Pakistan’s Balochistan Problem: An Insurgency’s Rebirth

[Valin]

World Affairs:

 

Aurangzaib Alamgir

Nov./Dec. 2012

 

Early in 2012, a small group of US congressmen looking for alternatives to the Obama administration’s AfPak policy made recommendations for two changes in the region. The first, that instead of fantasizing about incorporating the Taliban into the Afghan political system the United States ought to rearm the Northern Alliance, had been discussed previously. The second recommendation was more novel and controversial: instead of trying to normalize relations with Pakistan’s corrupt government and hostile military, the US ought to support the creation of a separate state of Balochistan in the southern part of Pakistan. US Representatives Dana Rohrabacher, Louie Gohmert, and Steve King went so far as to introduce a bill stating that the “Baloch nation” had a historic right to self-determination and called for Congress to recognize Baloch independence.

 

Although the congressmen involved are not seen as influential members of the foreign affairs establishment, the idea of dismembering the largest of Pakistan’s four provinces, consisting of nearly half of the country’s land mass and having a profound strategic importance because of a shared border with Afghanistan on the north, threw Balochistan into the US foreign-policy calculus almost overnight. Journalists and think tanks began to examine the Baloch nationalist movement and its heterodox idea that because ethnic identity trumps religious identity Muslim Pakistan is therefore not a nation. The controversy that has divided leaders of the Baloch nationalist movement—greater autonomy versus outright succession from Pakistan—began to receive new scrutiny. As with other sudden policy enthusiasms, however, the subject quickly got ahead of itself, racing past the deeper understanding of Balochistan’s history and its place in Pakistani nationhood that is required to bring the independence movement into clear focus and understand the implications of its demands.

 

Among the ancient inhabitants of the central Caspian region, the Balochs were an independent tribal union until the nineteenth century. In 1893, the British drew the Durand Line, which divided British India and Afghanistan, as well as the Pashtun and the Baloch tribes on both sides of the new border. Indian independence in 1947 gave the tribes the choice of joining either Pakistan or India. Baloch leaders agitated for a third way: independence. Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, believed that Balochistan would not be able to survive on its own and forced it to join Pakistan. One of the Baloch leaders at that time, Suleiman Khan, later said: “We had no desire to be part of Pakistan but we were ignored and the agreement was eventually forced down our throats. Till the very last moment, they kept us in the dark. All the time we were assured that the Baluch would keep their independent state but instead we were sold down the river.”

 

(Snip)