Outcome of Bugti episode

WHILE in America, I learnt of the death of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti at the hands of Pakistan’s security forces. Academicians and South Asia experts were disturbed enough for them to contact me for my assessment of the event. What could I tell them? Nearly four decades of discipline imposed by the rigours of diplomatic service had taught me to be cautious and circumspect, especially when commenting on events at home. Moreover, I have always been uneasy with criticism of the country and its policies, while abroad.

It is, nevertheless, a fact that Bugti’s death is a major political development and most likely to cast a shadow on national politics for decades to come. Whether it was an accidental death or pre-meditated elimination matters little. As far as the people of Pakistan, specially those of the three minority provinces, are concerned, the military leadership has eliminated a charismatic spokesman of an angry and alienated minority. Given the lingering bitterness in Sindh over the hanging of Mr Bhutto, the nawab’s death will add to the growing perception that the federal government does not tolerate popular leaders, particularly those that espouse the cause of smaller provinces.

Even after his death, the government has not refrained from trying to besmirch Bugti’s name and character. In fact, there appears to be a well-orchestrated plan to portray the late Baloch leader as a common criminal. Tales of his cruelty, blackmail, intimidation and murderous traits are being circulated. While some of these colourful stories about Bugti’s personality and character may be true, they have little relevance to the situation created by his death.

In the midst of all these claims and counter-claims, there are certain incontrovertible facts that cannot be denied. These relate primarily to the profound sense of alienation among the Baloch over the past many years. No single measure, nor any single government, can be held responsible. Most national governments and many of the provincial governments of Balochistan have been singly and jointly responsible for the current malaise. They have colluded and conspired to deny the people of the province not only their rightful share in the country’s economic resources, but also their legitimate role in national political life.

An obvious example of this discriminatory policy has been that even though vast deposits of natural gas, discovered in the 1950s in Sui, warm homes and offices all over the country, Balochistan remains the least covered by gas pipelines. Thus, while the rest of the country has the advantage of access to a relatively cheap source of energy, the people of Balochistan continues to shiver through the dark winter nights. Also, the royalties received by Balochistan for its gas are much lower than those given to Sindh or Punjab for gas extracted from their fields. Balochistan’s copper, gold, granite and other rich mineral resources, too, have been exploited with little advantage to the Baloch.

As regards the political grievances of the Baloch, these are many and mostly genuine. The Baloch claim, with good reason, that except for the short duration of Ataullah Mengal’s government in the early 1970s, Balochistan governments have been nominated by Islamabad, serving the interests of the centre, rather than those of the province.

Given this background, Bugti’s personal life becomes irrelevant in the context of what he had come to represent to the people of his province. While in the myopic view of Islamabad, he represented the old, archaic, tribal order; to the Baloch, his was the voice that articulated the anger and alienation felt deeply all over the province.

Few would care to now recall that for years, he was a moderate, ever willing to work with the centre. Until recently, he had not abandoned the path of dialogue and reconciliation and if only Islamabad had found it fit to implement the recommendations of the government, this tragedy could have been averted. It is, therefore, ironic that Islamabad, by its ill thought-out policies, should have helped restore Bugti’s tarnished credentials. In his death, he has come to symbolise Baloch nationalism. In that sense, he died a glorious death, feared by his enemies, but loved by his people.

Islamabad has taken refuge behind the plea that it was only engaged in maintaining law and order in the province, but there are other ways of doing so, rather than going about eliminating political leaders and destroying their ancestral homes. And how does one explain the meanness with which the government went about the business of burying Bugti’s body, without showing any consideration for the feelings of his family, friends and well-wishers?

Not surprisingly, the government has also spoken of foreign involvement in the Balochistan crisis. This is an old story that no one takes seriously. Every time the centre has wanted to dismiss a provincial government, whether in East Pakistan, Sindh or Balochistan, it has come out with allegations of foreign involvement. Even the venerated East Pakistani leader Maulvi Fazlul Haq was accused of being an Indian agent when Islamabad decided to move against him. Soon thereafter, he was appointed the country’s interior minister. The government’s 13-page fact sheet on Bugti’s “misdemeanours”, lacks credibility and reminds us of numerous such “white papers” prepared in the past, most of which were consigned to the dust heap soon thereafter by the authors themselves.

India’s reaction to Bugti’s killing was contained in an official statement, which described the event as an “unfortunate killing”. At the same time, the Indian statement spoke of “continuing operations in Balochistan that underlined the need for peaceful dialogue to address the grievances and aspirations of the people of Balochistan”. It warned that “military force can never solve political problems”. Not surprisingly, Pakistan rejected the Indian statement and advised Delhi to mind its own business and focus on putting its own house in order.

What is disappointing is that the government should have now chosen to bring India into the equation, with the foreign office spokesperson accusing Delhi of trying to destabilise Pakistan. Indian consulates in Afghanistan are alleged to be taking advantage of their location close to Pakistan’s frontiers, to engage in activities aimed at destabilising Pakistan. The newspapers have also reported that General Musharraf informed a high-level meeting about the routes through which terrorists were bringing in their arms.

