Web | Aug 19, 2004
The Baluch Resistance Movement
[B. Raman]
Musharraf has already made clear his determination to go ahead with the Gwadar and other Chinese-aided projects in the province and the projects for new cantonments. His Government continues to deny any military operations against the Baluchi youth. Thus, the only issues on which his regime may be prepared to negotiate relate to the demand for more royalty and for more job opportunities for the Baluchis. Even this has not been indicated openly and specifically.
There are two generations of Baluchis now engaged in a simultaneous confrontation with the Islamabad regime. The first is the older generation, consisting of the grown-up members of the younger generation of the 1970s, which had spearheaded the post-1971 freedom struggle, which was brutally crushed by the late Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto with the help of the Army and the Air Force. In their midst, one could see recognisable faces like those of Ataullah Khan Mengal, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, Khair Bux Marri etc and their progenies, who were born in the 1950s and the 1960s and fought with their elders against the Pakistan Army before giving up their armed struggle and taking up to politics.
The second is the post-1970 generation of young Baluchis. Many of them are from the same legendary tribes which had waged a freedom struggle in the 1970s, but had no role to play in it, because they were still children or not yet born. Many members of this younger generation went to the Gulf countries in the 1980s and 1990s, served in the local police and security forces, acquired a certain expertise in the use of arms and ammunition and explosives and have since returned to Baluchistan. It is these elements, which constitute the hard-core of the Baluch Liberation Army (BLA), which has been in the forefront of the current freedom struggle.
The BLA is a very well-organised and well-motivated clandestine organisation, with a high degree of invisibility. Very little is known about its leaders and cadres. One hears of them whenever there is a spectacular incident such as the eight explosions in Quetta on Pakistan's Independence Day on August 14, 2004, the ambush of a group of seven Pakistani army officers going for shopping in the Khuzdar area on August 1, killing five of them, the abortive attempt to kill the Baluchistan Chief Minister Jam Yousef in the same area the next day, the frequent disruptions of gas and oil supplies to Punjab by blowing up the pipelines, the blowing-up of the Sui local airport etc, but one rarely sees them.
The resistance fighters of the BLA are as invisible as those of Iraq and have been operating in a large number of small. autonomous cells, capable of opportunistic actions without the apparent need for a central command and control. Like the US Army in Iraq, the Pakistan Army in Baluchistan has been totally foxed by their activities. It has been groping in the dark, without being able to identify them and penetrate their set-up.
B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Observer Reserach Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.