Explosions at gas pipelines and railroad tracks are common in this remote desert region. Now, roadside bombs and artillery shells are, too. More than 100 civilians have been killed in recent months, along with dozens of government security forces, local residents and Pakistan's Human Rights Commission say.
This is the other front of Pakistan's widening civil unrest, not the tribal areas along the Afghan border where the United States would like the government to press a campaign against Islamic militants, but the restive province of Baluchistan, home to an intensifying insurgency.
It is here, say local leaders and opposition politicians, that Pakistan, an important ally in the United States' campaign against terrorism, has diverted troops from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban to settle old scores as it seeks to develop the region's valuable oil and gas reserves.
One visit makes it clear that, despite official denials, the government is waging a full-scale military campaign here. Rebel leaders say they have several thousand men under arms, fighting what they estimate are 23,000 Pakistani troops.
During a 24-hour trek on camel, horse and foot across the rugged, stony terrain in early March, the fighting was plain to see. Military jets and surveillance planes flew over the area, and long-range artillery lighted up the distant night sky.
This fight is altogether separate from the Taliban insurgency on Afghanistan's border or the Shiite-Sunni violence that sporadically flares in and around the provincial capital, Quetta, and it threatens to dwarf the nation's other conflicts.
It is about the ethnic rights and self-rule of the Baluch people, who are distinct among Pakistanis. They speak their own language, Baluchi, which has its roots in Persian, and are probably the oldest settlers in the region.
In particular, tensions have been aggravated by President Pervez Musharraf's determination to develop the area's oil and gas fields, the largest in the country, as well as his aim to build a pipeline across the region to carry oil from Iran and a strategic deep sea port to expand trade with China, local residents say.
They charge that General Musharraf has shown little regard for their concerns and that for years their province has received paltry royalties on its resources, while remaining one of the country's poorest regions.
The government has branded two of the rebel leaders, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, nearly 80, and Balach Marri, 40, "miscreants," outlaws who oppose economic development to retain a hold over their tribes.
In an interview under the shade of a rocky overhang, Mr. Bugti and Mr. Marri, who share the names of the tribes they lead, dismissed the charges. They are not opposed to economic development, they said, but rather to the Pakistani government's military campaign to suppress them.
"The military government has imposed military rule and this has forced the Baluch to defend their land and resources against the might of the armed forces of Pakistan assembled in our area," Mr. Bugti said, perched in a carved wooden armchair as tribesmen sat around him cradling Kalashnikov rifles.
"The dispute is about the national rights of the Baluch," he added, "and if the government accepted these rights then there would be no dispute."
Mr. Bugti and others said that the government was using its American-supplied jets and helicopter gunships against them. They said they had found bomb fragments with "Made in U.S.A." stamped on them.
Indeed, huge craters and fragments from American-designed MK-82 bombs lay beside a badly damaged school in the village of Mararar, the results of a bombing raid that the Baluch fighters said had occurred at the beginning of March.
Another bombing raid on or around March 14 hit two bulldozers building a road, the fighters said. A collection of bomb fragments gathered by tribesmen from other raids revealed a "valve solenoid" made in New York, and part of a gas generator made in Mesa, Ariz.
Last year, the Baluch political leaders presented a 15-point agenda to the central government. The demands included greater control of the province's resources, protection for the Baluch minority and a halt to the building of military bases that local residents say have proliferated here.
Concern over the issues had been building for years, said Suret Khan Marri, a historian living in Quetta, the provincial capital, and the concerns and violence reach far beyond the Bugti and Marri tribes.
"The movement is there," he said in an interview. "Sometimes it is crushed. Now it is the fifth insurgency, and it has spread all across the Baluch area."
Armed resistance by Baluch nationalists has been a repeating occurrence since the birth of Pakistan in 1947, when tribal leaders, Mr. Bugti among them, only grudgingly joined Pakistan after having ruled independent territories under the British.
The bitterness today is such that the tribal leaders compare the situation to the 1970's, when Bangladesh broke from Pakistan. "If grievances have come to this level that we do not mind if Pakistan disintegrates then things are bad," Mr. Marri, the rebel leader, said.
The terrain here is marked by harsh, rocky desert, rising into craggy mountains and cut through with narrow gorges that supply many hiding places for shepherds, or guerrilla fighters. In the summer, temperatures soar to more than 120 degrees.
The shadowy Baluchistan Liberation Army, one of three armed resistance groups born in the 1970's, has claimed responsibility for many of the recent attacks, including the killing of three Chinese engineers working on the deep sea port, at Gwadar. Mr. Marri said that he did not know who was leading the group, but that it was neither a Bugti nor a Marri.
