Pakistan sets army on tribal protestersBy Justin Huggler and Shiv Malik in Baluchistan
19 March 2005
Pakistan is poised on the precipice of a tribal war in the vast desert province of Baluchistan after the army unleashed helicopter gunships and heavy weapons on local protesters. The Independent has learnt that during two days of violence, more than 60 tribespeople in the region, including women and children, have been killed. Reports suggest the confrontation is becoming increasingly brutal.
Baluchistan covers almost half of Pakistan and is home to tribespeople who respect no central law. Outside the main cities, tribal rules apply and the region has traditionally been a no-go area for Pakistani police. Law and order is kept by tribal chiefs paid by the government to keep a semblance of control.
Tensions with Karachi spilled over into violence in January after Pakistani soldiers stationed in the area were accused of raping a local woman doctor. This, together with the attempted eviction of 30,000 tribespeople from the area containing Pakistan's largest gas fields and the imminent opening of a new port in the province, has led to reprisals from local chiefs who accuse Karachi of decades of brutality and neglect.
Nawab Akbar Bugti, one of the tribal chiefs who has been leading local opposition to the government of Pervez Musharraf, says his people have been attacked without provocation.
"The situation was that the army opened up with uniform and concentrated fire with artillery and mortar directly at my house," he told The Independent. "A mortar came through the roof and killed two people sitting to the left of me."
Nawab Bugti says that in total 60 people were killed and more than 150 injured.
The Pakistani military countered by claiming that one of its convoys was attacked as it was passing through the town, killing eight soldiers.
The ripples of what has happened in Dera Bugti could spread much further. Though he is 78, Nawab Bugti commands the loyalty of more than 30,000 tribesmen, all of them heavily armed and prepared to fight and die for him. Bombs exploded on two trains in Baluchistan yesterday, killing two people and wounding eight, a sign that the violence is already spreading beyond Dera Bugti.
A recent siege of the Sui gas field by Baluch tribesmen incensed at the alleged rape, led to gas supplies to the rest of the country being cut off for more than a week. The military has now retaken Sui, about 45 minutes by car from Dera Bugti, and is said to have a considerable force based there.
Many fear that the impoverished tribespeople will now face a brutal military offensive similar to that which Pakistan unleashed on restive tribesmen in the 1970s but updated with lethal modern weaponry.
President Musharraf threatened as much after the Sui siege when he said: "Don't push us. It isn't the 1970s when you can hit and run and hide in the mountains. This time you won't even know what hit you."
But the Baluch are talking tough too. "An uprising would be more fierce and more strong than it was in 1973," the secretay-general of the Jamhoori Watan Party, Shahid Baloch toldThe Independent. "The general said the Baluch insurgents would not know what hit them because it's not the 70s. Yes, we know it's not the 70s, but it doesn't go for us only. It goes for both of the parties."
The anger does not stem from a single act of rape. There was a series of bombings last year. The rape was a catalyst, but the anger has more to do with the huge new port Pakistan is constructing at Gwadar on the coast - and the fact that the tribesmen see Baluchistan not as a province of Pakistan, but as their homeland.
They fear the authorities will bring in millions of ethnic outsiders from the overcrowded cities of Punjab province to live and work in Gwadar, changing the demographics of Baluchistan forever.
"After passing through years of bitter experiences we feel that Gwadar will be a death warrant," said Mr Baloch. "Once we are turned into a minority what's left for us? I'd put it this way: the white man started developing the great American plains and removing the red Indians in the name of development Now in the 21st century our Pakistani rulers are trying to apply the same formula".
There is also seething resentment that Baluch towns remain primitive places, not even connected to the gas from their own land, neglected by the Pakistani authorities, while they pump it into Gwadar.
"This is our forefathers' land and we will not give it up and we will resist," said Wadera Kanadeen, another tribal chief. "We are getting nothing. We are getting no help from the government, no schools, no roads, no hospitals, no drinking water. We don't see Pakistan as one country and don't see Musharraf as our president."
― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Saturday, 19 March 2005 15:16 (twenty-one years ago)
Train bombings have killed two people in southwestern Pakistan as thousands of government workers and their families evacuate a remote town in the region, a senior official said.
The bombs, planted in toilets on trains travelling the main railway line in Baluchistan province, went off within about three hours of each other on Friday. Eight other people were wounded.
A low-level insurgency by Baluch nationalists has gathered steam in the impoverished province this year, along with demands for more royalties from the country's main natural gas fields, located on their territory.
Railway police said the first bomb killed a soldier on a train from the provincial capital, Quetta, to the eastern city of Lahore at a station about 35km southeast of Quetta. At least five people were injured, two critically.
The second bomb went off on a train heading in the opposite direction about 100km southeast of Quetta, killing one person and wounding three.
Rising tensions
Tensions in the region escalated on Thursday when tribesmen ambushed a troop convoy and fired rockets at a military base on the outskirts of Dera Bugti, 300km southeast of Quetta.
