killing of Punjabi settlers, describing them variously as “a fifth column”, “a brigade of the state”, “members of the army” and “spies”. He also rejected non-violent, democratic means for attaining Baloch independence, citing the example of East Pakistan.

But those hard-line views appear to have gained traction with a number of degree-holding Baloch men. Tarin, the journalist who interviewed Nazar last summer, claims that of the fighters who were with Nazar, “many were doctors and engineers”.

Siddiq Baloch, incarcerated during much of the last insurgency and now editor of the Balochistan Express, suggested there has always been a streak of resistance among Baloch ‘commoners’: “They tell the sardars to shut up. They all think they are sardars.”

Outwardly, security officials are dismissive of the influence of Allah Nazar and his fighters. One mocked him: “Allah Nazar found the insurgent lifestyle irresistible. He’s a lower-class guy. He thought he’d get money and fame through rejecting Pakistan.”

But local analysts suggest the real reason for the rise of Allah Nazar and his fighters is the policies of the state itself. “They saw the security situation, they saw the oppression, they’ve seen how the Baloch are treated,” said a local journalist.

And with the state’s response to separatist sentiment still mired in lethality, the potential for more educated, middle-class, non-tribal Baloch men to embrace violence would appear to be high.

A weaker insurgency, but with new contours | Newspaper | DAWN.COM

 

[My Pakistan]

ALLah will save PAKISTAN as HE has saved it uptill now INSHALLAH we do not have nay hope from our govt

 

[krash]

Must have been ethnic Punjabis, because the Balochis look upto to Bugti as a father figure. Not only him even the minorities (Hindus) in Balochistan praise him for ensuring their safety and security.

When he was killed celebratory shots could be heard at his house coming from near by villages. Pretty sure they were Balochis. Anything else you could cook up?

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

ALLah will save PAKISTAN as HE has saved it uptill now INSHALLAH we do not have nay hope from our govt

Well, at the moment it is not Allah, but the Army and FC that is saving Pakistan, at least in terms of trying to fight the various terrorists in FATA and Baluchistan, and the rest of Pakistan.

Of course the military fight is only one aspect of 'saving Pakistan', we desperately need the civilian leadership to step and strengthen institutions and reform the economy and deliver good governance, and for that we desperately need Pakistanis to come out to vote in huge numbers in the next elections and reject the candidates of the PPP and PML-N/Q.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Making this a sticky. Please continue all discussion related to the insurgency/violence/terrorism in Baluchistan on this thread instead of starting new ones.

Given the senstive nature of the topic, refrain from simple copy pastes, and provide your opinions and highlighted excerpts to support those opinions, along with any articles you post.

Political, economic, development related discussions/news should go in the Baluchistan thread in National Politics.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

A security prism, not a human one​

Cyril Almeida
(17 hours ago) Today

WHAT`S wrong with the army isn`t necessarily the choices it makes, but the fact that it`s the decision-maker.

You can see the effects in Balochistan. Confronted by an armed, low-level Baloch threat against the state and certain segments of the non-Baloch population, the security forces are doing what comes to them naturally.

First, they have assessed the threat. Militarily, it isn`t very big — definitely several orders of magnitude smaller than the `70s insurgency. Next, they have rummaged around in their bag of instruments for policy responses — and come up with the obvious response of men in uniform: bullets and rupees.

Put yourself in a pair of army boots for a minute and have a look around Balochistan. Insurgents are killing Punjabi `settlers`, Baloch moderates and attacking the state apparatus. The overall impact has been to virtually cut off an already isolated Balochistan from the rest of Pakistan. Nobody wants to go there and few can.

Vast mineral and gas reserves remain untapped, or are being extracted with great difficulty. Internal demographic changes have occurred, with Punjabi `settlers` who have called Balochistan home for over a century having to flee. Business is down, property prices have plummeted and fear and uncertainty stalk the land.

What do you in your army boots do about the insurgents dragging the already antediluvian province a further generation back?

You can`t prosecute them: the courts are too weak, the security forces` training in the art of forensic evidence non-existent. You can`t accommodate them politically: there`s already an elected government and, in any case, beyond rigging elections and manipulating governments, you don`t have the power to dictate permanent outcomes in politics.

Yet, you believe that doing nothing isn`t an option. Pakistan is the motherland and the fatherland and anyone who doesn`t accept that reality needs to be dealt with.

So what do you do?

You go after the insurgents. You figure out what their lines of supply, their means of communication are, who the foot soldiers are, where they are operating — you squeeze them and you hunt them down.

