Pakistan- the Balochistan Conundrum

by Tilak Devasher

  Given British prompting, it was not surprising that by October 1947 Jinnah had a change of heart on the recognition of Kalat as an ‘Independent and a Sovereign State’, and wanted the Khan to sign the same form of instrument of accession as the other states, which had joined Pakistan. Jinnah was, of course, aware of the sentiments in Kalat since on 29 October 1947 Kalat’s prime minister Aslam had informed the Government of Pakistan that ‘… not only HH but the vast majority of his people, including the sardars, also are totally against accession.’42 The Khan who could not have known about the British thinking and intentions got the shock of his life when he visited Karachi, the capital of the new state of Pakistan, in October 1947. He found Jinnah’s tone had mysteriously changed. He was no longer a friend nor Kalat’s lawyer but a hard-nosed Governor-General who demanded that the Khan accede immediately to Pakistan. The British high commissioner had clearly worked on Jinnah.

  Bolstered by the resolutions of both the Houses rejecting accession to Pakistan, the Khan dug in his heels. He expressed his reluctance to abandon the nominally achieved independent status but was ready to concede on defence, foreign affairs and communications. However, he was unwilling to sign either a treaty or an instrument, until and unless he had got a satisfactory agreement on the leased areas. As he prevaricated, the Government of Pakistan worked on the rulers of Lasbela and Kharan, who were feudatories of the Khan, and of Makran that was never more than a district of the state of Kalat.43

  By February 1948, the discussions between Kalat and the Government of Pakistan were coming to a head. On 15 February 1948 Jinnah visited Sibi and addressed a Royal Durbar. The Khan failed to turn up for the final meeting with him, pleading illness. In his letter to Jinnah, he said that he had summoned both the Houses of the parliament, Dar-ul-Umra and Dar-ul-Awam, for their opinion about the future relations with Pakistan, and he would require two months to obtain their views. The Dar-ul-Awam of Kalat met on 21 February 1948 and decided not to accede but to negotiate a treaty to determine Kalat’s future relations with Pakistan. The Upper House asked for three months for further consideration.

  By now, relations between the Khan and Jinnah had deteriorated. On 18 March Pakistan announced accessions of Makran, Kharan and Lasbela to Pakistan.44 This deprived Kalat of more than half its territory and its access to the sea. The following day the Khan of Kalat issued a statement refusing to believe that Pakistan as champion of Muslim rights in the world would infringe the rights of small Muslim neighbours, pointing out that Makran as a district of Kalat had no separate status and that the foreign policy of Lasbela and Kharan was placed under Kalat by the Standstill Agreement.

  Time had, however, run out for the Khan. The plans for the invasion of Kalat were finalized on 22 March 1948 when Prime Minister Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan of Pakistan presided over a meeting of the three services chiefs to oversee the military invasion. Despite the Standstill Agreement, on 27 March 1948, Lt Col Gulzar of the 7th Baluch Regiment under GOC Maj. Gen. Mohammad Akbar Khan invaded the Khanate of Kalat. General Akbar escorted the Khan of Kalat to Karachi and forced him to sign the instrument of accession. Jinnah accepted the Instrument of Accession on 30 March 1948.

  The Khan’s signing of the Instrument was without obtaining formal sanction from the Baloch sardars and in opposition to the decision of the Baloch legislature (in October 1947 and January 1948). As the Khan wrote in his memoirs: ‘Without obtaining the formal sanction from the tribal sardars, I signed the merger documents in my capacity as the Khan-e-Azam on 30 March 1948. I confess, I knew I was exceeding the scope of my mandate.’45 The far-fetched justification he gave was:

  Had I not taken the immediate step of signing Kalat’s merger, the position of Pakistan would definitely have gone worse. The British Agent to the Governor-General could have played havoc by leading Pakistan into a fratricide war against the Baloch. The army of Afghanistan could have easily entered into Balochistan. India, too, could have aggravated the situation by sending her naval warships to the Makran sea-coast obviously to help the Baloch, but in reality, this would have provided the best pretext for Russia to advance through Afghanistan and capture the ports on the Makran sea-coast!46

  Whatever the argument, the accession was regarded and continues to be regarded as ‘illegal and oppressive’ because it was only the two legislative chambers of Kalat that were authorized to decide the issue of accession. Both the chambers had clearly decided against accession. The Baloch have never gotten over their anger at the way the accession of Kalat was manipulated and they continue to treat the accession as invalid.

