حزب مردم بلوچستان Balochistan People’s Party بلوچستانءِ اُستمانءِ گــَل
VOA Persian and Radio Farda (Persian) are Looking after the Iran Interests; US Senator
By W. Garboni
12-03-2007
My opinion of the Persian Media’s attitude towards non Persian
nationalities of Iran which I
expressed in my latest article has received backing from a US senator
and he also has written a critical letter against VOA Persian and Radio
Farda.In his letter to the US president senator Tom Coburn has written that Radio Farda and Voice of America Persian Service’s work are favoring the Iranian regime instead of protecting the American objectives.
Quoting Washington Times Iran Press News has written that Mr. Coburn’s letter to president Bush has revealed that instead of working for the US interests with regards to terrorism and nuclear issues the said services are hurting the US. Mr. Coburn as an example has mentioned a Dr. Farhang for being critical of Mr. Bush.
Washington Times has pointed out that at a time when most Iranians are eager to see the mullah regime of Tehran go and people are rising against the regime; the senator's pursuit for a review of the heads of both Persian radio services which are funded by the US is valid.
Washington Times has specifically written
about Balochistan in this regard by pointing out “Iran has
been convulsed by unrest and violence, particularly in the southeastern
Baluchistan region, where last month Sunni radicals killed 11 members of
the elite Revolutionary Guards in a bus bombing. On Feb. 19, one week
after the bombing, the regime televised the hanging of a man it said was
responsible for the attack. It would be a positive thing if BBG were
offering Iranians a real alternative -- something better than the likes of
both Dr. Farhang and public hangings.”
Similar action must be sought against the BBC Persian Service which is also following the VOA and Radio Farda foot steps. I urge the BBC head to wake up and stand for the freedom of speech and do not allow Persian chauvinists to hostage Persian Service of the BBC.
Similar action must be sought against the BBC Persian Service which is also following the VOA and Radio Farda foot steps. I urge the BBC head to wake up and stand for the freedom of speech and do not allow Persian chauvinists to hostage Persian Service of the BBC.
Read Washington Times editorial "Are Farsi
language broadcasts helping?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Today, as Washington
grapples with the threats posed by Iranian support for terrorism and
efforts to develop nuclear weapons, it appears that American policy-makers
are being forced to choose between very bad options: 1) taking military
action against Iranian nuclear sites and other regime targets, or 2)
continuing to push for passage of largely unenforceable U.N. resolutions
and hoping that if the regime develops nuclear weapons, we would somehow
be able to use some form of "containment" to deal with the problem.
We find ourselves in this untenable position today due in part to our neglect of alternatives such as the development of radio stations oriented towards taking the American message directly to the Iranian people. In his position as ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Government Information, Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, has made it his mission to reform what he views as a largely dysfunctional system of broadcasting to Iran. In a letter to President Bush last month, Mr. Coburn made a powerful case that Radio Farda, which broadcasts music and other entertainment programs to Iran, and the Voice of America's Farsi-language service "may actually be harming American interests rather than helping."
As chairman of the subcommittee last year, Mr. Coburn held a hearing on the Iranian nuclear question, in which lawmakers heard testimony from Amirabbas Fakhravar, an Iranian dissident who wants the United States to publicly support regime change in his country. Imprisoned in 2002 after writing a book denouncing Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he managed to escape Iran three years later. Mr. Fakhravar told the subcommittee in July that Radio Farda and VOA "are presently giving more assistance to the regime than to the dissident movement" in Iran by touting fraudulent efforts to institute reforms within the Islamist regime. Subsequent complaints from native Farsi speakers who monitor U.S. broadcasts to Iran and a report commissioned by the State Department and National Security Council mirrored Mr. Fakhravar's testimony.
The federal Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) disputes the criticisms and periodically provides examples of broadcasts it describes as balanced. But according to Mr. Coburn, the board has not conducted a systematic review of all content broadcast into Iran and is limited in its ability to oversee broadcasting content because there are no English-language transcripts of U.S. international broadcasting. Along with his letter to the president, Mr. Coburn attached several transcripts of VOA's Farsi-language coverage of the State of the Union address. One of the two guests provided by VOA, Dr. Mansour Farhang, "uses a Farsi term best described as 'baseless statement' to describe your State of the Union speech," Mr. Coburn wrote. "Dr. Farhang's hostility is further expressed when he describes your Iraq policy as having 'no connection to reality.' " Dr. Farhang then went on to blame the United States for increased violence and instability in Iraq. The only other guest, who was supposed to balance the criticism, said he agreed with this harsh assessment of U.S. policy.
All of this is particularly tragic in view of the fact that the Iranian government would appear to be quite vulnerable to the kinds of pressures that U.S. radio broadcasts, properly done, could help generate. Public-opinion polls taken in recent years suggest that an overwhelming majority of Iranians admire the United States and/or want to bring down the Islamist regime in Tehran, and despite a brutal secret-police, visitors to the country frequently say they have little trouble finding Iranians who want to be rid of clerical rule. Iran has been convulsed by unrest and violence, particularly in the southeastern Baluchistan region, where last month Sunni radicals killed 11 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards in a bus bombing. On Feb. 19, one week after the bombing, the regime televised the hanging of a man it said was responsible for the attack. It would be a positive thing if BBG were offering Iranians a real alternative -- something better than the likes of both Dr. Farhang and public hangings.
