14 January 2005
How not to put out a fire
By Ayaz Amir
"It is not the '70s and we will not climb mountains behind them, they will even not know what and from where something has come and hit them." - General Musharraf
Tough military talk but if historical analogies are to be drawn, they should be drawn in the correct perspective. The Baloch insurgency of the '70s was sparked by foolish assumptions on the part of the Baloch nationalist sardars - principally Nawab Khair Baksh Marri and Sardar Attaullah Mengal - and arrogance and pigheadedness on the part of then premier, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
The Baloch suffered a lot but eventually Bhutto did too for the operation in Balochistan was the first step in the long slide which led ultimately to his downfall.
Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that the path to the 1977 coup mounted by Pakistan's gift to the annals of international hypocrisy, General Muhammad Ziaul Haq, was smoothed not so much by the PNA movement against the rigged elections of 1977 as by the Balochistan operation.
The army was the one clear beneficiary of that affair. Beaten and humiliated in East Pakistan, it regained self-assurance in the killing fields of Balochistan.
As an aside it may not be out of place to mention that the redoubtable chief of the Bugtis, Nawab Muhammad Akbar Khan, in the eye of the current storm sweeping the Sui area from where most of Pakistan's domestic and industrial gas comes, was on Bhutto's side, and indeed his anointed governor of Balochistan, during that army operation.
As a very proud and intelligent man, conscious of the past and conversant with history, it may not be far-fetched to assume that that memory is a scar he still carries on his heart.
Another small reference to the past before this history lesson is done. When General Yahya Khan and his coterie ordered the army operation in Dhaka on March 25, 1971, they too thought that Shaikh Mujib and the Awami League wouldn't know what had hit them.
This was true as far as it went for the army action was brutal and swift. Barely nine months later, however, when Lt-Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora's forces launched their assault on East Pakistan - leading to the all-too-swift collapse of the Eastern Command, one of the swiftest collapses in all of military history - it was the Pakistan Army and the people of West Pakistan who had trouble figuring out what had hit them.
Come to think of it, 34 years later we still don't know what hit us. So perhaps we should be careful with our military rhetoric, remembering that statesmanship lies in pacifying raging fires rather than stoking them to greater heat and fury.
This caveat applies to Nawab Akbar Khan as well. A very strong and shrewd personality who has always moved carefully, never losing sight of the larger picture, it would be tragic if at this stage in his life he were to be guilty of an error of judgment which could lead to incalculable consequences for him and his tribe.
Any more attacks on the Sui gas installations, no matter what the cause or source of attack, would act as a red rag for the army. Although the Baloch in general, and the Bugtis in particular, are a proud and warlike people with a strong sense of grievance against the perceived injustices of the military-bureacratic oligarchy - Pakistan's permanent ruling party - it would be folly of the gravest kind to do anything more which invites an army operation against the Bugtis.
The army may have problems fighting India but it has little or none when it comes to its ability to crush internal dissent. So its resolve should not be underestimated. But the army too needs to exercise caution. While there would be elements within it keen to teach the Bugtis a lesson (what does Akbar Khan take himself to be?) for the sake of Pakistan, this gung-hoism should be kept in check.
While there is no comparison between the army and the Bugtis, taking on the Bugtis would be no tea party. You can bet the Bugtis will take to the hills, thus creating another South Waziristan for the army.
How many quagmires can any army afford? Already troops from Mangla, Gujranwala, etc - troops meant to keep an eye on the Indian army - have been pulled out for American duty in South Waziristan. If Bugtiland is in flames, the army will be stretched further.
So even if this be the most over-worked clichi in Pakistan, there must be a 'political solution' to the trouble in Sui and a moratorium on any contemplated military operation.
Just as we sometimes feel used at the hands of India - the Baglihar Dam issue being the latest expression of this feeling - the people of Balochistan feel used at the hands of Islamabad. Applying balm to their feelings is more important at this juncture than trying to revive the flagging spirit of the composite dialogue with India.
