Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06ISLAMABAD17546
2006-09-04 07:23:00
SECRET//NOFORN
Embassy Islamabad
Cable title:  

BALOCHISTAN (5): THE PASHTUNS -- BALOCHISTAN'S

Tags:  PK PREL PGOV PTER PINR 
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S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 ISLAMABAD 017546 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS
NOFORN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/03/2016
TAGS: PK PREL PGOV PTER PINR
SUBJECT: BALOCHISTAN (5): THE PASHTUNS -- BALOCHISTAN'S
OTHER TRIBES

REF: A. ISLAMABAD 14349

B. ISLAMABAD 16269

C. ISLAMABAD 16944

D. ISLAMABAD 16962

E. ISLAMABAD 16987

F. ISLAMABAD 16994

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Peter W. Bodde,
Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 ISLAMABAD 017546

SIPDIS

SIPDIS
NOFORN

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/03/2016
TAGS: PK PREL PGOV PTER PINR
SUBJECT: BALOCHISTAN (5): THE PASHTUNS -- BALOCHISTAN'S
OTHER TRIBES

REF: A. ISLAMABAD 14349

B. ISLAMABAD 16269

C. ISLAMABAD 16944

D. ISLAMABAD 16962

E. ISLAMABAD 16987

F. ISLAMABAD 16994

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Peter W. Bodde,
Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)


1. (C) Summary/Introduction: In Balochistan, violent Baloch
tribal leaders and vociferous Baloch nationalists grab the
headlines, while the Pashtuns interests and issues are buried
on the inside pages. Like the Baloch, the Pashtuns share
deep-seated anger toward the federal government for
Islamabad's exploitation of the province's natural resources
without commensurate investment in the province's development
or economy, particularly in Pashtun districts. Some Pashtuns
accuse the Baloch nationalists of chauvinism in their calls
for greater provincial autonomy, equating greater provincial
control to greater Baloch control. Balochistan is also now
home to thousands of Afghan refugees, the majority of whom
are Pashtun, and is also a reputed safe haven for Taliban
leaders directing operations in southern Afghanistan.
Despite the province's large Pashtun population, it has thus
far resisted the spread of "Talibanization" that has plagued
the northern Pashtun belt. End summary/introduction. (
Note: This cable was researched before the August 26 death of
Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti. (Ref C) End note.)


--------------
Who are the Pashtuns?
--------------


2. (U) Pashtuns comprise roughly 38 percent of the provincial
population, slightly less than the 43 percent of the
population that is ethnically Baloch. (Note: NGO
representatives in Quetta say that rumors in the province
contend that the Pashtuns have actually surpassed the Baloch
as the most numerous ethnic group in the province. End note.)
The Pashtuns dominate the northern quarter of the province,
considered by many the least-developed are of the
least-developed province in Pakistan. The Pashtun areas of
Balochistan are the southernmost stretch of the Pashtun belt

that runs from the Hindu Kush in the north, straddles the
Pakistan-Afghan border, and ends in the south in the
Balochistan districts of Quetta, Sibi, and Loralai.


3. (C) Pashtuns communities are present in nine of
Balochistan's 27 districts. There is also a narrow Pashtun
corridor in the predominately Baloch Chaghai district that
stretches westward along Balochistan's border with the Afghan
provinces of Qandahar, Helmand, and Nimruz. In recent months,
these Afghan provinces have experienced a violent resurgence
by the Taliban, with some attacks launched from locations in
Balochistan. According to Embassy interlocutors, Afghan
refugee camps in these areas, such as Girdi Jungal, Pir
Alizai and Posti, are prime havens for drug smugglers and gun
runners.

--------------
Pashtun Political Alignment
--------------


4. (U) Balochistan's Pashtuns are politically divided among
three different parties:

-- The secular Awami National Party (ANP),whose home base is
the North West Frontier Province (NWFP),where it holds ten
seats in the provincial assembly; the party has no seats in
the Balochistan assembly and has only one seat in the federal
Senate;


ISLAMABAD 00017546 002 OF 004


-- The Pashtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP),which has five
seats in the provincial assembly, one seat in the National
Assembly, and two in the federal Senate; and

-- The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Fazlur Rehman Faction (JUI-F),a
key member of the national coalition of Islamic political
parties -- the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). The JUI-F holds
17 seats in the 65-member provincial assembly, where it is
part of the governing coalition, and holds roughly half of
the MMA's seats in the National Assembly, where Maulana
Fazlur Rehman leads the opposition.

--------------
Pashtun versus Baloch
--------------


5. (SBU) While the Pashtun share many of the same concerns as
the Baloch (septel)--they feel that the federal government
has taken advantage of the province's natural resources
without adequately funding development, and worry about
settlers from Punjab and Sindh tipping the province's
demographic balance -- they do not support the Baloch agenda
in its entirety. Pashtun political leaders from both the
ruling PML and the opposition PKMAP describe the Baloch
nationalists as presenting themselves as the only people of
Balochistan. Pashtun leaders accuse Baloch nationalists of
treating the jobs reserved in the federal bureaucracy for
Balochistan as being intended strictly for ethnic Baloch, not
the Pashtuns.


6. (C) Some Pashtun leaders nurture their own separatist
aspirations. For example, Senator Mahmood Khan Achakzai
(PKMAP) said that while the Pashtuns agree that Islamabad
should give more power to the provinces, describing the
central government as the "Punjabi empire," the best way to
empower the Pashtuns was to create a "natural Pashtun
homeland" made up of the NWFP, the tribal agencies and the
Pashtun districts of northern Balochistan and the
northwestern edge of Punjab. (Note: There is little prospect
of this concept gaining traction, given the current political
realities of Pakistan. End note.)

