Positions based on 'valid' reasons
The opposition is surplus to general requirement when treasury members are there to make the necessary noises
By Asha'ar Rehman
In our society -- tribal or otherwise -- there can be no bigger affront to someone than making that someone the butt of jokes posthumously. But since the old and the rugged must give way to a new civilised code, there is no dearth of this black humour being practised at the expense of Akbar Bugti, good or bad, patriotic or not, a rebel or a renegade, dead, and according to local custom, deserving of silence at least. Especially since 'he was not a target' of guns but just an absconder.

profile
From the mainstream to the margins
Bugti belongs to the category of Pakistani politicians who fell foul of the real masters and paid a heavy price for that
By Adnan Rehmat
The confident upright posture and the welcoming outstretched hand firmly clasping Jinnah's. This is a picture worth a thousand words. Many would give their right arm to be in his place. But only in the picture dating back to 1947, not in a dark cave in the middle of nowhere in 2006 when the state might comes bearing down on you for all your sins of omission and commission, actual or perceived.

Bodypolitic
Is political outrage over Bugti's killing an opportunistic venting of anti-government ire?
By Muhammad Ejaz Khan
The killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, one of the most powerful tribal chiefs in Balochistan, has created an uninterrupted wave of anguish among the political circles and uncertainty in the national political scenario. Though one of the most important immediate outcomes of the killing has been its almost unanimous condemnation by all the religious and political parties of the country, the mysterious circumstances of the incident will certainly keep casting a long shadow of uncertainty on the future political scene. Already Quetta and some other parts of Balochistan have witnessed riots since the night of August 26 when the news of the killing first came out.

There is no dispute on the need to eliminate danger. The disagreement is on as to what constitutes danger and how it is to be eliminated. Pakistan should not be seeking to enrol itself in a refresher course on ways to deal with this problem. It has had more than its share of violent endings that spawn prolonged periods of unrest. It should, by now, be able to discard methods that backfire.

The premise has to be questioned. There is no shortage of historical evidence where a man has come to personify a struggle, but was Akbar Bugti that man? Does his exit bring the curtain down on the Baloch saga? Far from it, the state may have further complicated the situation. It could have done better than providing an already hurt province with a martyr, even if an analyst was to view it coldly, excluding the legal and moral sides.

A state is no sardar and it must have the ability to look at things outside the enemy context. Guns are never a good advertisement for reform whoever holds them and good intentions have to be supported by an open mind. The end result counts, but for the fact that there is no end result in politics. It is a never ending process. While those in charge of affairs in Islamabad may want to wrap up things in a hurry, so long as they hear out the local guides patiently, they may end up going around in circles forever. There is no use wishing that they had done it earlier. If only they could come down from their high pedestal and listen now.

The details of Akbar Bugti's killing may forever remain shrouded in mystery but some of the factors behind it will not. Though it's hard to pinpoint what exactly caused the latest confrontation between him and the state, any number of possible explanations will find it hard to exclude the absence of a democratic federal system of governance in Pakistan.

Only days before Bugti's murder, the government announced the abolition of tribal system in the Bugti area backing it up with 'harrowing' tales of how horribly the Bugti tribal chief treated his subjects. Sounds radically progressive for a state known for its backward looking conservatism, clannish outlook and feudal ways of treating its citizens. Even if we take the official claims on their face value, some troubling questions remain unanswered: Will the government also abolish the tribal system in the territories of tribal chiefs holding official portfolios as provincial ministers, federal ministers and even chief minister? Are the pro-government chiefs treating their subjects any differently?

The answers are as obvious as the gaping holes in the official theories about Bugti's death. What's not clear is whether other Baloch tribes will require an armed conflict between their chiefs and the state to move into a new era of peace, prosperity and personal dignity which is now being promised to the Bugtis, without a brutal chief lording over them.

It's here that the failure of a polity comes in as a decisive factor in delivering the goods to the society. Sane societies resolve their problems through dialogues, constitutional conventions and legal probity by ensuring that everyone at the end of the day gets a fair deal. Only societies bent upon destroying themselves from within either try to suppress the conflicts of interests between various groups or attempt to deal with them through violent means. Even the American civil war did not end with the defeat of one party: It needed a constitutional convention and long period of impartial and universal application of constitutional covenants to heal the wounds.

