Rohrabacher: Why I Support Baluchistan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-i-support-baluchistan/2012/04/06/gIQAQ17Z0S_story.html

Some excerpts from the Honorable Rohrabacher's article:

Why I support Baluchistan

By Dana Rohrabacher,

There has been quite a stir since I introduced a resolution this year calling for recognition of the right to self-determination by the people of Baluchistan…

Some allege that my willingness to raise this subject has harmed U.S.-Pakistan relations…Pakistan’s Foreign Office twice summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires in Islamabad to protest the resolution…Well, to paraphrase Shakespeare, methinks Islamabad doth protest too much. In fact, Pakistani elites are upset not about lies but the truth.

Baluchistan is Pakistan’s largest province in area and lies in the south, near Iran and Afghanistan. It is replete with natural resources and treated like a colonial possession. Its natural gas, gold, uranium and copper are exploited for the benefit of the ruling elite in Islamabad; meanwhile, the Baluch people remain desperately poor.

This is consistent with my commitment to support freedom and people’s right to control their own destiny in accordance with their cultural values and sense of identity. There are many good people in Pakistan who understand that the abuse of human rights by security forces in Baluchistan is a stain on the honor of their country. Such heavy-handed oppression is also counterproductive. It drives people away.

We should not remain a silent partner to a Pakistani government that engages in monstrous crimes against its people and has been an accomplice to terrorist attacks on Americans, including those of Sept. 11, 2001. The real irritant to U.S.-Pakistan relations is not my resolution but the policies of the Islamabad government and military.

Consider the plight of Shakeel Afridi, the Pakistani physician who helped lead our Navy SEALs to Osama bin Laden. He has been arrested and threatened with a charge of treason. An inquiry commission deemed him a “national criminal” because he helped the United States put an end to the terrorist who plotted the deaths of thousands of Americans.

Islamabad has not only sheltered al-Qaeda but also provided a base of operations for the Taliban, who continue to kill Americans. With one hand officials thumb their noses at us and with the other hand they grab billions in our foreign aid. It is time Washington stopped aiding Pakistan and developed a closer friendship with India and, perhaps, Baluchistan.

I make no apology for submitting a resolution championing the oppressed people of Baluchistan in their dealings with a Pakistani government that has betrayed our trust.

Pakistani Army's Business as Usual: Assassination of Bugti's Grand Daughter

EXCERPT:
The violence took a new turn in January (2012) when Nawab Bugti’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter were intercepted driving home from a wedding in Karachi. The gunmen first shot the 13-year-old great-granddaughter, then dragged her mother out and shot her in the face. They left her expensive jewellery. The family believes this was a hit ordered by Pakistani intelligence.

http://www.economist.com/node/21552248

Balochistan

“We only receive back the bodies”

Murder and mayhem in an ugly but little-known Pakistani conflict

Apr 7th 2012 | KILLI KHURASAN AND QUETTA | from the print edition

ZULFIKAR LANGAU was 17 when he ran away “to the mountains”, a euphemism for joining independence-seeking insurgents in Balochistan, a vast, thinly populated province of deserts and mountains in the west of Pakistan. The death of a tribal chief, Nawab Akbar Bugti, in a cave during a clash with the Pakistani army in 2006, transformed Zulfikar’s mind, says his family. That event ignited the latest bloody phase of Balochistan’s on-off revolt against Pakistan, which has seen hundreds of mutilated bodies dumped on roadsides, thousands of people go missing and revenge killings by security forces and by competing tribal and religious factions. 

Balochistan, with 9m out of Pakistan’s 180m people, covers 44% the country’s territory and contains its most valuable deposits of gas, copper, iron ore and oil. It has a new deepwater port, Gwadar, and provides a route for trade and pipelines to Central Asia. Yet Balochistan is the country’s most impoverished province. The Baloch are convinced that they are being exploited to death by the country’s dominant ethnic group, the Punjabis. Balochistan was semi-independent under the British Raj, and some Baloch believe it was forcibly annexed in 1948, sparking the first of five revolts led by tribal chieftains.

 The current crisis is taking on wider ramifications.

 In February an American congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, submitted a resolution to Congress calling for “self-determination” for Balochistan. The proposal—not voted on—caused uproar in Pakistan, where the government has long charged that India supports Baloch separatists, via its consulates in Afghanistan. A sense of “great game” intrigue hangs over the province. Quetta is known as the hideout of the Afghan Taliban’s leadership council, the Quetta Shura. Iran and Afghanistan also have Baloch populations who would surely be affected if the situation in Balochistan worsened further. There is even talk about a new round of Pakistani disintegration, comparable to the break-up in 1971, when subjugated East Pakistan split away to become Bangladesh.

Since July 2010 over 300 battered corpses have been flung on roadsides and in remote areas across the province. Baloch activists and human-rights organisations believe these men, insurgents and activists, were victims of a “kill and dump” policy run by the Frontier Corps (FC), a paramilitary force that works with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency. With burn marks, broken limbs, nails pulled out, and sometimes with holes drilled in their heads, the bodies are discarded, becoming food for dogs. The security forces deny any connection to the corpses. No one has been held responsible.

Even more people simply go missing. Dr Deen Mohammad, who worked at a government hospital in the central Khuzdar district, was abducted from the hospital grounds one night in June 2009. He was a senior member of the Baloch National Movement, a political organisation—and a peaceful one, says his 19-year-old daughter, Sheeri. “We’ve had no news,” she says. “With all the Baloch brothers who’ve been taken, we only receive back the bodies.”

According to the Voice for Missing Baloch, a campaign group, 8,000 people have disappeared over the past nine years.

The violence took a new turn in January  (2012) when Nawab Bugti’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter were intercepted driving home from a wedding in Karachi. The gunmen first shot the 13-year-old great-granddaughter, then dragged her mother out and shot her in the face. They left her expensive jewellery. The family believes this was a hit ordered by Pakistani intelligence.

In March Lashkari Raisani, the brother of the province’s chief minister, resigned from the Senate, Pakistan’s upper house of parliament, complaining that politicians in Quetta and Islamabad were “not serious” about Balochistan. “We are going toward the point of no return,” he warns.