QUETTA: About forty kilometres short of Chaman on the Pak-Afghan border, and a 90-minute drive north-west of Quetta, lies the town of Qilla Abdullah. The road that runs through its market hosts a two-way complementary traffic: trucks carrying Afghan Transit Trade goods towards the west and, in the opposite direction, vehicles ferrying smuggled goods into Pakistan. Locals tell you unabashedly, “The main sources of income here are fruit farming and smuggling”. There’s also a large Afghan population in the area with towns along the route, such as Saranan and Jungal Pir Alizai, home to large refugee populations who have settled down in this part of the country.

Qilla Abdullah town is part of Qilla Abdullah district, one of the eight out of the 30 total districts in Balochistan where Pakhtuns are in a majority. Named after the tribal leader Sardar Abdullah Khan Achakzai, it is the home constituency of Mahmood Khan Achakzai, leader of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP). The party has a secular, nationalist agenda, but it doesn’t advocate a breakaway state as do the more extreme Baloch nationalists. Instead it demands a loose federation, with a redrawing of provincial boundaries so that Pakistan’s Pakhtun population, currently divided in four different areas — Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Punjab and Fata — is included in one province.

In the interim, the party says the Pakhtuns must have an equal share in the province’s resources, a demand that causes friction with the province’s Baloch majority (this ‘majority’ is also disputed by the party). “If there is 50 per cent division, we will be masters of the province. Also, the offices of the chief minister and the governor should be held by rotation between Baloch and Pakhtuns. Then there will be neither goli nor gaali,” says Achakzai at his Quetta residence, in a conversation that reveals his fondness for aphorisms.

The Qilla Abdullah seat (NA-262) is not a sure shot for Achakzai (he’s also standing from another national assembly seat in Quetta) despite his consistent electoral success so far.

Pakhtun nationalism, once a rallying cry of some of Pakistan’s foremost politicians, faces increasing competition from religious parties that have always had a vote bank in Balochistan. Islamist sentiment was further promoted as part of state policy in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and large numbers of foreign-funded madressahs came up in the province at the time.

According to local journalist Fazal Mohammed Jajak, there are also five or six large madressahs at a short distance from Qilla Abdullah that have been around for some 30 years. “Each one has between 600 to 1000 students, who are mostly from Helmand in Afghanistan. Smaller madressahs tend to have only Pakhtun students.”

After the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) swept the 2002 elections in Balochistan riding the crest of public anger against the US invasion of Afghanistan, yet more madressahs came up. Many belonged to the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), which was a member of the six-party alliance of religious parties that came to power through the ballot.

Along the road to Gulistan, a sub-division of Qilla Abdullah, a procession of motorbikes and double-cabin pickups raises clouds of dust. The participants hold black-and-white striped flags identical to the JUI-F standard, but these are supporters of its splinter group Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Nazariati (JUI-N). “Both groups are planning a show of power today,” says a local journalist. Although the rift occurred before the 2008 elections, JUI-N members contested them as independent candidates. The group is more hardline and openly pro-Taliban; among the sea of zebra stripes in the procession flutter a couple of white flags of the Taliban.

In the procession is Malik Mohammed Essa Kakar, a young man with flowing dark hair and an unexpectedly closely cropped beard. He’s a candidate for the area’s provincial seat, and explains the intra-party estrangement vaguely as “differences over Islam. They’re more interested in pursuing their own interests.” He’s more forthcoming about the party’s raison d’etre: “imposition of Islami nizam, purdah and an anti-US policy”. This point of view, which sees religion as a unifying force, decries nationalism as an effort to create divisions among the Pakhtuns. The JUI-N has had traction in the Pakhtun belt from the outset, with its leader Maulana Asmatullah defeating JUI-F’s Balochistan provincial president Maulana Sherani from Zhob district in the 2008 elections.

Back in Quetta, Achakzai sounds off about the policies that have led Pakistan to a juncture where the electoral process is openly threatened by separatists and religious extremists. “Our intelligence agencies are not incompetent. They can find a needle in dirty water but they don’t know where the terrorists are? The fact is some militants have been the agencies’ blue-eyed boys. Now they have to make a choice,” he says. “A sovereign Pakistan cannot come into existence until it supports the sovereignty of its neighbours and stops interfering in their affairs. If there is peace in the region, then the aman ki asha will start from Kabul and end in aman ki bhasha in Delhi.”

The PkMAP along with several other parties, in protest against the holding of elections under Musharraf’s military-led government, boycotted the 2008 polls. The coming elections will tell if that was a short-sighted move which allowed other parties to make inroads into its vote bank. In 2008, Qilla Abdullah’s three provincial seats were won by the MMA, ANP and an independent candidate, while the national assembly seat was bagged by the JUI-F’s Haji Rozuddin from the MMA platform. It was a splintered vote typical of the Pakhtun belt where tribal rivalries also play a big role in determining electoral alliances.

According to JUI-F secretary general Maulana Ghafoor Haideri, nationalism is no answer to Balochistan’s problems. “Nationalism is not a system,” he says. “It’s a slogan. Besides, PkMAP is present in only two or three districts, it’s a local party, whereas we have support throughout the province.” He believes the Baloch have legitimate grievances that have been further stoked in recent years. “All separatists took part in the 1970 elections, didn’t they? They’ve been victims of injustice for 60 years, but the separatist movement started only five years ago.”

Achakzai acknowledges that religious parties have gained ground but adds, “If the intelligence agencies don’t support them, no mullah will win.”

Meanwhile, there is a deceptive calm in the Qilla Abdullah town market, where the contesting parties have their election offices. JUI-F candidate Maulvi Juma Khan voices apprehension that tribal rivalries, rather than political differences, are more likely to disrupt elections here. Haji Mohammed Essa, member of PkMAP’s central committee, says “We’ll be grateful if polls take place peacefully. If the army isn’t deployed here, it’ll be a major sin.”

People in the marketplace say they plan on casting their vote. The town falls in the provincial constituency won by the ANP and unusually, incumbency seems to be working in its favour. “They’ve done some work around here. The Arambai dam, for example, was built on their watch,” says Mohammed Siddiq, a butcher. For Mohammed Nasim, who runs a shop selling smuggled goods, it is another aspect of the ANP’s work that appeals to him. “They’ve made a masjid in town,” he says. “The JUI-F hasn’t done much.” Perhaps Achakzai is right after all when he says “you have to trust people’s street wisdom”.