From M Rama Rao reporting for Asian Tribune from New Delhi
New Delhi, 24 January, (Asiantribune.com ): A senior French diplomat has publicly contradicted Pak President Musharraf’s claim that India has been helping Baloch insurgents. In fact, the diplomat Frederic Grare contends that foreign support to Baloch movement doesn’t appear even imminent.
Grare report, ’Pakistan: a resurgence of Baloch nationalism’, was released by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington this past week. What qualifies his study is his personal knowledge of the scene as he had a posting in Pakistan. He also had a four year stint in New Delhi.
The French diplomat makes two broad conclusions which are not going to please Islamabad.
First the Baloch issue is going to be a pestering sore. ’The risk of a prolonged guerrilla movement in Balochistan is quite real’, he says.
Second the possibility of a civil war is not ruled out.
’The outbreak of another civil war in Balochistan between the nationalists and the Pakistan Army cannot be ruled out if the minimum demands of the Baloches are not met’, he cautions.
Grare’s analysis of the root causes of trouble in Balochistan will not please Islamabad either. He traces what he calls a deep feeling of mistrust amongst the Baloches towards Islamabad to ’almost six decades of intermittent conflict’.
He puts the blame for the present crisis in Balochistan at the door step of President Musharraf’s government. He says the federal government had provoked the Baloches by undertaking projects like the Gwadar port, which locals saw as new instruments to perpetuate their exploitation, marginalisation, and dispossession.
The Baloches, he argues, will not forget General Pervez Musharraf’s recent ’insults’ at their nationalist leaders.
Grare’s study also takes a look at the projects that were trumpeted as the means to Balochistan’s development and integration. It notes these have so far led only to ’ the advance of the Pakistani military in the province’, accompanied by ’the removal’ of the local population from their lands and by an ’intense speculation’ that benefits only the army and its "henchmen".
Baloch nationalism is, therefore, a reality that Islamabad cannot pretend to ignore forever, he remarks.
Cautioning that the Balochistan province is likely to enter a ’new phase’ of violence, the French diplomat avers that the long-term consequences are ’difficult to predict’.
In his assessment, this conflict could be used in Pakistan and elsewhere as a weapon against the government in Islamabad . "Such a prospect would affect not only Pakistan but possibly all its neighbors. It is ultimately Islamabad that must decide whether Balochistan will become its Achilles’ heel," Frederic Grare writes in his report.
At the very out set, he clearly states that the Baloch movement cannot hope to succeed. "In the absence of foreign support, which does not appear imminent, the Baloch movement cannot prevail over a determined central government with obviously superior military strength" but still "can have a considerable nuisance value", he observes.
Most observers, according to Grare, concur that Baloch nationalists are raising the stakes to strengthen their negotiating position vis-à-vis the central government. Movement leaders have made it known that they would be satisfied with a generous version of autonomy. In the absence of their winning autonomy, however, the medium- and long-term consequences of the struggle for independence cannot be predicted today."
Observing that the question of Baloch identity, role of army and Islamist fundamentalism are intertwined in the daily gun fire and rocket attacks that are rocking Balochistan, the French diplomat remarks that the national question is central to the ethnic divisions in Pakistan.
"The elite, in particular the army elite, has never recognised ethnic identities. From Ayub Khan to Pervez Musharraf, the army elite has always tried to promote a united Pakistan," he points out. Cognisant of their province’s strategic and economic importance, he argues, the Baloch have been all the more resentful of the military’s "arrogance and contempt".
He opines that the Pakistan Army exercises its power by "manipulating" Islam to weaken Baloch nationalism and, even more important, to conceal the real nature of the Baloch problem from the outside world. "The Baloch crisis is not just the unintended outcome of more or less appropriate decisions. The crisis epitomizes the army’s mode of governance and its relation with Pakistan’s citizens and world public opinion," he adds.
-Asian Tribune -
http://www.asiantribune.com/show_news.php?id=16820
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