Balochistan: Yet another crackdown

AT A random reckoning, we are seeing the fifth major military/paramilitary operation in Balochistan since independence. This is besides other lesser known and relatively minor military actions launched in the province from time to time.

The first one was in April 1948 when the centre used military force to get a recalcitrant Khan of Kalat to accede to Pakistan. The second was launched, again against the anti-state activities of the Khan, on the eve of the country’s first martial law on October 7, 1958 and was cited as one of its causes.

The third military action came in October 1972 because of some trouble, largely conjectural, in and around the Pat Feeder area. Drought-stricken Marris, relatively the most peaceful of the Baloch tribes, were said to have raided some Punjabi settlements around the area. About the same time, Salim Bugti was reported to be advancing on Quetta at the head of a tribal Lashkar with aggressive intentions. Brigadier (later Lieut-Gen and governor of Sindh) Abbasi, then director, military operations, at the GHQ could not substantiate the reports after contacting the civil authorities concerned in Quetta. He conveyed the correct picture to the army chief, General Tikka Khan.

Nevertheless, under the direct orders of Prime Minister Z.A. Bhutto, force was used in and around the village of Goth Mohammad Hussain, where a Punjabi settler was allegedly killed by Marri raiders.

The fifth, the longest-lasting and the costliest military operation in terms of so-called collateral damage and human casualties on both sides was launched in April 1973 after the dismissal of the provincial government headed by Ataullah Mengal as chief minister and Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo as governor.

The ensuing insurgency lasted for a full four years — 1973 through 1977. The military action not only tarnished Mr Bhutto’s image as an elected prime minister but also compromised his authority vis-à-vis the army.

On July 5, 1977, General Ziaul Haq toppled the Bhutto regime and placed the country under its third martial law. One (perhaps the only one) of the Zia’s brave and noble acts was to call off the military operation in Balochistan.

Regardless of the gravity and urgency of circumstances governing the current military action, the question remains as to why the same province is yet again the target. In the degree and volume of organized and focused violence, the raging insurgency in Kohlu remains almost unprecedented. Some eight rockets were fired when President Musharraf was on a visit to Kohlu in the middle of the month. A couple of days later, an army helicopter with the Inspector-General, Frontier Corps (IGFC), Maj-Gen Shujaat Zamir Dar, and his deputy Brig Saleem Nawaz on board was also attacked, injuring both.

This is the first reported incident of its kind targeting a general officer and his deputy in their own area of command. The only other episode occurred in the mid 80s. An errant missile fired from around the Chaklala airport narrowly missed the airliner, during landing or take-off, carrying Gen Ziaul Haq and his entourage.

The Kohlu incident besides underscoring the daring of the “miscreants” also indicates the high state of their training and access to sources of modern weaponry. By sheer good luck, the helicopter pilot remained unhurt. He showed absolute mastery over his craft and had the nerve to be able to make a safe landing.

Earlier, on November 15, multiple blasts shook the high security area around the PIDC House in Karachi and two of city’s five star hotels besides any number of major business houses. The responsibility for the outrage was claimed by the so-called Balochistan Liberation Army. Whether phantom or real, shadow without substance, the emergence of such a body is disturbing.

Sardar Akhtar Khan Mengal, chief of the Balochistan National Party (BNP), in a recent interview said that the country was “heading towards anarchy as there was no rule of law”. He said that Balochistan was “totally” under the control of government agencies like MI and ISI who were “victimizing” people.

According to the Anjuman-i-Ittehad Marri, apparently a newly-formed organization, action has been ‘intensified’ around Kohlu. Whether called a ‘raid’, an ‘operation’ or a crackdown, the use of different expressions hardly changes the ground reality.

The presence of some 15,000 troops and the induction of helicopter ‘gunships’, heavy artillery and armoured vehicles into the operation can be traced back overwhelmingly to the military. The areas at the hub of the operation include Kohlu and Dera Bugti.

Quite ominously, the launch of the operation coincided with the 34th anniversary of the fall of Dhaka to invoke grim comparisons. The use of a word like ‘miscreants’ alone takes the mind irresistibly back to similar phraseology used through the 1971 crisis.

The army may well claim to have wiped out the Al Qaeda networks from the tribal areas of the NWFP. The point to consider is whether we might not be creating our own indigenous brand of Al Qaeda in the shape of the Balochistan Liberation Army and such other mushroom militant bodies in Balochistan?

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army

Sri Lanka remains a long way from tsunami recovery

KATUGODA: Sitting in the tattered tent that has been his home for eight months, Pela Ketiyage Sanjaya Premanath waves the flies away as he grips the cheaply framed photograph of his wife and reflects on what might have been. Chandrika would still be alive today, Pela Ketiyage says, if she had just ignored a mother’s natural instinct and run away from the gargantuan wave. Instead, she headed toward the sea to save her child, not knowing he had taken the infant to higher ground.

It has been a year since the deadliest tsunami in living memory killed an estimated 220,000 people, and here in southern Sri Lanka, life has moved on. From Pela Ketiyage’s vantage point, however, it hasn’t moved all that far. Pela Ketiyage’s life underscores the problems that plague the survivors a year later: the frustratingly slow pace of reconstruction; the lingering pain felt from Africa’s East Coast to the Indonesian island of Sumatra; and the enormous human toll of those few fateful minutes on the morning of Dec. 26, 2005.

