New Delhi (ABC Live): Balochistan Insurgency: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech on India’s 70th Independence Day categorically strategically mentioned the name of Balochistan to convey direct message to his Pakistani counterpart on proxy war with India.
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS REVIEW in its article “PAKISTAN’S BALOCH INSURGENCY: History, Conflict Drivers, and Regional Implications” written by Mickey Kupecz detailed about Baloch insurgency. This is the First part of that report and in coming days rest will be publish in ABC Live in public interest for knowing the real facts and issues behind this geopolitics issue.
“The Baloch insurgency in Pakistan is the result of both historical and contemporary factors, and has implications for stability across South Asia.
However, Balochistan is often overlooked or forgotten altogether because of the more prominent internal and regional issues facing Pakistan.
The Kashmir dispute, the war in Afghanistan, nuclear safety issues, and the internal struggle with religious extremists dominate headlines. However, relations between Baloch nationalists and the central government have been confrontational since the creation of Pakistan in 1947, periodically turning violent.
In 2004, the long-simmering tensions broke out into renewed insurgency. The conflict stems in part from the central government’s imposition of a historical narrative of the creation of Pakistan as a religiously homogenous country onto the ethnically distinct Baloch.
Today these divisions are also intimately tied to the headlinedominating issues mentioned above. While resolution of the conflict in Balochistan will not solve these internal and regional issues, limiting the insurgency is important in preventing further destabilization of Pakistan and the South Asia region at large.
This analysis begins by detailing the Baloch’s low-level insurgency undertaken against the federal government of Pakistan since 2004. It then presents the drivers of historical conflict including tribal divisions, the Baloch-Pashtun divide, marginalization by Punjabi interests, and economic oppression.
A brief history of relations between Balochistan and the Pakistani federal government. The analysis then investigates the contemporary conflict drivers, which include the construction of the Gwadar mega-port, oil revenues, the war in Afghanistan, and repression. These historical and contemporary conflict drivers are unlikely to be resolved in the near future.
HISTORICAL CONFLICT DRIVERS
The conflict in Balochistan has been driven by a number of historical trends that will be outlined in this section, including a weak tribal alliance system, economic oppression, and rivalry with neighboring ethnic groups.
The intractable nature of these historical factors has made a conclusive resolution of the conflict impossible, resulting in intermittent uprisings by Baloch nationalists. The development of a Baloch national identity stretches back to the pre-colonial era. At the time, Balochistan was a highly fragmented society.
Nasir Khan, the preeminent figure in Baloch mythology, was the first leader to successfully unify the Baloch tribes in the middle of the 18th Century. He created an army of 25,000 men and set up the first administrative system of government in the region.
However, the loose tribal alliances arranged by Khan remained volatile. This fragmentation has hindered economic development in the province, exacerbated problems with neighboring Pashtuns in northern Balochistan and Afghanistan, and left Balochs vulnerable to Punjabi domination.
While the Pashtuns and Punjabis have never allied against the Balochs, both have presented distinct problems to them. In the late 1800s, the British exploited this weak tribal alliance system through a divide-and-conquer strategy.
The strategy partitioned Balochistan into seven regions so that the British could take control of the area and ensure access to Afghanistan. In 1884, the British annexed Balochistan to British India.
Unfortunately, as a result of the tribal rivalries exacerbated by the partition, the infrastructure and economic development of Balochistan suffered relative to other parts of British India, a trend that would continue into the twenty-first century.
The tribal nature of Baloch society also prevented a unified nationalist movement from forming in the lead up to the creation of Pakistan in 1947, which led to the province’s annexation. As British withdrawal became imminent in the mid-1940s, some Baloch leaders scrambled to form a sense of common ethnic identity by calling for an independent Balochistan.
However, Baloch separatism was the project of only a few tribal chiefs and failed to become a cohesive ideological movement.20 Ultimately, on August 15, 1947, the day after the partition of India and Pakistan, the nascent government in Islamabad forcibly annexed Balochistan. After the partition, Punjabis would maintain their domination of the civil and military bureaucracies of the state, continuing the alienation of the Balochs.
Another long-term conflict driver is the pattern of economic oppression. Balochistan has always been the poorest and least developed of all of Pakistan’s provinces.Since the mid-1970s its share of the country’s GDP has dropped from 4.9 to 3.7 percent.Balochistan has the highest infant and maternal mortality rate, the highest poverty rate, and the lowest literacy rate in Pakistan.
The government has often tried to co-opt Balochs with development projects, but none has achieved any measure of success. While economic development usually dominates the rhetoric coming from Islamabad, the larger issue for the Balochs remains resource exploitation. This source of tension dates back to the colonial era, when the British began extracting coal from Balochistan.
Exploitation of the province’s natural gas has remained a major Baloch grievance since it was first discovered in 1952, soon after the departure of the British. Despite being Pakistan’s most abundant province in natural gas, Balochistan has seen little benefit from its gas fields relative to the Sindh and Punjab provinces. This is because a new constitution introduced in 1973 set provincial gas royalties at 12.5 percent. However, the wellhead price of gas from each province was differentiated, based on per capita provincial income in 1953. While this tremendously disadvantaged Balochistan, the dismissal of the provincial assembly in February 1973 left them without recourse. This has resulted in a wellhead price five times lower than in Sindh and Punjab, meaning that Baloch receives less in royalties.
Furthermore, the government has returned little of the royalties owed to the province, citing the need to recover operating costs.
Consequently, Balochistan is heavily in debt.
