Herald Dec 18, 2010

Bugti and Baloch discontents

Rashed Rahman

The assassination of Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006 by the Musharraf regime raised the dead Baloch leader’s stature to yet another martyr to the Baloch nationalist cause, transformed a relatively narrow and sputtering nationalist insurgency into a province-wide conflict, and for most nationalists, became the last straw in a troubled relationship between the province and the centre since Pakistan came into being.
The Nawab, a colourful character in the mould of a typical, and amongst the ‘tallest’ of the Baloch Tumandars, showed little sign throughout his life and career that he would end up in the pantheon of the martyrs of the nationalist cause. His tribe, the Bugtis, is one of the three largest and most powerful of the tribes that dot the parched Balochistan landscape. Although considered by some a nationalist from day one, Nawab Bugti’s political orientation remained pro-centre. He served as a federal minister as well as chief minister of his province. The latter proved to be the high point of his political career. Tribal feuds, in which one of his sons was assassinated, persuaded Nawab Bugti to retreat to his ancestral tribal seat of Dera Bugti, where he remained until his last days.
In the 1970s, he fell out with the nationalists grouped in the National Awami Party-Wali Khan over, it is alleged, his failure to get the post of governor of the province. In true affronted Baloch Tumandar style, Akbar collaborated with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s crackdown and military operations in Balochistan, a conflict that certainly played its part in eroding Bhutto’s grip on power. Bugti got his prized governorship from Mr Bhutto, but even he resigned within a year in disgust at the manner in which the military went about suppressing the Baloch. In subsequent years, Akbar made repeated attempts to regain acceptance from the nationalist camp, with only limited success.
Ironically, Nawab Akbar Bugti invited the dictator Musharraf’s wrath for displaying the traditional Baloch tribal gallantry in defence of a wronged woman. Dr Shazia Khalid’s rape in Sui, allegedly at the hands of an army officer, triggered a revolt by the Bugti and other tribes surrounding the Sui gas fields. Clashes with the military and security forces escalated to the point where Akbar had to abandon Dera Bugti in the face of a heavy artillery and aerial bombardment of his ancestral home and take refuge with the neighbouring Marri tribe’s insurgents grouped under the banner of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). This was a historic first, since the Marris and Bugtis had often been at loggerheads in the past.
An insurgent rocket attack on Musharraf’s helicopter while on a visit to the Marri area’s headquarters, Kohlu, in 2006, amidst an uneasy ceasefire in the Bugti area, triggered the commando dictator’s revenge. Although the likelihood is that the rockets were fired by the elusive BLA guerrillas, Musharraf took it out on the relatively easier and higher profile octogenarian leader.
The unintended consequences of Musharraf’s rash and vengeful actions were that a section of the Bugtis became part of a nationalist insurgency for the first time since Pakistan was created, with his grandson Brahmdagh taking up the banner of revolt in the aftermath of the mysterious, and still unexplained assassination of Nawab Akbar Bugti in the cave in which he had located himself. Akbar’s death washed away any taint from his past of collaborating with the centre against his province’s nationalists. It bestowed the halo of the martyr on his memory. And arguably, it sealed the future trajectory of the Baloch nationalist cause in the direction of separatism and independence. As the centre continues to carry on its oppressive policies in Balochistan, the result is this suppression (including disappearances and tortured bodies of murdered nationalists turning up almost every other day throughout the province) has become the greatest recruiter for the separatist nationalist cause. God give our rulers wisdom.