Dispatches from Pakistan

Balochistan Betrayed

150 BalochistanBetrayed mahvish ahmad abdul wahab baloch is afraid to talk on the phone. In 2008, he was picked up by security agencies after leading a rally through Karachi protesting the tenth anniversary of Chagai-I—the notorious underground nuclear tests that polluted a Baloch district to serve Pakistan’s national security interest.After a post-rally search for a friend1 ended in a brutal three-day torture fest involving baggings, beatings, and injections , Wahab is convinced that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is tapping his phone to keep an eye on his movements, carefully surveilling where he is, who he is with, and what he is saying. Another manifestation, says Wahab, of the oppressive state of Pakistan. Wahab is among several hundreds of Baloch who have been kidnapped , tortured, and (at times) brutally killed by Pakistan’s military and intelligence institutions.Their crime: political sympathies or activities furthering the cause for a more autonomous or outright independent Balochistan. Their fates have been met with a silent (or silenced) Pakistani media, where news of the atrocities only started trickling in during the summer of 2011. According to Wahab, this spate of state-led pick-ups has not taken place in a vacuum. Rather, it is part of a “historical pattern of betrayal,” balochistan betrayed 151 where the Pakistani state has repeatedly broken specific agreements around the accession of Balochistan to Pakistan, the governing of the province and the sharing of Balochistan’s natural resources. It is easy to excuse Wahab’s indictment of history as a separatist fantasy, one unsupported by facts or experience. He is, after all, the chairman of the Baloch Rights Council and a member of the Baloch National Front, a coalition of separatist political parties fighting for an independent Balochistan. Separatist to the core—a sarmachar2 even, according to one bystander who observed our interview from afar. But Wahab and his companions are not alone with their memories of Pakistani betrayal. Baloch parties across the political divide share their sentiments, from the more pro-federation and pro-Pakistan Baloch National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) and National Party (NP), to the separatists of the Baloch National Movement (BNM) and the Baloch Republican Party (BRP). Diverging in their solutions, they unite in their memories. These memories have largely been silenced and, though dif- ficult to reconstruct into an air-tight and unified narrative, they paint a picture of forced agreements, promises made and broken, of power brokered and unshared, and of deep poverty amid great wealth. The First Betrayal:Annexation, NotAccession We are Muslims, but it is not necessary that by virtue of our being Muslims, we should lose our freedom and merge with others. If the mere fact that we are Muslims requires us to join Pakistan, then Afghanistan and Iran, both Muslim countries, should also amalgamate with Pakistan. —Ghaus Bux Bizenjo, speech at Dar-ul-Awam, Dhadar, Balochistan, December 14, 1947 Wahab Baloch has agreed to meet with me after a flurry of texts has been exchanged between my phone and his numerous mobiles. Tightly holding on to the microphone I’ve handed him, he speaks in a low voice, narrating a (hi)story that remains hidden to most Pakistanis outside Balochistan. Already in the first few words, he begins to part ways with the conventional narrative. 152 Mahvish Ahmad In March 1948 the Pakistani military forcibly annexed Balochistan. It is impossible to understand our demands if you do not understand this fact.You see, we never wanted to be a part of Pakistan. That is why we declared our independence on August 11, 1947—three days before Pakistan. Our wishes were betrayed. By the British, and then, by Pakistan in March 1948 when their troops marched into Balochistan and forced us to sign an accession treaty. The conventional narrative does not tend to the particularities of Balochistan’s entry into Pakistan. Usually, it limits itself to the occurrence of accession in March 1948, followed by a swift move to the narration of parallel events around the country. But sometimes, Pakistani historians refer to a conference held in June 1947, two months before Pakistan’s independence inAugust, where selected Baloch leaders called for Balochistan’s accession to Pakistan. Political activists like Wahab contest the idea that Balochistan voluntarily acceded to Pakistan. They point out that the June 1947 conference is misrepresented by Pakistani historians, who claim that it reflected the...