Gen Musharraf should be dispatching the secretary-general National Security Council, (what in God's name is its charter of duties?) Tariq Aziz, to Balochistan. Not to appease Nawab Akbar Khan, for matters have gone beyond that point, but to save the country another needless headache.
When we talk Sui and Bugtiland, let's not forget that the gas coming from its soil lights the nation's cooking fires and fires a whole range of industrial furnaces. What are our three biggest national resources? Water from three rivers - the other three, in our magnanimity, gifted to India - manpower and gas from Sui. That's it.
The nation has used and exploited this gas for 50 years and what has it given the Bugtis, or for that matter the people of Balochistan, in return? Very little.
Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) which, on behalf of the government, owns the Sui fields is the biggest culprit of all. Sui should have been Pakistan's leading boom town, its El Dorado out in the wastes of an arid province.
Indeed, if Sui had been in Dubai, its name would have been emblazoned on the world's skyline. But with us Sui is just another stricken little town, the PPL installations an island in a sea of desolation. But what the PPL management has done now takes the cake. It has gifted a first-rate crisis, a raging firestorm, to the rest of the country, all because of a squalid little attempt to hush up the multiple rape of a lady doctor working in the Sui hospital.
When police tried to enter PPL premises, guarded by the Defence Service Group (DSG), a military outfit charged with the security of the Sui installations, they weren't allowed to carry out a proper investigation.
Why? Bazaar gossip holds a DSG officer and some other personnel responsible for this crime. Maybe it is just gossip and no more. But the truth can only be established after a proper investigation.
Far from helping the investigation, PPL has hindered it, not allowing the lady doctor to come before the police when the incident took place and instead flying her away to Karachi.
The Bugtis working in PPL installations may have other grievances, and they sure do, but this attempted cover-up was the spark which set the situation ablaze, leading to exchanges of firing resulting in more than half a dozen deaths and damage to property.
In a letter to PPL, the Naseerabad police, in whose jurisdiction Sui falls, have voiced their misgivings about the management's attitude. Why wasn't the lady doctor brought before the police immediately? If she was unconscious, how could she be airlifted to Karachi? If she was fit enough to travel by air, she surely was fit enough to record her statement.
And if it wasn't rape but a case of armed robbery, as PPL tried to suggest in the beginning, what explains the recovery of a blood-stained bed sheet and other incriminator evidence from the scene of the crime? And why weren't nurses and lady doctors at the hospital who were witnesses to the lady doctor's condition produced before the police?
This incident occurred on the night of Jan 2-3. A case was finally registered on Jan 10 after Sui was gripped by firing and lawlessness. On the 11th, the Balochistan government announced the setting up of a judicial inquiry.
Do all rape cases merit judicial inquiries? If not, why this one? Rape victims in Pakistan quite often never press charges. Having suffered already, they have no wish to suffer more at the hands of a criminal justice system generally perceived as corrupt and ineffective and favouring the strong over the weak.
>From PPL's attitude the suspicion is fuelled that powerful forces were
out to cover up this crime. Does this not mean that if the Bugtis hadn't
taken matters into their hands, the entire matter would have been hushed up?
Of course, the Bugtis had no right to take the law into their hands. But where the law doesn't exist or it chooses to go to sleep, how is a sense of outrage to be expressed? Remember that while rape is a heinous act everywhere, it has an extra-ugly dimension in Pakistan's tribal areas where it is a very rare occurrence.
There is a need for tempers to cool. The Bugtis should not over-estimate themselves or under-estimate the resolve of the Pakistan Army. Nawab Akbar Khan, on account of many things almost a legend in his lifetime, should not make a virtue of obduracy.
There's a time for being tough and a time for remembering the Maoist dictum that when you are weak, and your adversary strong, there is wisdom in stepping back. The Pakistan Army cannot afford another operation against its own people.
Being in the responsible position that he is, for good or ill the fate of Pakistan in his hands, Gen Musharraf should show flexibility and statesmanship. If one-fortieth of the largely unrequited flexibility shown towards India were shown towards the Baloch people, Balochistan would be Pakistan's most peaceful province.
© The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2005