Anarkismo.net: Balochistan on the brink by Joshua Virasami

The military occupation of Balochistan ---- ?Come here, listen to this?, Ali slowly leafed 
through the pages of the local newspaper, ?look, you see this small paragraph? This is an 
account from a fighter in the villages.? I asked him if he could translate. ?Today we lost 
several fighters but we killed three Pakistani soldiers and shot down their helicopter?. I 
asked him whether he had visited the fighters in the Bolan Pass. ?Yes, I?ve been there in 
my role as a government official but also as a Baloch, I negotiated with them on the 
release of a hostage, but I respect their fight?... ---- Baluchi elder at the farm in 
Dasht. Balochistan 2014 ---- Entering Balochistan ---- We had just come down from Ali?s 
small mountain, he inherited it from his parents and we were now on his 7 acre farm which 
he had also inherited. He closed the newspaper and looked over to the mountain face, 
?People mark out their mountains by spelling their surname over it?, and he proceeded to 
point out where he had spelled out his surname, ?Kurd?. Ali is however an ethnic Baloch.

Everybody was napping in the summery haze and I went inside to find his small dusty 
library he'd told me about. A shotgun lay hesitantly against the wall, a few paces away I 
dug out a book on Baloch culture and history. The book verified what Ali had previously 
told me, that Baloch are a people and nation unto themselves, that unlike other 
ethnicities of the region they actually hail from further afield, the Caspian sea region, 
they are Kurds who travelled a little further. In fact to my surprise they shared some of 
the same Dravidian ancestry as me, a consequence of mixing with the indigenous Brahui 
people. Baloch are their own people, with their own proud culture and who, before the 
arrival of the British and the establishment of Pakistan, tribally administered their own 
vast lands which now constitutes 47% of Pakistani territory.

I had entered Balochistan from the badlands of Iran, a porous border where Mossad/CIA 
backed Jundullah rebels slip between Pakistan to lay siege to the South-Eastern interior 
of Iran. I crossed by land from Zahedan in Iran, to Taftan in Pakistan. Once in Pakistan I 
was immediately assigned a levy (armed guards of the vast interior between provinces). 
Taftan swiftly placed me into the reality of Balochistan. No foreigner can travel alone 
and bus services were unavailable to me as two Czech girls had been kidnapped by Taliban a 
month prior, even though they had multiple levies, they're still being held in 
Afghanistan. Taliban, in the Quetta Shura, are a common sight and it?s long been a US 
fantasy to start droning them in Balochistan, as they do in N.W Pakistan. I slept in the 
police station a couple nights acclimatizing to the politics and weighing up my options 
without a bus.

Wahe Watan O Hushkien Dar. The fatherland even barren is worth anything - Balochi saying.


This is not Pakistan

I watched as a line of roughly 20 men were marched into the police station; they were 
forced to sit whilst the smaller of the guards shouted at them, as you would an infant. 
Another larger guard came back with a stick and beat them at random, never too 
convincingly, then split them into Baloch and non-Baloch for interrogation. All twenty men 
were then taken into a cell for two people. The guards explained to me they were trying to 
sneak into Iran without ID and were mostly Baloch who couldn?t find work in Pakistan, a 
sad reality I would hear repeatedly. Eventually I convinced the local police chief to 
front half of my journey costs to Quetta as I didn?t have the funds, which was true. My 
two new armed escorts arrived and I said my goodbyes, the station guards replied ?Khoda 
Hafez?, exactly as they do in Iran, ?You say that in Pakistan too!? I said in surprise, 
the new heavily bearded armed guard responded with an air of certainty, ?This is not 
Pakistan?.

The raging conflict between Balochi Nationalists and the Pakistani government began when 
Pakistan was created on 14th August 1947. At independence the British Chief Commissioners 
province within Baluchistan was immediately ceded to the newly created Pakistani state, 
however the remaining princely states of Balochistan under the Khan of Khalat did not 
immediately accede to Pakistan, as this was not the popular sentiment in the public. 
Instead they declared an independent Balochistan. The 1st April 1948 is a historic day for 
Balochi people, on this day the Pakistani military marched into Kalat and forced the Khan 
to capitulate, which he did. What ensued was the beginning of the insurgency. The Khan?s 
brother, prince Abdul Karim, led what is widely recognized as the first of a series of 
rebellions against the Pakistani state: the Karim revolts. Since the Karim revolts in 1948 
there have been continuous revolts, rebellions and often full scale war in resistance to 
Pakistani occupation.