Sadly for Pakistan, the conflict goes on indefinitely without any likelihood of their constitutional/political resolution taking place any time soon. Without having to go into the detail of how the country has been moving in circles since its independence in terms of creating a democratic, federal system of governance, even a cursory look at history will show how Balochistan has been subjected to a lot of violence during the last six decades. That individuals, tribes and even political groups have stood up in arms for one reason or the other against the central government in almost every decade since 1947 shows how grave the problem and how ham-handed the official response to it.

In dealing with the constituent units the state and the central government have always tilted towards centralisation, though some occasional attempts like the 1973 Constitution were made in earnest to redress the balance in province's favour. Again, taking Balochistan as an instance, the state did not allow the province to accede to Pakistan on its own terms.

In any federal system worth the name, the federating units bargain their coming together based on their relative weaknesses and strengths. The central government in Pakistan from the outset told the constituent units of the country to come together unconditionally. Where people wanted to have it otherwise, they were either sidelined through political means (via a referendum in the Frontier) or annexed through bribery, cooption and even armed confrontation (as is the case with various princely states that fell within in Pakistani territory in 1947). So, there was no constitutional bargain to begin with among the federating units as well as between the centre and the federating units.

In fact, those who asked for a bargain were ostracised as mischief-mongers, wanting to jeopardise the unity of the nascent nation by raising issues other than its sole raison d' etre -- religion. Speaking of provincial autonomy, ethnic/cultural identity and political/democratic rights was seen as sabotaging the spirit of national unity -- couched solely in religious terminology.

In this context, it was easy for the central government and the state to go about doing what it liked and how it pleased. Balochistan was the easiest to target. Divided into a number of tribal fiefs and what was once called British Balochistan, the region was not suitable for a concerted campaign against the aggressively unifying tactics of the central government. The centre first coaxed, coopted and even forcibly annexed all the various Baloch princely states like Kalat, Kharan, Makran and Lasbella and then merged them with the British Balochistan. But it was left in a constitutional limbo for a very long time. It was only in 1970 that it became a full-fledged province. Before that it was first governed by a chief commissioner appointed by and answerable only to the central government and then as part of the West Pakistan one unit it was governed by a governor sitting in Lahore and acting no more than as a repressive arm of the centre, at least for the smaller regions in one unit.

The creation of and existence of one unit, too, was an expression of the centre's unifying, centralising instinct beyond Balochistan. The areas that became parts of one unit were in it before they could even think of bargaining for terms and conditions of their entry. It was but a logical extension of the state's efforts at ensuring national unity and territorial integrity of the country through decree, instead of letting it emerge as the result of conscious debate, understanding and bargaining by the people of the country.

In the absence of an agreement on entry, exit too needed something other than dialogue, accords and conventions. Those pushed into creating one unit had only one exit option, to revolt against it. This was indeed true for the constituent units of the federation as a whole, as shown by the creation of Bangladesh in such an unmistakably bloody way.

Exit is an extreme step, though, coming many stages after bargaining, coming together and accommodation. Ideally it should be resorted to after accommodation fails and lines of communication break up for creating a new bargain to arrive at fresh rules for holding together.

In Balochistan's case, exit -- or the threat of it -- has been the way the Baloch could extract any concessions for themselves. But the problem with these concessions is that they are not institutionalised. Not set in stone through transparent, public and enforceable contacts, they are given away more like a handout than as a right. Also, they encourage individuals to deal directly with the level of the state that can bestow them, bypassing all the intervening local, district and provincial governments. This is what was the case of natural gas royalties being paid by a state-owned company to a tribal chief by the name of Akbar Bugti. So many others like him in Balochistan may have similar arrangements with other state/federal agencies.

This equation between strong individuals and the central government is also evident in the system of federal appointments. In the absence of an institutionalised mechanism to ensure that all constituent parts of the state are fairly represented in the federation, the central government resorts to a tokenism which benefits individuals, willing to be coopted and shown as symbols of smaller provinces' presence in the federal system. The appointments of Sindhis and Baloch as prime ministers should be seen in this context rather than as a way to constitutionally address the problems of representation. Sometimes, even this tokenism backfires just because of being region-specific and not community-specific.

There must be hundreds of people in bureaucracy who entered the civil service on Balochistan's quota though in reality their association with that province does not go beyond a posting of their parents there at the time of their birth.

The system also encourages individuals to keep themselves ahead of the pack, a cut above the rest and be much more equal than all those under their tribal or feudal stewards. This explains why Bugti was so brutal and why he treated his people as worthless serfs.

The fact that tribal chiefs exist in a 21st century Pakistan has more to do with how the state and the central government prop them up because they serve the purpose of skirting a much-needed covenant between the federal authorities and the provincial people. For a federal government seeking to cut a deal -- that too, a secret, uneven one -- it is much easier to deal with individuals, no matter how powerful, than having to satisfy millions of voters or their popularly elected representatives always fearing a recall by an ever watchful electorate.

Even if the state is seen sincerely wanting to put an end to the rule of tribal chiefs in Balochistan because they hamper the political empowerment, social uplift and economic development of their subjects, its claims should be taken with a pinch of salt. Hadn't the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto announced an end to tribal system in Balochistan amid an earlier military operation in the province? If yes, then the presence of Baloch chiefs, not just as the heads of their tribes but also as heads of political parties and provincial governments, goes a long way to expose the inefficiency of the state and the weakness of its writ.

In our society -- tribal or otherwise -- there can be no bigger affront to someone than making that someone the butt of jokes posthumously. But since the old and the rugged must give way to a new civilised code, there is no dearth of this black humour being practised at the expense of Akbar Bugti, good or bad, patriotic or not, a rebel or a renegade, dead, and according to local custom, deserving of silence at least. Especially since 'he was not a target' of guns but just an absconder.

Bugti did not just kill, he also saved lives. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain remembers Akbar Bugti as the man who had saved his father from the callous clutches of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, according to a report that quotes his heir, was on the hit-list of Z A Bhutto and Bugti was selected to act as the exterminator in the murder scheme. The Baloch refused to carry out orders and in fact came to Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi's rescue. To this day the Chaudhry family feels indebted to him for that favour.

Since 'God had willed' Bugti to be killed in the manner he was, the current Chaudhry patriarch doesn't or cannot commit himself to a vision of the future -- just how grave the consequences could be for politics in Balochistan and indeed the whole of Pakistan. Instead he finds emotional refuge in a past where friends were able to save friends and maybe wonder how the times have changed. He can only commit himself to an attempt at ensuring that Bugti's body is handed over to his family for burial.

That would be a huge favour in return for Bugti's defiance against ZAB three decades ago. Short of that Chaudhry Shujaat can find contentment in the fact that he had done whatever was within his power to save Bugti while he acted as an emissary of the president (or was it so?) in the president's pursuit of a solution to the Balochistan problem.

It was Shujaat Hussain, who, in the company of Mushahid Hussain, shuttled between Quetta and Islamabad soliciting an agreement between the sardars and the President. The two leaders who represent the regime in a none too indirect way by virtue of their positions in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, were the epitome of the changing times vis Punjab and the Establishment when a couple of years ago they came up with a list of 30-odd points on which Islamabad and the sardars were close to an agreement. Only a few points divided the two parties, it was then said -- it is presumed that at that moment in time the sardars including Akbar Bugti were considered genuine stake-holders in Balochistan, or there would have been no list of points worthy of making it to the Presidency. The stalemate lasted for what seemed an eternity, and culminated not in an accord but in rhetoric based on the great favours the federation was bestowing on Balochistan.

Chaudhry Shujaat and Mushahid, from the routinely maligned tribe of politicians, had come to be regarded as the only ray of hope for reconciliation during those tense days. Could they do it? They could not and Bugti called for a panel of three journalists to investigate Balochistan. That could not materialise, the journalists stayed put and all politicians were pushed to the background in recent times, especially since Bugti retreated into he hills with all guns blazing in December last year. What we had in front of us was sardars who had nothing to do with politics pitted against a state that saw them as blackmailers. What did the ruling-party politicians do to salvage the situation and create conditions for what should have been their goal as politicians: a political settlement. They failed to come up with anything of merit, or if they did have a possible remedy in mind, they failed to prevail on the authorities over an issue as political as Balochistan. Despite their known past links with today's 'miscreants'.

Bugti, with all his faults and his faith in the sardari system and his small province refrain, had friends doing politics in the Punjab heartland. Apart from Chaudhry Shujaat, Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri is saddened by the tragic exit of Bugti. He reminisces about the Nawab's friendship with his father, Mahmood Ali Kasuri.

And Bugti had sympathisers among the conscious middle-class reformers belonging to the most forward-looking of the country's urban parts, Karachi. It was not so long ago that the Muttaheda Qaumi Movement was threatening to quit the Shaukat Aziz government over Islamabad's tackling of Balochistan. The crisis was somehow averted and since Bugti is no more, why would anyone be throwing their weight behind a cause that in the official circles has come to be equated with him?

Even the Muttaheda Majlis-e-Amal, which proudly flaunts its opposition tag in get-togethers in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad and claims to rule the NWFP in spite of the Centre, can do little more than wave a tame warning that it could quit the Balochistan coalition. But among allies, the MMA's response has to rank much lower than the personal, apolitical, guarded reactions of those whose family had once rubbed shoulders with, an albeit different, Bugti.

This sampling of the ruling party members and their allies brings out the curious nature of the conglomerate that runs the county these days. It provides the Establishment with an inbuilt opposition which is allowed to make disparate noises, without ever coming close to posing any real danger to it. With friends like these, who needs an opposition?

profile

The confident upright posture and the welcoming outstretched hand firmly clasping Jinnah's. This is a picture worth a thousand words. Many would give their right arm to be in his place. But only in the picture dating back to 1947, not in a dark cave in the middle of nowhere in 2006 when the state might comes bearing down on you for all your sins of omission and commission, actual or perceived.

Pakistan's polity has been shaped by the Establishment in a way that few who have been associated with politics, legal or illegal, have escaped the impact of the national political discourse dictated from the above. This has, among other things, meant that aspiring politicians have had to find less-than-perfect means to ply their trade.

Many, many political careers have been midwifed by the various forms of military rule, some of them major 'independent' politicians. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto comes to mind. His shot to eminence as a minister of Field Marshal Ayub Khan. He became president with the assistance of General Yahya Khan and then shortly thereafter the prime minister. There's Nawaz Sharif who became a provincial minister under a general-governor during General Ziaul Haq's rule. Then there's Shaukat Aziz of course, made finance minister and prime minister by General Pervez Musharraf.

Some, of course, threw off the mantle of military patronage and actually turned against it paying a steep price in the bargain -- Bhutto was hanged, Sharif was exiled.

It is in this small category of high-profile politicians who were mainstream leaders and who in the end fell foul of the real masters and paid a heavy price that Bugti belongs. A former minister at the federal level and provincial governor and chief minister, he was killed in a military strike in a Kohlu cave last week, on the run from the outcome of a violent campaign for greater autonomy.

What is common between Bhutto, Sharif and Bugti is their provincial political roots. The 'Sindh card' is forever associated with Bhutto; more so after his death. Sindh has had many prominent political leaders but it is the country's hanged first elected prime minister that is associated with all political deprivations of the province.

Likewise, Sharif, who developed the 'Punjab card' during 1988-90 period when Benazir Bhutto was the prime minister and he was the chief minister of the province, is now seen as the symbol of 'Punjab wronged' with his sacking, trial in an anti-terrorism court, sentencing for life and forced exile along with family, including his brother Shahbaz who was at the time chief minister of the same province.