And because there is deprivation and because it is a tribal society, you worry about copycats and vendettas, so you throw money at the people who may be susceptible to separatist ideas: jobs, development projects, economic growth — anything to take the minds of young people off `dangerous ideas`.

Frankly, the army`s approach seems likely to work.

Barring some disastrous Musharrafian move to go after the tribal fountainheads of the insurgency, the fifth insurgency in Balochistan since the time of Pakistan`s creation appears set to slowly disappear. Forget the money sloshing around the province; you can`t sustain an insurgency without fighters.

But here`s the problem with the army`s approach: the preferred solution to the fifth insurgency almost guarantees that there will be a sixth one.

Who knows, it may come five years hence or a decade from now. But anybody who knows anything about Balochistan is certain there will be another insurgency. The reason is a time-worn one: the army has been trying to solve a political problem by military means. And by throwing more money at it.

There is a curious paradox at work in Balochistan. The small size of Balochistan`s population — 6.5 million in the `98 census with around 40-45 per cent Baloch — means the army regards it as a problem that can be handled militarily. Where can they go? How many miscreants and terrorists can there be? Bring `em on. We`ll get them all. That about sums up the army`s approach.

But because the population is so small — 3-3.5 million Baloch today perhaps — it has been easier to perpetuate the story of Baloch alienation, of mistreatment at the hands of the state, of political repression since the absorption of the Khanate of Kalat into Pakistan in 1948.

It`s quite remarkable, really. The smallness of the Baloch `problem` tempts the army into believing it can be manageable militarily, but the `problem` never goes away because the legends of Baloch grievances are easily nurtured and perpetuated in a small population.

The real problem, of course, is the army itself. Not because of how it thinks — arguably, armies the world over would react the same way to an internal threat — but because what it thinks becomes the policy towards Balochistan.

It`s not that the civilians have a magic cure for all that ails Balochistan. But accustomed as they are to the process of the negotiated settlement, they understand how to surgically defang a threat rather than smash it in the mouth.

If nothing else, a civilian leadership with genuine powers would have been able to call the army out on its selective memory when it rails against Khair Buksh Marri and rants about the evilness that was Akbar Bugti (both have been used by the security establishment before).

But because there is no one on the civilian side to challenge the army`s narrative on Balochistan and no one to veto a military response to a political problem, Balochistan lurches from one insurgency to the next. The underlying causes are never addressed.

And, in Balochistan`s case, it`s not just that armies don`t deal in underlying causes. It`s also that fundamentally the Pakistan Army views Balochistan through a security prism.

When generals look at Balochistan they see a strategic asset with vast natural resources, not an impoverished people with little hope of a better life. When generals look at Balochistan they see Iran to the west, Afghanistan to the north and the Arabian Sea to the south, strategic threats and opportunities. The Baloch are just pawns, a population to be manipulated either against Pakistan by outside forces or neutralised as a threat by Pakistan. n

If you look at a land and see not the people, is it any wonder the people fight against you?

The writer is a member of staff.

cyril.a@gmail.com

A security prism, not a human one | Opinion | DAWN.COM

=============

I disagree with Almeida on a couple of points.

1. 'The Army does not understand the 'genuine grievances of the Baluch'.

The Army's investment in development projects, schools, roads, clinics, colleges, programs to increase Baluch recruitment into the Army, all point to an understanding that development of Baluchistan and a resolution of the Baluch's grievances is a necessary component for a long term resolution of the conflict.


2. 'The elected government is powerless':

They are not powerless, when it comes to 'addressing the genuine grievances of the Baluch'. As Almeida himself states, it is the perception of 'deprivation and lack of development' that keep the insurgencies coming back - those are all issues that the civilian government is well placed to address, if it can actually get around to doing so. The military certainly has no interest in preventing the civilian government from investing in infrastructure, schools, roads and hospitals - the military itself is doing that in a limited capacity.

Perhaps the civilian government should set up a seperate fund for investment in infrastructure and development, and let the military adminster the projects, but hire civilians to do most of the work.

 

[Chow chow]

Pakistan torturing Balochistan activists, report say

Hundreds of political activists are being held and tortured by security forces in the Pakistani province of Balochistan, Human Rights Watch says.

The region is currently the centre of an insurgency by local tribesmen fighting for greater political rights.

A new report by the rights group focuses on political activists detained without charge. Many of them were later killed, the report says.

The Supreme Court is investigating the killings and disappearances.

