Would nt it be easier for the USA to deal with the current set-up after all most of the leaders in muslim countries are already pliant. Sometimes i think that they wont ferment nationalism as it wont kill the notion of them being muslim although it could bring chaos and disunity.
Why would the USA want to carve Turkey up? The Turkish leadership would nt allow that - they are very nationalistic.
Re: Pakistan's Balkanization
^^^ the whole plan shows one thing, weaken the muslim world, divide and rule is good old one that worked perfectly in the past. though all the rulers does obey US but still they are "dangerous" cause they should not get so powerful at any stage! Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey can also be direct threats to Israel in any future large scale event or partnership. its also important militarily, resources, and corporate businesswise.
far eastern muslim countries had some lessons already taught to them in Malaysia and Indonesia with stock and economy twists.
Re: Pakistan’s Balkanization
A report by the US National Intelligence Council and the CIA forecast a “Yugoslav-like fate” for Pakistan “in a decade with the country riven by civil war, bloodshed and inter-provincial rivalries, as seen recently in Balochistan.” (Energy Compass, 2 March 2005). According to the NIC-CIA, Pakistan is slated to become a “failed state” by 2015, “as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons”. (Quoted by former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Times of India, 13 February 2005):
“Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the Central government’s control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi,” the former diplomat quoted the NIC-CIA report as saying.
Expressing apprehension, Hasan asked, “are our military rulers working on a similar agenda or something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council in joint collaboration with CIA?” (Ibid)
Continuity, characterized by the dominant role of the Pakistani military and intelligence has been scrapped in favor of political breakup and balkanization.
According to the NIC-CIA scenario, which Washington intends to carry out: “Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction,” (Ibid) .
The US course consists in fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup of Pakistan. This course of action is also dictated by US war plans in relation to both Afghanistan and Iran.
This US agenda for Pakistan is similar to that applied throughout the broader Middle East Central Asian region. US strategy, supported by covert intelligence operations, consists in triggering ethnic and religious strife, abetting and financing secessionist movements while also weakening the institutions of the central government.
The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State and redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Oil and Gas reserves
Pakistan’s extensive oil and gas reserves, largely located in Balochistan province, as well as its pipeline corridors are considered strategic by the Anglo-American alliance, requiring the concurrent militarization of Pakistani territory.
Balochistan comprises more than 40 percent of Pakistan’s land mass, possesses important reserves of oil and natural gas as well as extensive mineral resources.
The Iran-India pipeline corridor is slated to transit through Balochistan. Balochistan also possesses a deap sea port largely financed by China located at Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea, not far from the Straits of Hormuz where 30 % of the world’s daily oil supply moves by ship or pipeline. (Asia News.it, 29 December 2007)
Pakistan has an estimated 25.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven gas reserves of which 19 trillion are located in Balochistan. Among foreign oil and gas contractors in Balochistan are BP, Italy’s ENI, Austria’s OMV, and Australia’s BHP. It is worth noting that Pakistan’s State oil and gas companies, including PPL which has the largest stake in the Sui oil fields of Balochistan are up for privatization under IMF-World Bank supervision.
According to the Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), Pakistan had proven oil reserves of 300 million barrels, most of which are located in Balochistan. Other estimates place Balochistan oil reserves at an estimated six trillion barrels of oil reserves both on-shore and off-shore (Environment News Service, 27 October 2006) .
Covert Support to Balochistan Separatists
Balochistan’s strategic energy reserves have a bearing on the separatist agenda. Following a familiar pattern, there are indications that the Baloch insurgency is being supported and abetted by Britain and the US.
The Baloch national resistance movement dates back to the late 1940s, when Balochistan was invaded by Pakistan. In the current geopolitical context, the separatist movement is in the process of being hijacked by foreign powers.
British intelligence is allegedly providing covert support to Balochistan separatists (which from the outset have been repressed by Pakistan’s military). In June 2006, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of “abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran” [Balochistan]..(Press Trust of India, 9 August 2006). Ten British MPs were involved in a closed door session of the Senate Committee on Defence regarding the alleged support of Britain’s Secret Service to Baloch separatists (Ibid). Also of relevance are reports of CIA and Mossad support to Baloch rebels in Iran and Southern Afghanistan.
It would appear that Britain and the US are supporting both sides. The US is providing American F-16 jets to the Pakistani military, which are being used to bomb Baloch villages in Balochistan. Meanwhile, British alleged covert support to the separatist movement (according to the Pakistani Senate Committee) contributes to weakening the central government.
The stated purpose of US counter-terrorism is to provide covert support as well as as training to “Liberation Armies” ultimately with a view to destabilizing sovereign governments. In Kosovo, the training of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in the 1990s had been entrusted to a private mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), on contract to the Pentagon.