The latest in this exclusive club is Bugti. With his fiery defiance he emerged as the symbol of 'Balochistan wronged.' His white-bearded face has become the face of Balochistan resistance and will come to haunt the Establishment.

While Bugti's name will increasingly come to be uttered in the same breath as Bhutto when it comes to the fate of politicians who are identified with popular movements or collective aspirations, there is a key difference between the two leaders. Bhutto's political career progressed from the provincial to the national and to the international.

In Bugti's case it was the other way round; he started off from the national, devolved to the provincial and regressed to the tribal. He started his political career in 1946 when he voted for the creation of Pakistan. As soon as Pakistan was founded in 1947 he was appointed adviser on Baloch affairs to Pakistan's agent to the governor-general. His national level political career was on the way, albeit as a technocrat, not leader.

He became a formal leader by being elected to the National Assembly in May 1958. His federal credentials went a notch higher when he became minister of state for interior in the federal cabinet of Prime Minister Sir Feroz Khan Noon in September. However this was brief. In October, President Iskander Mirza had imposed martial law and Bugti's fling with the federal cabinet was over.

Bugti's first transition from the national to the nationalist began when he was arrested and convicted by a military court in 1960 and subsequently disqualified from holding public office. He was prevented from contesting the 1970 general election.

Deprived of a 'national' space, he decided to rehabilitate himself politically at the provincial level. To create space for himself at this level, he offered another handshake, this time to Prime Minister Bhutto. Bugti helped remove Bhutto's political nemeses in Balochistan -- Governor Mir Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo and Chief Minister Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal. These two were sacked in February 1973 and Bhutto appointed Bugti as governor, deployed the army and began a crackdown on the National Awami Party.

True to his fiery nature, Bugti couldn't live with an equal bully: Bhutto, and quit acrimoniously in January 1974. This began his slide into the 'tribal' and he became politically inactive. The political hibernation lasted 14 long years. After General Zia's death in 1988 he jumped back into the fray and joined the Balochistan National Alliance. In February 1989 he was elected the chief minister but his relationship with Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was the same as that of Punjab Chief Minister Nawaz Sharif: hostile.

His disillusionment with the federation set in when Governor General (retd) Musa Khan dissolved the provincial assembly in August 1990. His only solace: Benazir was sent packing by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan simultaneously. He retained influence for a while with incoming caretaker provincial chief minister Humayun Khan Marri being his son-in-law.

Not one to give in, he formed the Jamhoori Watan Party and was re-elected to the Balochistan Assembly and encouraged by moderately good success by his party aimed higher and was elected to the National Assembly in 1993. When the lower house of parliament was sacked yet again by President Farooq Leghari, he lost faith in not just the federation but in politics of pragmatism.

Thereafter gradually began a period of withdrawal, not just political but from public life as well. General Pervez Musharraf's military coup in 1999 was the last straw for him. His party became more vociferous in criticism of the military. Things came to a head in February 2005 when Shazia Khalid, a doctor at a Sui gas station was raped. Bugti laid the blame on an army captain and vowed to seek revenge.

An attempt to build a cantonment in Sui made matters worse and sparked attacks and ambushes on army convoys and government installations by Bugti's private militia broke out. Several months of fierce fighting later a ceasefire was announced and the government began political discussions with Bugti and others on greater provincial autonomy for Balochistan.

Talks broke down in December 2005 when rockets were fired as Musharraf addressed a gathering in the province. A major escalation saw Bugti's houses and properties attacked. He had to flee with his families and followers. In his absence, he was declared a proclaimed offender and the government re-settled his rivals in Dera Bugti to ensure he won't return. In the third week of August 2006 the government staged a dubious 'jirga' of Bugti tribe that 'abolished' the sardari system and stripped Bugti of the only 'authority' he was left with. Three days later he was killed in a military strike.

For the Pakistani Establishment, this may be the end of a septuagenarian 'tribal,' 'rebel' and 'traitor' but for many in Pakistan thus begins a new larger-than-life career of a political legend that will haunt the powers that be. First there was Bhutto. Now there is a new legend that can't be killed: Bugti. Ironically, in his death the 'tribal' Bugti has become 'national.'

