Meeting of minds in Kabul

COMMONALITY of interests and a shared threat perception are reason enough for Islamabad and Kabul to bury the hatchet and start afresh. Hopefully, the events of the last few days, both public and behind the scenes, are an indicator of what the future may hold for bilateral relations between the two neighbours. President Musharraf’s first visit to Afghanistan in four years appears to have produced more than just rhetoric and the customary expressions of goodwill associated with ceremonial meetings between heads of state. The indications are that both countries have taken a tentative but sincere first step down the road to rapprochement, and it is imperative that the opportunity thus created for developing genuine trust is not squandered through imprudent statements or actions. Peace and stability in both Pakistan and Afghanistan are dependent in large measure on tackling the militancy of the Taliban and the terrorism of Al Qaeda, forces that complement each other and are active on either side of the Durand Line. This ground reality was readily accepted by Mr Musharraf while speaking in Kabul. He also stressed that while some militants were “certainly” entering Afghanistan from Pakistan, neither the government in Islamabad nor the ISI were sponsoring such activities. He also dispelled the view that renegade elements within the military’s intelligence set-up could be acting on their own and assisting the Taliban. The blame game, he said, must end.

For this to happen, both sides will have to demonstrate maturity and honesty of purpose. Until now, it has been routine for Kabul to reflexively blame Islamabad for every Taliban attack in Afghanistan. If militants are crossing the Durand Line from Pakistan, it must be realised by the Afghan president that there is similar traffic in the opposite direction, involving not just battle-hardened extremists but also arms and ammunition as well as huge quantities of narcotics. If Pakistan has failed, despite the posting of some 80,000 troops, to monitor its 1,400-mile porous border with Afghanistan, authorities on the other side are equally culpable. Only a coordinated military and intelligence effort can help stem this tide. Instead of giving the media a list of Taliban fighters and their purported addresses in Pakistan, as Mr Karzai did in February this year, any such information must be immediately forwarded to Islamabad so that its veracity can be ascertained and action taken. Pakistan, for its part, must ensure that militants in North Waziristan honour the recent accord which bars infiltration into Afghanistan. With peace holding in the tribal areas, the country’s armed forces should be in a stronger position to keep a better watch on cross-border movement. Here again close cooperation between the two sides is essential.

Both countries stand to gain by overcoming long-standing misgivings and an accrued deficit of trust. As pointed out in the joint statement issued at the end of President Musharraf’s visit, extremism and Talibanisation is a common threat to societal harmony and a collective campaign is needed to help rid the two countries of this scourge. On the economic front, stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas can lead to new opportunities for direct trade, besides opening up the region as a transit route for Central Asian and Chinese trade. Real progress may also finally be made on projects such as the gas pipeline from Turkmenistan. But for any of this to happen, peace and stability must be restored in both countries. Without this, there can be no way forward.

Demand by Bugti’s sons

THE crisis in Balochistan is nowhere near being resolved. The mystery surrounding the death and burial of Nawab Akbar Bugti has heightened people’s anger and resentment. The family of the deceased has naturally been pained the most and it is not surprising that the sons of Nawab Bugti are now demanding that their father’s body be exhumed and international human rights bodies be involved in the forensic investigation to determine the cause of death of the Baloch leader. This demand is nothing extraordinary because under the law many people manage to get the body of a close relative exhumed and an autopsy performed if the circumstances surrounding the death of a person appear to be suspicious. Bugti’s is a special case. He was a political and a tribal leader of a major tribe in Balochistan and a very controversial figure.

Given the rumours and speculation that have been rife since August 26 when Bugti’s death was announced, the government itself should be keen on clearing the air of the controversy surrounding his death. Normally, in cases of sudden or unnatural death where an autopsy is needed, it is resistance from the family that can be the main obstacle to ascertaining the truth. In the present case, Nawab Bugti’s family itself is demanding a forensic examination of the body, and if the minister of state for information is to be believed, the authorities have no objection to instituting such a process. As for the demand to associate some independent bodies with the investigation, this is understandable and in all fairness should be conceded. The credibility of the government in this case is so low that its opponents need to be reassured of the honesty and fairness of the probe. In the absence of any international agency which could extend facilities of this kind, the government should agree to associate with the enquiry individuals and agencies the Bugti family can trust. The government made a terrible mistake by not handing over the body to the family members and keeping them out of the funeral. It could make amends by inviting the sons of Akbar Bugti to participate in the legal processes, including forensic testing.

When will KCR be revived?