But, that does not appear to be happening today. As Mr. Coburn wrote in his letter to the president: "Our international broadcasting needs serious management and accountability reforms. Given the international challenges and threats to our national security, I believe it is vital that this important public diplomacy does not undermine your role as our lead diplomat. The status quo should not continue."
And if BBG thinks it is getting a bum rap from Mr. Coburn, it would do well to conduct its own comprehensive study of its Farsi-language broadcasts and set the record straight.
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http://www.defense-update.com
By David Eshel
By David Eshel
13-03-2007
Two
bombings in mid February near Zahedan in southeastern Iran are the latest
in a series of high profile incidents involving armed opposition groups
based among the country’s ethnic minorities. The most recent attacks again
raise questions about the activities of Iranian clandestine groups,
seeking a regime change, with, or without US assistance. Zahedan is the
capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, which borders Pakistan and
Afghanistan and is home to Iran’s estimated 1-2 million ethnic Sunni
Baluchis. The first blast killed at least 11 members of Iran’s Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were travelling in a bus from their
housing compound to a nearby military base. A further bombing, followed by
sustained clashes between police and an armed group, named Jundallah, a
Sunni extremist organisation based among Iran’s Baluch minority. Sistan va
Baluchistan straddles the main drug-trafficking route from Afghanistan and
Pakistan to Europe and is among the poorest and the most lawless provinces
in the country. Many locals resort to drug trafficking and smuggling in
order to survive.
The Provincial police commander Brigadier
General Mohammad Ghafari said a total of 65 suspects had been detained
over the Zahedan attack, including three who were believed to have
actually carried it out. He renewed Iranian accusations that Jundullah was
receiving support from British and US forces in neighboring Afghanistan
for its campaign of violence in Sistan-Baluchestan. A man identified as
Nasrollah Shanbe Zehi was executed at the site of the attack in Zahedan,
after having confessed on Iranian state TV to be involved in the bomb
attack.
The Sunni militant group Jundullah (army of god), operating in Baluchistan seems to be an offshoot of a terrorist network based in Pakistan and is allegedly fighting to establish a unified, independent Baluchistan. Formed in 2003 it is led by Abdul Malik Rigi, who in his mid-twenties, goes by the title 'Emir Abdul Malik Baluch. In March 2006 members of the group dressed in police uniforms attacked the motorcade of the governor of Zahedan, killing 22 members of his entourage on the spot and abducting 12 more. The governor himself was badly wounded but survived.
By his own undoing, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is building up the growing ethnic opposition camp against the centralist cleric Shiite rule in Tehran.
The Sunni militant group Jundullah (army of god), operating in Baluchistan seems to be an offshoot of a terrorist network based in Pakistan and is allegedly fighting to establish a unified, independent Baluchistan. Formed in 2003 it is led by Abdul Malik Rigi, who in his mid-twenties, goes by the title 'Emir Abdul Malik Baluch. In March 2006 members of the group dressed in police uniforms attacked the motorcade of the governor of Zahedan, killing 22 members of his entourage on the spot and abducting 12 more. The governor himself was badly wounded but survived.
By his own undoing, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is building up the growing ethnic opposition camp against the centralist cleric Shiite rule in Tehran.
While no definite proof
has surfaced over any direct, or indirect involvement of American
intelligence agencies in the latest bombing in Zahedan, the US should
certainly be interested inflaming ethnic and political opposition inside
Iran.
Analiysts estimate that sectors of the Baluch elite who, like their counterparts among Iran’s Azeri, Kurdish, Arab and other minorities, are considered having potential benefits of aligning themselves with Washington in a future military conflict with Iran. US support for such layers could create an even greater catastrophe than in neighbouring Iraq, where the American-led invasion has triggered an escalating sectarian civil war.
In fact by his own undoing, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is building up the growing ethnic opposition camp against the centralist cleric Shiite rule in Tehran. According to James Woolsey, former director of CIA, a bare majority of Persians rule restive minorities of Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Baluch, and others. Just as is needed to exploit the resistance to the regime among the younger people, reformers, and women, Washington should also need to pay attention to its geographic and ethnic fissures - for example, a large share of Iran's oil is located in the restive Arab-populated regions in Iran's south.
Analiysts estimate that sectors of the Baluch elite who, like their counterparts among Iran’s Azeri, Kurdish, Arab and other minorities, are considered having potential benefits of aligning themselves with Washington in a future military conflict with Iran. US support for such layers could create an even greater catastrophe than in neighbouring Iraq, where the American-led invasion has triggered an escalating sectarian civil war.
