[R-G] Balochistan is the ultimate prize

[HMFJ]

> In a recent Pakistani TV interview he could not be more sectarian,
stressing the BLA is getting ready to attack non-Balochis.

Hmm... I'm planning a trip through South-East Iran next month (train from
Istanbul to India). Is this a bad idea I'm wondering? (despite my probable
sympathies for the BLA's cause)

On 5/14/09, Sid Shniad <shniad at sfu.ca> wrote:
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> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE09Df03.html
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> Asia Times May 9, 2009
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> Balochistan is the ultimate prize
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> By Pepe Escobar
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>
> It's a classic case of calm before the storm. The AfPak chapter of Obama's
> brand new OCO ("Overseas Contingency Operations"), formerly GWOT ("global
> war on terror") does not imply only a surge in the Pashtun Federally
> Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). A surge in Balochistan as well may be
> virtually inevitable.
>
>
>
> Balochistan is totally under the radar of Western corporate media. But not
> the Pentagon's. An immense desert comprising almost 48% of Pakistan's area,
> rich in uranium and copper, potentially very rich in oil, and producing more
> than one-third of Pakistan's natural gas, it accounts for less than 4% of
> Pakistan's 173 million citizens. Balochs are the majority, followed by
> Pashtuns. Quetta, the provincial capital, is considered Taliban Central by
> the Pentagon, which for all its high-tech wizardry mysteriously has not been
> able to locate Quetta resident "The Shadow", historic Taliban emir Mullah
> Omar himself.
>
>
>
> Strategically, Balochistan is mouth-watering: east of Iran, south of
> Afghanistan , and boasting three Arabian sea ports, including Gwadar,
> practically at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.
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>
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> Gwadar - a port built by China - is the absolute key. It is the essential
> node in the crucial, ongoing, and still virtual Pipelineistan war between
> IPI and TAPI. IPI is the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the
> "peace pipeline", which is planned to cross from Iranian to Pakistani
> Balochistan - an anathema to Washington. TAPI is the perennially troubled,
> US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, which is planned
> to cross western Afghanistan via Herat and branch out to Kandahar and
> Gwadar.
>
>
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> Washington's dream scenario is Gwadar as the new Dubai - while China would
> need Gwadar as a port and also as a base for pumping gas via a long pipeline
> to China. One way or another, it will all depend on local grievances being
> taken very seriously. Islamabad pays a pittance in royalties for the
> Balochis, and development aid is negligible; Balochistan is treated as a
> backwater. Gwadar as the new Dubai would not necessarily mean local Balochis
> benefiting from the boom; in many cases they could even be stripped of their
> local land.
>
>
>
> To top it all, there's the New Great Game in Eurasia fact that Pakistan is
> a key pivot to both NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), of
> which Pakistan is an observer. So whoever "wins" Balochistan incorporates
> Pakistan as a key transit corridor to either Iranian gas from the monster
> South Pars field or a great deal of the Caspian wealth of "gas republic"
> Turkmenistan.
>
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> The cavalry to the rescue
>
>
>
> Now imagine thousands of mobile US troops - backed by supreme air power and
> hardcore artillery - pouring into this desert across the immense,
> 800-kilometer-long, empty southern Afghanistan-Balochistan border. These are
> Obama's surge troops who will be in theory destroying opium crops in Helmand
> province in Afghanistan. They will also try to establish a meaningful
> presence in the ultra-remote, southwest Afghanistan, Baloch-majority
> province of Nimruz. It would take nothing for them to hit Pakistani
> Balochistan in hot pursuit of Taliban bands. And this would certainly be a
> prelude for a de facto US invasion of Balochistan.
>
>
>
> What would the Balochis do? That's a very complex question.
>
>
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> Balochistan is of course tribal - just as the FATA. Local tribal chiefs can
> be as backward as Islamabad is neglectful (and they are not exactly paragons
> of human rights either). A parallel could be made with the Swat valley.
>
>
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> Most Baloch tribes bow to Islamabad's authority - except, first and
> foremost, the Bugti. And then there's the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)
> - which both Washington and London brand as a terrorist group. Its leader is
> Brahamdagh Bugti, operating out of Kandahar (only two hours away from
> Quetta). In a recent Pakistani TV interview he could not be more sectarian,