--------------
Skepticism about the Bugti Insurgency
--------------


7. (C) Pashtuns are generally not supportive of the current
Baloch tribal uprising led by tribal sardars Bugti, Marri and
Mengal (ref C),or to the rebel's attacks on infrastructure
in the province's Sui gas fields. The Pashtuns sympathize
with Nawab Bugti's fight to stop the GOP's efforts to build
army cantonments in the province, the permanent military
bases that Islamabad sees as key to protecting development
projects. Many in Balochistan -- Baloch and Pashtun -- view
these as Islamabad's effort to exert greater control over the
province. Achakzai said, wryly observing that "Punjabis are
good fish: they swim from cantonment to cantonment."


8. (C) Pashtuns are deeply skeptical about the motives of the
Baloch tribal leaders, pointing out that two of the Baloch
sardars currently at odds with the government -- Nawab Bugti
and Sardar Mengal -- have formerly served as chief ministers
or provincial governors. Many Pashtun recall that Nawab
Bugti was allied with the government more often than against
it. Pashtun leaders view the Baloch tribal sardars as placing
more importance on sustaining tribal law -- and their
unassailable positions as the heads of their tribes -- than
fighting for the general welfare of the province.

--------------
The Afghan Refugees
--------------


9. (C) The Afghan Pashtuns are a source of frustration for

ISLAMABAD 00017546 003 OF 004


both the Baloch and the native Pashtuns of Balochistan.
Afghan refugee camps are considered havens for gun runners
and drug smugglers, as well as possible hiding places for the
Taliban from Afghanistan. As of December 2005, there were
683,000 Afghan refugees in the province, according to UNHCR.
NGO workers and Quetta-based journalists say that the number
of Afghans is actually substantially higher, as many cycle in
and out of Balochistan, depending on the conditions on the
Afghanistan side of the border.


10. (C) In separate August meetings with NGO workers --
including a Pashtun native of Balochistan and one of Afghan
Hazara descent -- and with journalists, poloff heard
descriptions of near-universal resentment in Balochistan,
especially in and around Quetta, against the Afghans. In some
areas, local residents blame the Afghan Pashtuns for
exacerbating the drought that has afflicted the province
since the mid 1990s. They are accused of deforesting large
stretches of land. Palwasha Jalalzai, a Pashtun from Qila
Saifullah who works for the NGO SEHER, told Poloff that many
Balochistan Pashtuns "completely resent" the Afghans.
Balochistan natives also resent the refugees and Afghan
economic migrants for obtaining Pakistani national ID cards
and passports, and thus being treated just like Pakistanis.
An Afghan refugee recently earned top grades in the town of
Dalbandin and took the one spot reserved for a Dalbandin
student at Balochistan's only medical school. "That one
medical college seat could have gone to a local Dalbandin
boy, who already is so disadvantaged," Palwasha lamented.


13. (C) The Afghans have created new neighborhoods that run
from the edge of Quetta to the feet of the mountains that
rise over the city. Pashtuns have built the extensive town of
Pashtunabad, a lawless place that even the police and
security forces refuse to enter, according to journalists and
local interlocutors. In contrast, many of the estimated
300,000 Afghan Hazaras in Quetta, Shia Dari speakers from
central Afghanistan, live in the neighborhood known as
Marriabad. It is an area of neat, tidy, modern-looking,
shop-lined streets. The Uzbeks, another non-Pashtun group,
are the poorest of the Afghan refugees, working as the
day-laborers and living in mud-walled compounds in a low
lying area of the city squeezed between the railroad line,
Balochistan University and Pashtunabad.

--------------
The Taliban
--------------


14. (S) Afghan Taliban leaders -- virtually all ethnic
Pashtun -- are widely suspected of hiding in the Pashtun
areas of Balochistan, including Quetta, according to the
local contacts and journalists. In July 2006, the GOP
initiated what it termed concerted effort to expel Taliban
members from the country, beginning with raids and arrests in
and around Quetta on July 16 - 18, in which more than 200
Afghans were rounded up. More arrests occurred in August,
including 28 suspected Taliban members at a hospital in
Quetta. Senator Sarwar Kaker (PML) was skeptical that these
arrests -- and the subsequent expulsion of 58 Afghans
arrested who lacked immigration documentation but who were
not considered Taliban -- would have much effect given the
porous nature of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Like many
of post's interlocutors, he expected the 58 to drift back
into Pakistan because there is more work on this side of the
frontier. Quetta-based journalists told poloff that the
arrests were "a joke" because the police had arrested
ordinary Afghans, not high-level Taliban. In contrast, Syed
Salman Muhammad, the top ranking officer in the city police
department, asserted to poloff that all the Afghans the
police rounded up were Taliban, explaining that police policy
now was to focus on Afghans without valid immigration or
refugee documents through raids in places where single Afghan
men were known to live. The police were not/not harassing

ISLAMABAD 00017546 004 OF 004


Afghan families with valid refugee status, he said.

--------------
Comment
--------------


16. (S) Comment: From a brief visit to Quetta and extensive
outreach to Balochistan contacts in Islamabad, post concludes
that there has been minimal spillover in Balochistan of the
"Talibanization" phenomena present in Pakistan's Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),despite allegations of the
Taliban's heavy presence in Quetta and along the Afghanistan
border. While Baloch-dominated districts may be naturally
immune to the ethnic-Pashtun Taliban, even Pashtun-dominated
districts appeared to be only minimally influenced by Taliban
ideology. End comment.
BODDE