According to reports, an anti-terrorist court in Karachi has received "challans" presented by the state saying that the two Bugti tribesmen who allegedly bombed the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) building on November 16, 2005, in Karachi had received instructions and explosives in Balochistan from a grandson of Mr. Akbar Bugti. The grandson, Brahmad Khan, is alleged to have told them that they should blow up the PPL (Pakistan Petroleum Ltd, which is close to the PIDC building) because "it did not employ the Baloch". The police in Karachi have declared Brahmad a "fugitive" and will presumably contact the government in Quetta for organising a police party to go to Dera Bugti and arrest him.
Meanwhile, the Bugti chief has declared from his fastness in Dera Bugti that the government has extracted whatever suits its purpose from the two alleged Baloch terrorists in its hands. He said if his men could lay their hands on police officials in Sindh they could make them swear that the PIDC blast was carried out by President Pervez Musharraf himself! This denotes a lack of confidence in the inquiry of the Sindh government that has extracted this confessional statement. Bugti also made fun of the charge that the two captured men (Aziz Khan and Mangal Khan) belonged to the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and claimed that his grandson was in Dera Bugti during the crime and was not involved in plotting it.
We can see where the incident is leading. The Baloch sentiment will surely back the accused party and will not take kindly to the idea of the police from Sindh entering Dera Bugti to look for Brahmad. Equally, it is unlikely that Brahmad will give himself up. Therefore the question of the Bugtis facing the "evidence" and proving themselves innocent in the court of law simply will not arise. Up in Islamabad, however, national politics is being intensely polarised, and the combined opposition should not be expected to give an inch to the ruling party in general and to President Musharraf in particular. Anti-government comment from the politicians of the country will make any operation in Balochistan to arrest Brahmad almost impossible. It may be recalled that the Musharraf regime hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory in this regard in the recent past. Consider.
In May this year, after the Bugtis besieged a posse of Frontier Corps (FC) men in Dera Bugti, Bugti tribesmen and government troops battled for days, after which Mr. Akbar Bugti claimed that 50 civilians, including women and children, were killed by FC shooting; on the other side, an FC spokesman said that five FC personnel had been killed and at least 19 injured. The operation was forgotten and Islamabad turned to ’damage control’ in the face of general opposition and popular protest that the political PMLQ government had succumbed to General Musharraf’s pressure to start a "military operation" in Balochistan. There was a vocal opposition to contend with and, more significantly, some intra-party scepticism to overcome. It is therefore clear that pursuing the PIDC bombing case in Balochistan will only serve to reveal the limits of the writ of the state and the shortcomings of the political order presided over by General Musharraf.
Of course, there is no doubt that there are two opinions inside the Balochistan nationalist camp. When the bombing occurred on November 16 a spokesman of the BLA claimed responsibility but was immediately rebutted by another spokesman of the BLA. But the split in the Balochistan nationalist front is typical of regional movements against the centre. However, in this case, there will most likely be a trend towards a closing of the ranks merely to prevent the government from being effective in Balochistan.
There is however a positive side to the latest development on the PIDC blast. Sensing that it would be difficult to pursue the spoor of the crime inside Balochistan, some TV channels had decided to link India to it and had tried to get the federal interior minister, Aftab Khan Sherpao, to agree to the theory about an "Indian hand". But the minister refused to fall into this trap. Later, a former IG of Balochistan police too declined to fall for the Indian ploy, although former ISI chief General (retd) Hameed Gul has predictably gone along and added his "specialised knowledge" to the conspiracy theory that India is involved in "tit-for-tat" blasts. The big lie is thus set at rest and the picture is clearer. But other difficulties have come to the fore as noted above. So the government should tread carefully in this case.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20051212story_12-12-2005_pg3_1
|