In fact by his own undoing, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is building up the growing ethnic opposition camp against the centralist cleric Shiite rule in Tehran. According to James Woolsey, former director of CIA, a bare majority of Persians rule restive minorities of Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Baluch, and others. Just as is needed to exploit the resistance to the regime among the younger people, reformers, and women, Washington should also need to pay attention to its geographic and ethnic fissures - for example, a large share of Iran's oil is located in the restive Arab-populated regions in Iran's south.
Although Iran’s state religion is Shiite
Islam and the majority of its population is ethnically Persian, millions
of minorities from various ethnic, religious, and linguistic backgrounds
also reside in Iran. Among these groups are ethnic Kurds, Baluchis, and
Azeris. Many of them face discrimination and live in underdeveloped
regions. Though they have held protests in the past, they mostly agitate
for greater rights, not greater autonomy. But this could change, if a US
sponsored regime change is forseen.
Roughly one out of every four Iranians is Azeri, making it Iran’s largest ethnic minority at over eighteen million. The Turkic-speaking Azeri community is Shiite and resides mainly in northwest Iran along the border with Azerbaijan.
The Azeri minority is based predominately in the country's northwest, what is called the Northern Tier of the Middle East, where Iran shares borders with Turkey and with the South Caucasus states of Azerbaijan and Armenia. The ethnic links between the Azeri of northern Iran and Azerbaijan were long exploited by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and this vehicle for internal manipulation has been seized upon by CIA paramilitary operatives and US Special Operations units who are training with Azerbaijan forces to form special units capable of operating inside Iran for the purpose of intelligence gathering, direct action, and mobilising indigenous opposition to the Mullahs in Tehran.
But there are more foreboding signals already in store. Last May, rioting started in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz allegedly sparked off by a state-run newspaper publishing a cartoon depicting a cockroach speaking Azeri. Despite official efforts to stem discontent by punishing the newspaper editors, fighting quickly escalated following the usual strongarm response by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ anti-riot units and Basij militias against the Azeri protesters. Soon after, Iranian security forces cracked down on tens thousands of offended Azeris, taking to the streets in Tehran and in the major northwestern Iranian cities such as Tabriz, Urumieh, Ardebil, Maragheh, and Zenjan. A massive detention campaign followed, but failed to calm the outrage, which spread like bushfire, with nearly 100 Azeris beeing killed in the town of Sulduz. The Tehran central government, was quick to accuse foreign elements stirring up the unrest, in effort to undermine Tehran's nuclear program.
In spite of this and other incidents, leading analysts estimate, that while Iranian Azeris may seek greater cultural rights, few Iranian Azeris sofar display serious separatist tendencies, or serious aspirations toward an all out uprising against the Tehranj Mullah rule. Still, the central government is extremely sensitive over possible changes of attitudes among the Azeris. Last June an attempt to hold rally at Bazz (Babek) Castle in northwestern Iran to commemorate the birthday of the Azeri national hero, Babek, who organized resistance against Arab invaders in the 9th century, prompted an unprecedented wave of arrests among Azeris in a number of Iranian cities.
Unlike other ethnic groups in Iran such as Sunni Kurds and Khuzestan Arabs, the Azeri Turks are Shiites like the ruling Persians. Having been separated from their kin in Azerbaijan by the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchai, which gave northern Azerbaijan to Russia, it is interesting to note, that in spite of influential figures in the establishment, even such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, being of Azeri descent, the Tehran mullahs do not hesitate to crack down hard on Azeri- Turkish nationalism. An Azeri secret organisation named Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement (Gamoh), is regarded officially as a subversive element, its leaders often arrested and sometimes even executed without trial.
The plight of Iranian Azeris is followed closely by their neighboring kin in Azerbaijan and Turkey. However, officially, the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments are extremely cautious not to damage their sensitive relations with the Iranian government. eBut to the north, to the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, strange things are happening already. Unofficial reports indicate the US military preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that could foretell a major land-based campaign designed to infiltrate into Iranian territory when the time is ripe for action. While Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's interest in Azerbaijan may have escaped the Western media, Russia and the Caucasus nations understand only too well that the die has been cast regarding Azerbaijan's role in the upcoming war with Iran.
Meanwhile, another source of ethnic unrest in Iran is building up among the Kurds. Persisting reports, by news networks, indicate that US intelligence teams, operating with Kurdish groups are training infiltrators to gather information on potential targets inside Iran and encourage armed opposition among the Kurdish minority. A little-known clandestine organization based in the mountains of Iraq's Kurdish north is already emerging as a serious threat to the Iranian government, allegedly staging cross-border attacks and claiming tens of thousands of supporters among Iran's 4 million Kurds. Identified as Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê ("Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan"), but better known by the local acronym PEJAK or PJAK, is considered to be a splinter group of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party. The group claimed to have killed 24 Iranian soldiers from Iran's elite Republican Guard in three raids against army bases last year, all staged in retaliation for the killing of 10 Iranian Kurds during a peaceful demonstration in the city of Maku. The present leader of the organisation is Haji Ahmadi. According to intelligence reports, over half the members of PJAK are women, many of them still in their teens. One of the female members of the leadership council goes by the name of Gulistan Dugan, a psychology graduate from the University of Tehran. Analysts claim, that the greater threat to the Tehran regime may come from the group's underground effort to promote a sense of identity among Iranian Kurds, who make up 7 percent of that country's population. PEJAK leaders predict that their effort is already spreading quickly among students, intellectuals and businessmen. It is interesting to note that unlike most other rebel groups in the Middle East, PEJAK is secular and Western-oriented. However, the group's leaders insist that while they have had sofar no contact with the United States, they would be willing to work with Europe or America against the Tehran government.
