Pakistan- the Balochistan Conundrum

by Tilak Devasher

  Notwithstanding future discoveries of oil, presently it is Balochistan’s natural gas that is of critical significance for Pakistan’s energy profile. Wirsing adduces three reasons for this: (i) natural gas makes up about 50 per cent of Pakistan’s total energy consumption and is by far the principal energy source. ‘This makes Pakistan’s economy one of the world’s most natural gas dependent’; (ii) of Pakistan’s proven natural gas reserves—in 2006 estimated at 28 trillion cubic feet (tcf)—as much as 19 trillion tcf (68 per cent) were located in Balochistan; (iii) Balochistan produces between 36 and 45 per cent of Pakistan’s natural gas, but consumes only 17 per cent of it.60

  The Sui gas fields in Dera Bugti district of Balochistan contributes the largest share of gas. This is also the stronghold of the Bugti tribe that has been in an adversarial relationship with the state since the early years of this millennium. It was consequently among the areas most seriously impacted by militancy leading to disruptions of gas supplies. As Wirsing notes, since the state-owned Sui Southern Gas Company alone, for example, has a 27,000-km pipeline distribution network across Sindh and Balochistan, the scale of the problem of monitoring and policing the pipelines can well be imagined.61

  This, according to him, has a threefold impact on the situation in Balochistan. First, it puts Balochistan and Baloch nationalism on a much higher priority for the Central government, reinforcing its policy of zero tolerance and ruthless crushing of the insurgency. Second, it provides added incentives to the Baloch insurgents to reclaim control of Balochistan by a higher level of insurgent activity. Finally, by harnessing Balochistan’s potential for an important corridor for energy trafficking in the region, it provides major opportunities and incentives for addressing Baloch nationalist demands in a positive and peaceful manner.62 The moot point, of course, is whether the government and especially the army will do so.

  There are three proposals of energy trafficking, two on an east–west axis and one on a north–south axis. The first is a 2,700-km (1,678-mile) Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, with a capacity to transport 2.8 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas daily from Iran’s huge offshore South Pars field to terminals in Pakistan and India. Second is the 1,680-km (1,044-mile) Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, with the capacity to transport up to 3.2 bcf daily from Turkmenistan to markets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Both would have to pass through Balochistan.63

  The IPI pipeline has been a non-starter given the problems between India and Pakistan and between Pakistan and Iran. In February 2018, Iran threatened to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Pakistan for unilaterally shelving the IP gas pipeline project invoking the penalty clause of the 2009 Gas Sales Purchase Agreement (GSPA). Under the penalty clause, Pakistan was bound to pay a penalty of $1 million per day from 1 January 2015 if it failed to take gas from Iran. Iran has asked for payment of over $1.2 billion that is almost equal to the cost of the project. According to media reports in June 2016, Pakistan had shelved the IPI gas line project and now Iran has presented the bill for doing so.64

  The TAPI pipeline was inaugurated on 23 February 2018 with leaders of the four countries attending its groundbreaking ceremony in Serhetabat followed by another in Herat. The pipeline costing $8 billion is expected to be completed within two years to begin pumping 32 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas annually from Turkmenistan’s giant Galkynysh gas field through Afghanistan and Pakistan into India. For the present, even the Taliban have vowed to protect the pipeline.65

  The third is the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on a north–south axis consisting of port, road and rail infrastructural networks billed as part of China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ (OBOR) or Belt and Road initiative (BRI) initiative. It seeks to connect Gwadar in Balochistan with Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang province. This too will have to pass through Balochistan. The development of the Gwadar port and the CPEC has further heightened Balochistan’s strategic significance. The port and corridor could potentially transform Pakistan into an economic hub. CPEC is on its way to be operationalized, further underlining the strategic importance of Balochistan.

  These developments have resulted in the efforts of the Central government to forcefully exert its authority in the province leading to an adverse reaction from the Baloch nationalists. The development of Gwadar port is likely to lead to an influx of non-Baloch and this has raised fears among the Baloch of their being converted into a minority in their own land. Along with other historical and economic factors, the Baloch nationalists have come to view the mega project as an attempt to subjugate them and exploit their resources for the benefit of Punjab. This has provoked a violent backlash from Baloch militants, leading to a harsh reaction from the Pakistan Army. The tit-for-tat cycle seems to have developed a momentum of its own with more and more Baloch getting disillusioned with the state.