The ensuing 16-hour battle, in which the army deployed helicopter gunships, ended early on Friday after both sides agreed on a ceasefire, said a Frontier Corps spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Rizwan Malik. He said eight soldiers were killed and 23 injured.
Tribal fighting has escalated in Baluchistan Major General Shujaat Dar, head of the corps, said 18 to 20 people from the Bugti tribe - the main tribe in the area - had reportedly died, and others were injured. He gave no further details.
It was the first public admission by any army or government official about tribal casualties in the fighting.
Abd al-Samad Lasi, a senior official at Dera Bugti, said on Saturday they had received reports from intelligence and security officials that more than 1500 armed men from the dominant local Bugti tribe had taken up positions in mountains outside the town and were waiting for an order to attack government installations.
A security official said paramilitary reinforcements were being sent to the region to support an already strong troop presence.
Evacuation
Lasi said government officials and their families started leaving the town on Saturday morning in vehicles escorted by paramilitary troops after receiving a warning from the chief of the Bugti tribe, Nawab Akbar Bugti, that he could not guarantee their safety.
"Yes, he has asked all government officials to leave Dera Bugti before 3pm today, and they are leaving with their families," Lasi said.
He said all 3314 officials and their families would leave Dera Bugti, which is about 50km from Pakistan's main gas fields.
Protests
Hundreds of supporters of ethnic Baluch nationalist parties demonstrated on Friday outside the provincial assembly in Quetta, protesting at what they said were high civilian casualties from Thursday's clashes.
Sardar Akhtar Mengal, an opposition politician and former Baluchistan chief minister, claimed the army had killed more than 50 innocent people, including women, children and minority Hindus. He accused the government of concealing civilian deaths.
A parliamentary committee has been set up to examine the tribesmen's claims for greater royalties from gas reserves, and other grievances. It is expected to make its recommendations to the government soon.
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/30C36E58-DB57-4184-8CEC-32DF2EEE4304.htm
― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Saturday, 19 March 2005 23:30 (twenty-one years ago)
Belushistan?
― I loved Ian Riese-Moraine so much, I bought the company! (Eastern Mantra), Sunday, 20 March 2005 00:45 (twenty-one years ago)
― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Monday, 21 March 2005 00:19 (twenty-one years ago)
More than 300 troops remain surrounded in Pakistan's Balochistan province, four days after clashes in which at least 23 people died, officials say.
The paramilitary troops are encircled by about 5,000 armed tribesmen in the remote town of Dera Bugti, provincial governor Owais Ghani told the BBC.
There is no independent confirmation of official claims, as Dera Bugti has been cut off since last Thursday's violence.
Tribesmen in Balochistan are demanding greater political and economic rights.
They also blame army members for raping a local doctor.
The troops besieged at their base in Dera Bugti are from the Frontier Corps - the main paramilitary force policing the province's tribal areas, Mr Ghani told BBC Urdu Online.
Those under siege include the local administration chief, Samad Lasi, he added.
Murder case
Mr Lasi also spoke to the BBC by satellite telephone, saying Dera Bugti was extremely tense and that most of the civilian population had left.
Tension rose in the area over the weekend after authorities confirmed that a murder case had been registered against the Bugti tribal chief, Nawab Akbar Bugti.
Pakistani authorities say Mr Bugti was behind an attack on a paramilitary convoy last Thursday that led to the clashes between tribesmen and troops.
Mr Bugti denies his men attacked the convoy, saying the clashes were deliberately instigated by security forces as a pretext for launching a military operation in the area.
He is one of the leading tribal chiefs in Balochistan who are pressing for greater political autonomy and a greater share of the revenue from the province's gas reserves.
The Bugtis say that attacks by government forces on Dera Bugti last week left over 50 dead, mostly civilians. The government denies attacking civilians and says the figures are exaggerated.
The clashes are the most serious since eight people were killed in several days of fighting in and around strategically important gas fields in the area in January.
Those clashes were sparked by the rape of a doctor, which Bugti tribesmen blame on an officer in the security forces.
Since then the army has moved extra forces into the area.
In the past two months tribal fighters have staged small-scale but almost daily attacks, hitting the security forces and the province's rail, power and communications infrastructure.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/4368049.stm
Published: 2005/03/21 13:30:12 GMT
― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Monday, 21 March 2005 14:11 (twenty-one years ago)
― Matt DC (Matt DC), Monday, 21 March 2005 14:23 (twenty-one years ago)
Here's another article:
Pakistan heading toward an armed rebellionUPIMar 23, 2005, 10:30
The southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan has turned into a battlefield with both government and armed tribesmen preparing for a major clash that could cause hundreds of deaths and start a rebellion that would be difficult to put out.
Journalists who visited the area Tuesday reported that civilians had already fled a 40-mile area in and around the small tribal town of Dera Bugti.
"All one could see were hundreds of heavily armed Bugti tribesmen.Other than that, there were only signs of the heavy ordnance used -- perhaps from both sides -- in the shape of shrapnel and spent rocket shells," said BBC's Zafar Abbas in a report.
