ON A misty night in February, the headlights of the blue pickup trucks — known as Zambad — could be seen laboriously making their way like ants along the dilapidated Turbat-Buleda road in the hilly north of district Kech, Balochistan. They are carrying smuggled oil from Iran to Pakistan.

Despite the passage of almost three decades, the Turbat-Buleda road project remains incomplete. And yet, the same road has been ‘inaugurated’ several times, including by General Qamar Javed Bajwa as army chief. Indeed, last month, the Balochistan Assembly in its budget session again approved funds for the project’s construction and improvement: Rs39.19 million, to be exact. It is a saga that illustrates the rampant corruption in Balochistan’s development sector.

As do most visitors to the area, the Dawn correspondent travelled to Buleda in a GLI Corolla, locally known as ‘2D car’, which, like the vehicles of many Buleda residents, had been customised in a workshop to elevate the body to enable it to better withstand the rigours of driving on that road. A local guide informs him that although the distance between Buleda and Turbat is only 29km, it takes over an hour to reach Buleda. “If the road was complete, it would have taken just a half hour.” Another resident of Buleda caustically remarks that thanks to its atrocious condition, most of the vehicles arriving in Turbat garages for repairs are those coming from Buleda.

What is the signficance of this road?

Metalled only in certain parts — some of that too washed away by the recent torrential rains and floods — the rest of the track is kutcha. Bridges along the route have not been constructed, and pylons meant to support them stand forlornly. It is testament to the state’s myopic policies in Balochistan where appointments to positions of power are meant to serve the security agenda, not the people.

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Buleda valley, close to the Iran border in southern Balochistan, predominantly comprises the Makran division (Kech, Gwadar, and Panjgur districts). Buleda town itself is comprised of seven villages, surrounded by date trees and cultivated agricultural lands. Aside from the Buleda-Turbat road, the town lacks even a shingle road in toto, let alone other basic facilities. For instance, there is not even one well-equipped hospital in Buleda valley.

Murad Bibi*, an elderly resident of Buleda, tells Dawn: “I tell my children not to take me to Turbat city or anywhere else in case I fall sick. I want to die peacefully in my hometown. Being transported on that ramshackle road leading out of Buleda will be enough to kill me.”

Behind this long incomplete road lies a story of corruption in broad daylight, and it leads straight to Balochistan’s finance department.

A black hole

During the first half of 2016, intelligence operatives began monitoring a particular house, number C-27, located in Quetta’s GOR (government officers’ residences) colony. Only senior officials were aware of the actual location being surveilled; sources tell Dawn that some FC intelligence personnel suspected there was a terrorist taking refuge in one of the residences in the colony. To their surprise, the target turned out to be Balochistan’s then serving secretary finance, Mushtaq Ahmad Raisani. One night in early May that year, a raid on the house resulted in the recovery of Rs730 million in local and foreign currency. It is said that NAB officials were exhausted after tabulating the massive amount of cash on currency counting machines. And that was not all. Cash continued to be unearthed by NAB personnel, including from a bakery shop, as well as water tanks of other residences in the city.

If security is the only issue hampering the development of roads, highways and other infrastructure projects in Balochistan, then why have such projects not been developed and completed in the northern parts of Balochistan, which are not affected by the insurgency

According to a source, the money was to be wired through the hawala system to Dubai, to be received by the then finance minister Khalid Longove’s men. Mr Longove was also subsequently arrested and disqualified for embezzling the public exchequer.

In 2016, another resident of GOR colony, a senior administration official who was serving in Chaghi during the elections, and who hails from Turbat district, nearly met Raisani’s fate while travelling from Gwadar to Karachi. Acting on a tip off, the coast guards at the Uthal crossing check post stopped him, and found huge amounts of cash hidden in his vehicle — according to some, over 100 million rupees.

The same individual was posted in Gwadar in 2015 when the CPEC project was announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Following the news that the coastal city would serve as its epicentre, prices of land in Gwadar skyrocketed. Credible sources tell Dawn that the official freely distributed plots to benefit himself and his friends. By one account, he invited some close friends to Gwadar for Eid holidays on the promise that he would give them plots in the city and serve them whisky — smuggled of course — if they would allay his boredom.