After the water demolished Pela Ketiyage’s house, killing six family members, the eight survivors headed for the nearby Sugatharama Buddhist temple, where they spent several weeks with hundreds of other refugees. Eventually, however, the head monk started losing patience with people smoking and drinking on hallowed grounds. So the family moved in with friends, until they wore out that welcome.

Today they live in a 10-foot-square tent pitched between the coastal road and the remains of a former grocery store, now their kitchen. Recently they’ve come under pressure from the former shop owner to leave here as well. Throughout the tsunami zone, the lack of permanent housing remains a major problem as does graft, confusion and incompetence surrounding the spending of billions on reconstruction; Months ago, a government official promised Pela Ketiyage, 27, and his family a place to live, and asked them to fill out some forms. But because they’re not in an official camp, they’ve fallen through most of the aid cracks.

When it rains, their beds get wet. When the wind blows off the adjacent sea, their tent collapses, forcing them to reassemble the stakes, wedge the Styrofoam blocks back in place and reposition the blue plastic tarps. Most of their few belongings were scrounged in the tsunami’s immediate aftermath, they say, pointing to the stained plastic chairs repaired with bits of copper wire. They found a metal shelf to hold dishes. And their closet is a pile of cardboard boxes just inside the tent flaps. They found a few of their own mud-stained shirts a few blocks inland, a source of comfort.

It’s late morning, but two of Pela Ketiyage’s younger brothers are still sleeping on the makeshift mattresses that cover the tent’s floor. There aren’t enough mosquito nets, so family members make up for the fitful nights by napping during the day. They don’t have much money, but graciously offer visitors tea. When they recovered Chandrika’s body, thieves had stolen her jewelry. The wave took Pela Ketiyage’s tools and with it his livelihood as a diesel mechanic. His father had been a skipper on a fishing boat. With so many boats destroyed, he lands only occasional crew jobs now. If the fish are biting, he makes $10 for several days’ work, the family’s only income.

Their only light is a single kerosene lamp that goes out when it’s windy. Living beside the road means someone has to watch Pela Ketiyage’s 21-month-old son, who likes to run into the road. The older children play cricket on the beach around the rubble, using a cobbled-together bat and ball. With no real light, the family generally sits by the road after dark and watches the aid-filled trucks going elsewhere.

Sometimes Pela Ketiyage and his family think about how this all happened. Some neighbours attribute the tsunami to God’s wrath. But his mother, Sebba Kuttige Priyangani, 44, questions that logic. If that were so, she says, why did so many innocent children lose their lives? They also wonder at the random nature of it all, why his wife died, still young and strong, while his mother survived after being swept out to sea, and swept back. She points to the top of a telephone pole, her inanimate hero increasingly lost amid the fitful rebuilding.

Recovery efforts go through stages, and the tsunami aftermath is no exception. With most emergency food and basic health needs met, housing has become the main priority. Sri Lankan government officials initially promised to have 60 per cent of permanent houses built within a year and 100 per cent by 2007.

That’s proved wildly optimistic. Less than 10 per cent of the permanent houses are done, as Pela Ketiyage’s growing frustration attests. More than 300,000 people are still displaced from their homes in Aceh in Indonesia and more than 100,000 in Sri Lanka.

All told, 12 nations were hit by the tsunami that followed a wrenching magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Aceh. About 223,000 people were killed, according to UN figures, although the exact number might never be known — many bodies washed out to sea, and population figures in the affected areas were not always reliable. In Indonesia and Sri Lanka, the worst hit, entire communities washed away. Thailand’s tourist industry was hard hit while parts of the Maldives temporarily were submerged.

The United Nations estimates that 2 million people were left homeless after the wave destroyed nearly 400,000 houses throughout the region. Global aid pledges reached $13.6 billion. But the actual amount delivered has been lower, as often happens, and Oxfam estimates only 20 per cent of those displaced are in permanent housing. The waves of money and legions of aid workers often have been too much to absorb, dubbed by some people the second tsunami. Some quietly admit there’s too much money to spend effectively.

Sri Lanka’s highly centralized government bureaucracy has at times nearly ground to a halt, creating bottlenecks. Scores of registered charity groups and untold thousands of unregistered do-gooders often work at cross-purposes.

The northern and eastern shores of Sri Lanka, some of the hardest hit, have received far less aid than the south, stronghold of the majority Singhalese. In Hambantota, the home district of the president, plans call for building 2,253 houses, although only 1,158 lost their homes, says Danny Lee, representative with the Tzu Chi Foundation of Taiwan, which recently scaled back its own construction plans.

There have been the inevitable corruption charges, particularly surrounding Sri Lanka’s presidential election in November. “There’s been huge bungling and misallocation of funds,” added Fredrica Jansz, a reporter with the Sunday Leader newspaper, which published an expose on the questionable use of tsunami funds in bank accounts linked to the president.—Dawn/Los Angeles Times News ServiceBy Mark Magnier