  Martin Axmann has written probably the best epitaph for Kalat: ‘The death of the state was the birth of the nation. The Baloch lost their ‘national homeland’ and turned into a marginal ethno-linguistic minority of Pakistan. This situational switching moulded the Baloch nation. It produced a conflict between the dominating national group of Punjabi-Pakistani and the dominated sub-national group of Baloch.’47

  Pakistan had signed a Standstill Agreement with Kalat on 11 August 1947. It had signed a similar Standstill Agreement with the Maharaja of Kashmir in August 1947. Pakistan broke both these agreements. Its subsequent history would show similar disdain for international commitments.

  7

  Post-Accesssion Insurgencies

  THE ONE COMMON THREAD THAT runs through the history of Balochistan since 1948 is the Baloch frequently breaking out in rebellion against the state. Every rebellion has lasted longer than the previous one, every rebellion has encompassed a wider geographical area than the previous one and every rebellion has involved more Baloch than the previous one. This must say something about the legitimacy of the Pakistan state in the eyes of the Baloch.

  After forcing Kalat’s accession, Pakistan restored the status quo ante in April 1948, that is, as had been the case in British times, a political agent, an officer subordinate to the Agent of the Governor General (AGG) in Quetta, was appointed to look after the administration of the state. The two legislative chambers were abolished, the cabinet dissolved and several cabinet ministers exiled or arrested in mid-April 1948. This put an end to the brief independence enjoyed by the Khanate after the British had left India.

  1948 Insurgency

  While the Khan acquiesced in the accession of Kalat, his brother Abdul Karim Khan declared a revolt and launched guerrilla operations against the Pakistan Army in Jhalawan district. Prior to the partition of the subcontinent, Abdul Karim had been the commandant of Kalat state’s military and, during Kalat’s short-lived independence, he held the post of governor of Makran. He proclaimed the independence of Kalat and issued a manifesto in the name of the Baloch National Liberation Committee rejecting the accession agreement signed by the Khan. With him were several leading figures in the Baloch nationalist movement, including Gul Khan Nasir and Muhammad Hussain Unka, along with several officers and some troops of the Kalat state army.1

  Karim Khan hoped to obtain Afghan support since Afghanistan had objected to the inclusion of the Baloch and Pashtun areas in Pakistan and had even opposed the admission of Pakistan to the United Nations. While the Pakistani version is that Karim received substantial Afghan support, the Baloch nationalist version is that Afghanistan denied support since it favoured the inclusion of Balochistan in Afghanistan rather than as an independent country.2

  Though not many new followers crossed over from Pakistan to join the rebels who had established a camp near the border, Abdul Karim managed to keep alive the flag of nationalist defiance until 1950. In late May 1950, the Khan, threatened with reprisals by the Pakistan Army, persuaded Karim Khan to surrender. According to Selig Harrison, Pakistani officers reportedly signed a safe-conduct agreement with Abdul Karim’s representatives in the Harboi mountains and swore an oath on the Koran to uphold it. However, the agreement was dishonoured and the prince was ambushed and arrested along with 102 of his followers on their way to Kalat.3 Karim and his followers were all sentenced to prison terms. Karim would spend several years in
Pakistani prisons.

  Karim Khan’s was the first Baloch insurgency against Pakistan. Though militarily not very significant, it is important in Baloch history for two reasons. First, it established that the Baloch did not accept the forced accession of Kalat to Pakistan. Second, as Harrison notes, ‘It led to the widespread Baloch belief that Pakistan had betrayed the safe-conduct agreement. The Baloch regard this as the first in a series of broken treaties that has cast an aura of distrust over relations with Islamabad.’4 Karim Khan was to become the first modern rallying symbol for the Baloch liberation movement. Subsequent Baloch history would reinforce the impression of broken promises and repression by the government.

  Developments in the 1950s

  The 1950s saw the resurgence of nationalist aspirations in politics. Prince Abdul Karim was released in 1955. Soon after his release he again attracted the attention of the authorities by launching a new political party, Ustaman Gal, which had the stated goals of making Pakistan a people’s republic, establishing a Baloch province and preserving the Balochi language and culture. The nucleus of the party were the members of the former Kalat State National Party (KSNP). In 1956 the Ustaman Gal joined the Pakistan National Party (PNP) to form the National Awami Party (NAP).