Another source of unrest seems to be flaring up in a remote area of Iran, where central official control is faltering. Last month and armed revolt instigated by Bakhtiari, Lor and Ghashghai tribes comprising over three million, against the Islamic Regime was reported by clandestine news networks. There were claims of freedom seeking tribal fighters in the Isfahan and surrounding provinces which began fighting local Islamic Regime forces in an attempt to free their villages from the Islamic Regime's control. According to these reports, the Semirom area, some 590km from Tehran, which is on the Ghashghai tribal migrations route, apparently saw heavy fighting occurred in between Isfahan Province and Yassooj further south, which is the center of the Boyer-Ahmadi tribal territory. Local fighters from the various tribes, confronted Islamic Regime paramilitary forces – the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the Bassij . The heaviest fighting took place apparently at a point around Yassooj and in the Province of Fars which was labeled the Red Line which was not to be crossed by the central Regime forces.
Much of the unrest is said to stem from the Islamic Regime's on-going efforts to disarm the tribes and put religious leaders in charge of them instead of their traditional Khans. The rough and difficult mountainous terrain, which severely limits mobile forces and the stiff resistance put up by the tribes, have prevented government militias from penetrating into Bakhtiari and Ghashghai tribal areas The tribe leaders hope, perhaps somewhat premature, that their uprising will spread south to Shiraz and Masjid Soleiman in the Khuzestan oil province (link to our story) and even become a national uprising across the country.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roughly one out of every four Iranians is Azeri, making it Iran’s largest ethnic minority at over eighteen million. The Turkic-speaking Azeri community is Shiite and resides mainly in northwest Iran along the border with Azerbaijan.
The Azeri minority is based predominately in the country's northwest, what is called the Northern Tier of the Middle East, where Iran shares borders with Turkey and with the South Caucasus states of Azerbaijan and Armenia. The ethnic links between the Azeri of northern Iran and Azerbaijan were long exploited by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and this vehicle for internal manipulation has been seized upon by CIA paramilitary operatives and US Special Operations units who are training with Azerbaijan forces to form special units capable of operating inside Iran for the purpose of intelligence gathering, direct action, and mobilising indigenous opposition to the Mullahs in Tehran.
But there are more foreboding signals already in store. Last May, rioting started in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz allegedly sparked off by a state-run newspaper publishing a cartoon depicting a cockroach speaking Azeri. Despite official efforts to stem discontent by punishing the newspaper editors, fighting quickly escalated following the usual strongarm response by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ anti-riot units and Basij militias against the Azeri protesters. Soon after, Iranian security forces cracked down on tens thousands of offended Azeris, taking to the streets in Tehran and in the major northwestern Iranian cities such as Tabriz, Urumieh, Ardebil, Maragheh, and Zenjan. A massive detention campaign followed, but failed to calm the outrage, which spread like bushfire, with nearly 100 Azeris beeing killed in the town of Sulduz. The Tehran central government, was quick to accuse foreign elements stirring up the unrest, in effort to undermine Tehran's nuclear program.
In spite of this and other incidents, leading analysts estimate, that while Iranian Azeris may seek greater cultural rights, few Iranian Azeris sofar display serious separatist tendencies, or serious aspirations toward an all out uprising against the Tehranj Mullah rule. Still, the central government is extremely sensitive over possible changes of attitudes among the Azeris. Last June an attempt to hold rally at Bazz (Babek) Castle in northwestern Iran to commemorate the birthday of the Azeri national hero, Babek, who organized resistance against Arab invaders in the 9th century, prompted an unprecedented wave of arrests among Azeris in a number of Iranian cities.
Unlike other ethnic groups in Iran such as Sunni Kurds and Khuzestan Arabs, the Azeri Turks are Shiites like the ruling Persians. Having been separated from their kin in Azerbaijan by the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchai, which gave northern Azerbaijan to Russia, it is interesting to note, that in spite of influential figures in the establishment, even such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, being of Azeri descent, the Tehran mullahs do not hesitate to crack down hard on Azeri- Turkish nationalism. An Azeri secret organisation named Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement (Gamoh), is regarded officially as a subversive element, its leaders often arrested and sometimes even executed without trial.
