Baloch and their sardars

GENERAL Musharraf would have us believe that the current insurrection in Balochistan is primarily the work of a few self-serving tribal sardars. They hold their tribesmen in utter subjection, exploit them, and force upon them a life of ignorance and misery. They oppose the government’s moves to bring modernization to the province, because they fear that the resulting awakening of the people will make for their (sardars’) eventual demise.

Actually, there is a lot more to the situation. Baloch grievances are well known, and I do not wish to repeat them here. I shall instead explore the Baloch political culture.

Baloch society is largely tribal. Beyond the family, tribe is the oldest social unit in human experience, and it continues to exist in several regions of the world. It is usual for a tribe, wherever it may be, to have a headman or chief and some sort of a council of elders to settle disputes and manage its collective affairs. It has been the same way in Balochistan.

There are nomadic tribes that go from place to place in search of pasture to feed the animals they raise. The difference of possessions (goat, sheep, etc.) between members is not substantial. All are nearly equal, and all may participate in deciding how any particular problem is to be handled. The tribe is thus democratic in its ethos. There is little scope for the sardar in this situation to become a tyrant.

Then there is the “sedentary” tribe. It is pretty much settled in one place. Some of its members may still roam around, looking for grasslands for their sheep and goat, but many of them may also do a bit of farming. Differences of possessions, and the resulting gradations of status, here can be substantial. Disputes among members are more frequent and so is crime. The sardar is likely to become more a ruler than a first among equals. There is also the opportunity for him to become a tyrant. Tribes in Balochistan used to be largely nomadic, but that does not appear to be the case any more: most of them are now sedentary.

Tribes in parts of Africa are inclined to be pacific. But more often, and in most places, they tend to be warlike. Even if violence within a tribe is controlled, inter-tribal warfare is common, and that remains the case in Balochistan as well. In speaking of the Baloch in this regard, I shall rely on Justice Khuda Bakhsh Marri’s eminent work, entitled Searchlight on Baloches and Balochistan (1974).

“The principal occupation of Baloches” he says, “has been, and to a great extent still is, constant inter-tribal and clan warfare. If, however, opportunities for such indulgences are not available, a Baloch will occupy himself with a family feud.” This “wild drama of blood-letting” may subside as social conditions change, “but the pace of progress is painfully slow.” In the same vein a characterization of the Baloch written by Sir Charles Napier around 1848 (which Justice Marri says still holds good for the most part) may be instructive for our present policy makers:

“The Baloochee, though fierce and habituated to acquire property by violence, is shrewd, and has a strong, though savage, sense of dignity and honour. A combination of coercion, respectful treatment, generosity and temptation, may therefore bend him to better habits. To fight and plunder is his vocation. The Baloochee warrior loves his race, his tribe, not the general community which he regards but as a prey and a spoil. With men of his temper a change of dynasty (government) will be little regarded if their own dignities and possessions are respected.”

(If the Baloch have always been, and still are, the fighting sort, one may wonder why they have no noticeable presence in Pakistan’s armed forces.)

Generally speaking, each tribe possesses a specific tract of territory, originally taken by conquest or through bargaining with the neighbouring tribes. The sardar, whose office is hereditary, is assigned a portion of the land that is the tribe’s common property, but he cannot sell it. He and heads of clans within the tribe (“Mukkadams”), also hereditary, constitute a council that settles issues, including those of war and peace. The Mukkadam is assisted by a “Wadera” in each clan and by “Motabars” in the sub-clans or groupings of families.

As the British saw it, Balochistan had strategic value in that it provided gateways to Afghanistan and Iran; otherwise it was a vast but barren, unyielding, and unprofitable region. They did not want to put money into building the infrastructure needed to govern its small population. They opted for a system of indirect rule. They moved to strengthen the tribal system and its hierarchy. They gave the sardars and mukkadams stipends, pensions, grants, and other privileges and sought to control the tribes through them.

The Frontier Crimes Regulation Act (1901) recognized the sardars and other functionaries in the tribal hierarchy, and allowed its customary law to prevail. The government did not interfere with its operation. The council of elders (‘jirga’) settled disputes subject to the British political agent’s approval, which he gave routinely except in politically sensitive cases.

A sardar retained his office on condition of loyalty to the British government. Doubt on that score could result in his removal and replacement by one of his more trusted relatives or tribesmen. The sardars were, in return, expected to maintain peace and order in their respective tribes. They were left free to burden their tribesmen with heavy taxes, and they were under no obligation to provide education, health care, or any other amenities to their people, who remained ignorant and economically deprived.

Their deprivation did not abate much even after independence. Steps should have been taken to disestablish the sardari system. Successive governments denounced it, and some of them issued declarations that it was about to be abolished. But nothing of the kind ever happened. The ruling politicians, both civil and military, and the higher bureaucrats, partook of the British outlook and attitude towards Balochistan: too large an area, too few people, too expensive to develop and modernize.