  Meanwhile, on 14 October 1955, President Iskander Mirza officially terminated the Balochistan States Union (detailed earlier in the chapter on Land) and made it part of the ‘One Unit’ of West Pakistan. This was an attempt by Punjabi interests to combine the ethnically diverse provinces of West Pakistan, including Balochistan, into one administrative entity to counter the numerical, ethnic and linguistic challenges posed by an ethnically homogenous and numerically larger East Pakistan. In reality, it was a crude effort at establishing a national identity by trying to paper over ethnic and regional differences against the backdrop of rising discontent in Pakistan’s eastern wing.

  The impact of the ploy was, however, just the reverse. Instead of being suppressed, the ethno-national aspirations in West Pakistan were further strengthened. The ethnic minorities and the smaller provinces saw the ‘One Unit’ as posing a threat to their identity and autonomy, and galvanized concerns to protect their own identities. ‘One Unit’ thus became a unifying factor for the nationalist parties in the smaller provinces of West Pakistan.

  1958 Insurgency

  The Khan of Kalat could mobilize various tribal chieftains against the ‘One Unit’ scheme since it was perceived as concentrating excessive power in the federal government and circumscribing provincial autonomy. What upset the Baloch was the fact that ‘One Unit’ ensured that the establishment of Balochistan as a province with its own assembly even after a decade of accession, was forestalled. In October 1957 the Khan held a meeting of the important Baloch sardars in Karachi where the demand to end the ‘One Unit’ system was made. In a meeting with President Iskander Mirza in October 1957 they asked him to exempt Kalat from the scheme and to allot more government funds on developmental activities in Kalat. Though the ‘One Unit’ plan originally had little to do with the Baloch, its implementation ignited a Baloch uprising. As Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri put it, ‘Our people have slowly sensed that they [Pakistanis] would destroy our identity as a nation if we did not fight back.’5

  When some Baloch sardars started non-cooperating with the government, it was alleged that the Khan had raised a parallel army to attack the Pakistan military. Ayub Khan, then commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army, ordered it to march into Kalat on 6 October 1958, a day before Mirza imposed martial rule in Pakistan. The Khan of Kalat was arrested on 6 October 1958 on the charge of gathering 80,000 tribesmen ‘to revolt against the government’ and of secretly negotiating with Afghanistan for a full-scale Baloch rebellion. The only evidence was that his Afghan wife had gone to Kabul.6

  The Khan denied these allegations. The general feeling was that President Iskander Mirza had encouraged the Khan to assert his autonomy in order to find a pretext to impose martial law.7

  On 6 October 1958, a day before martial law was declared in Pakistan, the army besieged Kalat and sacked the palace. According to the Khan, his wife and children were locked up in a room. The royal treasury was placed under military control. The treasury was full of ancestral valuables and ancient coins and several other antiques. Things went on disappearing till everything was lost. ‘The loot even bypassed the technique of the Tartars of the bygone days. Kalat was the worst sufferer, comparable to the destruction of Delhi or the sack of Baghdad in the past.’

  Mir Ahmed Yar Khan Baluch, Inside Baluchistan: A Political Autobiography of His Highness Baiglar Baigi: Khan-E-Azam-XIII, Karachi: Royal Book Company 1975, p. 183.

  These developments sparked the second insurgency in Balochistan, barely eleven years after the creation of Pakistan. Its leader was the eighty-year-old Nawab Nauroz Khan Zehri, the Sardar of the Zarakzai tribe of the Kalat region. Together with 500 armed men he launched an insurgency and put up a stiff resistance in the Mir Ghat mountains. The Jhalawan sardars loyal to the Khan also resisted the army’s campaigns in Danshera and Wad. In the chain reaction of violence and counter-violence the government bombed villages suspected of harbouring guerrillas.