After the coastguard episode, this official moved to London on leave in the name of higher studies, and only returned home after the dust had settled down. He is now back in London, ironically doing his PhD on the Baloch insurgency.

When Dawn spoke to this official, he claimed the allegations were unfounded and baseless.

This, in a nutshell, is Balochistan’s finance department — a black hole where public money goes to disappear.

Documents obtained from the department suggest that so far over Rs2.8 billion have been released for the construction of the Turbat-Buleda road.

Dawn’s investigations reveal how the project has been used to extract funds from the public exchequer. For instance, its PC-1 was formulated in the 1990s, and the project was to have been completed in one phase. According to the National Party’s Senator Jan Buledi, during Zulfiqar Ali Magsi’s second term as the provincial chief minister Balochistan in the 90s, Rs4m was given to Ayub Buledi for the purpose. Instead, the financial allocation has been repeatedly revised by vested interests, specifically the Buleda notables who have been ruling the town for over 30 years.

According to finance department sources, the more that schemes such as the Buleda road drag on, the more it benefits the local MPA.

One of the documents available with Dawn indicates that by 2017, a total of Rs599m had been spent on the road, that, as per the record, is only 19km long. General elections were held a year later. Zahoor Buledi was elected from Buleda as MPA in 2018. Within a year, he was given the portfolio of finance minister under Jam Kamal Khan’s chief ministership. At the time, both belonged to the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), a king’s party formed overnight in Balochistan preceding the 2018 elections.

Like most other politicians, Zahoor changes parties whichever way the wind blows. Before the 2024 elections, he joined the PPP.

Zahoor remained finance minister for almost three years. Documents available with Dawn suggest that funds allocated for the Buleda road increased from Rs599m to around Rs2.8bn during his tenure. Yet there was no indication of any work being done on this 19km stretch between the beginning and end of 2023.

And that is not all. During his tenure as finance minister, supplementary funds — a special allocation that, as per Article 124 of the Constitution, can only be approved by the chief minister and his cabinet — were also issued from the finance department for the Buleda road. Thus, in 2019 and 2020, additional amounts of Rs280m and Rs298.16m respectively, were also allocated aside from the original budgeted amounts.

Talking to Dawn, Zahoor denies that the project has been ongoing for so long, contending that work on it commenced in 2009. He says the road is still incomplete because of the security situation and the attacks on the FC. “Despite that, 90 per cent of it is done.”

“The road is 32km long [although official documents record the distance as 19km], of which 16km is in hilly areas,” he said over the phone. “Due to this, there’s a lot of work required such as diversions, etc so the construction has taken some time.”

According to him, Baloch separatists have carried out 10 attacks on labourers engaged in constructing the road, resulting in 12 workers losing their lives.

“The security situation is beyond my control, even the FC has been targeted”, he tells Dawn.

He does not agree that the total cost of the Turbat-Buleda road has exceeded Rs2bn, claiming that it has so far cost Rs1.7bn. Documents available with Dawn say otherwise.

Interestingly, until he surrendered some years ago, one of Zahoor’s cousins, Iltaf, used to be a separatist leader in the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) — the militant group that Zahoor holds responsible for most of the attacks on Buleda road. When asked about Iltaf, Zahoor says that he never had and still has no sway over his cousin.

According to official records, work on the Buleda road had commenced in the mid-90s. However, locals recall the project being in the pipeline much earlier, after Ayub Buledi, from the same family, was elected MPA in 1988. That was the beginning of the Buledi family’s long and continuing association with Balochistan’s formal power structure.

“Ghost roads reflect the rampant corruption and plunder of Balochistan’s meagre financial resources,” contends Syed Fazl-e-Haider, development analyst and author of The Economic Development of Balochistan, while talking to Dawn.

He says the incompetence of financial managers is another reason for the lack of infrastructure, such as metalled roads, in the province and that there is a vast disconnect between the fiscal outlay and the outcome on the ground. “Funds are allocated and spent, but work on projects is delayed or halted for some reason or another and the prolonged delay raises project costs, [requiring another] budgetary allocation.”

This is why projects take years and are completed, if at all, at a cost many times more than originally budgeted.

The Buleda road saga more or less reflects the same pattern. Among other things, the documents available speak volumes about how justifications continue to be found for funds to be released ad nauseam in the name of the project, an exercise in which local bureaucrats and technocrats seem to be fully complicit.

For instance, consider the bureaucratically worded minutes of a meeting of a forum headed by Additional Chief Secretary Hafiz Abdul Basit, which was attended by representatives from the finance, C&W and P&D departments. At one point it states that the 19km Turbat-Buleda road’s “civic and economic importance cannot be overruled as the opening of this route will not only provide convenient access to the pretty large populations of Buleda and Zamuran area but will also help to improve law and order security situation and further connect the road up to Iran border and mineral-rich area of Chaghi.” This, despite the fact that travelling from Buleda to Chaghi is a journey of some 1,000km.

Up until 2009, there is no record of funds being released in the name of Buleda road, suggesting that Rs2.8bn has only been released since then.

Who are the Buledis?

Mir Naseer Khan Ahmedzai Kambrani Baloch in his book A History of the Baloch and Balochistan writes: “The descendants of Shah Beg lived in the Buleedi Valley of Makran. As such, they came to be known as the Buleedi tribe.”

Later in the book, he says that the Buledi Ameers, who were Zikris, took over the governance of Makran on 28 March 1623 CE, which led to the Zikri faith spreading in Makran. In more recent times, especially in the wake of the Islamisation during General Zia’s rule (1977-88), most Buledis today are ‘namazis’, a colloquial term to denote any non-Zikri. While their religious beliefs may have changed, they continue to call themselves Meer — meaning leader — as they remained the rulers in Makran where, unlike the rest of Balochistan, society is divided along divisions in status. There is no sardari system here.

“Traditionally speaking, there have been three social classes (status groups) here — the ruling class (hakum), the middle class (Baloch), and the menial labouring class (hizmatgar),” said Baloch anthropologist Dr Hafeez Jamali. For many common Baloch in Makran, social mobility can be achieved by engaging in corruption and marrying upwards.

Mehnaz village in Buleda is the family’s ancestral town. Back in the 1990s, Zahoor, the public face of the Buledi family today, used to have a parchoon store just off the shabby Shaheed Ayub Buledi square here — a fact he does not deny during his interview with Dawn. His father, Manzoor Buledi, would usually park his Alto Mehran outside the shop. The store has long since closed, as has the clinic that later took its place, but this bit of history illustrates Zahoor’s humble background. The Buledi family was also involved in a deadly feud with the Shambezai tribe. This became yet more fierce when the Munshi group, who were the Buledis’ political rivals, joined hands with the Shambezais.

As mentioned earlier, the work on the Turbat-Buleda road had begun when Ayub Buledi — who espoused a nationalistic ideology — was elected to the provincial assembly for the second time, deepening the family’s association with electoral politics in Balochistan. Not long after, on Nov 22, 1995, Ayub was attacked in the Jahan-i-Aab area and murdered in an attack orchestrated by the Shambezais and the Munshi group. Law and order in Buleda has spiralled since then; many people even began roaming around with guns and Kalashnikovs.

After Ayub’s death, his brother-in-law Aslam Buledi was appointed minister, the second member of the Buledi family to reach such a position, but unfortunately, Ayub’s nationalism was buried along with him.

By 2002, Jan Buledi, a senator from the Dr Malik Baloch-led National Party (NP), was known as the political teacher of Buledi family, as most of its senior male members had lost their lives in the tribal feud. Also, before the general elections, the then military dictator General Pervez Musharraf had introduced the condition of graduation or equivalent qualification in order to contest election.

Meanwhile, the Turbat-Buleda road project lingered on. During Musharraf’s time, the finance department started digitising the budget. In 2008, when Zahoor joined the NP and became minister, funds for the road began to be released.

In 2013, Ayub’s son Azeem was elected MPA, but soon after he committed suicide at Zahoor’s house on Airport Road in Turbat. In 2018, Zahoor was once again elected to the provincial assembly.

