Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti might be a bigger threat to Pakistan after being killed by the Pakistan army in an encounter last week. That insightful comment from General Asad Durrani, a former chief of Pakistan8217;s Inter-Services Intelligence, sums up an important view on the impact of Bugti8217;s death on the future of Baloch nationalism and Pakistan8217;s stability.
By making Bugti a martyr of the Baloch cause, the Pakistan army might have galvanised the nationalist movement in the province for a prolonged struggle that could only weaken Pakistan.
Whether it merely simmers or quickly boils over, Balochistan will remain emblematic of the unfinished agenda of modern state-building in the subcontinent8217;s borderlands after 1947. From Balochistan in the south-west to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in the north-west, from Kashmir to the North East Frontier Agency and undivided Assam and northern Burma in the east, British India exercised, by choice, only minimal sovereignty.
As the British introduced the European notion of territorial sovereignty to the subcontinent and sought to define India8217;s borders in the nineteenth century, they came up with a unique three-fold framework.
It included an 8220;inner line8221; that defined the territories which were fully administered, an 8220;outer line8221; that covered many tribal areas where they exercised only limited sovereignty, and the creation of buffer states all along the perimeter of British India.
While the British saw the three-fold frontier as a device to address specific security concerns in the Great Game with other major powers, newly independent India and Pakistan had claimed the outer line as the national boundary and invested it with extraordinary emotion and prestige.
India and Pakistan, however, faced considerable difficulties in bringing the areas beyond the inner line into the national mainstream. India has addressed this inherited challenge on its north-eastern frontier within a democratic and federal framework. Despite some successes, India continues to confront many challenges on its borderlands.
Pakistan, in turn, inherited the British frontier policy on the subcontinent8217;s western borders 8212; in North Western Frontier Agency, the FATA and Balochistan. Having claimed territories, over which sovereignty in a modern sense was never exercised by anyone in the past, Pakistan faced immediate trouble on its western borders, especially Balochistan.
The region had two parts, a British administered one headquartered in Quetta and the so-called 8216;Balochistan states8217; representing the historic tribal fiefs. In both areas there was considerable opposition to joining Pakistan.
Having been tethered loosely to British India, the Baloch nationalists and tribal leaders had no desire to be absorbed into the successor state of Pakistan. And if they were to be drawn in, the Baloch insisted, it should be only within a framework of substantive autonomy.
In British Balochistan, the opposition to Pakistan was led by Abdus Samad Khan Achakzai, who was a Gandhian and close to the Indian National Congress.
With some help from the British the new rulers got the British Balochistan to join Pakistan. But in the Balochistan states, the Khan of Kalat, widely seen as sitting at the apex of the loose tribal coalition refused to join Pakistan.
The Khan of Kalat8217;s forced integration into Pakistan in 1948 led to the first rebellion in the region for autonomy; since then sections of the Baloch have seen the Pakistan army as an occupation force.
After the failed uprising of the early 1970s, which was put down with brutal force by the Pakistan army, the Baloch are now at it again. The jury is out on whether the Baloch will be third time lucky on getting their demands fulfilled.
These include calls for greater political autonomy, a larger share in revenues form the region8217;s mineral resources, especially natural gas, greater representation in the central civil services, and above all a dignified place in a federal Pakistan.
In trying to put down the Baloch struggle, Pakistan has sought to project Bugti as a representative of the old semi-feudal and tribal order that stands in the way of development.
Many Pakistani analysts also blame the old Sandeman system, named after the British colonial administrator Robert Sandeman for the current mess in Balochistan. The much maligned Sandeman system was a political framework that gave near complete autonomy to the Baloch tribals in return for their protection of British interests in the Great Game.
The problem, however, is not with the Sandeman system but the failure of the post-colonial state in Pakistan to write a fresh compact with the Baloch. A revised Sandeman system had to balance the aspirations for autonomy of peoples who never were under anyone8217;s tutelage and the imperatives of modernisation and development offered by a centralised state in a federal framework.
Instead of a new compact, the rulers of Pakistan played fast and loose with the federal structure, leveraged Islamic fundamentalism to counter ethnic nationalism, and privileged military solutions over political ones in Balochistan and FATA.
India will have no reason to gloat over Pakistan8217;s troubles on its western frontiers. New Delhi must lead by example to demonstrate that genuine federalism is the only answer to the myriad problems of multi-ethnic states. Failure to come up with enduring political agreements between the subcontinent8217;s states and their outlying regions would only open up the borderlands to geopolitical power play and the influence of religious extremism and terrorism.
As they struggle to manage the inherited legacy of the frontier, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan must devolve greater political autonomy within the present territorial framework, take advantage of open borders, and limit the heavy hand of the centralised state while promoting long overdue modernisation of the borderlands.