  On 19 May 1959, Nauroz Khan along with his fighters surrendered near Anari Mountain after the authorities swore on the Koran the acceptance of their demands. According to Baloch nationalists, Nauroz Khan agreed to lay down his arms in return for the withdrawal of the ‘One Unit’ plan and the guarantee of safe conduct and amnesty for his men. Once again, the army dishonoured its solemn pledge on the Koran. Nauroz Khan and his companions were arrested, shifted to the Quetta cantonment, tried by a special military court and sentenced to death on 7 July 1960. The Nawab’s eldest son Battay Khan Zarakzai along with six colleagues were hanged.8 Nauroz Khan, due to his advanced age, and his minor son Mir Jalal Khan were imprisoned for life. The Nawab himself died in prison on 25 December 1965 becoming another martyr of the Baloch nationalist movement.

  After they were hanged, the authorities sadistically requested the aged Nauroz Khan to identify the bodies. ‘Is this one your son?’ an army officer cold-heartedly asked the old warrior as he pointed to the body of the elderly warrior’s son. Nauroz Khan stared at the soldier for a moment, then replied quietly, ‘All these brave young men are my sons.’ Then looking at the faces of his dead supporters, he noticed that the moustache of one of them had drooped in death. He went over to the body and tenderly curled the moustache upwards while gently admonishing, ‘Even in death, my son, one should not allow the enemy to think, even for one moment, that you have despaired.’

  Sherbaz Khan Mazari, A Journey to Disillusionment,

  Karachi: OUP, 1999, pp. 84–85.

  For the Baloch, Nawab Nauroz Khan and the seven martyrs form an important chapter in their struggle. On the one hand he came to symbolize the determination of the Baloch to not to bow to unjust and brutal assaults on their freedom and to resist, regardless of the price that must be paid for this honourable path. Emulating them is the dream. On the other hand the treatment meted out to him has reinforced the impression of the treachery of the Pakistani government.

  The 1958 revolt was followed by the Pakistan Army setting up new garrisons at key points in the interior of Balochistan. Over the next decade Balochistan was treated like a colony rather than a part of the Pakistan state. Punjabis and other non-Baloch groups dominated the administration while the Baloch were kept out of governance.

  1962 Insurgency

  The immediate provocation for the third Baloch insurgency of 1962 was that the results of the elections held under Gen. Ayub Khan’s ‘Basic Democracies’ were not honoured. Ayub was furious that several nationalists like Khair Baksh Marri and Attaullah Mengal had been elected. He dismissed them peremptorily and nominated sardars of his choice to head local government institutions. The plan backfired as Baloch tribesmen assassinated several of the nominated sardars and also began attacking the newly-established Pakistan military posts in Balochistan. In August 1962 Ayub Kha
n on a visit to Quetta publicly threatened the Baloch with ‘… complete extinction if they continued to oppose’.9 Pervez Musharraf, another military dictator, would make a similar threat decades later that would fuel another insurgency.

  The Baloch insurgencies of 1948 and 1958 had been impulsive and short lived. The credit for creating an organized and sustained armed struggle goes to Sher Mohammad Marri, respectfully called Babu (Uncle) by the Marris while the Punjabi media often called him General Sherov to imply he served Russian interests.10 He realized the need of transforming the disorganized and sporadic struggle adopted so far into a classic guerrilla warfare. With the support of Khair Bakhsh Marri he established the first Parrari11 camp in 1962 to challenge the Pakistan Army in an organized manner. By July 1963 a network of twenty-two base camps had been set up, each manned by about 200 full-time fighters. The base camps were located largely in the Mengal tribal areas of Jhalawan in the south and the Marri and Bugti areas in the north. The demands included the withdrawal of the Pakistan Army from Balochistan, the unification of all Baloch areas, provincial autonomy and the ending of the oppressive sardari system.12 The Parrari movement later became the Baloch People’s Liberation Front (BPLF).

  The Parraris, using guerilla tactics, ambushed convoys, bombed trains and carried out other acts of violence. In retaliation, the army staged savage reprisals. For example, it bulldozed 13,000 acres of almond tress owned by Sher Mohammad and his relatives in the Marri area. However, Gen. Ayub Khan for all his bluster could not crush the Baloch. The fighting continued sporadically until 1969 when Gen. Yahya Khan, Ayub Khan’s successor, got the Baloch to agree to a ceasefire, dismantled the ‘One Unit’ plan and created the four provinces of Punjab, Sindh, North-West Frontier and Balochistan. Yahya also ordered elections to the national and provincial assemblies in December 1970, the results of which led to the creation of Bangladesh and radically altered the geography of Pakistan.