Fault Line

The Bengalis had voted for Sheikh Mujibur Rehman8217;s Awami League in the 1970 elections, hoping that their votes would enable them to write the constitution of the country of which they were the majority of citizens. But the generals who ruled Pakistan then did not approve of the people8217;s verdict or their chosen representative. When Mujibur Rehman refused to give in to the generals8217; demand to accept their views on the constitution as final and in the national interest, confrontation between the people and the army began.

Late Brigadier Siddiq Salik, who worked as an officer in the Pakistan army8217;s public relations directorate at the time, wrote an excellent account of events in Dhaka after the 1970 elections titled Witness to Surrender. In that book, he cites a comment that sums up the attitude of the army in East Pakistan. According to Salik, the General Officer Commanding, Major-General Khadim Hussain Raja, told an Awami League sympathiser within the hearing of fellow officers: 8220;I will muster all I can 8212; tanks, artillery and machine guns 8212; to kill all the traitors and, if necessary, raze Dhaka to the ground. There will be no one to rule; there will be nothing to rule.8221;

The military cracked down on the politicians and the people they led. Operation Searchlight began on the night of March 25, 1971 and its basis for planning clearly stated: 8220;AL Awami League action and reactions to be treated as rebellion and those who support the League or defy ML martial law action be dealt with as hostile elements8230; As AL has widespread support even amongst EP East Pakistani elements in the Army, the operation has to be launched with great cunningness, surprise, deception and speed combined with shock action.8221;

Troops moved with full force against Awami League supporters, students at the Dhaka University and Bengali Hindus. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was arrested and moved to West Pakistan. Salik offers the following account of the night of March 25, 1971: 8220;The first column from the cantonment met resistance at Farm Gate, about one kilometre from the cantonment. The column was halted by a huge tree trunk felled across the road. The side gaps were covered with the hulks of old cars and a disabled steamroller. On the city side of the barricade stood several hundred Awami Leaguers shouting Joi Bangla slogans.

8220;I heard their spirited shouts while standing on the verandah of General Tikka8217;s headquarters. Soon some rifle shots mingled with the Joi Bangla slogans. A little later a burst of fire from an automatic weapon shrilled through the air. Thereafter it was a mixed affair of firing and fiery slogans, punctuated with the occasional chatter of a light machine gun. Fifteen minutes later, the noise began to subside and the slogans started dying down. Apparently, the weapons had triumphed.8221;

The triumph of weapons was, however, short-lived. After the first flush of victory, the Pakistan army in East Pakistan faced broader resistance. Bengali nationalism replaced demands for autonomy within a federal Pakistan as the Bengalis8217; aspiration. Seeing themselves as freedom fighters, the Bengalis secured help from India and the Pakistan army faced an ignominious defeat and surrender. But even that experience has not made Pakistan8217;s generals wiser to the need for politics as opposed to their preference for the logic of brute power.

The consequences of Nawab Bugti8217;s assassination are likely to be monumental. Pakistan8217;s generals might think that the situation in Balochistan is different from that in East Pakistan because the army8217;s logistics and supply situation is better. More troops can be brought in from cantonments around the country to Balochistan and much faster than was possible during the civil war in East Pakistan.

Moreover, Balochistan does not border India and the prospect of a foreign military intervention in favour of the Baloch is unlikely. But these soldierly obsessions miss the crucial point. Should the conduct of the armed forces of a sovereign independent nation be the same as the behaviour of the British Indian army? Shouldn8217;t a modern independent state draw its legitimacy, not from force, but from the consent of the majority of its own citizens?

Husain Haqqani is director of Boston University8217;s Center for International Relations and Co-chair of the Hudson Institute8217;s Project on Islam and Democracy. He is the author of the book Pakistan Between Mosque and Military.

The Indian government has put out the line that Baloch tribal leader Nawab Akbar Bugti8217;s death is a 8220;tragic loss8221; for Pakistan. While Pakistan has rejected India8217;s concern as interference in its internal affairs, Indian analysts as well as officials argue that their comments on what is happening in Pakistan are pegged on India8217;s desire to see a more democratic Pakistan as a non-democratic Pakistan puts regional security at risk.

This is supposed to be a rejection of Pakistan8217;s allegation that India is fishing in Balochistan. Highly debatable as this is, let8217;s leave aside the justification or the lack of it of the military operation and consider some facts instead.