The plight of Iranian Azeris is followed closely by their neighboring kin in Azerbaijan and Turkey. However, officially, the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments are extremely cautious not to damage their sensitive relations with the Iranian government. eBut to the north, to the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, strange things are happening already. Unofficial reports indicate the US military preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that could foretell a major land-based campaign designed to infiltrate into Iranian territory when the time is ripe for action. While Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's interest in Azerbaijan may have escaped the Western media, Russia and the Caucasus nations understand only too well that the die has been cast regarding Azerbaijan's role in the upcoming war with Iran.
Meanwhile, another source of ethnic unrest in Iran is building up among the Kurds. Persisting reports, by news networks, indicate that US intelligence teams, operating with Kurdish groups are training infiltrators to gather information on potential targets inside Iran and encourage armed opposition among the Kurdish minority. A little-known clandestine organization based in the mountains of Iraq's Kurdish north is already emerging as a serious threat to the Iranian government, allegedly staging cross-border attacks and claiming tens of thousands of supporters among Iran's 4 million Kurds. Identified as Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê ("Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan"), but better known by the local acronym PEJAK or PJAK, is considered to be a splinter group of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party. The group claimed to have killed 24 Iranian soldiers from Iran's elite Republican Guard in three raids against army bases last year, all staged in retaliation for the killing of 10 Iranian Kurds during a peaceful demonstration in the city of Maku. The present leader of the organisation is Haji Ahmadi. According to intelligence reports, over half the members of PJAK are women, many of them still in their teens. One of the female members of the leadership council goes by the name of Gulistan Dugan, a psychology graduate from the University of Tehran. Analysts claim, that the greater threat to the Tehran regime may come from the group's underground effort to promote a sense of identity among Iranian Kurds, who make up 7 percent of that country's population. PEJAK leaders predict that their effort is already spreading quickly among students, intellectuals and businessmen. It is interesting to note that unlike most other rebel groups in the Middle East, PEJAK is secular and Western-oriented. However, the group's leaders insist that while they have had sofar no contact with the United States, they would be willing to work with Europe or America against the Tehran government.
Another source of unrest seems to be flaring up in a remote area of Iran, where central official control is faltering. Last month and armed revolt instigated by Bakhtiari, Lor and Ghashghai tribes comprising over three million, against the Islamic Regime was reported by clandestine news networks. There were claims of freedom seeking tribal fighters in the Isfahan and surrounding provinces which began fighting local Islamic Regime forces in an attempt to free their villages from the Islamic Regime's control. According to these reports, the Semirom area, some 590km from Tehran, which is on the Ghashghai tribal migrations route, apparently saw heavy fighting occurred in between Isfahan Province and Yassooj further south, which is the center of the Boyer-Ahmadi tribal territory. Local fighters from the various tribes, confronted Islamic Regime paramilitary forces – the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the Bassij . The heaviest fighting took place apparently at a point around Yassooj and in the Province of Fars which was labeled the Red Line which was not to be crossed by the central Regime forces.
Much of the unrest is said to stem from the Islamic Regime's on-going efforts to disarm the tribes and put religious leaders in charge of them instead of their traditional Khans. The rough and difficult mountainous terrain, which severely limits mobile forces and the stiff resistance put up by the tribes, have prevented government militias from penetrating into Bakhtiari and Ghashghai tribal areas The tribe leaders hope, perhaps somewhat premature, that their uprising will spread south to Shiraz and Masjid Soleiman in the Khuzestan oil province (link to our story) and even become a national uprising across the country.
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Is Balochistan Doomed?
By Subroto Roy
14-03-2007
Nawab Mohammad Akbar Khan Bugti’s death (apparently in a cave that was precision-bombed by the Pakistani
military using American equipment after he had spoken on a Thuraya satellite-phone) lengthens Pakistan’s list of political killings and assassinations, many still unsolved. Liaquat Ali Khan, Dr Khan Sahib, ZA Bhutto and sons as well as their enemy Zia ul Haq, are prominent members of the list. The Rule of Law is better in India to the extent we tend to solve and punish our major assassinations.
Bugti’s killing is symptomatic of many of Pakistan’s continuing ills, not least of which is the continuing inability of the military to comprehend politics as a discipline that accommodates competing interests and uses two-way dialogue, not one-way instruction, as its method. There is also the personal failure of Pervez Musharraf, seven years after his coup détat, to transform himself into Pakistan’s first genuine statesman in many years. Musharraf is a well-read, well-spoken soldier who sees himself as a man of destiny but he has quite simply failed to recognise statesmanship requires far more than personal ambition; he has become a Napoleon at home and a Quisling abroad when what he aspired to become was Pakistan’s Attaturk.