Entitled "We can torture, kill and keep you for years", the report completes a three-part series of investigations on Balochistan by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan says that taken together they present a disturbing and violent picture of what many are calling Pakistan's secret dirty war.

"Pakistan's security forces are engaging in an abusive free-for-all in Balochistan as Baloch nationalists and suspected militants 'disappear' and in many cases are executed," HRW Asia Director Brad Adams said.

"The national government has done little to end the carnage in Balochistan, calling into question its willingness or ability to control the military and intelligence agencies."

Pakistani authorities routinely deny claims of abuses in Balochistan.

'Propaganda'
The latest 132-page report says state security remains responsible for most of the abuses.

This includes holding detainees as young as 12 years old without charge - as well as the increasing torture and killing of those held, it says.


Balochistan is the scene of frequent attacks
The report details 45 alleged cases of enforced disappearances, the majority in 2009 and 2010. It says that while hundreds of people have been "forcibly disappeared" in Balochistan since 2005, dozens of new enforced disappearances have occurred since Pakistan returned to civilian rule in 2008.

The report is based on over 100 interviews by HRW in Balochistan in 2010 and 2011 with family members of "disappeared" people, former detainees, local human rights activists, lawyers and witnesses to government abductions.

It says that those targeted are primarily Baloch nationalist activists or suspected Baloch militants.

"Pakistani security services are brazenly disappearing, torturing, and often killing people because of suspected ties to the Baloch nationalist movement," Mr Adams said. "This is not counterinsurgency - it is barbarism and it needs to end now."

Security officials in Balochistan routinely dismiss such claims as part of propaganda by separatists.

They say all those arrested have been produced in courts.

In a recent interview, the top security official in Balochistan told the BBC the killings were the result of infighting amongst the nationalists.

But other security officials have also told the BBC that they have detained the activists.

They say the insurgents are being supported by India and it is the duty of Pakistan's security forces to do their utmost to suppress them.

The report also highlights how difficult conditions are getting for ordinary citizens in Balochistan. The province has strategic importance as it borders Iran and Afghanistan.

US officials say the Afghan Taliban leadership have their headquarters in the province, a claim Pakistan denies.

Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and most sparsely populated province, is also rich in minerals - with vast untapped deposits of oil, gas, copper and gold.

But locals say most of this remains under the control of the federal government - its policies have left them little choice, many say, but to side with the insurgents.

BBC News - Pakistan torturing Balochistan activists, report says

 

[Yeti]

GENEVA — A slim figure in a dark suit, Brahumdagh Bugti, 30, could pass for a banker in the streets of this sedate Swiss city. But in truth he is a resistance leader in exile, a player in an increasingly ugly independence war within Pakistan.


Brahumdagh Bugti, who fled Pakistan for Afghanistan and then Switzerland. Pakistan considers him a terrorist.


He has been on the run since 2006, when he narrowly escaped a Pakistani Army operation that killed his grandfather and dozens of his tribesmen in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. And since then, the government’s attempt to stamp out an uprising by the Baluch ethnic minority has only intensified, according to human rights organizations and Pakistani politicians.

The Baluch insurgency, which has gone on intermittently for decades, is often called Pakistan’s Dirty War, because of the rising numbers of people who have disappeared or have been killed on both sides. But it has received little attention internationally, in part because most eyes are turned toward the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas.

Mr. Bugti insists that he is a political leader only, and that he is not taking a role in the armed uprising against the government. He was caught up in a deadly struggle between his grandfather, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, a former minister and a leader of the Bugti tribe, and Pakistan’s military leader at the time, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, over control of Baluchistan’s rich natural resources and the establishment of military bases in the province.

Baluch nationalists have never accepted being part of Pakistan and have fought in five uprisings since the country’s formation in 1948. Their demands range from greater control over Baluchistan’s gas and natural resources, fairer distribution of wealth (Baluchistan suffers from the lowest health, education and living standards in the country), to outright independence.

When the Pakistani Army shelled their ancestral home in Dera Bugti in December 2005, Mr. Bugti took to the hills with his grandfather, who was 80 and partly disabled, and they camped for months in mountain caves. Then, in August 2006, the military caught up with them. “I escaped, but he could not,” Mr. Bugti said.

From a hide-out two miles away, he watched the military assault, a furious three-day bombardment by attack jets, helicopter gunships and airborne troops. On the evening of the third day, the government triumphantly announced that Nawab Bugti had been killed. Thirty-two tribesmen died with him, Mr. Bugti said. The day after learning of his grandfather’s death, Mr. Bugti gathered his closest tribal leaders, and they urged him to leave and save himself, he said.