The BLA bears a canny resemblance to Kosovo’s KLA, which was financed by the drug trade and supported by the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND).
The BLA emerged shortly after the 1999 military coup. It has no tangible links to the Baloch resistance movement, which developed since the late 1940s. An aura of mystery surrounds the leadership of the BLA.
Washington favors the creation of a “Greater Balochistan” which would integrate the Baloch areas of Pakistan with those of Iran and possibly the Southern tip of Afghanistan, thereby leading to a process of political fracturing in both Iran and Pakistan.
“The US is using Balochi nationalism for staging an insurgency inside Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province. The ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan gives a useful political backdrop for the ascendancy of Balochi militancy” (See Global Research, 6 March 2007)](US ally Musharraf in a tangle over Iran - Global ResearchGlobal Research - Centre for Research on Globalization).
Military scholar Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters writing in the June 2006 issue of The Armed Forces Journal, suggests, in no uncertain terms that Pakistan should be broken up, leading to the formation of a separate country: “Greater Balochistan” or “Free Balochistan” (see Map below). The latter would incorporate the Pakistani and Iranian Baloch provinces into a single political entity.
In turn, according to Peters, Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) should be incorporated into Afghanistan “because of its linguistic and ethnic affinity”. This proposed fragmentation, which broadly reflects US foreign policy, would reduce Pakistani territory to approximately 50 percent of its present land area. (See map). Pakistan would also loose a large part of its coastline on the Arabian Sea.
Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO’s Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, have most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles. (See Mahdi D. Nazemroaya, Global Research, 18 November 2006)
“Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted, before he retired to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.” (Ibid)
It is worth noting that secessionist tendencies are not limited to Balochistan. There are separatist groups in Sindh province, which are largely based on opposition to the Punjabi-dominated military regime of General Pervez Musharraf (For Further details see Selig Harrisson, Le Monde diplomatique, October 2006)](Pakistan’s Baluch insurgency, by Selig S Harrison (Le Monde diplomatique - English edition, October 2006))
“Strong Economic Medicine”: Weakening Pakistan’s Central Government
Pakistan has a federal structure based on federal provincial transfers. Under a federal fiscal structure, the central government transfers financial resources to the provinces, with a view to supporting provincial based programs. When these transfers are frozen as occurred in Yugoslavia in January 1990, on orders of the IMF, the federal fiscal structure collapses:
"State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics [of the Yugoslav federation] went instead to service Belgrade’s debt … . The republics were largely left to their own devices. … The budget cuts requiring the redirection of federal revenues towards debt servicing, were conducive to the suspension of transfer payments by Belgrade to the governments of the Republics and Autonomous Provinces.
In one fell swoop, the reformers had engineered the final collapse of Yugoslavia’s federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, Global Research, Montreal, 2003, Chapter 17.)
It is by no means accidental that the 2005 National Intelligence Council- CIA report had predicted a “Yugoslav-like fate” for Pakistan pointing to the impacts of “economic mismanagement” as one of the causes of political break-up and balkanization.
“Economic mismanagement” is a term used by the Washington based international financial institutions to describe the chaos which results from not fully abiding by the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Program. In actual fact, the “economic mismanagement” and chaos is the outcome of IMF-World Bank prescriptions, which invariably trigger hyperinflation and precipitate indebted countries into extreme poverty.
Pakistan has been subjected to the same deadly IMF “economic medicine” as Yugoslavia: In 1999, in the immediate wake of the coup d’Etat which brought General Pervez Musharaf to the helm of the military government, an IMF economic package, which included currency devaluation and drastic austerity measures, was imposed on Pakistan. Pakistan’s external debt is of the order of US$40 billion. The IMF’s “debt reduction” under the package was conditional upon the sell-off to foreign capital of the most profitable State owned enterprises (including the oil and gas facilities in Balochistan) at rockbottom prices .
Musharaf’s Finance Minister was chosen by Wall Street, which is not an unusual practice. The military rulers appointed at Wall Street’s behest, a vice-president of Citigroup, Shaukat Aziz, who at the time was head of CitiGroup’s Global Private Banking. (See WSWS.org, 30 October 1999). CitiGroup is among the largest commercial foreign banking institutions in Pakistan.
There are obvious similarities in the nature of US covert intelligence operations applied in country after country in different parts of the so-called “developing World”. These covert operation, including the organisation of military coups, are often synchronized with the imposition of IMF-World Bank macro-economic reforms. In this regard, Yugoslavia’s federal fiscal structure collapsed in 1990 leading to mass poverty and heightened ethnic and social divisions. The US and NATO sponsored “civil war” launched in mid-1991 consisted in coveting Islamic groups as well as channeling covert support to separatist paramilitary armies in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia.
