KARACHI Nov 7: There has been a slight quiescence in Balochistan in recent days, but there is no sign that the underlying problems or passions have subsided. An indication of this is the way Mir Suleman Dawood Khan, the Khan of Kalat, talks.

Give us our rights, he says, or we will do anything to get those rights. We created Pakistan, he says, and it needs to survive. This is his message in a nutshell.

Royalty on fisheries, royalty on gas, royalty on all minerals. He even wants money to be paid to Balochistan for overflights. All land in Balochistan belongs to the tribes, he says, "nothing belongs to the state."

It is difficult to beat the Khan in argument. He is knowledgeable about Baloch history, and the facts about Gwadar and the land ownership pattern are on his finger-tips.

Interviewing him for Dawn the other day in Karachi turned out to be a daunting task. He tells you in a jiffy about Prince Saeed's flight from Oman in 1783, the grant of asylum by Khan Mir Naseer Khan the First, his re-conquest of Oman with Baloch help in 1791, Gwadar's position after Prince Saeed won, the coming of the British, Gwadar's sale to Pakistan in 1956, and so on.

He put it graphically, "Great Game Part II is being played. We want our rights. If we don't get them, we will be a major player in the Great Game Part II."

The thrust of the Khan's arguments was on the unique position Kalat enjoyed in August 1947 when the British left the subcontinent. Unlike the hundreds of other princely states in British India, he said, Nepal and Kalat occupied an entirely different position. Kalat had the right to have diplomatic relations with other countries, and the British paid "taxes" to Kalat, while in the case of the princely states the situation was the other way around.

Between August 1947, when the British left the subcontinent, and March 1948, Kalat was an independent country. Unlike Pakistan, which became independent on August 14, 1947, Kalat became independent six days earlier - on Aug 8. It acceded to Pakistan on March 27, 1948, after the Khan of Kalat, His Highness Baglar Begi - the present Khan's grandfather - signed an agreement with the Quaid-i-Azam.

According to the terms of the agreement, the centre was to control only four subjects: defence, foreign affairs, communications and currency. In all other matters, Kalat was to be completely independent. (As an aside, he pointed out, Kalat was the only area in Pakistan where there was still a Qazi court. This was to point out the continuity in Kalat's political tradition.)

However, subsequent governments did not abide by the terms of the agreement of accession. Makran, Kharan and Bela were part of Kalat, but later they were given separate status when during the time of Governor-General Ghulam Mohammad a Balochistan States' Union was created.

Balochistan then constituted 62 per cent of (West) Pakistan. Later, parts of the province were given to the NWFP, Punjab, and Sindh. But even now it constitutes 46 per cent of Pakistan.

As a Baloch, the Khan has no objection to the development of Gwadar as a commercial port. But what he fears is the trampling of the rights of its people. The port has a population of 60,000, he says, but the grandiose schemes that have been announced will need at least a million people. "Where will these people come from? Obviously from Karachi, mostly Urdu-speaking," he says.

Khan Salman said when India was partitioned, most of the Urdu-speaking people who came to Pakistan had lost everything they possessed, unlike the local people, "who were quite prosperous". The tragedy was, he said, that policy-making in this country had always been in the hands of the migrants. The result was that "the refugees are controlling your country, and the sons of soil are beggars".

Told that this could have been the position in Pakistan's formative stages, he said even now 40 to 50 per cent of those making policies were Urdu-speaking or had an Indian Civil Service background. Along with Urdu-speaking and Punjabis, he said, the Pathans were now a partner in the triumvirate ruling Pakistan.

The Khan's main grievance is that Balochistan's minerals and other natural resources are being exploited without any benefit to the Baloch people.

Balochistan had a coastline of 600 miles, and the fish catch got Pakistan something between $750 million and one billion dollars a year, but Balochistan got nothing. Similarly, overflight rights for aircraft should give billions of dollars to Balochistan but "not a rupee is given to us". The same was true of marble and natural gas. "Gwadar belongs to the Gichkis", he said, and wondered of what use Gwadar's development would be to the people of Balochistan.

The Khan referred to the question of royalty time and again and emphasized that "every inch of the land belongs to the tribes and not to the state".

He was bitter about the cantonments issue. He was asked what objection a Pakistani could possibly have to the building of cantonments in Pakistan, because every country reserved the right to defend itself and build cantonments within its territory. Khan Dawood said one only had to travel through Balochistan to realize what the cantonments issue was all about. One would find a "qila" (fort or mini-cantonment) after every 30 miles. It was obvious that those "qilas" were being built not for Pakistan's defence but for what he described as exploiting Balochistan's mineral wealth and for controlling the Baloch people. This was a colonial approach, the aim being "to plunder Baloch resources".

Asked if the report about "camps" were true and if true who was running them, he said these were Baloch camps.

"Give us our rights or we will fight". For achieving those rights, he said, the Baloch could go to any lengths and contact any power.

Asked if he condemned the murder of the Chinese engineers involved in Gwadar's construction, the Khan said enigmatically that he would "condemn nothing, and support nothing ". The issue was that the Baloch people should be given their rights. If they were denied those rights they would fight for their rights. If the situation continued this way, there could be more casualties.

The Baloch were more pro-federation than anyone else in the country. "We created it (Pakistan) and we can damage it." If Kalat had not acceded to the federation and Pakistan had not come into being, he said, "we would be the underdogs of the Hindus. The papers (of accession) are lying in the Mohatta Palace and you can see them".

In November 2003, the Supreme Court, he said, had given a ruling saying no court could admit any case that challenged the (accession) treaty documents. This means an agreement signed by the Quaid was not being honoured. With the door of the judiciary closed on the Baloch, "what is the remedy left for us? Confrontation?"

The Khan referred to the close ties between his grandfather and the Quaid, who was legal adviser to Kalat. When there was an assassination attempt on Mr Jinnah in 1943, no one in the entire subcontinent gave him protection, except Kalat. As a measure of his grandfather's love and respect for the Quaid, he had given him ll security guards, two cars, two drivers, and two bearers. But, while the Quaid's picture adorned the office of every government leader, nobody was prepared to honour the agreement signed by the Father of the Nation.

He said the Baloch would now become a major part of the Great Game Part II.

It was a myth, he said, that Gwadar was being built for trade with Central Asia. Most of Central Asia's trade was already going through Chah Bahar (Iran), and Gwadar was of no use in this respect.

The country that hoped to benefit most from Gwadar was China.

In the development of Saindak and Gwadar, the Baloch people were playing no role, even though trained Baloch engineers and other skilled hands were available. He wondered why they were not being trained by China.

The murder of the Chinese engineers, he said, was part of the larger international forces that were at work in the region. He referred to the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, the break-up of the USSR and Yugoslavia, the virtual division of Iraq into four zones, the situation in Assam, and the Tamils and Biharis. "If the Baloch do not get their rights, we will demand independence".

About his role as a mediator in disputes among different Baloch tribes, the Khan of Kalat said he was helpless against the divide-and-rule policy followed by the government. This policy suited the English, because they realized one day they would go back go England. "But where do our rulers have to go? Or us?"

He said the government was protecting murderers and often helped both sides to a dispute. In the dispute between the Rinds and the Raisanis, the corps commander, the Khan alleged, gave millions of rupees to one side and the governor to the other.

He is happy he can move about freely in Balochistan, unlike many other Baloch politicians - whom he said he wouldn't like to name - who had committed murders but were now ministers and members of parliament.

He regretted that people still thought of themselves in terms of Punjabis, Sindhis, Baloch, Pathans and Mohajirs but not as Pakistanis. -By Muhammad Ali Siddiqi and Shamim-ur-Rahman