Civil war in Pakistan

Guardian (UK)
Pakistan's tribes on brink of civil war
Declan Walsh in Dera Bugti
Monday March 21, 2005


More than 3,000 people fled a desert town in western Pakistan yesterday as a simmering conflict between tribesmen and President Pervez Musharraf's government risked exploding into all-out civil war.
A day-long battle in the town of Dera Bugti, 400 miles south-west of Islamabad, last week killed at least 45 people, including eight soldiers from the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force charged with maintaining order in the tribal areas.

Yesterday a fragile ceasefire was holding as hundreds of heavily armed tribesmen gathered on the line of jagged hilltops overlooking a besieged garrison of 300 soldiers.

At the other end of the dust-blown town, the 78-year-old Bugti leader, Akbar Khan Bugti, directed his forces from inside a mud-walled fort.

"The situation is very tense. You can expect anything to happen," said the local administrator, Abdul Samad Lasi.

Conflict has been brewing for more than a year in Baluchistan, a vast, unruly and mineral-rich province that covers 44% of Pakistan, yet has just 5% of its 150 million people. Insurgents have blown up railway lines and phone exchanges, toppled power pylons and fired rockets into army bases and police stations, as part of a low-level guerrilla campaign against the Musharraf government.

So far the death toll has been relatively light. But the standoff in Dera Bugti, apparently sparked by an attack on a government convoy, risks plunging the province into a far deadlier conflict.

The insurgency is led by the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), a previously unknown group seen as a flag of convenience for the disgruntled tribesmen. First among them are the pugnacious Bugti and their white-bearded nawab, or chieftain, Akbar Khan Bugti.

"The rebels are like fleas," Nawab Bugti told the Guardian shortly before last week's fighting. "Even one flea can sting and bite. The dog's reaction is to bite back - particularly if he is a mad dog. But now the fleas are multiplying."

Outside the fort entrance, tribal gunmen in baggy trousers stood guard. Their long, whiskery beards and archaic weapons had echoes of the British Raj, when chieftains like Bugti came to dominance. Some fighters brandished Kalashnikovs, but others carried Enfield .303 rifles - first world war-issue weapons handed down by their grandfathers, they said.

Money, honour and nationalism are driving the bloodshed. Although Baluchistan is rich in oil, gas and other minerals, most of which remain unexploited, its people are the poorest and least educated in Pakistan. A 2003 UN study found that Dera Bugti had the lowest standard of living of any Pakistani district.

In contrast, the giant Sui gas plant, 30 miles to the south on Bugti land, pumps about 45% of Pakistan's production. The sense of alienation from far-off Islamabad is widespread.

"It is a great injustice," said a goat herder, Foj Ali, angrily clutching a 20 rupee [18p] note in the town market. "They are making billions of rupees pumping gas from our land to the rest of the country, and we are still using firewood."

Critics counter that the nawab and other tribal leaders are also to blame. "The sardars [chiefs] will not allow anything - schools, roads or army posts - that could undermine their authority," a senior government official in Baluchistan said.

The Baluchi have a long history of chafing against central authority, having revolted four times since independence in 1947. Today they still consider their government a foreign and colonising force - a hostility that was visible on the streets of Dera Bugti before last week's fighting.

A contingent of Frontier Corps soldiers were cornered at one end of the town, crouched inside a shoulder-high turret of sandbags and watching helplessly as jeeps filled with armed tribesmen defiantly raced past.

"For us, Pakistan means Punjabis," said Brahumdagh Bugti, the chieftain's 24-year-old grandson, referring to the province that dominates Pakistan's army.

In January the police issued a warrant for Brahumdagh's arrest, accusing him of leading a three-day attack on the Sui gas installation that left 15 people dead. Reports that a doctor had been raped on the premises enraged the tribesmen, who saw the attack on the woman as an infraction of their strict tribal code. The alleged culprit was also a government soldier.

The rape was a lightening rod for wider discontent across the province. Hardly a day has passed since January when BLA insurgents have not attacked a train, police station or army post. Their focus is the provincial capital, Quetta, which is also riven by tit-for-tat sectarian conflict. Yesterday a bomb ripped through a Shia mosque in the city, killing at least 29 people.

Baluchistan is also a frontline in the hunt for al-Qaida militants, possibly including Osama bin Laden.

Bugti, who was educated by British colonists at Aitchison College in Lahore - known as the "Eton of Pakistan" - in the 1940s, has a polished English accent and is a self-taught scholar in the classics. But he has also been jailed for murder, runs a private prison and has been involved in countless blood feuds.

The province's fractious tribes appear to have rallied behind him. Some, for instance, have forgiven old feuds to reopen sealed roads leading to Bugti territory.

After threatening to crush the upheaval by armed force, President Musharraf has sent envoys to seek a negotiated solution. Now, though, the stakes are higher - a wrong move against the Bugti could spark a chain of violence across Baluchistan.

But the army-led government has never been further from winning local hearts and minds. "The pupils have been brainwashed," said Javeria Qadeer, the deputy principal of Dera Bugti school, which has been closed by decree of the nawab since January. "They say they don't like the name of Pakistan. They say their country is Baluchistan."

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