EVER so often, one hears of some high-ranking official discussing the revival of the Karachi Circular Railway. Invariably, promises are made about it being made functional soon and the matter is then forgotten — until it is brought up again. So it is with some scepticism that one views the latest discussions, this time presided over by the Sindh chief secretary, with the federal railway secretary and the city nazim being present. The details of putting into place an effective and modern railway system for Karachiites were more or less the same thing one has been hearing for long. The only difference, it seems, is that some progress may have been made in finalising the details of the plan. However, the key element that is missing is when the KCR will actually be made operational. In December last year, the state minister for railway had said that once a Japanese financial proposal for the cost of the KCR was approved, work on the project could begin by the end of 2007 and be completed by 2010. But as there was no mention of a timeline at the latest meeting, one assumes that work has, once again, been delayed. This is bound to frustrate the millions of hapless commuters who have no choice but to fall back on rashly driven buses or obtain huge loans to buy motorbikes or cars.

It cannot be stressed enough how badly Karachi needs an efficient and reliable public transport system — one that will not destroy the city’s natural environment. It is not just a matter of the traffic — which will be of nightmarish proportions by the time 2010 comes around. It is also about addressing the people’s transport needs which are never given their due priority. Any preliminaries that may be there should be expedited so that work on the KCR’s revival is begun sooner than later.

Balochistan after Bugti

HISTORY and nature have one thing in common. They rarely teach lessons without bloodshed and trauma. Although we have never officially embraced it as a potentially preventable wound, one of the lessons etched like a deep scar on our body politic is the partition of Pakistan. Perhaps because of, not despite, all the cosmetic surgery we have done on that amputation, that wound is throbbing again today.

The dark shadow of 1971, when provincial disharmony turned into a virulent movement for secession, should have informed all decisions Islamabad took to assuage tensions in provinces that felt they had an unequal share in our multi-ethnic federation. Balochistan stood first in line since the 1950s as a province that was restive. But never through all the decades that led up to the recent past has it posed such a serious challenge as now to the stability of the federation that is seen by the Baloch as an oppressive state with a colonising army.

Nawab Akbar Bugti’s death in the largest military operation that Balochistan has ever witnessed was not unexpected by his close aides. Since March 17, 2005, when his personal home and living quarters were bombed by the Frontier Constabulary, it had become clear that Bugti was a marked man. The conflict between him and Islamabad had escalated over the last two years, triggered off by the rape case of Dr Shazia Khalid, allegedly at the hands of a military man.

The confrontation took a particularly ugly turn when General Musharraf’s helicopter was fired upon from the ground in Bugti areas, after which the episode took on a personal colour between Pervez Musharraf and the Baloch sardar. He knew he was living on borrowed time, which is why he was ensconced in the cave complex in Kohlu.

Yet no one had quite been prepared for this naked use of state force to bomb out a political leader who had lived out a long and chequered career both inside and outside public office. When I last saw Nawab Bugti, which was in 2005, he was talking the tough language that was his trademark, but he was definitely seeking institutional attention from Islamabad. Despite the fact that his entire homestead had been shelled all the way to his personal quarters, Bugti was looking for a dialogue. He was looking for the Baloch of Dera Bugti and Sui to be accorded the dignity of full citizenship.

Despite the fact that he earned personal royalties from the state for the gas-rich land he leased to Pakistan Petroleum in Sui, his lifestyle was clearly frugal, and his dependents impoverished. The mud settlements in Sui, outside the compound of the PPL complex, did not have the benefit of Sui gas. They were scrabbling for jobs, for energy, for water and for basic amenities for their community.

There is much to be said for the conventional wisdom that tribal sardars like Nawab Bugti thrive on the politics of a personal cult. Their hold on the illiterate but armed followers is mediaeval in its interpersonal hierarchism, and the impulse to buy guns instead of books for the Bugtis is encouraged by them today. This argument is all the more reason that Islamabad should have felt obligated to turn the fortunes of this province from tribalism to modern standards of citizenship.

After his assassination, the most serious challenge to the status quo will rise from all three smaller provinces. The street-fires of Kohlu, Dera Bugti, will, if not put out politically, ignite Balochistan, Sindh and parts of the NWFP. Old governance equations and resource-sharing formulas will catapult to centre-stage or become catalysts for dangerously repressed anger.

After his murder, which has swiftly morphed the late sardar to the status of a local saint, most of the Baloch, a group of 4.5 million, will now see Bugti’s resort to militancy as the only answer to their troubles. The BLA, which attracted a fringe following of nationalists, will increasingly be seen as the mainstream armed wing of a legitimate political movement of an oppressed people. The arguments made for Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq will resonate in Pakistan’s internal discourse, in which the Baloch narrative will assume apocalyptic, millenarian overtones. The state will emerge as the ‘other’, or the enemy, and will no longer be distinguishable from the military.

