MULTAN, March 31: The bloodletting by aggressive tribesmen of Balochistan in Kashmor on Monday speaks volumes for debility of law-enforcement agencies in arresting the culprits, who go scot-free in this part of the country.

Some 30 assailants sneaked through five checkposts, including one manned by Rangers, to reach Kashmor, a small town on inter-provincial border among the Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan.

Reports reaching here said the assailants’ target was the family of Wadera Ghulam Husain Ehsani Mazari. These days the Wadera is in the custody of the Punjab police, which have yet to assign any reason for keeping him detained for nearly a month.

Wadera Ghulam Husain is the head of Ehsani sub-clan of Mazari tribe living permanently at Mazari Goth village on the Kashmor-Sui Road. Mazari Goth has stolen limelight in recent months after the Sui gas pipelines blasts near it.

The initial reports on the blasts revealed that it was the outcome of the Mazari-Bugti feud. However, Bugti chief Nawab Akbar Khan admitted that the gas pipelines’ attacks had nothing to do with the tribal rivalry, but unresolved issues of gas royalty and rents of the gas fields in the Bugti area led to the blasts.

Whatsoever is the case, the attacks on gas pipelines highlighted the Mazari-Bugti feud countrywide, courtesy the print and electronic media. Consequently, the law-enforcement agencies had to take note of the matter, which they otherwise had swept under the carpet for the last seven years.

The Mazari-Bugti dispute started with the beginning of the construction on 110-kilometre portion of the Indus Highway in 1993. That portion had to be passed through Rojhan Mazari tehsil in the Rajanpur district. The construction firms — a Japanese and a Turkish — started picking sand and gravel from the lands on the Punjab-Balochistan border. The firms reportedly decided to pay royalty to the Mazaris for consuming the sand and gravel for the construction of the highway.

Seeing this, the Bugtis also demanded royalty, claiming that the area also came under their domain. When denied, they first kidnapped two employees of the Turkish company and later on Dec 12, 1994, attacked the stone-crushing plant of the Japanese firm, and gunned down five workers. Thereafter, the attacks on Mazari Goth became a routine.

The clashes intensified last year when the Bugti outlaws kidnapped a brother of Wadera Ghualm Husain for ransom from the shrine of Sayen Galan Faqeer in Mazari area. During the kidnapping, the Bugtis killed a Gulrani Mazari tribesman. In retaliation, the Gulranis killed son-in-law of the Mundrani Bugti sub-clan head, which killed Wadera Ghulam Husain’s brother and sent his body to the Mazaris.

When the people of Mazari Goth shot dead a Bugti belonging to the Phong sub-clan to avenge the killing of Wadera’s brother, the Bugtis started frequent attacks of heavy artillery, including rocket propelled grenades and short-range surface-to-surface missiles. Reportedly, in one such attack some Wapda installations meant to supply power to Dera Bugti area were destroyed. The Mazaris pulled down electric wires from 230 poles to settle score.

As the attacks on gas pipelines hit the headlines, the matter of law and order alongside the inter-provincial border came to the fore. It was expected that law-enforcers would have to fight a small scale war with the Bugtis, but the Mazaris living in the Punjab proved an easy prey to make the scapegoats to establish ‘writ of the law.’

Scores of Mazaris have so far been arrested by the Punjab police for their alleged role in electricity wire theft. Some of them reportedly secured release after greasing palm of the police officials. A senior police official, while talking to this correspondent, claimed that Wadera Ghulam Husain’s detention was proving helpful in retrieving the stolen wires from his tribesmen.

To escape police high-handedness against Mazaris, male members of the Wadera’s family had been shifted to Kashmor, and the alleged Bugti assailants, who took lives of 13 people, had this information as they reportedly asked about the sons of the Wadera. However, they went wild on finding that they (Wadera’s men) were not there.

Mureed Bakhsh, the Kashmor correspondent of a Sindhi language daily, commented while talking to Dawn that the situation of Mazari-Bugti row was identical to that of Iraq-America war.

He said first the police disarmed the Mazaris in the name of maintaining law and order and then arrested a number of their elders, including Ghulam Husain, Ahmad Nawaz and Sobhani Khan to deprive them of leadership. He added that now the Bugti intruders had no fear of retaliation. “It’s the law of the jungle, Sayeen,” he said. — Nadeem Saeed