NEW DELHI: Indian television viewers and newspaper readers could be forgiven for not knowing it exists. South Asia's most violent low-intensity conflict has garnered just a few column-inches of print and barely a few minutes of airtime.

Using combat jets, helicopter gunships and artillery, Pakistan's military has been pounding tribal insurgents in the gas-rich and strategically crucial province of Balochistan since the middle of December. Hundreds are believed to have died in the fighting, mainly civilians. The veteran Baloch leader Sardar Sherbaz Khan Mazari, a moderate, told the Daily Times that the situation was similar to that which preceded the 1971 Bangladesh war of liberation.

For a conflict that threatens to become a crisis for South Asia, the fighting in Balochistan had relatively innocuous origins. In January 2003, four Pakistan soldiers were alleged to have raped a doctor employed by Pakistan Petroleum at the Sui gasfield. When the authorities failed to file a case, Bugti tribesmen attacked the gasfield. Other tribes joined in, hitting the port at Gwadar as well as railway lines and military facilities. Pakistani forces responded in strength.

Enormous stakes

For both sides, the stakes were enormous. Tribal leaders saw the conflict as a last opportunity to get what they considered a fair share of Balochistan's enormous gas resources; Sui has among the largest reserves in the world. The Government, in turn, saw the fighting as an intolerable challenge to its authority and as a spark that could set off similar fires in other provinces.

In an article in August 2005, the eminent journalist Najam Sethi blamed the crisis on "the social and electoral engineering engineered by the military regime." By sidelining mainstream parties in favour of Islamists, he said, President Pervez Musharraf alienated both "the old non-religious tribal leadership as well as the new secular urban middle classes of Balochistan, who see no economic or political space for themselves in the new military-mullah dispensation."

By contrast, Gen. Musharraf has sought to present himself as a modernist whose developmental successes have provoked reaction from the powerful tribal `sardars' — the hereditary rulers of the dominant Bugti, Marri and Mengal clans.

Whatever the truth, Gen. Musharraf's polemic hasn't helped his own case. In one interview, he said that if the Baloch insurgents continued fighting, "I will hit them so hard they won't know what hit them," language that outraged many.

Attack on rally

The current military assault was provoked by a rocket attack on a rally held by Gen. Musharraf in the town of Kohlu in December. A day later, insurgents opened fire on a helicopter carrying the Inspector General of the Frontier Corps, Balochistan, Major General Shujaat Zamir Dar, and his deputy. Soon after these attacks, Frontier Corps paramilitary and regular Army units, backed by helicopter gunships, launched full-scale attacks on the insurgents.

To those with a sense of history, it isn't hard to see what could lie ahead. In February 1973, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence discovered a consignment of arms allegedly shipped by Iraq's Embassy to members of the Marri tribe. President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto promptly dismissed the provincial government; Baloch nationalists responded by launching a full-blown insurgency. For the next five years, a 55,000-strong Baloch irregular force fought six Army divisions, backed by air strikes.

Huge casualties

By the time fighting ended, an estimated 5,000 insurgents and 3,000 soldiers had died, along with tens of thousands of civilians. On that occasion, India chose not to use its considerable post-1971 leverage in Pakistan to end the carnage. Unlike in Bangladesh, its covert services did not respond to the insurgents' appeals for help. While New Delhi has now taken the unusual measure of expressing concern on the situation in Balochistan, no evidence has so far emerged that it is actually financing the insurgents.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail