Balochistan-PoK-Gilgit-Baltistan: The Enemy Of
Your Enemy Is Your Friend
A wise man gets more use from his enemies
than a fool from his friends- Baltasar Gracian
While the historical record shows that the dominant and
unfettered influence on map-making, and the consequent fates of the populace in
1947-48, was still with the departing British, it is a wonder that no
acceptance of resulting ground realities has sunk in, even after 70 years.
The cunning imperial power followed its vicious, if
covert, policies of divide and rule to the last, seeking, at a minimum, to
leave a blood-feuding mess, that might blow up in the faces of all those who
had had the temerity to demand their independence.
This, is, in fact, the legacy story, not only of grievously
vitiated India-Pakistan relations, but also those of the various provinces of
Pakistan, holding together only through ruthless repression, including the
bombing and routine abduction of its own people.
It is of some pyrrhic comfort therefore, post Brexit, to
witness what Britain did to so many others around the globe, playing out on its
home turf, as Scotland and Northern Ireland contemplate leaving the British
union too.
With regard to the abjectly failed current state of
Pakistan, ironically riven by Islamic religious discord, it is perhaps a pity
that the NWFP isn’t on the list of regions across the border that India is
ready to befriend now, after its recent policy shift on Pakistan.
After all, the
echoes of ‘Frontier Gandhi’, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan’s memory have not died out
entirely, either in India or in the NWFP.
The NWFP Pakhtoon is a target of Punjabi Pakistan’s bullying
too, as is the Afghan, across the border.
Afghanistan is closely allied to India today, after a
prolonged period of darkness, even at noon, and quite fed up of the regular
Pakistani Taliban attacks on its soil.
The Punjabi Sunni majority that runs Pakistan, and its
terrorist cohorts, have been ruthlessly targeting Kabul and Peshawar alike,
mainly to kill and scatter its remaining Shias.
They think nothing of killing/blowing up congregations as
they come out of their mosques after Friday prayers. And they didn’t hesitate
to kill scores of school children at their school desks in Peshawar either. And
now they’ve done it to an assembly of lawyers in Quetta, Balochistan, composed of Sunni and
Shia alike.
The scenario is similar in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan’s
only Shia majority area, where state oppression is routine, but goes largely
unreported. But recently it hit the news when 500 locals were arrested for once
again protesting the arrest of local leader Baba Jan in 2011, his conviction as
a terrorist, and sentencing to 40 years in jail. The 500 were also protesting development
of the vaunted China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), through
Gilgit-Baltistan, which the locals say will only benefit the Chinese and Punjabi Pakistanis, and not them.
In natural resource rich, but underdeveloped and poor
Balochistan, now attracting the attention of China with the proposed CPEC; the
Pakistani government intimidates the locals by abducting not only the men, but
their wives and daughters- as many as 25,000 at a time, per a recent cry for
help.
The bullying tactics and routine atrocities/human-rights
violations of the Pakistani Punjabis is oppressive to all of its three remaining other
provinces - after the loss of East Pakistan in 1971.
This includes Sindh, from where, the once powerful
Bhuttos, hail from the village of Larkana.
But, oblivious of the vulnerabilities in their own
increasingly chaotic backyard, official and ‘non-state’ Pakistan, working in
cahoots, continues on its reckless export of terrorists to India, Afghanistan
and further afield. Almost every terrorist attack and atrocity on European or
American soil has a Pakistani imprint on it too.
With regard to India, the strategy of ‘a thousand cuts’ has
not worked substantially, even after decades since President Zia Ul Haq first
put it in place. But, lost for an alternative, and unwilling to sue for peace,
the ISI, the Pak Army, its government, other elements, including the Mumbai
underworld in exile, that make up the Pakistani establishment, plough on
regardless.
They probably
still hope against hope, to some-day, radicalise most of India’s 200 million
odd Muslims, to rise up in a civil war blood-bath against the Hindu majority.
Pakistan is clearly determined to be obdurate, perfidious,
and single-minded in its lust to capture the Kashmir Valley, and has even said
so plainly, dedicating its own 70th Independence Day to the
liberation of the Valley!
But, how does it propose to do so, when its backdrop and
support-base has changed so radically?
America does not need it anymore as a strategic ally. The
oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, are much too
diminished in their circumstances to help like before, or promote radical
Wahabbism to the same extent.
They need, in fact, to find a post-oil economy livelihood,
by collaborating with growth engines like India. These Gulf countries no longer
want to use Pakistani terrorism as leverage around the globe either, and are
busy distancing themselves from it.
Today, Pakistan is reduced to banking solely on Chinese
support. It could, of course, start
another Kargil-like war with India, resorting, this time, to its much
publicised ‘tactical nuclear weapons’.
However, India, prior-warned, seems to have taken this
possibility on board. It looks as if it has made up its mind to call Pakistan
out on its regular nuclear war threats, with a few counter measures of its own.
And while Pakistan is banking on Chinese involvement if it
goes to war with India, recent events and postures may have changed its
position, isolating it within the world community. China may therefore be very
reluctant to weigh in on the side of its embarrassing ‘all-weather friend’.
Given the present geopolitical realities, the rest of the
United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Britain, France, the US and Russia;
will not support aggression against India!
Any solo Pakistani adventurism vis-a-vis India, will also
tend to put paid to Chinese plans to build the CPEC, estimated to cost $46
billion, from its Muslim majority Xinkiang province, all the way to Gwadur in
Balochistan.
This, is in fact an extension of the existing Karakoram
Highway through Gilgit-Baltistan built by China in the 1960s. It
already connects Islamabad to Gilgit, and on to Kashgar in Xinkiang via the
most high Khunjareb Pass.
But, if freedom movements now intensify in two of the
provinces on the CPEC route, China is likely to stay as far away as possible!
India has now made public its intent to encourage Balochi
nationalism. It may be also in position to help it, from its bases in Central
Asia, and Chabahar, in coastal Iran, where it is developing facilities, just 48
km away from Gwadur.
It is also good to remember also that the ethnic Balochi
people reside in contiguous areas of Iran (Sistan), and southern Afghanistan(Nimruz),
as well. They too could well help in the liberation of their Pakistani brothers,
if their central governments decide to also back the move.
Revolts in Balochistan have already occurred in 1948,
1958, 1962 and 1973-77, again in 2003 and once again, along sectarian Shia/Sunni
lines as of 2012. The embers of the Balochi bid for independence have never
died out, ever since the British let it
be occupied by Pakistan in 1948.
Matters were not helped by the murder of prominent
Balochi leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in 2006, in a crackdown ordered by President
Parvez Musharraf. His surviving
grandson, Brahumdagh Bugti, current head of the Baloch Republican Party, in
exile at Geneva, Switzerland, was duly surprised, but quick to hail Modi’s
support.
For: The Sunday Guardiam
(1,263 words)
August 16th, 2016
Gautam Mukherjee
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