War on terror claims another victim
The hilly, mountainous territory lying south of Afghanistan, straddling the trade routes of the ancient world, is now the happy hunting ground of the Pakistani Armay and the Baloach Nationalist Rebels under their leader Nawab Bugti, who was killed a couple of days ago. What is the implication of this development? How is the killing of Sardar Nawab Bugti going to impact on the war on Terror? These questions have been largely ignored and it is time to address them.
Baloachistan is an oil rich province of Pakistan, in which the old feudal ways have neither weakened nor is civil society highly developed. Nawab Bugti happened to be the scion of an old aristocratic family who graduated from Oxford University, making him a very unlikely rebel. He has held high office under the Federal Government. Since the time Pakistan came into being in 1947, the Military dominated elite has been exploiting the resources of the land with very little by way of development. For example, the gas rich province sends gas by pipes to Islamabad and Karachi, but there is hardly any use of the gas in Baloach territories itself. Given this background there is little surprise that a vigorous nastionalist movement of Resistance sprung up in that province. The Pakistani Army was routinely called out to crush the resistance with the maximum force. The War on Terror gave the Mushraf regime one more opportunity to brutally crush the resistasnce.
Tow days back the Pakistani Army used gunship helicopters and a whole brigade of its Infantry to storm a cave in which the 80 year rebel had taken refuge. He was killed in that attasck which the Pakistani Government through its spokesperson hailed as a significant victory.
The killing of the 80 year old Nawb Bugt is going to stir up the now dormant guerilla struggle against the Central Government. Since this region lies very close to the Afghsn border there will be an impact on the Taliban as the Pashtu tribes are divided between the Baluch region the NWF Provice of Pakistan and Afghanistan.