A similar “civil war” scenario has been envisaged for Pakistan by the National Intelligence Council and the CIA: From the point of view of US intelligence, which has a longstanding experience in abetting separatist “liberation armies”, “Greater Albania” is to Kosovo what “Greater Balochistan” is to Pakistan’s Southeastern Balochistan province. Similarly, the KLA is Washington’s chosen model, to be replicated in Balochistan province.
The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was not a haphazard event. The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of “chatter” among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place. (Larry Chin, Global Research, 29 December 2007)
Without evidence, quoting Pakistan government sources, the Western media in chorus has highlighted the role of Al-Qaeda, while also focusing on the the possible involvement of the ISI. What these interpretations do not mention is that the ISI continues to play a key role in overseeing Al Qaeda on behalf of US intelligence. The press reports fail to mention two important and well documented facts:
the ISI maintains close ties to the CIA. The ISI is virtually an appendage of the CIA.
Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA. The ISI provides covert support to Al Qaeda, acting on behalf of US intelligence.
The involvement of either Al Qaeda and/or the ISI would suggest that US intelligence was cognizant and/or implicated in the assassination plot.
Political Impasse
“Regime change” with a view to ensuring continuity under military rule is no longer the main thrust of US foreign policy. The regime of Pervez Musharraf cannot prevail. Washington’s foreign policy course is to actively promote the political fragmentation and balkanization of Pakistan as a nation.
A new political leadership is anticipated but in all likelihood it will take on a very different shape, in relation to previous US sponsored regimes. One can expect that Washington will push for a compliant political leadership, with no commitment to the national interest, a leadership which will serve US imperial interests, while concurrently contributing under the disguise of “decentralization”, to the weakening of the central government and the fracture of Pakistan’s fragile federal structure.
The political impasse is deliberate. It is part of an evolving US foreign policy agenda, which favors disruption and disarray in the structures of the Pakistani State. Indirect rule by the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus is to be replaced by more direct forms of US interference, including an expanded US military presence inside Pakistan.
This expanded military presence is also dictated by the Middle East-Central Asia geopolitical situation and Washington’s ongoing plans to extend the Middle East war to a much broader area.
The US has several military bases in Pakistan. It controls the country’s air space. According to a recent report: “U.S. Special Forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units” (William Arkin, Washington Post, December 2007).
The official justification and pretext for an increased military presence in Pakistan is to extend the “war on terrorism”. Concurrently, to justify its counterrorism program, Washington is also beefing up its covert support to the “terrorists.”
%between%
New map of Pakistan- NWFP
New map of Pakistan- NWFP
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/2483/nwfp.jpg
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/2483/nwfp.jpg
](http://img87.imageshack.us/i/nwfpnewmap.jpg/)
Re: Pakistan's Balkanization
This new map is looking very good option to me......
Re: Pakistan's Balkanization
is this thread not old one? i mean
is it allowed to start the thread with same topic time after time?
just wondering???!!!
Re: Pakistan's Balkanization
the only threat to stability of pakisn is ongoing rebellion in balochstan.. pashtuns i obeserved have no separative sentiments..
The government (as well as the people) should do what they can to undo the damage musharraf did in balochistan.
Re: Pakistan's Balkanization
Balkanization has a negative connotation to it. **
**
=4830&tx_ttnews[backPid]=167&no_cache=1"]Tribes and Rebels: The Players in the Balochistan Insurgency](http://www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news)
Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 7
April 3, 2008 05:02 PM Age: 2 yrs
Category: Terrorism Monitor, South Asia
By: [Muhammad Tahir](http://www.jamestown.org/articles-by-author/?no_cache=1&tx_cablanttnewsstaffrelation_pi1%5Bauthor%5D=402)
As the violence on Pakistan’s northwest frontier dominates the headlines, a lesser-known insurgency has gripped Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan. Bomb blasts and rocket attacks have become almost daily events in this region: A ten-week period in 2008 saw 76 insurgent-linked incidents reported, claiming the lives of 14 people and wounding 123 (South Asia Terrorism Portal: Balochistan Timeline 2008).
The troubled history of Balochistan dates back to the independence of Pakistan in 1947, beginning as a reaction to the annexation of the princely state of Qalat—later joined to three other states to form modern Balochistan—by Pakistani authorities in 1948. The annexation led to the first Baloch rebellion, which was swiftly put down. The security situation in the region remained fragile as rebellions erupted in 1958, 1973, and most recently in 2005.
Unlike previous anti-government insurrections, it is currently hard to pinpoint one person or group for orchestrating these incidents as there are today several groups in Balochistan potentially interested in challenging the government. The most immediate suspect is the Taliban, who are unhappy with Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States in its war on terror. The Taliban is active throughout Balochistan, particularly in Quetta and the Pashtun belt of the province, bordering with Afghanistan.
However, despite the Islamist presence, the prime motivators of the current insurgency remain Baloch nationalists, who live in the remote mountains of the province and believe they have been deprived of their rights and revenues from the considerable natural resources of their province. The nationalists believe these revenues are appropriated by the federal government with little return to the province (Ausaf, February 7, 2006).
The Baloch claim to have been native to the region since 1200 BC. Today, there are an estimated eight to nine million Baloch, living in Iran and Afghanistan as well as Pakistan. Their language consists of three main dialects: Balochi, Brahwi and Saraiki. The Balochistan province of Pakistan is one of the important Baloch settlements in the region, located at the eastern edge of the Iranian plateau and in the border region between southwest, central and south Asia. It is geographically the largest of the four provinces of Pakistan and composes 48 percent of the nation’s total territory.
Though the Baloch have a long history of mistrust of the central government of Pakistan, the federal government has its own interpretation of the current tensions, claiming that the hostile situation is provoked by Baloch nationalist leaders who consider large-scale initiatives to develop the region as a threat to their influence. President Pervez Musharraf even accused the leading tribal chiefs of the Baloch tribes of Bugti, Marri and Mingal of playing a direct role in the mounting insurgency (Daily Dunya, August 25, 2006; Dawn [Karachi], July 21, 2006).
The Baloch Tribes
• The Bugti tribe is one of approximately 130 Baloch tribes, with approximately 180,000 members dwelling mainly in the mountainous region of Dera Bugti. The tribe is divided into the sub-tribes of Rahija Bugti, Masori Bugti and Kalpar Bugti. For decades this tribe has been dominated by the Rahija Bugti family of Akbar Khan Bugti, a prominent Baloch nationalist. Before he took the chieftainship at 12 years of age in 1939, his father and grandfather were leaders of the tribe.
Unlike some other traditional Baloch tribal families, the Akbar Bugti’s family was considered moderate, as Akbar’s grandfather, Shahbaz Khan Bugti, was knighted by Britain, and Akbar Bugti himself was educated at Oxford and held several of the most powerful political positions in the country: governor, chief minister of Balochistan and federal interior minister. Until his death in 2006 in an air and ground assault by Pakistani security forces, Akbar Bugti was also chief of the Jamhuri Watan Party, established in 1990 (Bakhabar, August 27, 2006).
The issue of royalties and the ownership of gas fields—discovered in Akbar Bugti’s hometown of Dera Bugti and providing 39 percent of the country’s total requirement—remained the main cause of conflict between the tribal chief and the government. Pakistani officials claim that Akbar Bugti was paid around $4 million annually in royalties, but used these resources to blackmail the state and build a state-within-the-state (Khabrain, August 6, 2006). Islamabad’s response, such as supporting rival Kalpar Bugtis—who denounced Akbar Bugti’s chieftainship—and deploying troops in Dera Bugti, led Akbar Bugti and his followers to take arms against the government.
Akbar Bugti’s son, Nawabzada Talal Akbar Bugti, has rejected Prime Minister Gillani’s offer of negotiations conditional on laying down arms, saying that the Baloch people will only do so after they have achieved their rights and gained complete autonomy (ANI, April 3). Another son, Jamil Akbar Bugti, is currently fighting a freeze on his assets on the placement of his name on Pakistan’s exit control list (APP, March 28). A grandson, Nawab Sardar Brahamdagh Khan Bugti, is a major leader of Baloch militants.
• The Marri is another major Baloch tribe, based in the Kohlo district of Balochistan. Their chief, Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, was branded by President Musharraf as the “troublemaker Sardar” (tribal chief). The Marri are also divided into sub-tribes: the Gazni Marri, Bejarani Marri and Zarkon Marri, with Khair Bakhsh Marri belonging to the Gazni faction. The total population of the Marri tribe in Balochistan is reportedly around 98,000 and the nature of their relationship with the government is historically hostile—they have integrated little into the political structure of the country.
Unlike the leader of the Bugti tribe, the chieftain of the Marri is said to be closer to the communists, his sons graduating from schools in Moscow. Unable to withstand the Pakistani military, he and dozens of his followers took refuge in Kabul in 1979, remaining there until Russia withdrew. Khair Bakhsh Marri remains committed to an armed struggle for no less than full independence for Balochistan despite losing dozens of followers and relatives, most recently his son Balach Marri, who reportedly led a rebel group of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) (Balochistan Express, November 22, 2007).
• Ataullah Khan Mingal, leader of the Mingal tribe and another trouble-maker in Musharraf’s eyes, has played a dominant role in the political history of Baloch in the region. Unlike the other tribes, the Mingals have given little military resistance, although Ataullah never denounced the anti-government armed resistance.
The party in which he began his political career was the National Awami Party (NAP), led by Pashtun nationalist Wali Khan. Following the elections of May 1972, in which the party swept Balochistan, Atualla Mingal took power as the first chief minister of Balochistan. His role in the NAP-led London Plan—a secret meeting of Pashtun and Baloch nationalists in London, allegedly to prepare ground for declaring the independence of the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan—is the peak of his nationalistic political career, which led to his imprisonment in 1973. Subsequently the federal government began large-scale military operations in Balochistan to crush the nationalists (BBC Urdu, February 11, 2005).
Following his release from prison in the late 1970s, Atualla Mingal went into exile in London, returning in the mid-1990s to establish the Balochistan National Party (BNP), which brought his son Akhtar Mingal to power as chief minister of Balochistan. Mingal junior was jailed by Musharraf in September 2006 on charges of terrorism, due to his alleged involvement with the recent Baloch insurgency against the Pakistan government.
Tribal Leaders and Insurgent Groups
Since Musharraf came to power in 1999 there have been other goals besides independence that have drawn Baloch nationalists together. The most influential Baloch leaders—Akbar Khan Bugti, Khair Bakhsh Marri and Ataulla Khan Mingal—have had a variety of reasons to be suspicious of the government’s involvement in the area, which they viewed as an attempt to de-seat them from tribal chieftainship. Government moves have included state support to rival factions within the tribe and the deployment of military forces into the region (Bakhabar, August 27, 2006). Nevertheless, no tribal chief is ready to tie himself to insurgent groups publicly, though military sources remain skeptical that the authoritarian tribal chiefs are ignorant of who is firing rockets in their territory.
Currently at least five insurgent groups are publicly known in Balochistan, including the Baloch Republican Army (BRA), Baloch People’s Liberation Front (BPLF), Popular Front for Armed Resistance (PFAR), Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), and the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), the last two being the largest and most widely-known.
Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)
The BLA’s political stance is unequivocal: They stand for the sole goal of establishing an independent state for Baloch in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. The roots of the BLA date back to 1973, during the period of resistance against military operations in Balochistan and the discovery of the secret NAP-led London Plan.
Though the movement did not become public until 2000, some sources claim that the BLA was a Russian creation and came into being during the Afghan war, propped up as a reaction to Pakistan’s anti-Soviet involvement in Afghanistan (Dawn, July 15, 2006). Those supporting this claim point to the Moscow education of the alleged leader of BLA, Balach Marri, and the time he spent in Russia and Afghanistan.
The number of BLA activists is not known, but Pakistani military sources suggest that there are currently 10,000 Baloch insurgents involved in separatist activities, of which 3,000 are active in the insurgency. The government implicates India and Afghanistan in supporting the movement. President Musharraf reportedly presented a damning file regarding these allegations to President Karzai during his visit to Afghanistan in late February 2006 (The News [Islamabad], April 16, 2006). Despite these allegations and regardless of any possible outside support, the nature of the BLA’s activities has a local focus, with no foreign nationals being arrested with proven involvement in the Baloch insurgency.
Baloch Liberation Front (BLF)
The BLF, like the other Baloch insurgent groups, recently re-emerged as a potential threat in the region, claiming responsibility for deadly and frequent attacks on government installations. The BLF has so far escaped state accusations of organized terrorism, although its operations seem far bigger than those of other factions. The seventh article of its charter—from the pro-Marri nationalist website sarmachar.org—describes the struggle as a holy duty of all Baloch and asks for moral and financial, if not military, participation. The tenth article says: “The independent state is a matter of life and death for Baloch.” This organization, describing itself as an army of volunteers, also offers a complete program for a post-independence state, ranging from education and health policies to issues of foreign policy and internal and external security.
Some reports suggest that the BLF was established in Damascus in 1964 by Baloch nationalist Juma Khan Marri, who in the 1970s and 1980s was seen actively meeting with the communist regime in Moscow and Kabul. The BLF played an active role in the resistance against military operations in 1973, which continued until the collapse of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s regime. These clashes reportedly took the lives of 3,000 soldiers and around 5,000 Baloch rebels.
It is not clear on what scale the BLF currently operates and who leads it, though Akbar Bugti once described it as an autonomous organization that operated independently of tribal chiefs (Newsline, February 2005).
Conclusion
Regardless of the number of Baloch insurgents, the nature and scale of their activities since 2000 have marked their emergence as a major threat toward regional security, with Pakistan’s new government—elected on February 18—apparently recognizing this threat. Soon after the election, the victorious politicians began signalling the adoption of a softer approach to ease tension in Balochistan. The election was boycotted by the Baloch nationalist parties in response to ongoing military operations in Balochistan that began in 2005.
As a first step to change the tense atmosphere, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has hinted at accommodating some Baloch nationalists under its political umbrella and has accepted their demand to stop military operations in the region. The nomination of Aslam Raisani, an independently elected Baloch member of parliament, for the post of provisional chief minister in Balochistan by the PPP is another signal directed at winning hearts and minds in the province.
It is unclear whether these policies and the appointment of Raisani as a chief minister may bring a major breakthrough, but soon after his nomination, Raisani hinted at taking a completely different approach toward the crisis from the military-based policies of the Musharraf regime. Recently he was quoted by local media saying that the so-called rebel Baloch are his own brothers and if he could not make them agree to lay down their arms, he will step down (Daily Zamana, March 9).
The question of an independent state remains a tricky issue, but some moderate Baloch voices say that independence is no longer a priority for the Baloch majority, as they are struggling to survive due to the devastating effect of hostilities on the local economy. The economic structure of Balochistan is where the future of the region begins. Involving local Baloch in the large-scale economic projects proposed for the province will be a major step in winning their confidence; otherwise there is no reason to believe that the tense political situation in Balochistan will not deteriorate further.
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single - The Jamestown Foundation[tt_news]=4830&tx_ttnews[backPid]=167&no_cache=1
Speak for yourself & not for 170 million people of Pakistan. We need democracy, rule of law and the functioning institutions. And, the reason Pakistan is in this mess b/c of generals like Kayani, who looted the poor country, created jihadi monster, and destroyed institutions, started unnecessary wars, bankrupted & broke up the country.
One honest Guppy in hazar!
I personally think (as do a lot of other people), Western and other powers are working to bring about the "soft collapse" of Pakistan. This is because they consider Pakistan to be a dangerous and irresponsible state with WMDs and extremism.
"Hard collapse" is not an option because that is going to create a lot of mess.
Today, Pakistan is a lot weaker than it was a decade back. Institutional meltdown, economic collapse, population explosion, insurgencies, extremism, ethnic and political polarization, etc. are eating at the roots of this country. By the year 2015, it would be having 75 billions dollars external debt to pay...
Seems by 2020, Pakistan will exist but in a minimal form. Ultimately, Punjab, Sindh, and Karachi are going to constitute the Pakistani rump state. Baluchistan and NWFP will go their own way probably to become a part of West Asia.
This is what the great powers did with Yugoslavia, Othoman Empire, Austro-Hungrian Empire, Iraq etc.
I don't think so.
Any soft collapse will include a mass migration/expulsion of peoples.
There are more ethnic Baluchis outside of Baluchistan than inside. Do you think that this Pakistani "rump" state will tolerate their presence? I don't think so.
What about the Pakhtun population in Karachi? Surely there will be warfare there.
Also you can't just assume that Baluchis and Pakhtuns will be in the same boat. Although culturally and socially we might constitute a larger nation, more so than Punjabis, and Sindhis, I see additional conflicts ahead if independence was a reality.
I think that Pakistan has done a poor job with respect to Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan. Eventhough I support Pakistan to the fullest, there is that element of marginalization, questioning of patriotism, and the massive amounts of ethnic slurs/hatred that is freely espoused by many Pakistanis. The Baluchis are in much worse shape with their voices going unheard.
“Leaving his villa, I realized the development of Gwadar depended on how the government in Islamabad behaved. If it did not make a grand bargain with the Baluch, of a scope that would isolate embittered men like Marri and Nisar Baluch, then indeed the giant project near the Iranian border would become another lost city in the sand, beset by local rebellion. If the government did make such a bargain, allowing Baluchistan to emerge as a region-state under the larger rubric of a democratic and decentralized Pakistan, then the traditional fishing village that I saw could well give way to a Rotterdam of the Arabian Sea, its highways and pipelines stretching northward to Samarkand”.
Atlantic: Pakistan’s Fatal Shore - Council on Foreign Relations
I don't think so.
Any soft collapse will include a mass migration/expulsion of peoples.
There are more ethnic Baluchis outside of Baluchistan than inside. Do you think that this Pakistani "rump" state will tolerate their presence? I don't think so.
What about the Pakhtun population in Karachi? Surely there will be warfare there.
Also you can't just assume that Baluchis and Pakhtuns will be in the same boat. Although culturally and socially we might constitute a larger nation, more so than Punjabis, and Sindhis, I see additional conflicts ahead if independence was a reality.
I think that Pakistan has done a poor job with respect to Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan. Eventhough I support Pakistan to the fullest, there is that element of marginalization, questioning of patriotism, and the massive amounts of ethnic slurs/hatred that is freely espoused by many Pakistanis. The Baluchis are in much worse shape with their voices going unheard.
Ethnic minorities and diasporas have seldom come in the way of the aspirations of mainland communities. We have so many examples in history. There are as many Muslims in India (if not more) as in Pakistan but Pakistan came into being on the basis of a separate homeland for Mulims. Why not look at China (Chinese all the way upto Indonesia), Russia (Russian minorities throughout Central Asia), Tajakistan (Uzbaks), Uzbakistan (Tashkand is primarily a Tajak city), etc.
Yugoslavia itself is an example. There are serbs in Bosnia-Herzgovia, Bosnian Muslims in Serbia, Croatians in Serbia, Serbians in Croatia, etc.
In these circumstances, UN charter, international norms and conventions, and state responsibility come in play to protect minorities.
"Of course, the worst nightmare on the subcontinent is Pakistan, whose dysfunction is directly the result of its utter lack of geographic logic. The Indus should be a border of sorts, but Pakistan sits astride both its banks, just as the fertile and teeming Punjab plain is bisected by the India-Pakistan border. Only the Thar Desert and the swamps to its south act as natural frontiers between Pakistan and India. And though these are formidable barriers, they are insufficient to frame a state composed of disparate, geographically based, ethnic groups—Punjabis, Sindhis, Baluchis, and Pashtuns—for whom Islam has provided insufficient glue to hold them together. All the other groups in Pakistan hate the Punjabis and the army they control, just as the groups in the former Yugoslavia hated the Serbs and the army they controlled. Pakistan’s raison d’être is that it supposedly provides a homeland for subcontinental Muslims, but 154 million of them, almost the same number as the entire population of Pakistan, live over the border in India.
To the west, the crags and canyons of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, are utterly porous. Of all the times I crossed the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, I never did so legally. In reality, the two countries are inseparable. On both sides live the Pashtuns. The wide belt of territory between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Indus River is really Pashtunistan, an entity that threatens to emerge were Pakistan to fall apart. That would, in turn, lead to the dissolution of Afghanistan.
The Taliban constitute merely the latest incarnation of Pashtun nationalism. Indeed, much of the fighting in Afghanistan today occurs in Pashtunistan: southern and eastern Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. The north of Afghanistan, beyond the Hindu Kush, has seen less fighting and is in the midst of reconstruction and the forging of closer links to the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, inhabited by the same ethnic groups that populate northern Afghanistan. Here is the ultimate world of Mackinder, of mountains and men, where the facts of geography are asserted daily, to the chagrin of U.S.-led forces—and of India, whose own destiny and borders are hostage to what plays out in the vicinity of the 20,000-foot wall of the Hindu Kush."
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4862&print=1
Ethnic minorities and diasporas have seldom come in the way of the aspirations of mainland communities. We have so many examples in history. There are as many Muslims in India (if not more) as in Pakistan but Pakistan came into being on the basis of a separate homeland for Mulims. Why not look at China (Chinese all the way upto Indonesia), Russia (Russian minorities throughout Central Asia), Tajakistan (Uzbaks), Uzbakistan (Tashkand is primarily a Tajak city), etc.
Actually if you look at the creation of Pakistan, it was an ethno-religious endeavor instead of purely religious one. The far Northwest and the Bengal East were considered to be areas of high Muslim concentration. No one expected Kerala's Muslims to be split and join Pakistan. Regardless you can not deny the massive (one of the largest) human migrations in the history occurred with the partition. Also there are not as many nor were there ever as many Muslims in India as Pakistan. Before '71 East + West Pakistan far exceeded the # of Muslims in India and afterwards, Pakistan continued to hold a slim lead over Indian Muslims (which has been widening).
Lets talk China: Are aware of their hated status in Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries where the diaspora exists? Outright discrimination, ethnic violence and state sponsored anti-Chinese policies are the norm. They may exist but they are barely tolerated.
Russian minorities are clearly not well integrated except for places liek Kazakhistan. This also has to do with Russia being the "dominant" nation in teh region. A Pakhtun-Baluch state would hardly be "dominant" enough to protect its minorities in the rump of Pakistan. Sindhis+Punjabis+Urdu Speakers would outnumber us at least 4:1. Even if Afghanistan + Baluchistan va Seistan are throwm in the mix, there is no comparison. The Punjabi nation alone would exceed those numbers.
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Yugoslavia itself is an example. There are serbs in Bosnia-Herzgovia, Bosnian Muslims in Serbia, Croatians in Serbia, Serbians in Croatia, etc.**
That is a great example of bloodshed. Bosnia having thousands of Muslims, Croats butchered (even now, Bosnia is barely one nation), Muslims in Serbia = Kosovo, Croatians in Serbia are miniscule, and the same goes for Serbians in Croatia. Basically the Yugoslav Muslims and Croats were both victims of Serbian massacres and displacement. The break up of Yugoslavia was a horrible mistake where these smaller formerly peaceful groups broke out in warring factions and massive conflicts that threatened the entire region. In no way was this a "positive" experience for the Croats, Muslims, and Serbs. Maybe the Slovenes came out well.
In these circumstances, UN charter, international norms, and state responsibility come in play to protect minorities.
I would rather give up my dignity than to allow the UN charter, international norms to ensure the safety of my ethnic kin. There is no way Pakhtuns in Karachi would be safe under any Pakistani state, same would apply to Baluchis in Sind and Punjab. That is not a gamble that I or any rational person is willing to take. After the proven experiences of the India-Pakistan partition.
The best bet for Pakistan is autonomy as devised by the Lahore Declaration and reaffirmed by the 1973 Constitution where the Centre must devolve the power to the privincial level, with concurrent rights and responsibilities within the Federation. For too long, Pakistan has been politically dominated by the pronvincial elites of Sindh and Punjab with the Western provinces playing an acillary role - this must change.
Pak-One, my point was, ethnic /religious minorities exist everywhere but that has never blocked the creation of new states despite the risk and actual occurance of bloodshed. Yugoslavia is an example as many other examples in history. There is a sizeable Arab minority in Iran but still there are Arab countries.
And I think you are becoming somewhat cocksure to make that claim that it was not a positive development for croatians, Muslims, Slovanians, etc. How can you make such a claim on behalf of these groups. I have met many Croatians, Slovanians, etc. and they are very happy now that they are living in their own states.
Existance of minorities doesn't mean all nations/ethnic groups are lumped togethor in one super state to avoid mistreatment of minorities. That is illogical and irrational.
The right answer is international conventions, UN charter, state responsibility, etc.
Besides, such developments are not in our control and geopolitical issues are not decided according to our wishes. Great power politics, international system, the attitude and strength of your own state, etc. play a lot of role.
**Pak-One, my point was, ethnic /religious minorities exist everywhere but that has never blocked the creation of new states despite the risk and actual occurance of bloodshed. Yugoslavia is an example as many other examples in history. There is a sizeable Arab minority in Iran but still there are Arab countries.
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I’m not denying that it isn’t possible. The associated violence and problems that arise can not be discounted. Can you (or anyone) provide guarantees of the safety of the minorities? Can you or anyone guarantee that forced expilsions will not occur? Any change to Pakistan’s geography will be met with extreme violence, that is the ONLY guarantee so far.
And I think you are becoming somewhat cocksure to make that claim that it was not a positive development for croatians, Muslims, Slovanians, etc. How can you make such a claim on behalf of these groups. I have met many Croatians, Slovanians, etc. and they are very happy now that they are living in their own states.
It was not a net positive development if you keep in mind the economic losses, ethnic violence and even the current situation. Nationalism for the sake of independence is not enough there must be compelling reasons behind it.
If people didn’t miss Yugoslavia, the word Yugonostalgia would not exist:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/world/europe/27iht-nostalgia.4.9533599.html
As for the people you have met, what can I say? I have met a Londoner calling for independence of his city from the UK.
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Existance of minorities doesn’t mean all nations/ethnic groups are lumped togethor in one super state to avoid mistreatment of minorities. That is illogical and irrational.**
I would never forward that claim. Nation-States arise due to a shared experiences and are built upon a series national myths. Unless there are reasonable, historical and compelling reasons, the validity of nation-states is called into question. In regards to the minority question, I am trying to bring to your attention that these breaks are never clean and they WILL cause violence and suffering. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
**The right answer is international conventions, UN charter, state responsibility, etc.
The words “internal domestic matters” hold greater resonance than the UN Charter, international conventions etc. Besides any such collapse would come during crisis where “all acts whether of violence or forced expulsion can be expected.” We have seen this in the Balkans, Middle East and India. So you’re expectations of international intervention are not based on historical precedence.
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Besides, such developments are not in our control and geopolitical issues are not decided according to our wishes. Great power politics, international system, the attitude and strength of your own state, etc. play a lot of role.
True. Expect things to get ugly if such an event were to occur. I don’t rely on hypothetical or external interventions - I work with what is front of me and try bring change within the present setup and move it towards the true federation model.
