Spectre of civil war looms in Balochistan:-
http://www.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=62779&cat=Asia Washington January 27, 2005 9:58:03 AM IST
Washington, Jan 25 : The recent violence in Pakistan's Balochistan province that disrupted gas supplies to half the country underscores the danger of an explosive civil war, according to a media report.
Writing on the South Asia Tribune website, columnist Ahmed Rashid notes that President Pervez Musharraf, who faces increasing political isolation, is dealing with a rebellion by fundamentalist Pashtun tribesmen allied to Al Qaeda in the northwest, and a bloody civil war between Shias and Sunnis in Gilgit in the far north.
The two conflicts have claimed hundreds of lives, but a war in Balochistan would be more deadly for the government, he says.
"It could create the spark for more widespread unrest among smaller groups who are all opposed to what they see as the Punjabi-dominated army and who feel left out of the military-run political system," writes Rashid.
According to the writer, any conflict in Balochistan would involve Iran and Afghanistan, which have substantial Baloch populations.
"It could also derail the India-Pakistan peace process as Islamabad has accused Delhi of funding and arming the Baloch insurgents - a charge India denies," he says.
Rashid says over the past five years, Musharraf has sidelined smaller nationalist parties in the provinces in favour of an alliance with the mullahs.
Nationalist parties had shared power with the centre in the 1990s during Pakistan's "decade of failed democracy".
On Jan 11, Bugti tribesmen, encouraged by their chief Sardar Akbar Bugti, and the secretive nationalist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) attacked Pakistan's largest gas producing plant at Sui after local police accused an army captain of raping a female doctor working there.
Sui is in the heart of the Bugti tribal area - a land of dry, barren mountains and desert.
At the end of a five-day battle, in which the tribesmen stormed the gas company compound, eight people, including three soldiers, were killed and 35 people wounded. The army rushed thousands of troops and paramilitary forces to Sui.
The rebels were heavily armed, well-trained and organised and used sophisticated satellite telephones. They fired 430 rockets and 60 mortar rounds at the Sui plant, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao said.
"President Musharraf, a former commando, then threw fuel on the fire, saying: '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.'"
His comments and the fact that the army captain accused of rape has still not been arrested, infuriated the tribesmen and opposition politicians, who warned the army not to create "another Bangladesh" - a reference to the 1971 civil war that saw East Pakistan ceding from West Pakistan and becoming a new nation.
"In case of military operations, the Baloch people will fight a decisive battle this time... till the last drop of their blood," warned Sardar Ataullah Mengal, chief of the Mengal tribe that is allied to the Bugti.
Baloch nationalists demanding greater political rights, autonomy and control over their natural resources have led four insurgencies - in 1948, 1958-59, 1962-63 and 1973-77 - that were brutally suppressed by the army.
Now a fifth is under way and this time the insurgents are demanding independence, Rashid writes, noting that for the past two years, hit-and-run raids against the army have occurred across the province.
Last May three Chinese engineers were killed in the port town of Gwadar by a roadside bomb, an attack admitted by the BLA.
"The danger is that the present conflict has for the first time united educated nationalists with the tribesmen.
"The Sui incident led to the most powerful Baloch fighting tribes - the Mengals, Mazaris and Marris - uniting and rushing to aid their beleaguered Bugti brothers," Rashid writes.