The closer the Buledi family grew to the state, the more they found themselves in the crosshairs of the Baloch separatists.

As MPA, Zahoor posted on Facebook a prayer for the construction of the Turbat-Buleda Road to be safe from the separatists: “Allah isay nazr-i-badh se bachaey!” He was referring to Dr Allah Nazar Baloch, the leader of BLF, an insurgent group particularly active in the Makran belt.

The insurgency

Born in 1927 in Harnai district into a farmer family, Saadat Marri — popularly known as Saddo Marri — was the oldest commander of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA).

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Saddo, like the other Marri Baloch commanders, was dispatched to organise the Baloch insurgency in the Makran belt in 2004, after the BLA had declared war against the state of Pakistan.

Amongst the Baloch in other parts of the province, there prevails a belief that the Makrani Baloch, as compared to them, fear conflict. But contrary to expectations, Makran is the now the epicentre of the Baloch insurgency. And within Makran, the Buleda and Mand-Tump areas are the most adversely affected.

This appears to have provided an excuse for the powers that be and their handpicked politicians to extravagantly use public funds, even more so than in the rest of Balochistan. The Turbat-Buleda road is a case in point.

Consider the comments of the former DIG Frontier Corps (South) in a document obtained by Dawn. According to him, the Buleda-Turbat road “is a very important road keeping in mind the demands of the people of that area as well its strategic position in the prevailing law and order situation.”

The documents quote him saying that the road may be treated as a matter of national interest and the issue of the revised PC-1 settled at the earliest so that the work could be completed soon.

“If security is the only issue hampering the development of roads, highways and other infrastructure projects in Balochistan, then why have such projects not been developed and completed in northern part of Balochistan which is not affected by the insurgency?” argues Mr Fazl-e-Haider, the development analyst quoted earlier. “Certainly, security is a key issue, but corruption and mismanagement of funds by the ruling elite in Quetta cannot be discounted.”

Renowned economist Dr Kaiser Bengali, who has authored a book on Balochistan’s economic injustice titled A Cry for Justice, pointed out in a conversation with Dawn that the roads in Balochistan have been constructed for military and strategic purposes, not to serve economic need, which is why there is not a single dual carriageway in the province.

“Islamabad constructed the Makran coastal highway after discovering Gwadar in 2000, and that too was built on account of its military needs,” he said. “If the objective of a road is linked with security, then transparency becomes secondary.”

Along the decrepit road to Buleda, there are heavily manned FC pickets at every kilometre. When the situation in Buleda was particularly grim following the 2008 elections, FC personnel would frisk passengers, including the locals, at both the entrance and exit points of the Turbat-Buleda road.

“In Balochistan, the state’s policies are security centric and it wants access and infrastructure in the least developed parts of the province,” says Islamabad-based author, security analyst and director of Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies Muhammad Amir Rana. “If policies are security centric, then transparency is compromised, which is otherwise known as corruption.”

With a smile he says: “Everyone benefits from the conflict economy. In the long term, even the Baloch insurgents, who have always preached that the state is unjust, benefit because the prevailing situation can only intensify the people’s mistrust in the state and its politicians.”

The Baloch middle class

In Makran division, where there is no ‘sardari’ culture, the upwardly mobile middle-class Baloch is a class distinct in and of itself because it functions as a replacement of the sardari system. Take the example of three university teachers from a particular tehsil in Buleda who have been appointed pro-vice chancellors of different varsities in Makran and elsewhere in the province not on merit, but with a political objective. “Everywhere in Balochistan, pro-vice chancellors are appointed on some minister’s say-so,” said Kaleem Ullah Barech, the former president of the Academic Staff Association. That has led to varsities becoming cesspools of irregularities and corruption.

Sources close to Zahoor tell Dawn that he appointed two of the three aforementioned university teachers as pro-VC, while the third was appointed by another minister with Zahoor’s approval: the posts were not advertised. All three belong to the minister’s constituency; thus, through these appointments, Zahoor — who was minister Higher Education Commission as well as finance at the time — built up a vote bank in this tehsil. These appointees have also increased Zahoor’s ingress into the workings of varsities in Makran, and elsewhere, with one of them being appointed pro-VC in Lasbela.

