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Thursday March 28, 2024

The case of Brahamdagh Bugti

By Zaigham Khan
October 10, 2016

Many years ago, sitting at a cafeteria in Zahidan, I put some difficult questions to a group of university students. All of them had come from different parts of Iran to study at the University of Sistan and Baluchestan.

The students drew a blank when I asked them about local students at the campus. They looked at each other and smiled when I probed further. None of them could recall a single Baloch student at the university. “How come there is no Baloch student you can recall?”, I asked candidly. “Because they lack basic education”, replied a student in a matter of fact way.

While talking to locals there, I enquired about participation of Balochs in the government. “How many district level officers are from Balochistan?”, I asked a Baloch businessman. “District level?” he asked, roaring with laughter. “We don’t have village level officials from Balochistan here”, he explained.

The situation might have improved dramatically since then – though rare media reports from the area paint a bleak picture. For example, there have been recent reports of the entire adult male population of a village being executed for drug offences. In Chabahar, a city of Sistan-Balochistan, a port like the one at Gwadar is being built. Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to find a single media report containing the reaction of the local population to the mega-development initiative.

It is not fair to use the situation of the Baloch in Iran to justify their condition in Pakistan – and I am not trying to do that. However, there is no harm in realising that there is a cruel world out there. The modern nation-states have been tough on tribal societies because tribes are essentially self-governing structures and dislike external authority. Though these structures have almost collapsed due to rising population density and socio-economic change, the centrifugal tendencies remain.

Having missed a thousand years of political development, they find it hard to integrate into the state structures. Due to immense power modern states enjoy, any serious conflict between the state and a tribal society can have serious consequences for the latter.

Around the time I visited Iran, a group of Bugti tribesmen contacted me to get their plight reported in the press. They belonged to a sub-tribe of the greater Bugti tribe called Kalpars who had entered into a feud with the powerful Bugti chief, Nawab Akbar Khan, and the chief’s men were hunting them down. Dozens had been mowed down, some even in their hospital beds. “If you disclose our location, all of us could be killed”, a tribesman warned me.

The Kalpars lived in Sui where they experienced upward mobility due to employment and small business opportunities around the gas plant. As a  result, a sizable middle class had cropped up. This emboldened them to rise against their chief who was based in the nearby town of Dera Bugti. The results proved disastrous, forcing hundreds of families to relocate and go into hiding.

While this manhunt went on, the state institutions looked the other way, because Nawab Sahib was a firm ally who had remained close to the establishment through thick and thin, including the Baloch uprising of the 1970s. Bugti held his own court, ran his own prison and had his own small militia – all supported by the state. While no effort was made to change the lot of the people, Akbar Bugti was paid around Rs120 million annually by the Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) as rent for the land. In all administrative matters, Nawab Bugti was closely supported by his favourite grandson – Brahamdagh Bugti.

In Pakistan, the state has made hardly any effort to integrate tribal people into the state by extending state institutions and services. However, it has made deals and empowered a criminal elite both in Fata and Balochistan. Pervez Musharraf was not wrong in boasting that he enjoyed support from 99 percent tribal chiefs of Balochistan. How Pervez Musharraf, with his lethal mix of ignorance and arrogance, turned Bugti, a dying man, into a nationalist martyr and put Balochistan on fire is part of our recent history and needs no elaboration here.

Nawab Akbar Bugti had a tribal, rather than a nationalist, outlook on life and politics. He tried to keep alive a tradition that had long ceased to exist, or perhaps had never existed in the way he practised it. His conflicts with his rivals and the centre were also personal and tribal.

While Brahamdagh was considered the heir apparent to Nawab Akbar Bugti, his more docile cousins have used his absence to fill the vacuum by forming alliances with the deep state, leaving Brahamdagh high and dry. Brahamdagh is left with no option other than finding a replacement for the PPL somewhere else – and India, it appears, is keen to bankroll our Baloch prince. This is also a missed opportunity for the state because, according to Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, the former chief minister of Balochistan, Brahmadagh was open to a deal mainly focusing on his tribal demands. 

I must emphasise here that all of Balochistan is not tribal and Baloch grievances are not only tribal. Pakistan’s centralist state ignored many geographical regions and ethnic groups. The struggle for rights has resulted in many victories, particularly the 18th Amendment that makes Pakistan one of the most decentralised federations in Asia and empowers provinces like never before. However, there are many real and genuine unresolved issues, particularly those relating to resource-sharing and ensuring just development.

The Baloch have protested against the high-handedness of the central government through armed rebellions. That’s how tribes deal with each other and that’s the only form of protest known to them. However, all of these rebellions ended in accommodation. By closing the doors on accommodation, Barahamdagh and his associates are making life difficult for the people of Balochistan.

While it was criminal enough to seek rents from the state at the cost of the development of the people, pitching them against the full might of the state is suicidal. By seeking help from India, Brahamdagh is delegitimising the Baloch struggle for rights. He can keep the pot simmering but it will only ensure marginalisation of the Baloch people and result in death and destruction for a section of the most talented and idealistic Baloch youth.

The Baloch may not be the blue-eyed boys of the Pakistani state, but they are not like the US’s Native Americans or a persecuted ethnic group either. Baloch nationalists fail to recognise that the Baloch speak three, not two, languages. Perhaps the largest language of the Baloch is Seraiki, spoken in parts of Balochistan, southern Punjab and by the Baloch in Sindh. Millions of Baloch people are well integrated in both Punjab and Sindh where they dominate many districts, economically and politically. Baloch surnames are not hard to find in any important list.

After getting his Indian passport, Brahamdagh should visit some of the tribal regions in India and let us know of his experiences.

The writer is a social anthropologist and development professional.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com

Twitter: @zaighamkhan