[R-G] Balochistan is the ultimate prize

[HMFJ]

by the way hasten to add that's an uninformed vague sympathy for a
liberation cause, not support for any terrorist activity. (just been reading
up a bit more)

On 5/15/09, HMFJ <hardwin1 at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > 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:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE09Df03.html
>>
>>
>>
>> Asia Times May 9, 2009
>>
>>
>>
>> Balochistan is the ultimate prize
>>
>>
>>
>> By Pepe Escobar
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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".
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> Game on
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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").
>>
>>
>>
>> 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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>
>