Re: Enough is enough: The excesses of Baloch nationalists
Asia Times Online: What are the reasons for the insurgency in your area of Sui?
Bugti: What insurgency? There is no insurgency in the area.
ATol: Okay, whatever you name it, what is the main reason behind the present trouble?
Bugti: According to my knowledge, this is a reaction and resentment because of an incident in which a lady doctor, Shazia Khalid, was gang-raped by army personnel.
ATol: Can you elaborate?
Bugti: There was a Captain Emad [Bugti spelled the name] and three soldiers from the Defense Security Guards [DSG] , they gang-raped the lady doctor for a night in a room. [Dr Shazia Khalid is an employee of Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) and her family lives in the upscale Clifton neighborhood of Karachi; she was posted to Sui to treat PPL employees.] Then these army men kept her unconscious for several hours. Since an army officer was involved in the case, Major Mukhtar of the DSG hushed up the case by influencing the PPL management. They shifted the doctor to Karachi and she was not allowed to meet anybody so that nobody would know the reality. Even a first investigation report [FIR] was not allowed to be registered with the police, and when after 12 days it was registered, it was a "blind" FIR in which unknown rapists were mentioned. As I am privy to the information, the case was spread all over the area and the Baloch Liberation Front [Baloch Liberation Army] took things into their own hands and they attacked DSG camps and destroyed them and demanded that all foreign elements should leave and not do these nasty things in areas which originally belonged to Baloch culture.
ATol: Were you asked by the government to pacify this conflict?
Bugti: No. They never contacted me this time. There are activities in the area which suggest that they intend only a war against us. For the last two days there has been a full military build-up in the area. According to my information, 36 trucks loaded with army men have reached [the area] and more are coming from different [army] cantonments. At Sibi air base, six gunship helicopters have landed. Today [Thursday] aircraft and helicopters have been flying in our skies for ground checks. They have also brought tanks and 12 artillery pieces. This kind of activity shows that they really mean business.
ATol: It is your area. You are the chief of the Bugti tribe and your people are fighting against the army. What is your role in this conflict? You have consistently denied your role.
Bugti: It is immaterial what I say. The government has directly blamed me [laughs]. The interior minister said that all harm was done by Nawab Bugti, and that even shots were fired from Bugti's house.
ATol: But what will the end result be? When there are no talks and only a military buildup, what really are the government's designs?
Bugti: To eliminate dissenting voices once and for all.
ATol: What dissent?
Bugti: They think that natural resources are national assets, and we think they are Baloch assets, and whoever wants to use them must do so through us, not by direct possession.
ATol: There is an opinion that the root of the trouble is the call for a Greater Balochistan movement.
Bugti: [Laughs] Where did this Greater Balochistan issue come from? It is just a reaction and resentment shown by the Baloch nation to a heinous crime committed on our land.
ATol: Was Dr Shazia a Baloch?
Bugti: Honestly, I did not know about her ethnicity until somebody told me that she was not a Baloch, but hailed from Sindh. But it is beside the point. The Punjabi cannot understand our culture and codes. What respect we give to a women, irrespective of her caste, religion or ethnicity, no Punjabi can understand. The attack on the DSG camps was pure resentment against the humiliation of a woman, and nothing more. A Punjabi cannot understand these sentiments because they are alien to these concepts of the honor of a woman. You may have read about many incidents that happened in Punjab, reported in newspapers, that on the issue of personal enmity somebody entered into the house of his enemy and brought the women of his enemy naked in public, and the Punjabi public, instead of reacting or putting clothes on the naked women, clapped. We are alien to this kind of culture, and therefore when our men learned of the heinous crime they bombed the criminals' nest [DSG] and we say, "Get lost back to your Punjab and do whatever you like, but not on our land."
