| Issue 22 Vol I, August 31, 2006 | Archive |
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Pakistan on the Brink
It opens not only old wounds, but exposes the Musharraf regime that there was a vast difference between its precepts and practices. It has been described by a vast majority of people and the Pakistani politicians including some from the ruling party and the media as the most tragic, cruel and foolish military action against an 80 year old Baloch tribal leader who was highly educated and articulate leader. Nawab Bugti has been a chief minister, a governor and lawmaker in Pakistan and was uncompromising as far interests of his tribe or of Balochistan were concerned. Politically, this blunder is a strange way to deal with the demands of the people of Balochistan and for that matter of Sindh and Wazirstan, the areas deprived of any development over the years. These are the poorest areas, exploited by the rich landlords and government including its military.
Mainstream popular English newspaper the Dawn found the situation very disturbing as did the majority of the law makers. Dawn wrote," Every sensible person should be filled with deep foreboding at this critical development. The repercussions may not be immediately visible but they will appear in time, as our troubled political history has shown whenever force has been employed to solve a political problem. Nawab Bugti was a headstrong, politically erratic person and a tribal Sardar to the core of his being, with all the characteristic harshness and also some of its paternalistic mellowness…”
As many
public men in Pakistan described a living Bugti was less dangerous than a
dead one. His death is sure to ignite rebellions all across Balochistan,
Sindh and Wazirstan and does not augur well as far as Indo-Pakistan peace
process is concerned. It is already under strain. If the army rule
remains for another couple of years, the His close aides and ministers have backed out and now new theories are being floated that the death as an accident and what not. The body recovered from the debris of the cave after seven days under intense public pressure was neither handed over to his next of the kin nor to his tribe. Instead the military without showing it to anyone except to one maulivi buried it. Even media persons present at the graveyard were not shown the body. Public protests on September one through out Pakistan had just demand the dictator must relinquish and multiparty democracy restored. How America which supports gen. Musharraf supports the military regime to the hilt and is all the time pushing its armed forces around the world to establish democracy and liberty react would see in coming days. The World can watch a different Pakistan in the making in the coming years. |
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NAWAB
Akbar Khan Bugti met a violent death at the hands of the Pakistan army in a
targeted military operation on August 26, 2006 in a mountain cave. This has
given Balochistan the martyr that it needed at this hour to rally people
round the nationalist movement and inject fresh vigour into it. Ironically,
in his death Bugti's contribution to Baloch nationalism may prove to be
greater than his role in life. It could also undo what Pakistan's
all-powerful President and army Chief Pervez Musharraf has been claiming; a
united developed nation.
Balochistan
is the largest province, rich in mineral wealth and natural gas and yet the
poorest. It has 70 per cent population below the poverty line and
illiterate. People who live there have accepted no one as their lord
for the past two centuries and the government instead of addressing their
grievances first forced them to take arms and then started eliminating them
through cluster bombs.
Bugti
also articulated the nationalist aspirations of the people of his province
and was respected by almost every ethnic group there. His killing could
easily lead to a recrudescence of nationalist sentiment, not merely in
Balochistan but also in Sindh, and the acts of sabotage in Balochistan which
appeared to be waning may return in a more violent form. Indeed, it is
mystifying why this operation, reminiscent of the targeted attacks carried
out against Al Qaeda suspects, was carried out.