The system of indirect rule continued in parts of Balochistan, and so did the British practice of dispensing funds to tribal chiefs and other notables in the expectation that they would keep the peace, which sometimes they did and other times they didn’t. The Frontier Crimes Regulation, under which the jirgas administered justice, remained in operation, and the laws of Pakistan did not apply, in territories designated as “tribal areas,” for instance, the lands occupied by the Bugti and Marri tribes. I gather that even at this time regular police establishments and courts are missing in 14 of the 28 districts of the province, and that qazi courts function in Gwadar.

The foregoing should not be taken to mean that no social change whatsoever has taken place in Balochistan during the last 50 years. A university in Quetta has been functioning for quite some time, and numerous new colleges and schools have been established, even though the level of literacy here is still the lowest in the country, quite a few among the younger generations have had college education and become politically aware. Un-fortunately, most of them have nowhere to go, because the economy has remained stagnant, and jobs have been hard to find. The sardars, when they are dissatisfied with their receipts from the government, or when their dominance is threatened, proceed to make alliances with the educated, but frustrated, younger folks, as they are doing at this time.

How is the sardars’ alleged opposition to economic development and modernization to be overcome? The sardari system is still with us because those in power did not have a strong enough interest in abolishing it. I see no evidence to suggest that the present government wants to do away with it. Musharraf only wants the sardars to stop making trouble for him.

There are scores of tribes in Balochistan and as many sardars. The larger ones (e.g., Marris, Bugtis, Mengals) and their sardars are politically significant: they constitute centres of power not only because of their numbers but because they are armed with modern weapons. Many observers are telling us that resort to military force is not a viable strategy for dealing with the Baloch sardars and dissidents. It has not worked in the past (1973-77), and it will not work now. They warn also that the attempt to suppress the Baloch dissidents may take us to a replay of the tragedy of 1971.

What is then to be done? It may be useful to revisit Sir Charles Napier’s prescription quoted above. Leave coercion out, and take the rest: respectful approach, generosity and temptation. In other words, the government could compensate its opponents for their acquiescence without hurting their sense of honour and dignity. It may be said that the government has indeed been following this approach, but that the sardars now say its offerings are not good enough. Moreover, their alliance with the politicized classes calls for a different modus operandi.

Two other approaches come to mind. The more notables of the sardars, or their designees, and leaders of the dissident groups may be inducted as participants in the making and implementation of development and modernization plans for Balochistan. Let them be the ones to award contracts, sell or allot plots of land, direct the hiring of the needed workforce, and generally supervise the implementation process. If gains are to be made for those who manage it, let them be the ones to make those gains.

Dissidents in Balochistan and elsewhere complain that they were cheated out of power through rigged elections. That the elections were rigged is generally conceded. The resulting estrangement from the present political system acts like a cancer that threatens to destroy the body politic. If its health is to be restored, free and fair elections must be held as soon as possible. No individual’s notion that his continuance in office is essential to the country’s well-being, and no group’s lust for power, should be allowed to stand in the way.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

More powers for the provinces

THE majority of the people and political parties in Pakistan favour a parliamentary form of government with full autonomy for the provinces. The sentiment for autonomy is particularly strong in Balochistan, Sindh and the NWFP, perhaps in that order, because at the federal level Punjab can out-vote all three put together.

The aspirations of the smaller provinces to look after most of their affairs themselves is, thus, understandable. But a complex question is whether in a federation, where one constituent unit is larger than the other three combined, can the provinces really be autonomous in a parliamentary system?

A federation is required to maintain the balance of power among its constituent units, while the essential feature of a parliamentary system is the supremacy, indeed the sovereignty, of parliament. Pakistan through all its regime changes has found it difficult to reconcile the existence of a national sovereign parliament with the autonomy of the provinces. The provinces were no more autonomous under the Constitution when it was framed in 1973 than they are now. The amendments made and unmade over the past 33 years have been adjusting powers between the prime minister and the president but have altered centre-province relation to the disadvantage of the latter.

The executive, financial and judicial powers, almost all, arise from the parliament because the federal and concurrent legislative lists of the Constitution cover every aspect of statecraft. Resultantly, the natural resources, trade and industry, revenue and employment connected with the economy and security of the country are all controlled by the federal government. The residual functions of the provinces yield to them an income which is no more than 10 per cent of the federal revenues. (Last year the Central Board of Revenue collected about Rs600 billion in taxes, the collection by all the provinces added up to less than 60 billion).

The provinces can hardly be called autonomous when they have to subsist from day-to-day on the share they receive from the divisible pool of federal taxes, on subventions and, more humiliatingly, on occasional handouts from the president and the prime minister called “development packages”. The dependence of the smaller provinces on the centre is larger because their own resources are fewer. For that reason, they have to put up with more interference by the centre in their internal administration than Punjab does.

More annoying is the centre’s control over senior appointments in the provinces. For this situation, besides the enabling provisions of the Constitution, the provincial governments themselves are to blame. By making arbitrary recruitments disregarding merit they have run down their own bureaucracies to a point where they can administer neither their own affairs nor stand up to federal pressure.

