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Foreign hand in Balochistan?

Dr Farrukh Saleem

India on the east, China in the north and Iran and Afghanistan on the west. Which foreign hand has an interest in destabilising Balochistan? Is Iran
arming Baloch insurgents? Here are a few facts: Sistan va Baluchestan, with an area of 187,502 kilometres, is the third largest province in Iran.
Sistan va Baluchestan has a population of nearly two million and occupies 11.4 per cent of Iranian territory. Will Iran prop up Baloch nationalism in
Pakistan at the risk of encouraging nationalist fervour in Iranian Balochistan? As a matter of record, the Iranian Air Force actually helped us quell
the 'rebellion' during the 70s (by loaning us their helicopters). Furthermore, Iran now has an economic interest in the stability of Pakistan's
Balochistan or her dream of selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of natural gas will evaporate in thin air.

Is Afghanistan arming Baloch insurgents? Here are a few facts: Lt General David Barno is the top commander of American forces in Afghanistan.
The US has the Bagram Air Base (Parvan, Charikar), Kandahar Air Base, Khost Airbase (Paktia) and Mazar-e-Sharif Airbase. There is a large
contingent of US National Guard soldiers embedded with Afghan units, and Lt General David Barno is training a 70,000 strong Afghan government
force. Can the state of Afghanistan arm Baloch separatists without the explicit authorisation of Lt General David Barno? Then there is Hamid
Karzai, so deeply engulfed in troubles of his own neither interested nor capable of arming Baloch insurgents.

Is America arming Baloch insurgents? Right now, a stable Pakistan is in America's best strategic interest. Bush needs Musharraf to be focused
on Bush's 'war on terror' rather than a powerful distraction elsewhere. And, if Uncle Sam wanted Baloch insurgents to win there is little we can do
anyway.

Is al-Qaeda arming Baloch insurgents? Baloch nationalists are secular al-Qaeda is not; the two have very different agendas and goals.

Is China arming Baloch insurgents? Here are a few facts: The total cost of the Gwadar Port Project is estimated at $1.6 billion. In the first phase,
China has put in $198 million and Pakistan $50 million. Additionally, China is investing $200 million toward the building of a coastal highway.
Gwadar is China's strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea. An instable Balochistan is not in China's interest.

Finally, is India arming Baloch insurgents? The only way that India can arm Baloch insurgents is either through Iran or through Afghanistan.
Clearly, India cannot support Baloch insurgents through Iran without the explicit permission of the supreme leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei. Again,
Indian cannot arm Baloch insurgents through Afghanistan without the explicit permission of Lt General David Barno. Additionally, an instable
Balochistan jeopardises India's pipeline dreams and is not in India's long-term economic interests.

There is little doubt that arms are flowing into Pakistan's Balochistan both through Iran and Afghanistan. That, however, in no way means that the
states of Iran or Afghanistan are directly involved. Surely, the entire region has long been flooded with Kalashnikovs, heavy machine guns, rocket
propelled grenades, landmines and mortars. Every kind of killing machine is available to anyone who is willing to pay the price, and then
Pakistan's border with Afghanistan is a rugged 2,430 kilometres long, the one with Iran is 909 kilometres (even America has failed to block the
supply of arms to Iraqi 'insurgents').

"We don't face any external threat," said General Musharraf (Agence France-Presse; December 12, 2003). To be certain, the real threat in
Balochistan is from DDP; deprivation, discrimination and poverty. According to a recent estimate, "89 per cent of rural Balochistan is in high
deprivation areas." Gas from Sui (Balochistan), for instance, is valued at Rs47 per million BTU, Qadirpur (Sindh) at Rs145 per million BTU and
from Ratana (Punjab) at Rs217 per million BTU. Looking at poverty, the incidence of poverty in Balochistan is 50 per cent of the population, twice
that of Punjab (the literacy rate of females in Balochistan is at 16 per cent, the lowest in Pakistan and worse than what it is in Ethiopia).

The very structure of the state of Pakistan is such that authority is extremely centralised, and the needs of large segments of Pakistani population
outside the power structure are not responded to until they go violent. When Balochistan goes violent, gunship helicopters with automatic cannons
are sent in. There is no military solution to deprivation, discrimination and poverty.

The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist

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