REVOLT IN BALUCHISTAN

PAKISTAN is in trouble again. This time, it is mass revolt against Islamabad by the Pakistan’s most backward province of Baluchistan. Pakistani army has been using combat jets,helicopter gunships and sophisticated weapons in suppressing the tribal insurgents who have declared war against President Pervez Musharraf.
It appears, Pakistan has still to learn the lessons of 1971, when it lost its Eastern wing.Of the same patterns of political mismanagement, compounded by indicriminater and brutal use of military force. The army, the main culprit in that case is still looking for alibis to explain the debacle.
The situation in Balochistan is deteriorating very fast with the passage of every day. It is likely to snowball into a major crisis in South Asia if Musharraf does not take remedial measures. The trouble in Baluchistan has not flared up suddenly. In January 2005, four Pakistani soldiers were accused of raping a lady doctor in the premises of Sui Refinery, Queta. The doctor was employed by Pakistan Petroleum at the Sui gasfield in Baluchistan when the authorities failed to nab the culprits. Bugti tribesmen attacked the gas field. Other tribes joined hands with them, hitting the port at Gwadar as well as railway lines and military installations in and around Queta. The federal forces responded in strength and unleashed war against the Baloch tribesmen. The tribal leaders saw the conflict as a last opportunity to get what they considered a fair share of Baluchistan’s enormous gas resources,
This low intensity conflict has been gathering momentum since December. Since then hundred are said to have died in the fighting. According to reports, the current militant assault was provoked by a rocket attack on a rally held by President Musharraf in the town of Kohlu in December. Two days later, the Baluch freedom fighters opened fire on a helicopter carrying the Inspector-General of the Frontier Corps, Major General Shujaat Zamir Dar and some other military officers. Soon after these attacks army was pressed into action, which bombed the hideouts of the insurgents, resulting in the death of scores of Balcu rebels.
President Pervez is playing the old game and blaming India for creating this trouble by supplying them war equipment. Though New Delhi has strongly denied that the rebels were receiving any support from India. Nawab Akber Khan Bugti, the chieftain, has slammed President Pervez Musharraf’s claims that India was providing support to the Baluch freedom fighters. His objective is to defame the legitimate demands of the people of Baluchistan, says Sardar Bugti.
It is time Pakistan realised that the predatory culture that dominates its politics and overwhelmingly, its army will not benefit it. Musharraf has been eloquent in his advocacy of what he calls "self-governance" and "self-determination" in J&K. Pakistan’s leadership continues to believe that it is securing a strategic advantage through its campaign of terror in J&K. But the truth is that Pakistan is being systematically hollowed out by these campaigns.
Last year, Musharraf had issued a threat to the Baluch declaring, "this is not the 1970s…they will not even know what and from where something has come and hit them." No doubt, this is not the 1970s and the world will not long tolerate the sort of campaigns of genocide that Pakistan got away with in 1973-77 and that it is trying to repeat now.
Baluchistan is a vast land—3,47,641 square kilometers, accounting for as much as 43 per cent of Pakistan’s total landmass, but amounts to nearly 10 million people, who are today, utteerly alienated from Islamabad.
It is a difficult job on the part of Pervez Musharraf to restore peace in strife-torn Baluchistan. If conditions like present one persist for sometime more, time is not far off when Baluchistan will turn into an independent sovereign country like Bangladesh.