In response to the repeated acts of sabotage by Bugti tribesmen that have disrupted the supply of natural gas to Punjab, the government has - you guessed it - set up an 'inter-ministerial committee'.
One can understand the reluctance of the authorities to deal with the matter as a breakdown of law and order and apply the necessary force: the tribesmen are armed to the teeth and deploy short-range missiles and rocket-propelled grenades as a matter of course. In fact, these marauders are better equipped than provincial police and militias.
From the conflicting reports that have appeared in the press, it seems that the Bugtis are retaliating against the suspension of electricity supply to their stronghold, Dera Bugti. According to one version, the Mazari tribesmen have removed over 60 kilometres of electric cables. For good measure they also halted water supplies to Sui. Reports from the area are confused and often conflicting: it is almost as though we were hearing of events from a distant war zone. There have been offers of 'talks' from government officials; the gas company has offered 'negotiations' over payments made to the Bugtis. It is as though foreign, sovereign forces were locked in combat and third-party mediation was being proposed.
In all the editorial comment and criticism that has accompanied this fighting and destruction of national assets, nobody has asked the obvious question: why do we tolerate the presence of these armed groups that are controlled by tribal chiefs? Indeed, the entire tribal system is an anachronistic left-over from the days of the British raj and should be done away with. The British gave these tribal chiefs a stipend and a large degree of autonomy because they did not want to expend manpower in keeping the peace in the vast and lawless tracts of land in Balochistan and the North-West Frontier.
This anomalous situation was continued by successive governments. Bhutto tried to end the sardari system in the last phase of his tenure, but these reforms were undone by Zia. Since then, nobody has tried to tackle the problem. Indeed, no major politician or political party has even talked about it. The result is that these tribal chiefs have become more and more powerful, and feel they can challenge the state, as they are doing now in the Kashmore region.
Recently, in another context I had written that the state's authority rests on a monopoly over the means of violence. In Pakistan, over the years this monopoly has been gradually broken with all kinds of religious, ethnic and tribal groups possessing and using vast arsenals of sophisticated arms. Add to these the drug mafias and criminal gangs of every stripe, and you get a sure recipe for the kind of situation we are now faced with on the border between Punjab and Balochistan.
No state in the world - unless it was Rwanda or Somalia - would tolerate the presence of such weapons in private hands. Even the United States with its liberal gun laws draws the line at rocket-propelled grenades and short-range missiles. Using the autonomy granted by the British and extended by Pakistani authorities, tribes engage in all kinds of crimes ranging from smuggling everything from heroin to electrical goods to car theft to kidnapping. The profits from this criminal activity pay for the arms and fancy four-wheel drive vehicles they use to spread their depredations. More importantly, it is to their chiefs and not the government that they look for justice and protection.
For their part, tribal chiefs get subsidies from the government but permit very little development in their areas, lest their uneducated followers start getting ideas. The tribal areas have the worst record in the country for health and education, and that is saying something in a country at the bottom of the international ranking in these fields. Girls are not permitted to go to school, and their mothers are not allowed to vote. The Constitution and the law of the land have no authority or sanctity here. Outsiders traverse these areas at their own risk.
Thus, to all intents and purposes these tribal territories constitute states within the state with their own code, their own legal system and their own security forces. Tribes owe their allegiance first to their chief, and have only a vague idea about their obligations to the federation of Pakistan. One would have thought that after more than five decades of independence, such an archaic system would have been done away with by any state with a claim to civilization. Instead, it has been strengthened by the huge amounts of money it generates through all kinds of illegal activity. Apart from arms, this cash also buys tribal notables votes to place them in assemblies where they ensure that the system is perpetuated.
The result of malign government neglect is that apart from the criminality the system encourages, millions of Pakistanis condemned to live in these benighted areas are denied the most basic education and health care. Their chieftains literally hold the power of life and death over them. Democracy has no meaning and the freedom of expression is unknown. True, there are degrees of repression: in some tribes there is more freedom than in others. But in much of Southern Balochistan, the power of the chief is absolute.
In the on-going tribal war between the Bugtis and Mazaris, the damage to industry in Punjab caused by the halt of gas transmission runs into the billions. According to one estimate, losses so far are around 30 billion rupees. Add to this the loss suffered by the gas company and the figure mounts further. Then there is the discomfort to tens of thousands of families shivering in a very cold winter. There has been much talk recently about laying a multi-billion dollar gas pipeline between Iran and India across Balochistan and Sindh. However, if we can't protect our own internal gas pipelines, who would invest in such an expensive project?
This breakdown in the authority of the state underlines how far we have sunk over the years. When nobody in authority is even talking about cracking down on the warring elements, it shows that the government doubts that it can crush the tribesmen who are causing all this destruction and chaos. The truth is that currently only the army has the firepower needed to bring a halt to this state of anarchy.
But even if the tribes are bought off by meeting their demands, the larger question will remain: how much longer are we prepared to tolerate the existence of these states within the state?