The crisis in Balochistan - II: the culture, character and history of the Baloch
BY: Rashed Rahman
To comprehend the culture and character of the Baloch, it is necessary to familiarize oneself with the natural environment inhabited by them, which has helped determine their way of life. The Baloch homeland stretches over some 207,000 square miles, divided amongst three states - Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Of these, Pakistan is by far the largest Baloch territory in terms of area and population, comprising 42 percent of the total territory of post-1971 Pakistan and inhabited by about five percent of Pakistan’s total population. Current estimates put the population at around seven million, including the Pushtuns, Punjabis and other ethnic groups.
Balochistan has one of the bleakest, most desolate and forbidding topographies. Were it not for its strategic location, long coastline at the mouth of the Gulf, and potential for discoveries of oil, gas and other minerals, Balochistan may not have assumed the importance it currently enjoys.
For the most part, the landscape alternates abruptly between stark, bare mountains and arid expanses of semi-desert. Date groves struggle to survive in scattered oases. The exception to this bleak natural landscape are the relatively rich cultivated agricultural pockets of Las Bela and Kachhi. The precipitous peaks are punctuated by sharp ridges that overlook tight little valleys. Travelling from one valley to another can be a dangerous enterprise.
There are few passes, many of them only precariously negotiable. The Baloch have as a result been historically isolated from the mainstream and had the barren ranges exclusively to themselves, sharing them only with wildlife such as mountain goats, ibex and panthers. A 16th century Baloch war ballad expresses this phenomenon thus: "The lofty heights are our comrades, the pathless gorges our friends" (M. Longworth Dames: Popular Poetry of the Baloches, Volume 1, p. 45, Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1907. Also J. H. Elfenbein: The Baluchi Language: A Dialectology with Text, Royal Asiatic Society Monographs, Volume 27, pp. 41-45, London, 1966).
The climate is one of extremes. In winter, the temperature can drop as low as minus 40 degrees Centigrade. In summer it can soar to 55 degrees Centigrade in the shade. Rainfall seldom exceeds five inches per annum. Water conservation infrastructure is insignificant, making it a scarce resource. Last winter, because of the unusually heavy rains and floods, many faultily designed and constructed dams broke, bringing death and destruction to the hapless inhabitants of the remote, affected areas.
There are few perennial rivers with fixed courses. Thunderstorms and dust storms can strike violently without warning, especially in the summer monsoon months, often followed by torrential rains and flash floods.
The scarcity of water resources has determined the semi-nomadic lifestyle of the Baloch tribes. Most tribes rely on a mixture of nomadic pastoralism and settled agriculture to survive. The latter is characterized by widely dispersed clusters of small agricultural landholdings, located wherever nature’s precipitation allows. The pattern of land ownership in the tribal areas is largely collective, with families, clans, tribal sections and tribes sharing the scratchy agricultural holdings.
The necessity of survival imposes frequent migrations, which may be seasonal or sporadic, in order to escape the extremes of climate, move to wherever water is available, and find fresh grazing lands for livestock. The abiding need for mobility also is reflected in the dwellings of the tribes, largely consisting of tents that can be pulled up and transported very quickly.
The Baloch are largely Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi persuasion, although far from fanatically religious. The Mullahs traditionally play a relatively marginal role in Baloch society confined to necessary religious rites and observances and no more. In recent years, the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) of Maulana Fazlur Rehman, traditionally a Pushtun party, has made certain inroads in terms of political influence in the Baloch hinterland, but Baloch nationalists are wont to ascribe this more to help from the intelligence agencies rather than any fundamentalist religiosity creeping into Baloch society.
What matters in this society is the historically evolved tribal structure of social organization. Each of the major 17 tribal groups is headed by a Sardar (tribal chief), chosen from a traditional Sardar Khel branch of the tribe by the will of the tribe, which has been known to tilt against primogeniture where the eldest son of the Sardar proves unacceptable. There are also about 400 tribal subgroups headed by Waderas (sectional or clan chiefs).
The most commonly accepted account of the origin of the Baloch is that they migrated eastward with their kindred Kurd tribes in waves from around Aleppo (Haleb) in Syria over some 1500 years starting from before the Christian era. Whereas the Kurd majority settled in Iraq, Turkey and Iran, the Baloch moved to the southern reaches of the Caspian Sea, later migrating into Iranian and Pakistani Balochistan from the sixth to fourteenth centuries (See Mir Khuda Bux Bijarani Baloch: Searchlight on Baloches and Baluchistan, Royal Book Company, Karachi, 1974).
Having settled in what is now their homeland, the Baloch have successfully preserved a distinctive identity in the face of the stronger cultures surrounding them. Despite the isolation of their scattered pastoral communities, the diverse Baloch tribes have found a strong common denominator in the Balochi language and a uniform folklore tradition and value system (Rivaj).