The roots of Pakistan’s Balochistan problem are depthless. When Pakistan was first created, Punjabis constituted 25 per cent of the population but 77 per cent of the new armed forces. East Bengalis constituted 55% of the population ~ a fact inevitably leading to the idea of a “one-unit West Pakistan wing” governing itself independent of the numerical majority of Bengali-speakers. Equally inevitably perhaps, this led to Punjabi military domination of East Pakistan; the history of Bangladesh’s creation is too well-known to need recitation here except to say the Mukti Bahini, like Balochi separatists today, were incapable of taking on Pakistan’s military on their own. After Bangladesh’s secession, Pakistan became the four areas originally named in Iqbal’s 1930 speech conceptualising a Muslim country in North Western India (which, incidentally, excluded J&K despite Iqbal having been Kashmiri). Pakistan’s Pashtun and Baloch highlanders were never of Hindu/Indian origin, whereas the plainsmen consisting of Punjabis, Sindhis and migrants from India were (despite protestations and pretensions) , closely related to their Hindu/Indian cousins and neighbors. Muslim and Hindu religious and cultural beliefs and practices may be very different, but DNA testing would likely identify most of the subcontinent’ s Muslims and Hindus as ethnically indistinguishable from a scientific point of view.
The central fact driving and explaining Pakistan’s political history has been that the idea of Pakistan arose in the subcontinent’ s Muslim-minority areas, not among the peoples of the areas that today constitute Pakistan ~ least of all the Baloch (viz., F Robinson in WE James & S Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy).
Having created a country based on an ideology imported by a handful of super-elite Indian migrants like Jinnah and Liaquat, serious political conversation and democratic nation-building of a high order was required immediately from Pakistan’s national statesmen to make the enterprise a success. That was never forthcoming simply because there were no such national statesmen, only rather thick bungling soldiers and some corpulent corrupt politicians. In an alternative universe in which ZA Bhutto had been born a generation earlier, things might have been different. Musharraf’s efforts since his January 2002 speech to become an intelligent modern soldier-statesman amount to far too little, far too late, rather the way the French physiocrats were too late and came to be swept away by revolution.
The Baloch are a tribal people who defeated and later assimilated the Dravidian(?) -Brahui inhabitants of the area. For most of their modern history they were independent though owed nominal allegiance to the Afghan ruler in Kabul. The 19th Century British created a strip known as “British Balochistan” including Quetta and Sibi, but were interested in the region solely to the extent it controlled access to Afghanistan and otherwise left the Khan of Kalat to himself. The British also annexed Sindh from a Balochi dynasty.
In the 21st Century, it has become Balochistan not Afghanistan which has immense economic potential and strategic value in international politics. Yet its future must be filled with foreboding because Musharraf’s military-business state, goaded on by Western and Chinese business and military interests, has recognised its
potential and begun to behave ruthlessly against Balochis as a result. Balochistan contains Pakistan’s reserves of uranium, coal, gold, silver, copper, aluminium, and of course plentiful natural gas at Sui. The Makran Coast had been gifted by the Khan of Kalat to Oman, and was bought back by Pakistan in 1958. Development of Gwadar and Ormara ports and naval bases (whose strategic value is self-evident) and a road link through the Karakoram to Sinkiang have now become top Pakistani and Chinese military and business priorities. Gwadar real-estate speculation is rampant among Lahore and
Rawalpindi’s military-businessme n, while two Chinese workers were killed in Gwadar by Balochi nationalists in 2004 causing ruthless Punjabi reprisals. Also, the Americans have long had secret CIA-built bases in Pasni and Dalbandin in Baloch territory, which are being used presently in military operations in Afghanistan; their Pashtun/ Taliban enemy also use Quetta and northern Balochistan for rest and recuperation while fighting in Afghanistan! And Balochistan’s caves are where Pakistan’s nuclear-armed F-16s against India are hidden.
The Balochi are a small, poor, traditionally peaceful, politically divided tribal minority of perhaps 6.5 million people spread sparsely over this vast arid area that constitutes more than 48% of Pakistan’s present territory. Despite the pretensions of an articulate expatriate rebel elite (including even a self-styled Government-in- Exile based in Jerusalem dreaming of a secular free Balochistan) , Baloch guerrilla fighters are wholly incapable of taking on the organised military might of the Pakistani state, armed by America and China. The expansion of Pakistan’s 74 million Punjabis, 30 million Sindhis and 17 million Pashtun into Balochistan seems as inevitable at present as the expansion of the Han Chinese into Tibet ~ a similarity doubtless noted by Musharraf’s Communist
Chinese friends and advisers.
Also, because there are two million Balochis in Iranian Balochistan, Pakistan’s Balochi nationalists have had a declared enemy to their west in the Iranian Government ~ the Pahlevi regime even provided Italian-made American Huey helicopter gunships with Iranian pilots to help Bhutto crush the Baloch rebellions of the early 1970s. In fact, Balochi rebels have had no military allies except the pre-communist Government of Afghanistan under Daud, who “ordered the establishment of a training camp at Qandahar for Baloch liberation fighters. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Baloch youths were trained and armed there” (R Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan 1988, p. 78). The Governments of India or the United States lack motivation or capability to help, and Balochistan may be doomed to becoming a large human rights/genocidal disaster of the next decade. An
independent Balochistan may be unviable, being overwhelmed by its riches while having too small, uneducated and backward a population of its own, and powerful greedy neighbours on either side. In effect, a weak Balochistan has been divided rather like a weak Poland was divided by Hitler and Stalin in the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.