The president’s statement absolves the Afghan government of any involvement against Pakistan. We have, however, not been told as to whether these charges were ever taken up in official talks with India. In any case, with India’s intelligence agencies being accused of pumping arms and money into Balochistan, and Delhi convinced that our “boys” continue to maintain their linkages with the Kashmiri “jihadis”, it is difficult to see how the peace process can move beyond confidence-building measures to negotiations on political differences.

Not being privy to confidential information, it is not possible to comment on the allegations of foreign involvement in Balochistan. Even if true, giving it publicity will neither solve the problem in Balochistan, nor send the right signal abroad. If anything, it will encourage other countries to think of similar initiatives, because it is in the nature of inter-state relations, especially for neighbours and major powers, to fish in troubled waters. If such an opportunity is available in a resource-rich and strategically important area such as Balochistan, it would be surprising if our neighbours were not to take advantage of a situation that we helped create.

In this context, there is some concern in Pakistan about a recent article in the ‘US Armed Forces Journal’ by Ralph Peters, which called Pakistan an “unnatural state” and which appears to suggest that the disintegration of Pakistan may not be such a bad thing. Does it reflect the views of the administration? I do not think so. In the US it is not uncommon for academicians or even officials to be making outlandish suggestions. They become important only when they are adopted as policy, but there is no reason to believe that the Americans would see any advantage in the current turmoil in Balochistan. But this is as of now.

If the problems were to exacerbate, or if the US saw other powers getting involved, it would surely try to ensure that its interests are not hurt in any way. It is in this context that some analysts in the US have raised questions about the scale of Chinese involvement in the province and in particular over what its presence in the Gwadar port would mean for Chinese influence in the Gulf. We can, therefore, expect the Americans to closely monitor developments in the province.

Whatever the case, there is no doubt that the current insurgency in Balochistan has encouraged some Indian analysts to see in it an opportunity to apply renewed pressure on Islamabad. In their view, Balochistan has “become a soft spot in Pakistan’s under-belly”. They are hoping that continuing turmoil in this key province and the growing disquiet in Pakistan over the country’s commitment to the war on terror will encourage rethinking in Washington about the usefulness of the current dispensation in Islamabad.

This group would, therefore, favour going slow on the dialogue process so as to see what effect the disturbances have on the centre. There are others who believe that Pakistan will be able to wipe out the Baloch resistance, and that Delhi should, therefore, continue to maintain its relations with Pakistan on the basis of “business as usual”.

Whatever the truth in these speculations, as long as Balochistan remains disturbed, major powers will continue to take an interest in it. International study groups and think tanks are also focusing on the issue. While in Washington, I gathered that the Brookings Institution, a highly influential think tank, has brought in a well-known French scholar on sabbatical to examine the issue of Balochistan in depth. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group last week came out with a detailed report on Balochistan.

Whatever one’s views of the ICG, there is no doubt that it carries great credibility in western capitals. Moreover, the report contains some constructive recommendations that Islamabad would do well to examine. These include an end to military action, respect for the democratic rights of Baloch opposition leaders and activists and an end to “intimidation, torture, arbitrary arrests, disappearances and extra-judicial killings”. More importantly, the report calls on the government to “begin immediately a dialogue with all regional and national level political parties on ways of solving the crisis and creating a favourable environment for such a dialogue”.

There is, therefore, an urgent need for the government to abandon its preference for military-oriented, short-term remedies and instead opt for a well-thought out, long-term strategy, for dealing with the situation in Balochistan. Half-baked, piecemeal gestures and pronouncements are not going to work. The Baloch must not only be given the full autonomy promised to them repeatedly, but the ability to exercise power effectively and comprehensively. Most importantly, the military option must be ruled out publicly and irrevocably, now and forever.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Sharif’s disclosures & rapprochement

A FRIEND has brought me from Lahore a biography of Nawaz Sharif, the deposed prime minister of Pakistan. The book, written in the Urdu language and consisting of 430 pages, is titled Who is the traitor? It is a frank account as told to a Pakistani journalist. It records Sharif’s version of the Kargil operation, during his premiership, and the armed coup by President General Pervez Musharraf in 1999.

Sharif says that he was not aware of the fighting by his forces at Kargil until Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee called from Delhi to tell him. He says that he was given cursory information about the mujahideen sitting on the Kargil mountain ranges, but nothing about the military operation.

I wish I could see Musharraf’s book, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, to compare his account with Sharif’s. What I recall from the conversation I had with Musharraf a couple of years ago is that “everybody was on board”. His claim was that not only did Nawaz Sharif know about the operation but was a party to it.

However, Sharif says that he was not taken into confidence on Kargil. The little that he was told was that the attack would not create any problem. No life would be lost. He was assured that the army would not be directly involved. The attack by the mujahideen would be sufficient. But when Pakistan’s entire light northern infantry, according to Sharif, was destroyed killing 2,700 men, he asked Musharraf about the heavy losses.