The financial dependence of the provinces on the centre, it seems, will only grow with the passage of time. The smaller a province, (Balochistan, for example) the more dependent it will become because of poor and scattered habitation over a vast area entailing expenses which are beyond its own resources. Further, the natural resources and economic centres of the country are so located that they have to remain under some kind of federal control. Take just two instances. Balochistan has oil and gas but the consumers are all in Punjab and Sindh. Punjab has a diverse industry but it can be sustained only by the Karachi port which is in Sindh.

In this situation, the conventional concept of a federation that deals with a few subjects like defence, external affairs, currency and communications leaving the rest to the provinces is not workable in Pakistan. Most resources have to be pooled for distribution and the infrastructure, like the ports and arterial roads, has to remain under federal control for the provinces to have unhindered equal access.

The above is not to suggest that there can be no transfer of financial or regulatory functions from the federation to the provinces. The scope for transfer is enormous but not enough to make every province financially independent of the centre. The subjects in the concurrent list, as was envisaged when the Constitution was framed, can all be assigned to the provinces now.

The federal list must also be pruned. The general sales taxes which is a big source of revenue should be handed over to the provincial governments for collection at the retail stage as is the practice worldwide. To begin with, the federal government may act as a collection agency until the provincial cadres are built up and trained. In any case, the present arrangement in which 90 per cent, or more, of the public revenues go to the federation is intolerable and needs to be changed. The present regime, too, has shown an inclination to redress this imbalance.

Without waiting for the transfer of subjects and powers of taxation from the federation which would take a long time to agree upon, the provinces can be made more independent of the federal government and be less vulnerable to its whimsical or punitive actions by making some institutional changes straightaway. The first, and most desirable, step would be to raise the representative status of the Senate and to expand its role. The senators should be elected directly by the people so that they have their own popular mandate and do not always feel persuaded to follow the wishes of the groups or individuals in the National Assembly which elect them.

Then, the Senate as a whole or in its committees should have the power, as in the United States, to scrutinize specified appointments made by the president or prime minister. (Surely, our Senate thus empowered would have rejected quite a few ambassadorial, corporate and judicial appointments made by the present and the previous governments.)

Another, and equally desirable, amendment that the Constitution needs is direct election of the governors with the whole province as their constituency. The governors thus elected would exercise their judgment in the best interest of their provinces and not always at the behest of the federal government. In the disturbed conditions that prevail in Balochistan and the NWFP, the people of the two provinces can hardly expect an objective and sympathetic assessment of their plight by governors nominated by the federal government.

The sense of purposelessness in the provincial administrations and of deprivation among people (with the possible exception of Punjab) is more deep-rooted and spreading faster than is reflected in media reports. It is not all fomented by romantic nationalists or tyrannical sardars to meet their own ends as the president seems to think. Some piecemeal measures, like those suggested in this article, are necessary to end the frustration and violence till the next parliament reviews the whole constitutional structure.

Saving Darfur

THE risk still exists that we may eventually look back on the present decade and conclude to our shame that its greatest scandal was not who did what to whom in Iraq, or even in Palestine, but the way the world ignored genocide in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

Perhaps, but signs are now brighter for effective international action. It is not as if world public opinion was ignorant of what began developing in the mid-90s when a forerunner of the Janjaweed militia, acting at the instigation of the government of Sudan, first started killing what it regards as inferior “black” Africans in this long-neglected land.

Sudan’s British rulers neglected Darfur too. So do the global media, governments and even sections of the left today. If the outside power with important oil interests in Sudan was the United States, not China, there might be greater outrage. As things stand it was the US Christian Right which stoked concern in Washington about the separate murderous conflict, now hopefully receding, in Christian southern Sudan and even focused White House attention on Darfur.

But only for a while. So the current struggle between the Khartoum regime of President Omar el-Bashir and what has developed into myriad resistance groups threatens to join the list of other avoidable genocides of the modern era, Armenia, Bosnia, Rwanda and, of course, the Nazi Holocaust, commemorated yesterday. The fault is not all on one side, but those who quibble over definitions merely repeat past errors.

So it is encouraging then that the international community is back on the case where, on some estimates, fatalities could reach 100,000 a month if nothing is done. This week the Commons select committee on international development, now under energetic chairmanship, urged a series of stronger western and UN responses.

It suggests “credible sanctions” against Khartoum until it complies with past promises to desist and a reinforced mandate, plus money and material (some of it blocked by Khartoum), for the African Union (AU) military force of 6,700 soldiers and administrators who are trying to provide what the committee called “African solutions to African problems”.

Sir Menzies Campbell also raised the issue with Tony Blair. Better still, as the Guardian reported yesterday, Kofi Annan now accepts that those AU troops will have to wear the UN’s blue helmets and be reinforced from outside. This dreadful war can and must be stopped.

—The Guardian, London