Ironically enough, considering they were appointed by Zahoor, a pro-establishment figure and they themselves are close to the government, the PhD theses of most of these appointees are on Baloch nationalism and the separatist movement. One of them even thanked Zahoor — twice — in the acknowledgement section of his thesis.

Like many deputy commissioner offices elsewhere in the country, the DC office in Turbat too has a reputation for corruption. And because it is such a lucrative post, being appointed to it does not come cheap. Sources say an aspirant must shell out more than Rs100m to be appointed there.

But, given that no one is trying to clamp down on the corruption, the initial outlay is recouped within a few months. Following separatist attacks on FC camps in Panjgur and Nushki, it is rumoured that the then Corps Commander Quetta Lt Gen Sarfraz Ali, on the army chief Qamar Bajwa’s initiative, took the ‘management’ of smuggled Iranian oil from the FC and handed it to the local administration, so that the Baloch may be dissuaded from joining separatist outfits. The DC office would allegedly earn over Rs200m to 250m monthly in bribes from the token system (which involves a token issued by the district commissioner against a modest payment). The smuggling of oil, though illegal, is legitimised in this manner, which is more or less the case in five border towns of Balochistan.

Let alone oil, when bureaucrat Hussain Jan Baloch (DC Turbat until recently) was DC Chaghi, he was accused of being involved in the smuggling of sugar to Afghanistan, or at least turning a blind eye to it; the Customs Department wrote a letter against him — a copy of which is available with Dawn — for failing to stop the practice. There also seems to have been a substantial increase in the assets owned by the DC’s extended family in and around Turbat.

DC Hussain did not respond when Dawn contacted him multiple times for his comments.

Incidentally, Commissioner Makran is also the project director of Buleda-Turbat Road. It is well known that most appointments of commissioners and DCs are politically motivated. “The DCs are our ATMs,” said a former provincial minister in Quetta.

The Baloch — politically speaking — can be divided into three categories: those who work within the constitutional framework; the hardliners who do not see any point in talking with the state; and finally, the confused bunch — who are neither here nor there. They are what we could refer to as the middle class. They swing like a pendulum whichever side their interests lie.

When the Dawn correspondent approached people mentioned in this report to get their side of the story, they would astutely play the Baloch victim card. “We’re Baloch,” most of them say. “Why do you write against your own people?”

In Turbat, in the presence of several NP workers, Dr Abdul Malik Baloch welcomed Dawn at his house. He had just returned from the Tump-Mand area, where he had gone after 20 years to address a party gathering.

Dr Baloch was appointed chief minister in the name of the middle-class Baloch so as to counter rising Baloch nationalism. In reply to a question about their interests not being aligned with their people, he quoted Karl Marx’s scathing line on the middle class, that it is a dishonest class whose interests are with the bourgeois.

While he spoke highly of Ayub Buledi, he said little about Zahoor who had left his party before the 2018 elections to join the BAP. “Zahoor and his family left the NP because they did not want to stay in the party, even though we know the family quite well,” he maintained. “The Buledi family may have differences within, but they are one before the elections.”

As the Dawn correspondent was taking his leave, the former chief minister handed him a promotional book by Abdul Manan on his two-and-a-half-year performance as chief minister. In a low voice he said that unlike Baloch writers, many, especially non-Baloch, have written in his favour. Mr Manan, currently additional deputy commissioner Mastung said to be close to former chief minister Nawab Aslam Raisani, was Dr Malik’s press secretary when he was chief minister. Dr Malik had promoted him from grade-16 to grade-17 at the time, which is now equivalent to grade-19.

Back in Turbat, the Dawn correspondent accompanied some local residents to a wedding, which turned out to be Zahoor’s nephew’s nuptials. Later that evening, as cartons of party favours were brought into the spacious living room, it meant the time had come for us to leave the gathering.

Header image: Blue Zambad pick-up trucks carrying Iranian oil move along a kutcha portion of the Buleda-Turbat road, while pylons meant to support unbuilt bridges along this route loom in the background.—Photo by the writer

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2024