Azad Baluchistan?

Pakistan continues to sponsor acts of terrorism in India. The bomb blasts in New Delhi in October and today's incidents in Bangalore only confirm that. India will now need to resume its earlier policy of supporting Baluchi and Sindhi nationalists in Pakistan as an effective counter to that country's Punjabi dominated military establishment.

There has been significant unrest in Baluchistan in recent months unreported in the international media. Baluchistan, a province of 134,050 square miles, has a population of 7 million. It constitutes 43% of the land area of Pakistan. The British colonial authorities had annexed Baluchistan in 1887. Jinnah coerced the Khan of Kalat to accede to the Pakistani union in 1947. There have been four armed revolts in Baluchistan since then. The first guerilla campaign was in 1948 and did not last long. Its significance however lay in Afghanistan's territorial claim to Baluchistan. The second rebellion occurred in 1964. The third uprising took place in 1974. 15,000 Baluchis fought 80,000 Pakistani troops. 10,000 people had died in that insurrection that ended with the rise to power of General Zia-ul-Haq.

The fourth and as yet low key revolt spear-headed by the Baluchistan Liberation Army started with attacks on the gas fields of Sui in January, 2005 where 15 Pakistani military personnel were killed. The unrest had been triggered by the military-mullah nexus underpinning General Musharraf's power base, one that had alienated the traditional tribal leadership and the emerging urban middle class in Baluchistan. The Pakistani authorities immediately moved in the military to quell the unrest.

There were rocket attacks on a military camp on December 14, 2005. An attack on a military helicopter the very next day injured one Pakistani army general. The Pakistani military launched helicopter air attacks on two Baluchi training camps on December 22. The rebels in turn fired rockets on three military garrisons in retaliation. There were attacks on rail lines, oil and gas fields and on government buildings. The Pakistani army killed 20 Baluch tribesmen and injured 80 on December 24, 2005 in Dera Bugti, the hotbed of the Baluchi insurgency. Rebels blew up a small stretch of the gas pipeline of Sui on December 27. There was also a complete anti-Government shut down in Baluchistan on that day. Reports suggest that 200 people have been killed in the crackdown on Baluchi separatists in recent weeks. There were protests in the North West Frontier Province today on the proposed Kalabagh dam which would deprive Baluchistan and Sindh of much needed Indus water while submerging a wide tracts of land in the NWFP.

India should capitalize on this and openly support the cause for Baluchi independence. It might inadvertently have the support of both Afghanistan and Iran in this regard. It is time to neutralize the threat from Islamabad once and for all, American interests to the contrary notwithstanding. As one Baluchi elder had remarked "I have been a Baloch for several centuries, a Muslim for 1,400 years but a Pakistani for just 58 years". Baluchistan in open revolt would make the case for unrest in Sindh all the more feasible. Tit for tat.