The most recent violence has included summary killings of settlers from the Punjab, whom Baluch nationalists blame for stealing jobs and land.
Hundreds of political party members, students, doctors and tribal leaders have been detained by government security forces, many disappearing for months, even years, without trials in well-documented cases. Some have been tortured or have died in custody, say officials of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission.
A Baluch doctor, Bari Langove, 36, said he had examined a student leader, Dr. Allah Nasar Baloch, in a prison ward in Quetta six months ago and found him so debilitated that he could neither walk nor talk at first.
"He was mentally exhausted and wholly unable to speak," Dr. Langove said in an interview in Quetta. "We examined him and found he had post-traumatic stress disorder, symptoms of loss of short-term memory, insomnia, loss of appetite and energy."
In places like Dera Bugti and Kohlu, government forces have carried out reprisals against villagers, Baluch leaders and human rights officials say. In a case documented by the Human Rights Commission, the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force commanded by army officers, killed 12 men from Pattar Nala on Jan. 11 after a mine explosion near the village killed some of its soldiers.
Two old men from the village who went to the base to collect the bodies were also killed. The next day, the 14 bodies were handed over to the women of the village.
Local fighters say the Frontier Corps has carried out 42 such reprisal killings in the last three months, the latest involving six villagers during the week of March 6.
The government offensive began after a rocket attack on General Musharraf as he opened a military base in Kohlu on Dec. 17 an attack for which officials blamed Marri rebels, and Mr. Marri in particular.
Shortly afterward, government forces stormed the town of Dera Bugti, Mr. Bugti said, adding that they were burning shops and houses there still, including his family home.
The government has played down the fighting, and denies that the Pakistani Army is even deployed in Baluchistan, saying that it is merely using the Frontier Corps to run a police operation to stem violence.
In interviews, the police chief, Chaudhry Muhammad Yakub, put the number of rebels at no more than 1,000. The provincial governor, Owais Ahmed Ghani, said 36,000 Frontier Corps soldiers were deployed in Baluchistan, with two-thirds concentrated along the Afghan border. Both predicted that the Baluchistan conflict would be over within two months.
In all this, Mr. Bugti is an unexpected participant. He has been a prominent player in regional politics for many years and was governor of Baluchistan. He has spent time in detention on charges of murder during a long and colorful life.
Educated under the British Raj, he is a man from a bygone era, who said he attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London in 1953.
Now, forced to flee his home, he lives an austere life, camping out under the stars with his loyal tribesmen, a Kalashnikov propped by his aluminum walking stick.
"I have had a good and full life," he said, unperturbed. "It is better to die quickly in the mountains than slowly in your bed."
He warned that the government would be foolish not to negotiate with the senior tribal leaders. "If we are removed from the scene, I can guarantee the government will have a heck of a time from the younger generation, because they are more extreme," he said.
One of his grandsons, Brahamdagh, 25, is commanding the Bugti resistance fighters, and he appeared silently every so often to brief his grandfather. He took to the mountains in 2002 with just 50 to 60 men.
Brahamdagh contended that he now had more than 2,000 fighters in Dera Bugti and thousands more civilian helpers. He said the Marris had roughly the same number in Kohlu. In addition, small cells of fighters are in every district of the province, he said.
"There are so many groups," he said. "Three to four guys get together and decide what to do, to hit a railway or a bus. We are showing our bitterness. We are fighting the government to show we are not happy with you and you should leave our homeland."
Mr. Marri, who arrived unannounced one afternoon, on foot and accompanied by a dozen armed fighters, is another of the younger generation. The third son of the leader of the Marri tribe, he has spent most of his life outside Pakistan.
In 2002, he returned to run for Parliament but spent most of his time in his home in Kohlu, the capital of the Kohlu district, until forced to flee by the government offensive. "If they think they can pressure us like this, then they don' t know us," he warned. "The Baluch people have woken up."
The Human Rights Commission and opposition political parties have urged both sides to seek a political solution to the conflict. Yet at the moment there is no dialogue.
Two parliamentary committees set up last year to look into Baluch grievances have stalled, and General Musharraf has been blunt in his determination to use force against anyone opposing his vision for the region.
In their mountain stronghold, Mr. Bugti and Mr. Marri, and a third leader, Ataullah Mengal, in his home in Karachi, are disparaging about talks with the government.
"They are not worth sitting with at the table," Mr. Marri said. "The general keeps offering peanuts when my rights are at stake. We are not against negotiations, but only negotiations that are worthwhile."
Mr. Bugti offered his own grim prognosis. "I don' t see it ending," he said. |
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