Further military confrontation in Balochistan, apart from spurring long-festering ethnic unrest in Sindh, will incite various anti-Musharraf forces throughout Pakistan. General Musharraf’s ability to commit adequate military resources to the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban will be further reduced, undermining efforts to stabilise Afghanistan. The strategic importance of Balochistan, which has grown since China started building a port for Pakistan at Gwadar, close to the Strait of Hormuz, with a projected 27 berths, enough for a major Pakistani naval base that could be used by Beijing, will become its ticket to a new but disastrously overstretched Great Game.

The IPI pipeline is the first thing that will be scuttled, along with Pakistan’s regional security. On the eastern border, Indian ambivalence on Balochistan will straddle its usual range of postures. New Delhi may still talk of seeking a stable Pakistan that is open to an acceptable peace settlement on Kashmir, but many Indian voices from its nationalist mainstream will celebrate the prospect of an Islamabad trapped in the Balochistan quagmire. Privately, almost all Indian players in the security game will welcome the crisis in Balochistan as leverage on General Musharraf to turn down Pakistani support for Kashmiri Islamist extremists.

The final, but most decisive domestic challenge to the existing elite consensus in Pakistan will come from a previously co-opted source. As the most populous province in the country, Punjab may no longer be able to sustain its unifying metaphor on inter-provincial politics under the sheer weight of its own contradictions and internal tensions.

Without federal forces in power, like mainstream political parties that unite, Punjab itself could start seeing its old bond with the army as counter-productive and in deep existential review of its relationship with the rest of Pakistan. Minus a myopic colonising impulse gathering ballast among discontented locals and intellectuals in Punjab, the army would face a challenge from its very heartland and recruiting ground.

Much of this unfortunately, has already been taking shape since the start of the military operation in the province. According to US intelligence sources, more than six Pakistani army brigades, plus paramilitary forces totalling some 25,000 men, have been battling Baloch Liberation Army guerillas in the Kohlu mountains and the surrounding areas.

Earlier in the year, the Human Rights Commission was given only limited access to the Kohlu area, which is at the heart of the current insurgency, and its findings disclose not only a chilling list of disappearances, but also a catalogue of deaths, described as a result of “indiscriminate bombing and strafing” by 20 Cobra helicopter gunships and four squadrons of fighter planes, including F-16 fighter jets, resulting in 215 civilian dead and hundreds more wounded, many of them women and children.

Until this point, most Baloch leaders have not embraced independence or secession as a real option. Despite their rhetoric, at least as a first step, they have been ready to settle for the provincial autonomy envisaged in the 1973 Pakistani Constitution. They sought an end to the blatant economic discrimination by the centre, which is dominated by an elite, mostly still feudal, from Punjab. They are very conscious of the fact that most of Pakistan’s natural resources are in Balochistan.

Although the 1973 Constitution provides very specifically for provincial autonomy, as well as royalties and local rights even where well-heads are located, most of its stipulations are ignored. It is common knowledge that 36 per cent of the gas produced in Pakistan comes from the province, yet Balochistan consumes only a fraction of its production due to its harrowing poverty. For decades, non-inclusive central governments have denied Balochistan a fair share of development funds and paid only 12 per cent of the royalties due to the province for the gas produced there, while Sindh and Punjab pick up far more per thermal unit for the gas they produce. But under military regimes, Balochistan always slides further into backwardness.

This brings us to the grievous blowback that this ill-advised and tragic military action will invariably have in more ways than one. It is obvious that if security was the primary objective of killing Bugti, then the regime has guaranteed an opposite if not equal reaction. Not only will this killing catalyse Baloch dissent into material action, it will unite a fragmented nationalist movement. The main difference between earlier phases of the Baloch struggle and the present one, as many strategic observers say, is that Islamabad will no longer be able to play off feuding tribes against each other.

Any visitor to Kohlu or Dera Bugti will tell you that the other important difference is that the Baloch have a better-armed, more disciplined fighting guerrilla force. No one says where the sophisticated weaponry comes from, but the guerilla grapevine hints at the booming Baloch-Pushtun black market, spurred by active international activity at several points from East Gwadar to the Afghan-Russian transit corridor.

This lethal nexus, if cemented, will seal the contract on the commercialisation of this conflict. Once the international defence industry lands its middlemen to protect the vital energy interests it wages wars for in other parts of the world, all bets will be off on which way the lines of the map will be redrawn. That is when Balochistan will truly go global, and Pakistan will spiral deeper into chaos.

Akbar Khan Bugti’s killing at the hands of the military has escalated an old struggle into a fight for many things in Pakistan. His death has become symbolic of all that troubles the province, and the way military planners handle dissent. After the way Bugti was hunted down and his body flown out in a locked coffin, Balochistan can never be the same place. And without a doubt, if Balochistan will not normalise from shock-impact, then Pakistan too will be a different country in more ways than one.

There writer is a member of the National Assembly.