Pakistan and neighboring Iran were hostile to the Baluch, and the only place to go was Afghanistan, though it was consumed by the war with the Taliban. It took 19 days, on foot, to trek from a mountain base near Sibi to the Afghan border. But he had an armed tribal force and scouts with him and made the escape without incident, crossing into Afghanistan along a mountain trail, he said.

Although he had few contacts there, tribal links and traditions of hospitality assured him a welcome. He sent for his wife, his two children — a third was born in Afghanistan — and his mother, and after an elaborate dance to confuse government watchers, they crossed the border to join him days later.

Yet Afghanistan was not a safe haven. The family moved about 18 times over the next 18 months, and despite never going outside, he said, they became the target of repeated suicide bomb attacks by the Taliban and Qaeda militants, who they believe were sent by the Pakistani military. At least one bomb attack, in the upscale residential Kabul neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan, was specifically aimed at Mr. Bugti, a Western diplomat and an Afghan intelligence official said.

The Pakistani government has branded Mr. Bugti a terrorist, the leader of the militant Baluch Republican Army, and has made no secret of its desire to kill or capture him. It has repeatedly demanded that Afghanistan hand him over and has accused India of supporting Baluch rebels through its consulates in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s remonstrations over Mr. Bugti became so insistent that the United States and other NATO members urged Afghanistan to move Mr. Bugti elsewhere, Western diplomats and Afghan officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the politics involved. In October 2010, he and his family arrived in Switzerland and sought political asylum.



Though Mr. Bugti says he supports only peaceful political activism rather than armed resistance, he does share the rebels’ demand for independence for the Baluch. “I support the political struggle and the idea for liberation because the Baluch people demand it,” he said.

He formed a political party shortly after his grandfather’s death, distancing himself from the established parties. The manner of his grandfather’s death, his call for political opposition to the government and his youth have won him broad support beyond his own Bugti tribe, among the educated Baluch middle class and student movements and appointed representatives in every district.

“We got a very good response from all the Baluch,” he said.

It proved to him that people in Baluchistan still hoped and believed in political change, he said. Yet government retribution was swift. Eight members of his political party in Baluchistan have been killed, five members of its central committee are missing since its formation in 2007 and the top leaders have been forced into exile. Even the party’s 76-year-old secretary general, Bashir Azeem, was detained for two months in 2009 and tortured — including being beaten and hung upside down, in a case documented by Human Rights Watch.

It is part of an increasingly deadly government crackdown on political and student nationalist leaders in the province over the last 18 months, politicians and human rights officials say. “They are trying to kill the activists, anyone who is speaking out,” Mr. Bugti said.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented a rising number of abuses by the Pakistani security forces in Baluchistan. Amnesty International describes the use of “kill and dump” tactics, under which activists, teachers, journalists and lawyers, even teenagers, have been detained and their bullet-ridden bodies dumped on roadsides at a rate of about 20 a month in recent months.

Human Rights Watch says hundreds of people have disappeared since 2005 in Baluchistan, and it has documented 45 cases of enforced disappearances and torture by Pakistani security forces in the province in 2009 and 2010. Human Rights Watch has also reported a growing trend of retaliation by armed rebels on non-Baluch settlers, including the targeted killings of 22 teachers.

Despite the end of General Musharraf’s rule and Pakistan’s return to a democratic government in 2008, military repression of the Baluch has only increased, Mr. Bugti and others say. Members of the civilian government say they have no power over the military, and the army is obsessed with crushing an uprising that it sees as an effort by India to undermine Pakistani sovereignty.

Mr. Bugti has called on the United States to end aid to the Pakistani Army, which, he said, was diverting resources from intended counterterrorism goals and using them to suppress the Baluch. “If the U.S. stopped the military and financial assistance, they could not continue their operations for long,” he said.

The increased violence has pushed the Baluch far beyond their original demands for greater autonomy and recognition of their rights and toward an armed independence movement. “Ninety-nine percent of the Baluch now want liberation,” Mr. Bugti said.

“The people are more angry and they will go to the side of those using violence, because if you close all the peaceful ways of struggle, and you kidnap the peaceful, political activists, and torture them to death and throw their bodies on roadsides, then definitely they will go and join the armed resistance groups,” he said.

He sees little hope of change from within Pakistan and is appealing for intervention by the United Nations and Western nations. “We have to struggle hard, maybe for 1 year, 2 years, 20 years,” he said. "We have to hope.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/world/asia/24baluch.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1