Into the interior

My journey from departure in Taftan to Quetta took roughly two days, the Taftan 
commissioner had duped me into believing he would front my journey to Quetta when instead 
I was dropped off in the remote village of Dalbandin. After a meeting with another 
influential commissioner, and five minutes of blagging, I landed a free trip to Quetta and 
my hotel for that night. His free trip was not as simple as I imagined. 15 pickup trucks, 
a couple of hitches, several cups of tea and three pit stop meals later we arrived into 
Quetta late at night in pouring rain. It was a surreal day, I had travelled with perhaps 
30 different armed levies, shared traditional tea and meals with many Baluchi police, some 
whom I would go on to later live with and heard countless tales of cross border battles 
and living legends, far too many to recount here.

Once in Quetta, and after building good rapport with my final escort, I was given the 
privilege of staying with a friend, 99% of foreigners must be escorted at all times in 
this highly volatile city. On any given day in Quetta there will be either a kidnapping, a 
bombing, an assassination, a discovered body and sometimes all four. The day I arrived was 
no different, just thirty minutes before our armoured Jeep had entered the city centre a 
bomb had been detonated on its outskirts. The friend I stayed with was Ali, whom I 
mentioned at the beginning. Ali is a local businessmen, high ranking government official, 
farmer, and family man. The nine days I spent living on the office floor of a school he 
administers were some of the most insightful times of my life. He was keen to teach me 
what he knew of the Balochi struggle and I was keen to learn.

I sat in his government office and watched as he spoke at length with guest after guest, 
after the last one had left I asked him, how does the struggle affect you and your friends 
personally? He responded in absolute directness, ?you see this man who just came in, he is 
smiling, we must all smile, but a few months ago his brother, a lawyer, went missing, a 
few weeks ago his body was found on the road, tortured and killed. Everybody has either, 
in their family or a friend?s family, lost a life to this struggle.? Ali?s position in the 
local government means that he is the highest authority on governmental money flows in and 
out of Baluchistan, on this topic he told me, ?Our Balochi assembly are working hand in 
hand with the Pakistani government to plunder all our money and resources, no regard is 
paid to the ordinary Baloch, they are all thieves.?

The Struggle Continues

I sat in Sibi station on my 24hr train to Karachi and looked around at the shattered 
ceiling, the exposed metal was emerging out of rafters and the brick walls were broken. 
Just a week or so ago 17 people had been horrifically burned alive when Balochi Insurgents 
exploded a carriage whilst it was in the station. I sat down for some food in the reopened 
small restaurant and wondered how things could?ve escalated to such horrific acts. After 
1948 the next serious rebellions were in the 1950?s which escalated in October of 1958 
into a small military invasion of Baluchistan, events escalated almost uncontrollably. 
Pakistani army garrisons were being established on a perpetual basis throughout 
Balochistan in classical colonial style and sporadic warfare continued to plague the 
region until a ceasefire was reached in 1969.

The third Baloch rebellions of the 1970?s were by far the most devastating and escalated 
into a fully blown war. Baloch people undertook a strategic move to cooperate with 
Pakhtoons of the neighbouring NWFP province forming the National Awami Party (NAP) in 
order to pursue political means to secure Balochi fate. As the Bhuttos swept up over 
Eastern Pakistan, the NAP enjoyed a decisive victory, winning all seats in the western 
provinces of Baluchistan and NWFP. Punjabi settlers from Eastern Pakistan were 
increasingly made targets of Balochi violence and all it took was an unfounded pretext of 
secrets weapon caches in the Iraqi embassy for the Pakistani army to once more lead a 
military attack against Baluchistan. It's also important to note that the insecurity of 
Pakistan was catalysed further by the bloody independence struggle of Bangladesh.