  2

  The People

  BALOCHISTAN IS A MULTI-ETHNIC PROVINCE consisting of the Baloch concentrated mostly in the south and south-west, the Brahvi, an ethnic group of Dravidian origin based in central Balochistan, and Pashtuns in the north. In the 1901 census, the British showed the Baloch and the Brahvi as separate ethnic groups. According to it, the Baloch were less numerous than both Brahvis and Pashtuns. The exact numbers were: Baloch, 80,000; Brahvis, 300,000; and Pashtuns, 200,000. The census figures further stated that the number of Baloch staying outside Balochistan in Sindh and Punjab were 950,000.1

  According to the 1998 census, the province hosted about 5 per cent of Pakistan’s population. Of this, ethnic Baloch (including the Bravhis) formed 54.7 per cent and Pashtuns 29.6 per cent of the population, with the rest divided between Punjabis, Hazaras and others. In other words, ethnic Baloch formed only about 3.5 per cent of the total population of Pakistan while the province formed almost 44 per cent of the area of Pakistan. This unique demographic-cum-territorial configuration necessitates that for any development effort to be successful, there has to be a much higher per-capita expenditure as compared to other provinces. Historically, this need was not recognized at the national level until the seventh National Finance Commission (NFC) Award in 2009.

  The Baloch are spread around the province in 22,000 settlements that range from the capital city of Quetta to a sprinkling of small hamlets having less than 500 houses.2 Over two-thirds of its inhabitants reside in rural areas whereas half of its urban population is concentrated in Quetta, Khuzdar, Turbat, Hub and Chaman. The rural areas primarily consist of scattered settlements of sparse populations. The average population density of the province is nineteen persons per square kilometre and varies greatly across districts.3 A large number of Baloch reside outside the province, especially in Karachi. It is believed that the Baloch population in Karachi could well exceed that in Balochistan itself.

  Who Are the Baloch?

  The exact meaning and origin of the term ‘Baloch’ is somewhat cloudy. According to the Imperial Gazetteer, the word Baloch means wanderer or nomad.4 This view was also propounded by G.P. Tate, the then assistant superintendent, Survey of India, who held that the name has historically meant ‘nomads’.5 It would, therefore, be a synonym for ‘bedouin’.6 Another view is that the word ‘Baloch’ is the corrupted form of Melukhkha, Meluccha or Mleccha, which was the designation of the modern eastern Makran during the third and second millennia bc, according to Mesopotamian texts.7 Munir Ahmad Gichki, a professor of history at Balochistan University, however, relates it to ‘Gedrosia’ or ‘Bedrozia’, the name of the Baloch country in the time of Alexander the Great (356–23 bc).8 Muhammad Sardar Khan theorized that the term Baloch is a derivative of Belus, the title of Babylonian or Chaldian kings. Nimrud, the son of Kush or Cush or Kooth, was called Nimrud the Belus.9 The followers of Nimrud were known as Belusis. Among the Arabs, Belusis were pronounced Balos.10 Thus, the word Baloch has come from Belusis or Balos, Sardar Khan argues.

  Taj Mohammad Breseeg, a Baloch historian, quotes the Kurdish scholar Mohammad Amin Seraji who believes
that the term ‘Baloch’ is the corrupted form of the term Baroch or Baroz. Arguing on the origin and the meaning of the term, Seraji says, the Baroz has a common meaning both in Kurdish and Balochi, which means the land of the rising sun (ba-roch or ‘towards sun’). Located at the eastern-most corner of the Median Empire, the country probably got the designation ‘Baroch or Baroz’ during the Median or early Achaemenid era, believes Seraji. According to him, there are several tribes living in Eastern Kurdistan, who are called Barozi (because of their eastward location in the region).11

  Etymology apart, there are two competing theories on the historical origin of the Baloch: the first states that the Baloch are a native people who have been described as the Oritans, the Jatts, the Medes, etc., in ancient records; the second states that the Baloch migrated into the area from Syria some 2,000 years ago.12 The dispute is likely to keep historians busy for a long time.

