27 January 2005	Thursday	16 Zilhaj 1425

KARACHI, Jan 26: Army generals running the country have not learnt any lessons from history, and they may well repeat the mistakes in Balochistan which led to the break-up of Pakistan in 1971.

This was stated by veteran politician Sardar Sherbaz Khan Mazari at a function organized by the Oxford University Press on Wednesday to launch Brig A.R. Siddiqi's book, "East Pakistan - the endgame: an onlooker's journal 1969 - 1971".

"I don't want to sound bitter, but problems in Gwadar and Sui have made the people of Balochistan feel the way the people of what was East Pakistan felt in 1971. And, mind you, I am not supporting the Sardars at all. Some of them are really...well, let's not talk about them," said Mr Mazari.

Speaking about his visit to Dhaka with Asghar Khan in June 1969, Mr Mazari said: "We met former East Pakistan governor Admiral Ahsan. One day as we walked home, we saw a group of indignant people, mostly Bengalis, shout at us: 'Punzabi...Punzabi'.

I walked up to them and said: 'Look, I am not a Punjabi. I am a Baloch. And we have also been denied our rights the way you have been deprived of your due share.' Hearing this, they started shouting 'Zindabad...Zindabad.'"

In an enlightening discourse on the 1971 dismemberment of Pakistan, noted academic Dr Manzoor Ahmad said: "In the East Pakistan debacle, voices of sanity emerged quite often in both the camps, but they were too weak to be effective.

Muslim politics of the subcontinent is like a tsunami wave in which water is sucked into the sea, baring its bottom, and then surges back, taking everybody, including political stalwarts, with its force and smashing them to the ground.

Muslim leadership has been vacuous of rational planning and, more often than not, has succumbed to the furore they have created themselves, in the masses. Both Mujib and Bhutto, as described by Brig Siddiqi in the book, are illustrative of this phenomenon."

He said: "The book also brings another reality to the fore and that is the role of religion as a binding force between ethnic groups in Pakistan. Mr Siddiqi has rightly pointed out that the tenuous link of a common religion between the two wings was already over stretched through years of mutual rancour, and recrimination had reached a breaking point and could no more hold them together.

I believe that unity on the basis of religion is parasitic on the concept of 'the other' and can best be described as 'united against' rather than 'united for'. Mr Siddiqi correctly points out that Islam for the people of East Pakistan was symbol rather than a force to bind them with the people of West Pakistan."

Delivering a vote of thanks, the author, Brig A.R. Siddiqi, wondered whether the 1947 dismemberment of United India was a partition of the subcontinent or its balkanization.

"We did not have one partition. We had several partitions - such as, those of Punjab and Bengal. But if it's a process of balkanization, it won't stop. It is about time the governments of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh established an institute to look into the causes of partition." Oxford University Press managing director Ameena Saiyid and international relations expert Moonis Ahmar also spoke.