KARACHI, March 21: Eminent politician Sardar Sherbaz Mazari has described the military action in Dera Bugti area as ‘dangerously detrimental to the interests of our country’, and said that in these circumstances, one cannot oppose the right of the Bugti tribesmen to defend their families and kinfolk.

In a statement issued on Monday, Mr Mazari noted that the country’s entire civilian leadership, representing the PML, PPP, PML-N, ANP, MQM and MMA, had come out strongly against the ongoing military operation in Dera Bugti

which, he alleged, was ‘pre-planned’.

In reality, he claimed, under a pre-planned operation, the Establishment had launched a two-pronged attack on Dera Bugti in the early hours of March 18. At one of the two fronts, he said, an unprovoked attack was launched on the civilians living in Dera Bugti where Nawab Akbar Bugti’s private residence was also directly targeted.

He was of the view that this mortar/artillery attack led to civilian casualties on a large scale.

According to him, the second line of attack was a propaganda war which blatantly attempted to falsify the reality by painting Bugti tribesmen as the aggressors. Both the telephone exchanges in Sui and Dera Bugti had been blown up in advance to prevent journalists from having a free access to information.

Using the pretext of national security, the area had been sealed off, further denying the press the right of objective scrutiny, he observed.

Sardar Mazari said that the cancellation of a visit by a delegation of MNAs to Dera Bugti and Sui came as no surprise. Once the MNAs visited the area, a true picture of the ground realities would have emerged, exposing the Establishment’s deliberate policy of disseminating misinformation, he contended.

“Now we hear of an imminent massive military operation in Dera Bugti. Shaukat Aziz, Shaikh Rashid and Aftab Sherpao have endlessly been harping on the assurances that there will be no military operation in Dera Bugti. It is just a game of childish semantics,” remarked Sardar Mazari.

“When helicopter gunships, heavy artillery and mortars are used, as had been done on March 18, what else can one call it,” he argued, adding: “Sadly, the military leadership has once again decided to shut its ears and proceed on a course dangerously detrimental to the interests of our country.” He said it seemed that the military leadership was refusing to acknowledge the lessons learnt from the 1971 debacle when our generals single-handedly lost half of Mr Jinnah’s Pakistan.