  What is interesting about the debate is that it was joined by Muhammad Ali Jinnah who presented ‘The Memorandum of the Government of Kalat’ to the British Cabinet Mission in 1946. In it, an Arab origin for the Baloch was claimed. Thus, in para six, the Memo states:

  In the first place, ethnographically, the people of Kalat and of the territories under its suzerainty, have no affinities with the people of India. The Ruling Family of Kalat is of Arab origin, and not, as usually stated, of Brahuic extraction. They belong to the Ahmadzai branch of the Mirwari clan, which originally emigrated from Iran to the Kolwa Valley of Makran. Apart from the Brahvis, all the important and influential tribes are also of non-Indian origin. The Marri and Bugti tribes, who occupy the most southern buttresses of the Sulaiman Mountains, are Rind Baluchis, almost certainly of Arab extraction. They came to Sindh either with the Arab conquerors, or after them, and remained mixed up with the original Hindu inhabitants.13

  In short, the history of the origin of the Baloch people is shrouded in controversy primarily due to the absence of authentic, documented source material. Not surprisingly, Mir Ahmed Yar Khan Baloch, the Khan of Kalat wrote: ‘Authorities on the subject have not been able to state anything authentic about the exact origins of the Baloches.’14

  Whether an indigenous people or a migratory one, the Baloch have lived in the area of Balochistan since at least the start of the Christian era. The central marker that unites the Baloch community is a more or less well-articulated conception of all Baloch as descended from a common ancestor, thus constituting a ‘qaum’ (nation). The Baloch claim to descend from a single ancestor, Amir Hamza, the uncle of Prophet Muhammad, and can prove it to their full satisfaction with genealogical tables, ballads and traditions.15 The same is true of the Brahvis, who also claim to descend from a single ancestor, Braho or Ibrahim, from Allepo.16

  Based on the study of the different views on the origin of the Baloch, Inayatullah Baloch concludes that ‘It would be true to say that the present-day Baloch are perhaps not a single race, but are a people of different origins, whose language belongs to the Iranian family of languages.’ According to him, the Baloch are mixed with Arabs in the south, Indians in the east, Turkmen and other Altaic groups in the north-west and in the coastal area a mixture of Iranian, Assyrian and Negro stock.17

  In 1890, Sir Edward Oliver, a British colonial officer who had served in Balochistan, described Baloch tribesman as ‘essentially a nomad—good looking, frank, with well-cut features, black and well-oiled flowing hair and beard, attired in a smock frock, that is theoretically white, but never is washed save on the rare occasions when he goes to durbar.’18

  This is how Sylvia Matheson described a Baloch: ‘Just twenty-one years old, Sardar Akbar Shahbaz Khan Bugti, Tumandar of the warrior Bugti tribe … was a sight to gladden the eyes of any romantically-inclined girl. He was well over six feet tall, with a magnificent head of thick, shining, black, curly hair and beard to match, lively intelligent eyes, a humorous mouth (what could be seen of it under the superb, curling moustache and beard), and fine, clean-cut features. Almost impossibly good-looking in fact.19

  Baloch Ethnic Grouping

  The Baloch are divided into seventeen groups and some 400 subgroupings.20 Of the seventeen, the two major groups are the ‘Eastern’, or Sulaiman Baloch, who are the larger of the two groups and ‘Western’, or Makran Baloch, who have traditionally been viewed as the ‘original nucleus’ of the Baloch people.

  The Sulaiman Baloch include the tribes of Bugtis, Buzdars, Dombkis, Kaheris, Khetrans, Magsis, Marris, Mugheris, Rinds and Umranis while the Makran are made up of the Buledi, Dashtis, Gichkis, Kandais, Rais, Rakhshanis, Rinds, Sangus and Sanjranis. Traditionally, the Rinds have been regarded as being on top of the pecking order, though it is the Bugtis and the Marris who have become dominant in modern Baloch politics and been at the centre of the recent unrest. The Marris, who control almost 9,000 sq. km of land and are Balochistan’s largest tribe (they number 134,000), consider themselves Balochistan’s master tribe.21

  Among the Brahvis, who are found in the central mountain region south of Quetta, there are three subdivisions: the Brahvi nucleus, the Jhalawan Brahvis and the Sarawan Brahvis. The Brahvi nucleus tribes include the Ahmadzai, Bangulzai, Bizenjo, Gurguari, Iltazai, Kalandari, Kambrani, Mengal, Mirwari, Raisani, Rodeni and Sumalari. The Ahmadzais occupy the top of the social hierarchy among Brahvi, and is the tribe of the Khan of Kalat, though a Jhalawan tribe, the Mengals, have become a powerful player in Balochistan politics.22 Most of these tribes are bilingual and are quite fluent both in the Balochi and Brahvi languages.