This vitality of their ancient cultural heritage explains the tenacity of the continuing demand for the political recognition of Baloch identity. Also, the strength of Baloch nationalism is rooted in historical memories of determined resistance against would-be conquerors who attempted again and again to annex all or part of Balochistan to adjoining powerful empires.
Three Baloch rulers are credited with efforts at unification of the Baloch between the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The first, Mir Chakar Rind, established a short-lived tribal confederacy stretching from the Makran coast to the Marri tribal area (See M. Longworth Dames: The Baloch Race: A Historical and Ethnological Sketch, Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1904). He ruled from his capital Sibi from 1487 till his death in 1511 in Satygraha, Punjab, where he lies (See Mir Khuda Bux Marri Bijarani Baloch, ibid.). His tribal confederacy was destroyed from within by a civil war between two of the leading tribal federations, the Rinds and the Lasharis (See Sardar Mohammad Khan Baluch: History of the Baluch Race and Baluchistan, Gosha-e-Adab, Quetta, 1977).
After Mir Chakar’s death, the Moghul Empire made several unsuccessful attempts to subdue and incorporate the Baloch, who were able to stave off co-option by military cooperation with Delhi in return for their independence. However, the shattered unity of the Baloch tribes because of the long running Rind-Lashari civil war could not be re-established until the Ahmadzais created the Kalat Confederacy in 1666. This new confederacy gradually expanded to encompass an area even larger than Mir Chakar’s domain. By the early eighteenth century, the fourth Khan of Kalat, Abdullah Khan, claimed the allegiance of Baloch tribes from Kandahar (Afghanistan) across present-day Pakistani Balochistan to Bandar Abbas (Iran), and Dera Ghazi Khan (now in Punjab).
Despite his vast domain, Abdullah Khan was forced to pay tribute to the Iranian monarchs in order to forestall their incursions into the western border areas of his realm. However, Abdullah Khan failed to knit the areas under his control into a unified state. That task was accomplished by the sixth Khan of Kalat, Nasir Khan, who ruled for over 50 years from 1741. He created an army of 25,000 men and 1,000 camels, an impressive force by the standards of the time. Nasir Khan welded most of the major Baloch tribes into an agreed system of military organization and relatively centralized administration (For a contemporary account of Nasir Khan’s accomplishments see Sir Henry Pottinger: Travels in Belochistan and Sinde, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, London, 1816).
Despite his formidable success in forging a comparatively strongly unified state, Nasir Khan too had to pay tribute to the Iranian emperor Nadir Shah, who had conquered Afghanistan and helped Nasir Khan win paramount power in Kalat in the face of rival claimants. Nadir Shah’s assassination in 1747 and the subsequent decline of Iranian power freed Nasir Khan from this tributary status, but when Ahmad Shah Durrani established a new kingdom in Afghanistan, Nasir Khan had to accept Afghan suzerainty. This lasted till 1758, when Nasir Khan fought Ahmad Shah Durrani’s forces to a stalemate. Thereafter, Kalat remained a military ally of Afghanistan, but enjoyed sovereign status until the arrival of the British in the nineteenth century.
(to be continued)
The writer is the Executive Editor of The Post
The crisis in Balochistan - III: The rise of modern Baloch nationalism
Rashed Rahman
The unity built by Nasir Khan collapsed after his death in 1805, succumbing to the centrifugal pulls of tribal strife, coinciding as this did with the beginnings of the "Great Game" between Britain and Czarist Russia in Afghanistan (See Brian Spooner: "Tribal Ideal and Political Reality in a Cultural Borderland: Ethnohistorical Problems in Baluchistan", Paper presented at the Ethnohistory Workshop, University of Pennsylvania, 1978). To counter the Russian push south towards warm water ports, the British adopted the "Forward Policy", designed to halt the Russian advance by subjugating Afghanistan. Having come to grief in the Afghan wars, the British concluded that difficult-to-conquer-and-hold Afghanistan should be converted into a buffer state to provide a shield for their Indian Empire against Russia. Balochistan, as a key access route to Afghanistan, now acquired a new strategic importance
Seeking direct control over the access routes, the British fought a series of bloody wars with the Baloch for more than four decades. By the time of the Treaty of 1876, they had managed to obtain the right to station troops in Kalat and along the logistical route to Afghanistan through a combination of military might and handsome subsidies sweetened further by guarantees of internal tribal autonomy (See Mir Ahmed Yar Khan Baluch: Inside Baluchistan, Royal Book Company, Karachi, 1975). By the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the British had succeeded through their tried and tested method of divide and rule to carve up the original Baloch homeland into several pieces. Roughly one-fourth of this homeland went to Iran in 1871. A small strip was ceded to Afghanistan in 1894. In what is today Pakistani Balochistan, a centrally administered area dubbed British Balochistan which guarded the Bolan Pass was separated from a truncated Kalat Confederacy and three smaller principalities.
This first experience of alien domination paved the way for the rise of modern Baloch nationalism.