In April 1973 Bhutto in a dangerous move dissolved the regional Balochi government under 
false pretences of exceeding constitutional authority, what resulted was large scale 
violence. Balochi guerillas of roughly 15,000 ambushed army convoys. Bhutto responded by 
jailing the then removed political leaders and placing the full might of the Pakistani 
army in Baluchistan, placing almost 80,000 troops all across the region. What brought the 
most disastrous blow to Balochi nationalists was the unwarranted involvement of the Shah 
of Iran. The Shah under the posturing of the trouble possibly spreading into Iran sent in 
30 US cobra helicopters to decimate rebel hideouts, he also provided a stream of 
intelligence and $200 million in aid. Reeling from this significant counterpunch several 
Balochi leaders went into self exile and in 1977 as the war was winding down Zia-al-Huq 
instigated a military coup, overthrew the Bhutto regime and began a plan of appeasing the 
Baloch cause.

Is there an end in sight?

Before heading to Peshawar I decided to pay my friend Hamal-Khan a visit in his home town 
of Usmanabad in Baluchistan, on the border of Karachi. I met Hamal-Khan, a Balochi 
policeman, when catching rides to Quetta from Taftan, he invited me into his checkpoint 
for some simple food and ensured the levies understood my intention of staying with Ali in 
Quetta. I stayed with Khan, a proud Baloch, and his family, for several days, sleeping on 
the floor of their communal space. After a day I had an opportunity to visit a school they 
ran. The school was fast running into debt but provided an invaluable service to the 
community as they allowed each child's family to pay according to their means. The 
majority of the students had escaped or still live in severe hardship. Hamal-Khan 
introduced me to students who had fled US drone battered Waziristan and who had escaped 
the US invasion of Afghanistan or natural disasters in and around the region.

In Hamal?s home I spent a lot of time talking with his cousins who were roughly my age, 
our conversations were a sobering opportunity to see how vastly our lives differ. His 
cousin Abdul explained to me how he?d only just returned from Iran a month ago and barely 
escaped death when being beaten by Iranian police when they inspected his documents and 
found nothing. They sent him back immediately. Abdul had a gentle demeanour and looked 
upon his hardship with humour, I struggled to do the same. I asked him about finding 
employment and the Balochi Liberation Front, he answered:

?I don?t get work, when an employer hears my name and knows I?m Baloch they turn me away. 
I save up money to go into the city to find work and get turned down, sometimes on the way 
home the Pakistani police stop me and ask me for my name, when they here I?m Baloch they 
insist I am a terrorist, they tell me unless I pay them 500 rupees they will arrest me. I 
can?t afford to look for serious work any-more. The BLA offer some of us an opportunity, 
they say come and fight against those who hate you because you are Baloch, come and 
represent your people and of course they feed you, teach you and give you money for your 
family. I won?t go but I understand why people do.?

I knew the state prejudices were true, I myself had heated confrontations with Pakistani 
police, them pointing their guns at and trying to arrest me because I look like a Baloch 
and am bearded. By 1990 the nationalist sentiment which had been subdued by superficial 
promises began to resurge, this was owed largely to the Baloch Students Organisation. The 
BSO runs out of Quetta University and have long been central both ideologically and 
logistically to the Baloch insurgency. The students are fast becoming the primary target 
of the Pakistani military machine. Whilst I was in Quetta they suffered a huge loss to 
their organisation when Pakistani soldiers stormed the union within the university 
compound and kidnapped their current student leader, everyone is certain that his fate is 
fatal.

In 2005 Marri and Bugti, political leaders whose two tribes constitute the largest Balochi 
factions presented a 15 point agenda to the Pakistani government. Within a year Bugti was 
killed fighting the Pakistani military and the situation spiraled; his death was viewed as 
a martyrdom by the agitated youth, riots ensued. Since the early 2000?s until now, and 
particularly after 2006, Baluchis have been continually kidnapped at random by Pakistani 
frontier corps. Although official statistics place the missing between 5-10,000, most 
locals know this figure to be over 15,000. Recently a bold and brave march comprised of 
families of missing persons walked thousands of kilometres to Islamabad in order to demand 
answers from the capital.

