حزب مردم بلوچستان Balochistan People’s Party بلوچستانءِ اُستمانءِ گــَل
Belutschistan - Ein erneuter Bürgerkrieg?
Translation from German:Translated by Prof. Agnes Korn
http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/personal/korn.htm
(speaker:) Good evening. Today we'll talk about a so-called "low intensity conflict" which is rarely mentioned in the media. At a closer look, it turns out that the deserts of Balochistan are a meeting place of very diverging interests.
(slides)
First of all, let's look at the geographical and historical setting. Balochistan is a historical region in the West of the Indian subcontinent, in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some years ago, a few tribes living there started, or rather re-started, their fight against the Pakistani government.Let's take a closer look at this. The Baloch are originally an Iranian people which is said to have moved from the Caspian Sea to the area between the desert in SE Persia and the Arabian Sea the around the year 1000. The cattle-breeding nomadic tribes formed greater tribal confederations at several occasions. In the 18th century, the Khanate of Kalat included nearly the entire settling area of the Baloch and declared its independence in 1747. These data is meant to show the ability of these tribes to organise politically, and their experience in war-making. This didn't result in a nation, but in a national identity.
It was the British who divided the settling area of the Baloch in the course of the formation of British India in the 19th century. In 1871, they agreed with Persia on the so-called Goldsmith line, and established the border to Afghanistan with the Mortimer-Durand line in 1893. However, administration of Balochistan was not done by the British themselves, because it was thought that the peripheral areas of the empire were best pacified by granting the Baloch far-reaching autonomy, potentially including financial support for the tribal chiefs, the sardars. The situation only changed after 1947. The British had withdrawn from India, but independence was not granted to the Baloch. The tribal areas were now administered by the newly formed state of Pakistan, which ruled centrally and did not recognise Baloch sovereignty. Three wars were fought between the state of Pakistan and the Baloch nationalists, not only about the demand for independence, but also about the distribution of the mineral resources. The fiercest conflicts started in 1973. They cost the lives of 5000 Baloch and 3000 Pakistani soldiers and ended only in 1977.
The problem subsequently moved to the background, as the invasion of Soviet troops in Afghanistan 1979 shook the whole region. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans fled to Western Pakistan and Balochistan. But the conflict between the Baloch and the state of Pakistan started anew in 2004, and more fiercely than before.
This was the result of several factors: Pakistan has an area of 800,000 km2 and 160 million inhabitants. Balochistan comprises 42% of the country's surface and is thus the biggest, but with 7.5 million inhabitants the most scarcely populated province. According to per-capita income, Balochistan is the poorest province, but with regard to its share of 20% of mineral resources of the country the richest province. Most of the resources are around Sui. For instance, Balochistan has a share of only 6% of the national gas production and only 4 of the 26 districts of the province are served with natural gas, and even these probably only because garrisons of the Pakistani army are stationed there. For the same amount of gas for which the capital Islamabad pays R. 170 to the province of Sindh and R. 190 to the province of Panjab, they pay only R. 27 to Balochistan, without technical reasons for this difference. The unequal distribution of the revenue is thus a first point of conflict. According to geologic studies, the extraction of gas from deeper layers is likely to become profitable from 2012 onwards, and this time, the Baloch do not want to remain empty-handed when it comes to distributing the revenue.
The second point is the planned establishment of new garrisons in Balochistan, viz. in Sui, i.e. near the gas fields, in Kohlu, the district of the particularly nationalist Marri tribe, and near Gwadar.
And in Gwadar lies the third reason for the resuming of the fights on the part of the Baloch. This becomes clearer in another perspective: owing to its geographical position, Pakistan is a transit country for the transport of oil and gas from Central Asia, specifically for the gas from Turkmenistan. Here, Pakistan is in direct competition with Iran, whom the USA seek to avoid. A first important project is the building of a gas and oil pipeline through western Afghanistan, as well as a road and a railway line, which will grant access to the sea for the Central Asian states, all of which are inland countries. All these transport routes pass through Balochistan, to the port town of Gwadar.
The second project is the building of a deep sea port in Gwadar. The first part was inaugurated in 2005, and the second phase is planned to be finished in 2010. The plans include a port complex and a free zone with a container terminal and industrial area, which is intended to serve the countries of the region, but chiefly, it seems, China. The Gwadar port is built joinedly by Pakistan and China, and Chinese engineers take part in the building works. For China, the port is kind of the missing link in the chain. Having built the Karakorum highway from northern Pakistan to southwest China with much difficulties, only the port of Gwadar was missing at the other end of the chain. With the port, the western provinces of China will get access to the sea. In the future, it will be possible to transport oil imported from Africa and the Near East to western China on the land, and China will be able to evade some of the US control of the sea routes between the Near East and Asia. It is also planned that the Chinese sea forces can use the port. It is situated near the Strait of Hormuz in the West and the rival India in the East.
Now, the building of the deep sea port in Gwadar is again controlled by the central government in Islamabad. Except for a few day labourers on the building sites, the Baloch are not involved. They are excluded from the making of the decisions, and the contracts are given to Panjabis and Pathans. There is no connection between the port and the Balochistan hinterland, and only one road from Gwadar to Karachi. No investments were made into schools or institutions for vocational education or engineering, although Gwadar will develop to a big port city. The number of inhabitants is likely to increase by four soon, chiefly immigrants from the provinces of Sindh and Panjab.
Therefore the Baloch feel increasingly exploited. The attacks of the new rebel movement under Sher Muhammad Marri, the leader of the Marri tribe, are directed against the garrisons of the Pakistani army, the Chinese contract workers, and against gas pipelines, in order to disrupt the delivery to the towns in Panjab. The aim is a better distribution of the work and the revenue, as well as a recognition of Baloch identity.
(speaker:)
This much on the conflict (of the type called low intensity in the strategic year books) which is hardly noticed by the media, but important on several grounds. The Pakistani government maintains that the rekindled fighting is only about money. But it is also a fight against the low level of development and for an own identity. The government in Islamabad accuses India of maintaining 40 terrorist camps in Balochistan. It is difficult to check this. At any rate, it is sure that the Indian sea forces are afraid that there could be casualties with the Chinese sea forces on the sea routes between the Strait of Malakka and the Persian gulf. It is always a convenient solution to blame other countries. It always pays off to link the Baloch nationalism to terrorism, and the battle against terrorism justifies everything. Owing to its importance to exterior and interior politics, and to its strategic importance, Pakistan cannot afford to loose control over Balochistan, because the Pakistani atomic texts are carried out in northern Balochistan. And finally, the region would be (emphasis on would) a possible field for an assembling of troops for a US invasion into Iran.
(The speaker recommends some books in French.)