Nawab Bugti8217;s own record as a sardar Dera Bugti has the worst human development indices in entire Pakistan; the sardari system and how this system has stymied progress in Balochistan; the fact that successive governments have shied away from tackling Balochistan; and, of course, the broader question of whether it is prudent for India 8212; or even possible 8212; to try and have a democratic Pakistan while claiming to not interfere in Pakistan8217;s internal affairs.

Bugti was never a Baloch hero; in fact, during the military operation in the early 8217;70s, after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto dismissed the first-ever elected government of Chief Minister Attaullah Mengal, it was Bugti who Bhutto rewarded with the governorship of Balochistan for having broken away from his Marri-Mengal nationalist colleagues. Bugti was interested primarily in keeping his fiefdom intact and extracting a price from Islamabad.

This has been the case with the other sardars also. Islamabad pursued the policy of bribing them and controlling the province through them. It looked like a good policy because of the steeply hierarchical Baloch tribal structure, but it had the great disadvantage of keeping the common Baloch away from the federation and under the oppressive rule of the sardars. Different governments, at different points in time, courted one or the other Baloch sardar out of political expediency without expending any effort to reach out to the people directly or bring development to Balochistan.

With the changing configuration in the region, Islamabad is compelled to bring Balochistan into the ambit of municipal law. With too much at stake in Balochistan in both economic and military-strategic terms, the Baloch resistance, funded from outside, is a development no Pakistani government can tolerate. The province has to be developed and the sardars feel threatened not because they are fighting the common man8217;s war but because they want to maintain the status quo.

Not long ago, the very nationalists who want the federal government out of Balochistan today would grumble that Islamabad took no interest in the construction of a port at Gwadar; they also wanted the Mirani Dam, the Coastal Highway, the Kachhi Canal and other projects.

But when the government started these projects, they began to oppose development. Also, some twenty years back, the Balochistan Assembly was replete with supporters of the three renegade sardars, Nawab Akbar Bugti, Sardar Attaullah Mengal and Khair Bakhsh Marri; today, even the nationalists are represented by the National Party, which comprises the small educated middle class of Balochistan.

India is ignoring the fact that harnessing Balochistan would also be in India8217;s interest if New Delhi remained committed to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. But on that score India8217;s interest seemed to have waned, though it is still playing along.

India8217;s interest in presenting Islamabad8217;s efforts in Balochistan negatively has been evident for some time now and relates to the evolving thinking in New Delhi that India should have its own version of a Monroe doctrine. While this thinking targets the entire region, in relation to Pakistan it has been unfolding under the overhang of the India-Pakistan rivalry.

The question of why Balochistan is important for India can be answered with one word: Gwadar. The Gwadar port, which is being built with Chinese help on the Makran coast, is economically significant for Pakistan, as any port would be. But more than that, it is the strategic significance of Gwadar, represent as it does the Sino-Pakistan relationship, that India considers a threat.

For Pakistan, Gwadar8217;s strategic importance has to be seen in the context of, first, India8217;s ambition to have a blue-water navy that can dominate the Indian ocean and also show its flag outreach in the South China sea and Oceania; and, secondly, the consequences of such naval power for Pakistan8217;s security.

The mainstay of Indian naval strength in the coming years, then, would be, first, the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, and, secondly, an SSN force, though its Advanced Technology Vessel project, an euphemism for a nuclear-powered submarine, has not been a success so far.

Add to this the India-US strategic partnership and Pakistan8217;s security compulsions become clear.

For China, which has financed a large part of the Gwadar project, the port means the ability to monitor the sea channels, just 250 miles from the Strait of Hormuz, a key trade route and more importantly, a crucial passage for world oil supplies. Being at Gwadar also gives China direct access to the Persian Gulf while for Pakistan the Chinese presence serves as 8216;forward defence8217;.

Analyses coming out of India suggest that it would be in India8217;s interest to focus on and deepen the faultlines in Pakistan. If this can be done through exploiting the bad mood in Balochistan, given also that Pakistan might be thinking of using the Gwadar port to balance Indian naval strength, it would make eminent sense from India8217;s viewpoint.

Hence, moves to undermine Pakistan8217;s economic and strategic arrangement with China via Gwadar should be expected. India8217;s interests in Balochistan and in highlighting Baloch 8216;oppression8217; should also be clear.

Indian strategic analyst Bharat Karnad, in his book, Nuclear Weapons 038; Indian Security: the Realist Foundations of Strategy, laments that 8220;whale-sized8221; India has traditionally acted like a minnow. He grounds the imperative for India8217;s outreach 8212; India8217;s own Monroe doctrine 8212; in the Vedic concept of chakravartin, which presents the concept of power projection.

The writer is Assistant News Editor, The Friday Times, Lahore