Today, the Pashtun of Pakistan and Afghanistan (as well as perhaps Sindhis of Baloch origin) may be the only interlocutors who can prevent a genocide and mediate a peace between Balochi nationalists and Musharraf’s ruthless Punjabi military-businessmen determined to colonize Balochistan completely with Chinese help, effectively subsidising their misgovernance elsewhere with Balochistan’s riches. Like Bhutto and Zia, Musharraf has chosen military suppression and failed to see the only way forward for Pakistan is political accommodation of both Baloch and Pashtun aspirations and desires, while solving Pakistan’s grave fiscal and monetary problems
separately. The terms of a peaceful accommodation could involve e.g., a vertical administrative division of Pakistan between its tribal highlander peoples and its Indus Valley plainsmen (viz., The Statesman 16 July 2006) followed by slow, steady, sustainable development and modernization consistent with tribal cultural wishes
~ not Shanghai or World Bank capitalism. To be a man of destiny, Musharraf must transcend the military-business complex he rules over and reduce its role in Pakistani life, not increase it.
Statesmanship involves taking risks for a noble cause and these are the main risks he needs to address and build a national consensus upon. Instead, he has enhanced military capabilities and seems hell-bent (perhaps on advice of his MBA prime minister) on ruthless exploitation of Balochistan as a Lahore/ Rawalpindi colony. It is
the road to catastrophe.
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By Subroto Roy
14-03-2007
Nawab Mohammad Akbar Khan Bugti’s death (apparently in a cave that was precision-bombed by the Pakistani
military using American equipment after he had spoken on a Thuraya satellite-phone) lengthens Pakistan’s list of political killings and assassinations, many still unsolved. Liaquat Ali Khan, Dr Khan Sahib, ZA Bhutto and sons as well as their enemy Zia ul Haq, are prominent members of the list. The Rule of Law is better in India to the extent we tend to solve and punish our major assassinations.
Bugti’s killing is symptomatic of many of Pakistan’s continuing ills, not least of which is the continuing inability of the military to comprehend politics as a discipline that accommodates competing interests and uses two-way dialogue, not one-way instruction, as its method. There is also the personal failure of Pervez Musharraf, seven years after his coup détat, to transform himself into Pakistan’s first genuine statesman in many years. Musharraf is a well-read, well-spoken soldier who sees himself as a man of destiny but he has quite simply failed to recognise statesmanship requires far more than personal ambition; he has become a Napoleon at home and a Quisling abroad when what he aspired to become was Pakistan’s Attaturk.
The roots of Pakistan’s Balochistan problem are depthless. When Pakistan was first created, Punjabis constituted 25 per cent of the population but 77 per cent of the new armed forces. East Bengalis constituted 55% of the population ~ a fact inevitably leading to the idea of a “one-unit West Pakistan wing” governing itself independent of the numerical majority of Bengali-speakers. Equally inevitably perhaps, this led to Punjabi military domination of East Pakistan; the history of Bangladesh’s creation is too well-known to need recitation here except to say the Mukti Bahini, like Balochi separatists today, were incapable of taking on Pakistan’s military on their own. After Bangladesh’s secession, Pakistan became the four areas originally named in Iqbal’s 1930 speech conceptualising a Muslim country in North Western India (which, incidentally, excluded J&K despite Iqbal having been Kashmiri). Pakistan’s Pashtun and Baloch highlanders were never of Hindu/Indian origin, whereas the plainsmen consisting of Punjabis, Sindhis and migrants from India were (despite protestations and pretensions) , closely related to their Hindu/Indian cousins and neighbors. Muslim and Hindu religious and cultural beliefs and practices may be very different, but DNA testing would likely identify most of the subcontinent’ s Muslims and Hindus as ethnically indistinguishable from a scientific point of view.
The central fact driving and explaining Pakistan’s political history has been that the idea of Pakistan arose in the subcontinent’ s Muslim-minority areas, not among the peoples of the areas that today constitute Pakistan ~ least of all the Baloch (viz., F Robinson in WE James & S Roy (eds) Foundations of Pakistan’s Political Economy).
Having created a country based on an ideology imported by a handful of super-elite Indian migrants like Jinnah and Liaquat, serious political conversation and democratic nation-building of a high order was required immediately from Pakistan’s national statesmen to make the enterprise a success. That was never forthcoming simply because there were no such national statesmen, only rather thick bungling soldiers and some corpulent corrupt politicians. In an alternative universe in which ZA Bhutto had been born a generation earlier, things might have been different. Musharraf’s efforts since his January 2002 speech to become an intelligent modern soldier-statesman amount to far too little, far too late, rather the way the French physiocrats were too late and came to be swept away by revolution.
The Baloch are a tribal people who defeated and later assimilated the Dravidian(?) -Brahui inhabitants of the area. For most of their modern history they were independent though owed nominal allegiance to the Afghan ruler in Kabul. The 19th Century British created a strip known as “British Balochistan” including Quetta and Sibi, but were interested in the region solely to the extent it controlled access to Afghanistan and otherwise left the Khan of Kalat to himself. The British also annexed Sindh from a Balochi dynasty.