Musharraf’s explanation, according to Sharif, was that the Indian forces had resorted to “carpet bombing”. This charge does not tally with the account of General V.P. Malik, the then chief of the Indian army staff, in his book, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory. Malik says: “The air force had to face serious limitations due to the mountainous high altitude terrain, the narrow flying corridors, the lack of effective ordnance delivery systems and the stipulation not to cross the LoC even when engaging important targets very close to it.” In the face of this it is difficult to believe that carpet bombing was possible.

Malik further says: “No targets were engaged by the air force across the LoC. However, it is to the great credit and dedication of the Indian air force that its personnel continued to experiment and evolve new techniques throughout the operations to overcome these handicaps.” A top air force officer who was engaged in the operation once complained to me that their main handicap was that the government had strictly instructed them not to cross the LoC. I do not know how far Musharraf’s allegation of carpet bombing is correct. After the operation there should have been some debate in the foreign media, at least in Pakistan. I do not recall any such thing.

Sharif’s statement that Musharraf had “moved the nuclear devices from one station to another during the Kargil operation” is probably the most disconcerting disclosure. The fact that the US knew about it and did nothing is still more disturbing. Washington should have made this public to build up international pressure on Islamabad. After losing in Kargil, Sharif says that Musharraf requested him to bail out the army.

When Sharif sought President Clinton’s good offices for the purpose, the latter admonished him. So did Prime Minister Tony Blair. “I took the entire blame on myself to save the honour of the armed forces,” says Sharif. “I was sincere but the army commanders harboured spite against me and decided to end my government. Musharraf was afraid that I might order an inquiry into the Kargil operation. He wanted to save his skin.”

Sharif’s allegation is that the army was all set to stage a coup, “otherwise it is not possible to change a government within a few hours.” He gives no credence to the story that Musharraf’s plane from Colombo was not allowed to land. Sharif says that two generals came to him on the night of October 12, 1999, and asked him to sign an order to dissolve the state assemblies. But when he said “over my dead body,” they said that “they would take revenge.”

The reason why I am reproducing what Sharif has said is the renewed faith Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has shown in Musharraf, knowing well Sharif’s version of Kargil. This is important because India is set to establish a joint mechanism to fight terrorism inside the two countries and across the border. It should be interesting to see how New Delhi and Islamabad will change the nomenclature of “enemy” that the two use to describe each other in their war plans and otherwise. Military academies in both countries have only one enemy to target when they train their officers. On the Indian side, it is Pakistan and on the Pakistani side, it is India.

Since the intelligence agencies are going to be part of the proposed mechanism, what will be the role of ISI which, according to Sharif, is independent of the government and the army? Will it stop helping anti-India elements in the northeast through Bangladesh or even Nepal? Only time will tell how far the joint statement and other observations that Manmohan Singh and Musharraf have made will affect India-Pakistan relations. Will there be a visible change in the attitude of their respective governments? For example, many routes between the two countries have been thrown open but the visa restrictions are so strict that the buses have more officials than passengers.

Still, the welcome point is that both countries are going to resume the peace process. There are specific references to the Siachen glacier and Sir Creek. All those who want a rapprochement between the two should support the efforts. This requires an entirely different approach which bureaucrats surrounding both Manmohan Singh and Musharraf cannot even perceive. Sharif’s disclosures are important because we are putting all our eggs in Musharraf’s basket. His recent statements show that he has changed his stance a bit because he does not insist on solving Kashmir first and then tackling other problems. That he exudes optimism is encouraging.

But the real change in Musharraf will be judged on two counts: one, how soon will he give up his uniform and, two, how willing is he to restore democracy in Pakistan. By keeping both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif out of the country, whatever the charges against them, Musharraf is only heightening doubts about the credibility of the 2007 elections. He should know that the world will judge him on how he acquits himself on all these points, and not on the basis of President Bush’s certificate which is neither here nor there.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

Nato’s Afghan test

IN Afghanistan, the Nato alliance is engaged in the bloodiest and most important land battle in its 57-year history. Some 6,000 British and Canadian troops have been fighting near-daily engagements with the resurgent Taliban militia in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, killing more than 500 of the enemy in the past month while suffering three dozen deaths of their own soldiers.

The campaign is fateful in several respects: It could prove a turning point both for Afghanistan and for Nato, which hopes to demonstrate that an alliance forged for the Cold War in Europe can tackle the West’s 21st-century challenges.

For that reason, it’s been encouraging to see the courage and apparent effectiveness of the British and Canadian troops, who are supported by US and Afghan forces; it’s been equally disheartening to witness the response of other Nato governments to an urgent request for more soldiers and aircraft to ensure the Taliban’s defeat. At a special pledging conference at Nato headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, the alliance’s 26 governments failed to make any new commitments of troops.

Nato’s top commander, US Gen. James L. Jones, wasn’t asking for anything exceptional when he urged the alliance last week to provide an additional 1,000 soldiers to serve as a reserve battalion as well as 1,500 more air support personnel and a squadron of helicopters.

—The Washington Post