> stressing the BLA is getting ready to attack non-Balochis. The Balochis are
> inclined to consider the BLA as a resistance group. But Islamabad denies it,
> saying their support is not beyond 10% of the provincial population.
>
>
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> It does not help that Islamabad tends to be not only neglectful but
> heavy-handed; in August 2006, Musharraf's troops killed ultra-respected
> local leader Nawab Akbar Bugti, a former provincial governor.
>
>
>
> There's ample controversy on whether the BLA is being hijacked by foreign
> intelligence agencies - everyone from the CIA and the British MI6 to the
> Israeli Mossad. In a 2006 visit to Iran, I was prevented from going to
> Sistan-Balochistan in southeast Iran because, according to Tehran's version,
> infiltrated CIA from Pakistani Balochistan were involved in covert,
> cross-border attacks. And it's no secret to anyone in the region that since
> 9/11 the US virtually controls the Baloch air bases in Dalbandin and
> Panjgur.
>
>
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> In October 2001, while I was waiting for an opening to cross to Kandahar
> from Quetta, and apart from tracking the whereabouts of President Hamid
> Karzai and his brother, I spent quite some time with a number of BLA
> associates and sympathizers. They described themselves as "progressive,
> nationalist, anti-imperialist" (and that makes them difficult to be co-opted
> by the US). They were heavily critical of "Punjabi chauvinism", and always
> insisted the region's resources belong to Balochis first; that was the
> rationale for attacks on gas pipelines.
>
>
>
> Stressing an atrocious, provincial literacy rate of only 16% ("It's
> government policy to keep Balochistan backward"), they resented the fact
> that most people still lacked drinking water. They claimed support from at
> least 70% of the Baloch population ("Whenever the BLA fires a rocket, it's
> the talk of the bazaars"). They also claimed to be united, and in
> coordination with Iranian Balochis. And they insisted that "Pakistan had
> turned Balochistan into a US cantonment, which affected a lot the
> relationship between the Afghan and Baloch peoples".
>
>
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> As a whole, not only BLA sympathizers but the Balochis in general are
> adamant: although prepared to remain within a Pakistani confederation, they
> want infinitely more autonomy.
>
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>
> Game on
>
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> How crucial Balochistan is to Washington can be assessed by the study
> "Baloch Nationalism and the Politics of Energy Resources: the Changing
> Context of Separatism in Pakistan" by Robert Wirsing of the US Army
> think-tank Strategic Studies Institute. Predictably, it all revolves around
> Pipelineistan.
>
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> China - which built Gwadar and needs gas from Iran - must be sidelined by
> all means necessary. The added paranoid Pentagon component is that China
> could turn Gwadar into a naval base and thus "threaten" the Arabian Sea and
> the Indian Ocean.
>
>
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> The only acceptable scenario for the Pentagon would be for the US to take
> over Gwadar. Once again, that would be a prime confluence of Pipelineistan
> and the US empire of bases.
>
>
>
> Not only in terms of blocking the IPI pipeline and using Gwadar for TAPI,
> control of Gwadar would open the mouth-watering opportunity of a long land
> route across Balochistan into Helmand, Nimruz, Kandahar or, better yet, all
> of these three provinces in southwest Afghanistan. From a Pentagon/NATO
> perspective, after the "loss" of the Khyber Pass, that would be the ideal
> supply route for Western troops in the perennial, now rebranded, GWOT
> ("global war on terror").
>
>
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> During the Asif Ali Zardari administration in Islamabad the BLA, though
> still a fringe group with a political wing and a military wing, has been
> regrouping and rearming, while the current chief minister of Balochistan,
> Nawab Raisani, is suspected of being a CIA asset (there's no conclusive
> proof). There's fear in Islamabad that the government has taken its eye off
> the Balochistan ball - and that the BLA may be effectively used by the US
> for balkanization purposes. But Islamabad still seems not to have listened
> to the key Baloch grievance: we want to profit from our natural wealth, and
> we want autonomy.
>
>
>
> So what's gonna be the future of "Dubai" Gwadar? IPI or TAPI? The die is
> cast. Under the radar of the Obama/Karzai/Zardari photo-op in Washington,
> all's still to play in this crucial front in the New Great Game in Eurasia.
>
>
>
> Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is
> Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a
> snapshot of Baghdad during the surge . His new book, just out, is Obama does
> Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia at yahoo.com.
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