An historical conflict driver of Baloch nationalism is the Baloch-Pashtun divide, aggravated by British efforts in the region. The British fought several wars in Afghanistan with the strategic objective of keeping it as a buffer zone against Russian expansion. They developed extensive road and rail links throughout the northern parts of present day Pakistani Balochistan, areas mainly inhabited by Pashtuns.
The effects of road and railway development programs implemented during the colonial era persist today. The Pashtuns in the north of Balochistan have achieved greater economic progress than the Balochs within the province because of infrastructure and commercial links created during the British era. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 further aggravated the Baloch fear of political domination by Pashtuns. As Afghan Pashtuns fled across the border into Pakistan, Balochs viewed them as foreigners in a land they claimed as their own.
Fears of political domination seemed to be confirmed by the success of the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, a Pashtun nationalist party formed in 1989.30 Stunted economic development resulting from colonial era policies, as well as perceived marginalization as a result of increased Pashtun migration during the Afghan War, are important factors driving Baloch ethno-nationalism Domination by Punjabis is another historical conflict driver that dates to the colonial era.
During the colonial era the British favored Punjabi control of the region, and therefore arranged a political structure favorable to their interests over those of the Balochs. They entrusted the administrative and military institutions to Punjabis while Balochs were completely excluded.
Because of their small and fragmented population, Balochs were adversely affected by British policy more heavily than other ethnic groups—the structural legacy of which would continue following the partition and the simultaneous departure of the British in 1947.32
Indeed, mistrust of Punjabis sparked a Baloch uprising following the implementation of the One Unit Scheme in 1955. The plan originally had little to do with the Balochs; it was an attempt by Punjabi interests to consolidate the four ethnically diverse provinces of West Pakistan, including Balochistan, into a single administrative entity in order to counter an ethnically homogenous and numerically superior East Pakistan.
East Pakistan, which would become the independent country of Bangladesh in 1971, was composed of ethnic Bengalis and was separated from West Pakistan by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Its population was also larger than that of all of West Pakistan’s ethnic groups combined.
The Bengalis, like the Balochs, had always felt underrepresented in politics and the military establishment despite their massive population. The Bengalis and Balochs shared an ideological affinity for increased autonomy and a dislike for Punjabis, but their political affiliation extended no further. The One Unit Scheme nonetheless led to a violent response from Baloch nationalists, for reasons having nothing to do with the Bengalis. The Scheme decreased Baloch representation at the federal level and forestalled the establishment of a provincial assembly, which had yet to be approved by the central government nearly a decade after the partition. The Khan of Kalat was thus able to mobilize various tribal chieftains against the One Unit Scheme because it was seen as centralizing too much power in the federal government and limiting provincial autonomy.
The revolt was ended in 1958 through harsh government repression and the arrest of several nationalist leaders. Over the next decade Balochistan was treated more like a colony than a part of the Pakistani state. Punjabis and other non-Baloch groups controlled the administration of the province. Additionally, resource exploitation by the central government, low rates of literacy, and overall impoverishment plagued the province.
Dominance by Punjabis would continue after Balochistan became an independent province in 1970 following the dissolution of the One Unit Scheme. In 1972, the newly restored civilian federal government permitted Balochistan to hold its first provincial elections, which brought to power the highly ethno-national National Alwami Party (NAP). However, Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto removed the NAP government by dismissing the Baloch provincial government in early 1973, following allegations that they were conspiring with foreign governments.
This set off the most violent Baloch insurgency to date. During the four years of violence that ensued, estimates by scholar Selig Harrison put the number of Baloch fighters at 55,000 and the number of Pakistani troops at 80,000 with the death toll at 5,300 for Baloch militants and 3,300 for the Pakistani troops. The militant response of the Baloch was largely driven by their rivalry with the Punjabi. First, the dismissal of the provincial assembly was seen as ethnically driven. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) had come to power at the federal level and the demands of the nationalist NAP in Balochistan threatened to undermine the control of the PPP and its Punjabi support base.
Second, the Punjabi-dominated military’s harsh response was driven by ethnic concerns. The army had become increasingly wary of accommodating ethno-national demands after Bengalis successfully seceded from Pakistan and formed the country of Bangladesh in 1971.
The secession of East Pakistan was an episode that the army feared would be repeated in Balochistan and thus sought to crush the insurgency. A military coup in 1977 led to the execution of Bhutto and brought General Muhammad Zia to power. While he made no concessions on the issue of autonomy, Zia negotiated an uneasy, 25 year-long truce with Baloch nationalists, starting with the release of Baloch prisoners. There are three main reasons for this. First, the failure of the bloody insurgency in the 1970s disheartened many radical Balochs. Second, the collapse of the Mohammed Daoud government in Afghanistan in 1978 deprived these radicals of external support.
Lastly, Zia allowed Baloch nationalists to run in elections throughout the 1980s as long as they were not connected with a party; partially as a result, provincial assemblies formed by the winners of these elections had little actual power or autonomy.
While Balochistan was largely peaceful during the 1980s and 1990s, the historical roots of the conflict were never resolved, which allowed for a renewed outbreak of violence in 2004.
About Mickey Kupecz
Mickey Kupecz is an M.A. candidate in International Security at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies where he is a Sié Fellow. His degree focuses on the South Asia region, particularly Pakistan. His functional interests include ethnic conflict, terrorism, and stability operations. He has interned at the New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force, as well as at the Center for Complex Operations at the National Defense University.