So long as tribal leaders did not interfere with British military access to Afghanistan and strategic control of the frontier, the Sardars enjoyed virtually complete control of internal tribal affairs. They also enjoyed British subsidies. By reinforcing the power and autonomy of the tribal chiefs under what came to be dubbed the ’Sandeman System’ after a British colonial administrator, the British laid the foundations of subsequent conflict between the Baloch and central authority in Pakistan.
With the departure of the British, Pakistani central governments have attempted to reverse the Sandeman policy of internal tribal autonomy to reach the goal of a strong, centralized state. In the process, the aim was to merge the fiercely guarded Baloch identity into an overarching Pakistani identity. Islamabad’s continuing assault on the tribal social organisation and its rhetoric of a monolithic Pakistani nationalism have come to constitute a fundamental challenge to historically received Baloch value structures. Aggressive top-down modernisation as the Trojan Horse of assimilation has therefore been met with guerrilla resistance in 1948, 1958-60, 1962-69, 1973-77 and now from 2003 to date.
The forcible incorporation of Balochistan into the new state of Pakistan in 1948 invoked fierce nationalist anger. The Baloch parliament had met and declared Balochistan independent on August 11, 1947, three days before Pakistan came into existence. When the new state of Pakistan subsequently pressurized the Khan of Kalat to accede to it, Baloch nationalist opinion sought guarantees of sovereignty as a precondition for any political relationship with the successor state to the British Empire. They based their case on the argument that Kalat State had a Treaty relationship directly with the British Crown and therefore merited a different treatment from other princely states in British India (Mir Ahmed Yar Khan Baluch, ibid, page 294).
As things turned out however, the Khan of Kalat was forced to sign the document of accession in Karachi in March 1948, even though he had no mandate to do so from his people.
The forcible accession led to the first rebellion in Balochistan, led by the Khan’s younger brother, Agha Abdul Karim. In the first of what the Baloch have called a series of "broken treaties", the rebels were promised safe conduct under an oath on the Koran if they came down from their mountain fastnesses to negotiate. When they did descend, Agha Abdul Karim and 102 of his comrades were ambushed and arrested on their way to Kalat. Agha Abdul Karim spent 16 of the next 22 years in various Pakistani jails. His companions-in-arms were also sentenced to long prison terms.
The creation of One Unit under the 1956 Constitution by merging the four provinces into one province of West Pakistan, ostensibly to offset the numerical majority of the Bengalis in East Pakistan, created great unrest amongst Baloch nationalist circles. By 1958, General Ayub Khan used the rhetorical threat of another Baloch rebellion led by the Khan of Kalat as one of the justifications for the imposition of the first Martial law. Kalat was assaulted and the Khan placed under house arrest in Lahore. Another 350 Baloch leaders and activists were rounded up all over Balochistan (Mir Ahmed Yar Khan Baluch, ibid, pp. 180-190. See also Wayne Wilcox: Pakistan: The Consolidation of a Nation, Columbia University Press, New York, 1963, p. 206; Herbert Feldman: Revolution in Pakistan, Oxford University Press, London, 1967, pp. 42-43; Karim Baluch: "The Democratic Struggle in Baluchistan", Siyasat No. 3, London, 1975, p. 5, and Sylvia A. Matheson: The Tigers of Baluchistan, Oxford University Press, London, 1967).
The alleged rebellion did arise as a result of these events, led by 90-year old Nauroz Khan, chief of the Zehri tribe. Guerrilla actions continued for over a year before army representatives met Nauroz Khan and his men with a promise of safe conduct and amnesty on oath on the Koran. In another example of a "broken treaty", Nauroz Khan and his followers were arrested. His son ands eight nephews and comrades were hanged in Hyderabad Jail in July1960. Nauroz Khan died in Kohlu Jail in 1964, having been tortured severely.
The next rebellion broke out in 1962, starting from the Marri tribal area. The guerrillas chose for themselves the honorific Pararis (rebels). This guerrilla resistance spread to the other areas of Balochistan. By July 1963, the Pararis had established a number of base camps of varying size spread over some 45,000 square miles, from the Mengal tribal areas of Jhalawan to the Marri and Bugti areas.
Consciously, the guerrillas in classic fashion avoided large-scale fixed encounters with the army. They harassed the government forces by ambushing convoys, bombing trains, sniping and raids on military camps.
In retaliation, the army staged a series of offensives, reprisals and air bombardments whose main brunt fell on the people. This had the unintended consequence, as elsewhere in irregular wars, of expanding and consolidating support for the guerrillas. Atrocities by the army were widespread, earning General Tikka Khan, commander of the Balochistan theater, the unflattering sobriquet of Butcher of Balochistan, long before he earned further such ’glory’ in East Pakistan.
The fighting continued until 1969, when Ayub Khan was removed and his successor, General Yahya, sued for a ceasefire with the Pararis. One Unit was dissolved and Balochistan province once again re-established.
(To be continued)
The writer is the Executive Editor of The Post
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