  According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, there is a nucleus of eight Brahvi tribes to which other people have been affiliated so that the number of tribes has swelled to twenty-nine. Mir Ahmed Yar Khan, the Khan of Kalat, calls the Baloch and the Brahvis two groups of the same people. The ‘group which was originally called “Ibrahimi Baluches” is now pronounced as “Brahvi Baluches”’.23

  Tribal System

  Despite the tough geography, difficulties in communication as well as differences in language and dialect among the various Baloch groups, a specific tribal, political, social and economic organization developed over the centuries. The tribal system, in fact, is the very basis of Baloch society and culture and has shaped the general structure of Baloch life and institutions. Tribal loyalties based on common descent continue to dominate the Baloch society to a large extent. The allegiance of most of the Baloch has been to their extended families, clans and tribes. According to Sherbaz Khan Mazari, a Baloch politician, ‘In a tribal culture, lineage counts for everything, and one’s roots are inextricably linked with the present. Heritage invariably, and often invisibly, shapes and forms the contours of one’s life.’24

  According to Taj Mohammad Breseeg, tribal ties, however, are of little significance in Makran (both Pakistani and Iranian Balochistan) in southern Balochistan. Neither can the Kacchi plains in the east nor Lasbela in the southernmost part of Balochistan be characterized as tribal. In contrast, tribal social structure is important in Dera Bugti, Kohlu and Barkan, in Kalat and Khuzdar districts in central Pakistani Balochistan, northern Iranian Balochistan, Sarhadd, southern Afghanistan, Nimruz, and even to some extent in the rural areas of Sindh and Punjab.25

  The traditional tribal society has created hurdles in the development of Baloch nationalism since loyalties of tribal members extend to individual tribes rather than national entities or a political ideology. An individual’s identity is based on his belonging to a tribe and not the nation. The failure of different tribes to unite in the cause of Baloch nationalism has been due to this strong element of tribal loyalties. As a result, a unified nationalist movement could not take shape in the run-up to the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and the forced accession of the province. Some Baloch leaders did try to articulate a sense of common ethnic identity but it was the endeavour of only a few and failed to catch the imagination of most of the Baloch.

  In recent years, a new non-tribal leadership has emerged from among the Baloch. This cuts across different regi
ons and socio-economic classes. These nationalists are toeing a separate line and urging the sardars to leave their individual goals and champion the nationalist causes. As has been well put: ‘The process of horizontalization of the Balochi society and polity may have just begun. The Balochi nationalists may have embarked upon a long journey ahead.’26

  Given these constraints, the current rise of a non-tribal or pan-tribal nationalist movement is a very significant development. The dilemma for the nationalists is that tribal support remains an important element for the success of a national movement, which also makes them susceptible to tribal rivalries.27

  Tribal Rivalries

  Balochistan has a history of intertribal feuds that have given birth to long-lasting wars between the tribes. A critical feud was Nawab Bugti’s fight with another Bugti sub-tribe, the Kalpars. As a result, Amir Hamza Bugti, the son of the Kalpar Wadera, was assassinated. The Kalpars took revenge by assassinating Nawab Bugti’s, youngest son. In the ensuing skirmishes, thousands of Kalpars had to flee the Bugti area with government support. Such was the animosity that even a lawyer from Lahore, who was defending the Kalpars accused of killing the Nawab’s son, was gunned down in Quetta in June 1995. Other tribal rivalries include: Bugti vs Ahmedans; Bugtis vs Mazaris; Bugtis vs Raisanis; Gazinis vs Bijranis; Marris vs Loonis; and Rind vs Raisani.28

  Sardari System

  At the core of the Baloch tribal structure is the sardari system. According to Taj Mohammad Breseeg, ‘The sardari system appears to have had its origins in the Mughal period of Indian history, but it is believed to have assumed its present shape rather late, during the period of British colonial rule.’29 Under the centuries-old system, tribesmen pledged their allegiance to sardars, or tribal chiefs, in exchange for social justice and the maintenance of the ‘integrity of tribe’.30 The sardars, in turn, pledged their loyalty to the Khan at Kalat and defended the Khan’s khanate against any outside attack or provided the Khan with material and moral help during his campaigns. It was a well-federated system operating through tribal loyalty and patronage. According to Martin Axmann, ‘… the sardari system represented the keystone of British indirect rule in Balochistan. Without sardari collaboration British control of the region would have been impossible.’31