News Analysis
Thursday, August 27, 2009
By Amir Mir
LAHORE: The reluctance of the federal government to take up the August 2006 assassination of the Baloch nationalist leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, and to put on trial the prime accused Pervez Musharraf could have serious long-term repercussions on the future of Pakistan, especially when a martyr has already born to inspire the rebel Baloch nationalists in their struggle for greater rights and control over their natural resources.
It is better to die as the Americans say with your spurs on. Instead of a slow death in bed, I would rather prefer death come to me while I am fighting for a purpose, so said the late Nawab Akbar Bugti in May 2006 while talking to Time Magazine correspondent by satellite phone from the mountain refuge that eventually became his grave. The 80-year-old revered Baloch leader who wanted to fight till death got his wish three months later when he was killed in a military operation on August 26, 2006, becoming the legendary leader of the Baloch freedom struggle. The then military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, who had already declared Bugti a terrorist, too had made no bones about fulfilling the desire of the leader. In March 2005, he had warned the Baloch rebel: Don’t push us. It is not the 70s. We will not climb mountains behind you. You will not even know what and from where something has come and hit you. In response, Bugti had stated in an interview to News line in June 2005: The general [Musharraf] has promised to hit us in such a way that we will not know what hit us. In one sense, it is quick death that he is promising us. He could do this to me, and to a few other Baloch leaders, but not to the entire Baloch nation.
Bugti was not wrong in saying so. Within hours of his death, described by many as an extra-judicial killing, Balochistan had witnessed a bloody reaction, in which dozens of people were killed and hundreds injured. Over 500 were detained in riots throughout the province, with many Baloch protesters targeting the Punjabi-owned properties and businesses in Quetta, aggravating the already volatile ethnic divisions. And three years later, the situation in Balochistan remains precarious, mainly because the largest province of Pakistan continues to suffer from the neglect of the country’s new political leadership.
Change has been promised repeatedly by the federal government, but in fact the trust deficit between the nationalists and the state has widened as the legitimate grievances of the people of Balochistan have not been addressed. The gravity of the situation in Balochistan can be gauged from the fact that for the first time in the 62-year old history of Pakistan, the Baloch celebrated August 11 as their Independence Day in several districts of Balochistan.
Even today, one of the major demands of the Baloch nationalists remains the trial of Pervez Musharraf for having ordered Akbar Bugtis killing. However, strangely enough, the PPP government is unwilling to do anything that could harm Musharraf neither for the assassination of Akbar Bugti nor for that of Benazir Bhutto.
What actually prompted Musharraf to become personal with Bugti and target him was the firing of rockets in December 2005 while he was on an official visit to Kohlu? The rockets had crashed into a Frontier Constabulary camp on the outskirts of Kohlu without causing any casualties. While Musharraf thought it was an attempt to kill him, the Baloch rebels had maintained that they wanted to lodge a protest over the rape of a lady doctor, Shazia Khalid, allegedly by an Army captain who had been exonerated by the military authorities.
To Musharraf and his cronies, Bugti was no more than an insurgent feudal lord who wanted to prevent development from reaching his tribesmen and who operated a state within a state. Musharraf used to describe Bugti as a miscreant, a term introduced by the British East India Company -- a term which was widely used in 1971 by the Pakistani military elite to describe the Bengali people of erstwhile East Pakistan. The general repeatedly blamed Bugti for the past insurgencies in Balochistan, and accused him of being a warlord, running a well-organised militia, private courts and prisons, using his income from the gas fields in Dera Bugti. On July 20, 2006, in an address to the nation, Musharraf said that for 40 years, three Baloch Sardars, who were opposed to development in Balochistan, had been pampered unjustifiably in the name of political settlement, but no more. We are determined to re-establish the writ of the state in Balochistan by fixing the so-called Baloch Sardars. Adding an insult to Baloch sensitivities, he said, but I would not call him a Nawab any more as he is on the run.
However, after his death and the barbaric manner in which it was carried out, Bugti has already become a martyred hero for Baloch nationalists everywhere in Pakistan, rather than the anti-state tribesman Musharraf sought to portray him. To the Bugti tribe, he was not only the tribal head but also the latest in a long line of nationalist leaders who tried to defend the province from exploitation by the Centre at the hands of the mighty Punjab-dominated military establishment.
In April 2006, almost three months before his assassination, having left his Fort in Dera Bugti and shifted to the dry and treeless mountains in Kohlu, Nawab Akbar Bugti had issued a message to the Baloch nation Message from the Koh-e-Baloch (mountains of the Baloch) by the Sipah Salar (commander) Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti fighting for the defence of the Baloch coast, resources and identity. His message was meant to motivate the Baloch youth to pick up the gun and fight a battle for survival in their ancestral land. The veteran Baloch was convinced that the enemy understood the language of force alone and, consequently, the Baloch would have to battle it out to defend their 780-kilometers of coastline and riches of gas, oil, gold, silver and copper. He had asked the Baloch nation to embrace martyrdom instead of becoming a minority in their own land. He had warned against intrigues of fellow Baloch leaders with conduct similar to past sub-continental traitors like Mir Jaffar and Mir Sadiq. The symbols highlighted in Bugtis message and its tough language leave little doubt in one’s mind that he had finally embarked on a path of armed confrontation with Pakistan’s mighty establishment. To him, the time for staging peaceful protests, holding negotiations and sitting in parliamentary committees was a thing of the past. Instead, he sought to inspire the Baloch youth to join the armed struggle that he had been leading from the front.
On August 24, 2006, Bugti was spotted in a cave in the Kohlu area and asked to surrender. But he refused to oblige. Hardly 24 hours later, on August 26, 2006, the Musharraf regime had announced that Akbar Bugti had been killed in a military raid. None of his family members was allowed either to offer his funeral prayers or to see the dead body. In his May 2006 interview to Time Magazine, Bugti had stated: We, the Baloch people believe that the best way to die is to die fighting. We Baloch are the masters of our own destiny. And if that is taken away from us, then life doesn’t really matter.
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