In the 21st Century, it has become Balochistan not Afghanistan which has immense economic potential and strategic value in international politics. Yet its future must be filled with foreboding because Musharraf’s military-business state, goaded on by Western and Chinese business and military interests, has recognised its
potential and begun to behave ruthlessly against Balochis as a result. Balochistan contains Pakistan’s reserves of uranium, coal, gold, silver, copper, aluminium, and of course plentiful natural gas at Sui. The Makran Coast had been gifted by the Khan of Kalat to Oman, and was bought back by Pakistan in 1958. Development of Gwadar and Ormara ports and naval bases (whose strategic value is self-evident) and a road link through the Karakoram to Sinkiang have now become top Pakistani and Chinese military and business priorities. Gwadar real-estate speculation is rampant among Lahore and
Rawalpindi’s military-businessme n, while two Chinese workers were killed in Gwadar by Balochi nationalists in 2004 causing ruthless Punjabi reprisals. Also, the Americans have long had secret CIA-built bases in Pasni and Dalbandin in Baloch territory, which are being used presently in military operations in Afghanistan; their Pashtun/ Taliban enemy also use Quetta and northern Balochistan for rest and recuperation while fighting in Afghanistan! And Balochistan’s caves are where Pakistan’s nuclear-armed F-16s against India are hidden.
The Balochi are a small, poor, traditionally peaceful, politically divided tribal minority of perhaps 6.5 million people spread sparsely over this vast arid area that constitutes more than 48% of Pakistan’s present territory. Despite the pretensions of an articulate expatriate rebel elite (including even a self-styled Government-in- Exile based in Jerusalem dreaming of a secular free Balochistan) , Baloch guerrilla fighters are wholly incapable of taking on the organised military might of the Pakistani state, armed by America and China. The expansion of Pakistan’s 74 million Punjabis, 30 million Sindhis and 17 million Pashtun into Balochistan seems as inevitable at present as the expansion of the Han Chinese into Tibet ~ a similarity doubtless noted by Musharraf’s Communist
Chinese friends and advisers.
Also, because there are two million Balochis in Iranian Balochistan, Pakistan’s Balochi nationalists have had a declared enemy to their west in the Iranian Government ~ the Pahlevi regime even provided Italian-made American Huey helicopter gunships with Iranian pilots to help Bhutto crush the Baloch rebellions of the early 1970s. In fact, Balochi rebels have had no military allies except the pre-communist Government of Afghanistan under Daud, who “ordered the establishment of a training camp at Qandahar for Baloch liberation fighters. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Baloch youths were trained and armed there” (R Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan 1988, p. 78). The Governments of India or the United States lack motivation or capability to help, and Balochistan may be doomed to becoming a large human rights/genocidal disaster of the next decade. An
independent Balochistan may be unviable, being overwhelmed by its riches while having too small, uneducated and backward a population of its own, and powerful greedy neighbours on either side. In effect, a weak Balochistan has been divided rather like a weak Poland was divided by Hitler and Stalin in the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.
Today, the Pashtun of Pakistan and Afghanistan (as well as perhaps Sindhis of Baloch origin) may be the only interlocutors who can prevent a genocide and mediate a peace between Balochi nationalists and Musharraf’s ruthless Punjabi military-businessmen determined to colonize Balochistan completely with Chinese help, effectively subsidising their misgovernance elsewhere with Balochistan’s riches. Like Bhutto and Zia, Musharraf has chosen military suppression and failed to see the only way forward for Pakistan is political accommodation of both Baloch and Pashtun aspirations and desires, while solving Pakistan’s grave fiscal and monetary problems
separately. The terms of a peaceful accommodation could involve e.g., a vertical administrative division of Pakistan between its tribal highlander peoples and its Indus Valley plainsmen (viz., The Statesman 16 July 2006) followed by slow, steady, sustainable development and modernization consistent with tribal cultural wishes
~ not Shanghai or World Bank capitalism. To be a man of destiny, Musharraf must transcend the military-business complex he rules over and reduce its role in Pakistani life, not increase it.
Statesmanship involves taking risks for a noble cause and these are the main risks he needs to address and build a national consensus upon. Instead, he has enhanced military capabilities and seems hell-bent (perhaps on advice of his MBA prime minister) on ruthless exploitation of Balochistan as a Lahore/ Rawalpindi colony. It is
the road to catastrophe.
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14-03-2007
By a member of BalochUnity Yahoo Group
Salam Dear
Salam Dear
The Extra judicial killing and torture of innocent Baloch people in Iran is breaking the record of Punjabi army.
In 15 days Iranian Mullah regime took more than one thousand innocent Baloch in Different areas of West Balochistan.
The Iranian Mullah regime don't understand any language they are grand son of Meer Hitler.
His gas chamber history is being repeating In West Balochistan. Punjabi brutality and head cutting mentality is nothing as compare to Irani Gajar, for them Abdul Malik Baloch know well how to deal them.