Bodypolitic

The killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, one of the most powerful tribal chiefs in Balochistan, has created an uninterrupted wave of anguish among the political circles and uncertainty in the national political scenario. Though one of the most important immediate outcomes of the killing has been its almost unanimous condemnation by all the religious and political parties of the country, the mysterious circumstances of the incident will certainly keep casting a long shadow of uncertainty on the future political scene. Already Quetta and some other parts of Balochistan have witnessed riots since the night of August 26 when the news of the killing first came out.

Another unintended consequence of the killing of one of the veteran Baloch politicians has been Baloch nationalist parties seem to have united at least for the time being -- once again. Since the news of the incident came out they have been raising their voices, lodging their protests and devising plans for the future from a single platform. So far, they have been reasonably successful in their efforts. Businesses remained closed and traffic kept off the roads on August 29 throughout Balochistan, particularly in the Baloch-dominated areas.

These parties -- Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP), Baloch Haq Tawar, National Party and Balochistan National Party (BNP) -- are part of of a Baloch nationalist alliance. Their leaders have warned that they would be launching a strong anti-government protest movement, if the government does not hand over the body of Nawab Akbar Bugti to them for the burial. The demand has been made by the leaders of the alliance including the secretary-general of National Party Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo, opposition leader in Balochistan Assembly, Mir Kachkol Ali advocate, vice-president of Balochistan National Party (BNP) Sajid Tareen advocate, and Mahim Khan Baloch, another senior leader of BNP. Their demands have been supported by provincial president of Pakistan People's Party Nawabzada Lashkari Raisani and members of the provincial assembly Akbar Mengal and Akhtar Hussain Lango.

Condemning Bugti's killing, Mir Hasil Bizenjo and other leaders say the incident has whipped up resentment among the Baloch people against the Army. They were of the view that the Baloch people will never forget the killing, which they say was targeted. Bugti was killed in his old age only because he raised his voice for the rights of his people, they declare. He will always be remembered as a great Baloch leader, Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo tells The News on Sunday.

Other Baloch leaders have described Bugti's killing as a great tragedy for the Baloch nation. However, Khan of Kalat Mir Suleman Daud tells TNS that the Balochs will no longer cooperate with the government on any issue in the province. "The killing of Nawab Bugti has further widened the gulf between the Balochs and the government," he says.

PPP's provincial president Lashkari Raisani says, "We will not shy away from rendering any sacrifice to register our protest on the issue." The Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), of which PPP is a part, joined a call given by the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) for a countrywide shutter-down strike on September 1. "We have decided to register a countrywide peaceful protest against the killing of a politician who was struggling for the restoration of the Constitution," the ARD chief Makhdoom Amin Fahim is reported by the media as saying. The opposition parties in the National Assembly also offered a ghaibana namaz-e-janaza (funeral prayer in absentia) of Nawab Akbar Bugti outside the Parliament House after moving a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

While an all parties conference convened by ARD in Islamabad on August 31 would have just concluded when this report will be published, the alliance -- which also includes Nawab Bugti's JWP -- in a meeting held in Islamabad decided to hold a public meeting at Minar-e-Pakistan, in Lahore on September 10. The leadership of the alliance has also decided to lodge a First Information Report (FIR) of the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti against those responsible for the military action against him.

Some political observers, however, are of the view that the apparent unity and outrage shown by almost all religious, political and nationalist parties only thinly covers their real ambitions. These observers claim that all these parties are trying to cash in on the killing to further their own agendas, using Bugti's killing as a tool. They say these are trying to draw political mileage out of the issue considering that this may be the right time to launch an anti-government protest movement.

One of these observers, seeking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, says all those now trying to achieve their own political agendas by using the killings as a tool are not sincere with the cause of politics in general and the rights of people in Balochistan in particular. He quotes Akbar Bugti as having once told these leaders that "I don't need your money. What I need is manpower to continue the struggle for securing the rights of the Baloch nation." But, he says, "then all these leaders ignored Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti's words who kept repeating after taking shelter in the mountains. "They are trying to draw political benefits from his killing."