Make or break

The Balochistan Liberation Force, an armed wing of the BSO, appeared on the scene in 2003 
and immediately had a profound effect on the scope of combat in the region. It's leader, 
Dr Nazar, has become Balochistan's "Sub-Commandante Marcos," both an articulate, 
intelligent spokesman who pens open letters to the public and a formidable guerilla 
fighter who continues to take out Pakistani soldiers in a furious flurry of desert 
warfare. His 2006 capture led to an image of him, frail and ill on an ambulance stretcher, 
which went viral and brought him nationwide attention. The mounting public pressure led 
Pakistani authorities to then release this nascent hero an ongoing opponent of Islamabad's 
mandates.

Dr Allah Nazar is the face of a new dynamic within the Balochi struggle for sovereignty, a 
current which sadly still retains the sometimes gratuitous violence of previous liberation 
groups in the region. I got an opportunity to discuss the issue of Baluchi nationalism 
with students in Lahore's National College of Arts, a place full of progressive thinkers. 
The students turned out to be of the same opinion as others I had spoken to in Karachi: 
that Balochi nationalism is both patriarchal and classist in its background and that the 
Sardar system, the traditional tribal system, is no longer representative in its current 
format. They are right, the tribal Sardar systems traditional values have long been 
warped, owed entirely to British colonisation and the allocation of absolute power to 
certain tribal chiefs - a recurrent theme across the empire where the sun never set.

I am a doctor but I am a Baloch. I have a nation, I have a land, I have roots in my land 
and in my nation. I have a culture and I am connected with my culture.


"I have seen the poverty. My arms are not a sign of terrorism, because my arms are bound 
totally by a political ideology, that ideology is to help for freedom and to seek it not 
only for Balochistan but for the rest of the world," Dr Allah Nazar, BLF.

This tribal irresponsibility has only further eroded since Pakistani independence, however 
the newer waves of Baluchi thinking differ, Dr Nazar being case in hand. Dr Allah Nazar in 
response to allegations that wealthy Sardars finance the uprising has responded that, ?all 
the tribal chiefs are in the pocket of state, all the tribal chiefs are puppets, they are 
playing and are an alliance of ISI and Military Intelligence?. He cites the ceaseless 
expansion of the Pakistani military occupation as the crux behind the necessity to take up 
arms. As human rights breaches accelerate from both camps, the worlds citizens cannot 
afford simply to ignore this conflict, which Balochi nationalists call "a deepening 
struggle for freedom". Although the BSO/BLF movement want Baloch to decide their own fate, 
Dr Allah Nazar and his companions have envisioned a just Baluchistan state, which is as 
follows:

?I want it to be a democratic, secular and welfare state where every citizen ? 
irrespective of their class, gender, religion or caste, has access to free education and 
healthcare. Every citizen should enjoy equal rights without any discrimination. Also, an 
independent Balochistan would not enter into the nuclear arms? race and it would promote 
peaceful co-existence among neighbouring countries. The state would promote arts, science 
and literature under the policy of free-speech. I strongly believe in free-speech and it?s 
one thing that can guarantee the prosperity and success of a nation.?

In Peshawar I was fortunate to stay with a wonderful Pakhtoon man called Qaisar. One 
evening stroll we stopped, pulled up our traditional Shalwar Khameez and crouched down in 
the grounds of Peshawar University, just outside of his home. He explained how some 40 
years ago in this very same place the first Mujahideen fighters also crouched, discussed 
and brought about the birth of Al-Qaeda. As Qaisar and many others know and repeat, 
Pakistan is the hornets? nest of extremism and from inside its confines it exports these 
homemade dangers eastwards. One eyed Mullah Omar of the Taliban famously made a home in 
Pakistan, Bin Laden retired to Pakistan; it is the home and haven of Islamic Extremism.

One of the central arguments of Balochi nationalists is that an independent state of 
Balochistan offers an opportunity to create a physical buffer between Pakistan, Iran and 
Afghanistan and cap the flow of extremists into the Middle East and Africa. As getting 
information out of Balochistan grows harder, the global discussion is fast getting 
sidelined. The Balochi press clubs regularly hold protests, over 30 journalists have been 
killed in Baluchistan in the past 6 years, simply because Pakistan, like any occupying 
state, does not want an alternate version to their line escaping the region. One thing is 
for certain, so long as the Pakistani government continue to militarize their presence in 
Balochistan, to usurp their natural resources and to corrupt them from the inside, Baloch 
people will continue to resist and the bloodshed will deepen, we as an international 
community must not be silent onlookers.