Other journalists said the town looked like a ghost town or a war zone, with both government troops and tribesmen waiting for a showdown.Initial clashes have already killed scores of people.
The government claims that about 5,000 armed tribesmen have surrounded 300 troops and are threatening to kill them.
Leader of the rebel tribesmen, Nawab Akbar Bugti, does not confirm or deny the government's claim.Instead he told the parliamentary and media delegation that met him in Dera Bugti Tuesday that "the troops are outsider and they should vacate our lands."
Baluchistan is a particularly sensitive area because it borders Iran and the Afghan province of Kandahar, which is the home base of the Taliban movement.The region also offers the neartest port for landlocked, but oil-rich Central Asia.Although trouble in Baluchistan has been simmering for a long time, the Jan. 2 rape of a woman doctor, Shazia Khalid, in the nearby town of Sui sparked the current crisis.The native Bugti tribe, which is part of the ethnic Baluch group, blamed an army officer for the rape.The government denied the charge, but ordered an inquiry which exonerated the officer.The tribesmen refused to accept the result and started attacking troops and government installations across Baluchistan.
Khalid has since left Pakistan for London and has urged the tribesmen not to politicize her ordeal, but bombings and attacks on government troops have continued.Thirty-nine people were killed Saturday in an apparent suicide bomb attack at a shrine the government blamed on ethnic Baluch rebels.
The Baluch are the largest ethnic group in Baluchistan and are divided into several tribes and sub-tribes.The Mari and Bugti tribes are the largest.The Bugtis live in and around Sui, an area that also contains Pakistan's largest deposits of natural gas.
Since January, tribesmen have blocked gas supply to the rest of the country on several occasions, forcing the government to order gas rationing for both domestic and industrial users.
The Bugti tribe, especially its chief Nawab Akbar Bugti, demand a greater share in gas revenue and more administrative control over their area.The government says it already gives millions of dollars to the Bugti chief who uses the money to buy weapons instead of development.
But troubles in Baluchistan are older than the gas dispute or the row involving the Jan. 2 rape.Before 1947, when India and Pakistan became independent countries, Baluchistan was a semi-autonomous territory within British India.After 1947, it was annexed to Pakistan, against the wishes of some Baloch tribal chiefs.
Like the British before them, the Pakistanis have had troubles with the Baloch tribes for more than half a century.At least once, in the early 1970s, clashes between tribesmen and government troops led to a major military operation, resulting in the death of hundreds of people on both sides.
"The government is now planning a second operation," said Baluchi leader Sherbaz Mazari in a statement."They are using the current unrest as an excuse to launch the operation and have already severed communication links to the area."
The government denied the charge."We do not want a military operation.We want to settle this dispute peacefully," Information Minister Shaikh Rashid told reporters in Islamabad.
"We sent a parliamentary and media delegation on Tuesday to open negotiations with the Bugti chief," he said."The delegation also included opposition lawmakers.This shows our sincerity."
But Baloch leaders refer to a statement President Pervez Musharraf gave on Jan. 4, two days after the rape that started the current trouble."Don't push us.It is not the '70s, when you can hit and run, and hide in the mountains," Musharraf said in a statement issued in January, alluding to the military operation to quell the insurgency in Baluchistan in the 1970s."This time, you won't even know what hit you."
"They have killed my people.They may even kill me," the ageing Bugti chief told reporters who greeted him at his home."But they cannot kill the entire Baluch nation."Journalists who visited the area Tuesday say Bugti and his men are bracing themselves for a final show down with the military.They saw thousands of tribesmen armed with rocket launchers and automatic rifles, setting up trenches, check posts and roadblocks.
Pakistan also has pressed thousands of troops into the area and authorities have vowed to keep gas deposits under their control.Both sides are patrolling the area.Last week's clashes, according to some reports, resulted in more than 30 deaths.
"The situation is so tense that even a small incident could start a war," said a reporter for Pakistan's private Geo Television channel.
Bugti tribesmen are supported by the Baluchistan Liberation Army, a new militant group which demands independence for the province.
The government blames this group for fuelling the current unrest and the BLA admits carrying out bomb attacks on government targets.
The Bugti chief blames the government for the growth in the support for BLA."The government should be asking why so many people in Baluchistan support the BLA.The BLA's agenda clearly strikes a chord with the Baluch population."
Bugti, the BLA and other Baluchi nationalists are also opposed to the government's plan to build a new port city in Baluchistan.They argue that Gwadar port will bring millions of new immigrants from other provinces and this will turn the Baloch into a minority in their own province.There are only 6 million Baloch in a country of almost 150 million people.
They also fear that the government is trying to strengthen its control over Baluchistan by building new cantonments.
"We will fight till last man and last bullet but will not allow them to turn us into a minority in Balochistan," said a BLA statement.
And if a political solution to the current crisis is not found soon, it seems that the BLA will not have to wait long for a full-fledged war with the Pakistan Army.
― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Wednesday, 23 March 2005 16:31 (twenty-one years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 23 March 2005 16:33 (twenty-one years ago)