IT has been 10 years since the death of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti on Aug 26, 2006, at the hands of the army in the Bhamboor mountains of Kohlu, Balochistan. The ripples touched off by that watershed event — which turned a prominent tribal leader seen as pro-establishment for much of his life into a nationalist icon — continue to roil the province even today, with inevitable repercussions for the federation as a whole. On the day of the anniversary, Baloch-dominated areas in Balochistan witnessed a complete strike on the call of the Jamhoori Watan Party which was founded by Bugti. Even Quetta, a Pakhtun-majority garrison town with a mixed population of different ethnicities, came to a standstill.
Whether the people’s response was of their own volition or out of fear of retaliation by insurgents, the success of the strike was, by default, an acknowledgement of the enormous significance of what took place a decade ago. Bugti’s killing served to further inflame the insurgency that had been triggered a year earlier by the rape of a doctor allegedly by an army officer in Sui. That insurgency continues to this day — the longest of five such movements since Partition. Furthermore, for the first time ever, the conflict encompasses virtually all the Baloch-majority areas in the province, including those in the south. The establishment’s response, brutal and short-sighted, has been self-defeating, serving to fuel more anger and alienation — thus providing ample opportunity for covert foreign meddling and more chaos. Enforced disappearances have provided a rallying point for critics at home and abroad, while enlisting extremist groups as proxies to counter the separatists has had deadly consequences in a region with porous borders and an already existing militancy problem. The insurgents too have resorted to increasingly violent tactics as the situation has spiralled out of control. Meanwhile, efforts by the previous, Dr Malik-led provincial government to engage separatist leaders in dialogue went nowhere. That was scarcely surprising, given the lack of political will by the centre to address genuine grievances of the Baloch that stem from historical neglect and naked exploitation of their resources by the state. However, Brahmdagh Bugti does his people no favours by eliciting India’s help in this powder keg. The only — and one cannot emphasise this enough — the only way to deal with this confoundedly complex situation is through an astute political response, backed by real power to effect change in the long term.
Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2016