Identifier | Created | Classification | Origin |
---|---|---|---|
08ISLAMABAD1573 | 2008-04-15 12:20:00 | CONFIDENTIAL | Embassy Islamabad |
VZCZCXRO8467 PP RUEHLH RUEHPW DE RUEHIL #1573/01 1061220 ZNY CCCCC ZZH P 151220Z APR 08 FM AMEMBASSY ISLAMABAD TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6510 INFO RUEHBUL/AMEMBASSY KABUL 8446 RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI 3120 RUEHKP/AMCONSUL KARACHI 9548 RUEHLH/AMCONSUL LAHORE 5297 RUEHPW/AMCONSUL PESHAWAR 4026 RHMFISS/CDR USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC RHWSMRC/USCINCCENT MACDILL AFB FL |
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ISLAMABAD 001573 |
1. (C) Summary: In a March 31 - April 2 visit to Quetta,
capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province, Embassy political officer met with local politicians, businessmen, and students. While their views widely varied, whether they were male or female, new to politics or wizened, they uniformly complained that the province has been neglected economically and politically since Pakistan's inception. Most also voiced a stunning pride in their ethnicity--Pashtoon or Baloch--which in its most extreme form still results in calls for an independent state of Balochistan. Along with this pride comes a feeling of exclusion; every Baloch or Pashtun we spoke to in Quetta admitted to feeling "not quite accepted" by the rest of Pakistan. The power of the tribal Sardars and Nawabs (Chiefs) remains strong among many Baloch, and many tribal leaders still use this to resist the control of the central government, a pattern that dates from Balochistan's absorption into Pakistan in 1947 and 1948. Balochistan's history since Pakistan's inception is riddled with uprisings and insurrections followed by brutal repression from the center, with pockets of Baloch "liberation forces" carrying on the fight to this day in the province's mountains. 2.(C) Summary continued: All lament the backward state of the province, where some areas are yet to be electrified, and where some villages remain a day's walk from water in the dry season. Balochistan's small population (10 million) and huge area (134,000 square miles, 48 per cent of Pakistan, half the size of France) makes it a very difficult province to develop, an argument the central government indirectly makes: investment in a road in heavily populated Punjab reaches far more people than in sparsely populated Balochistan. This is cold comfort to the people of this desert province, however, only feeding their sense of aggrieved neglect. Private businessmen we met and foreign-funded NGOS are building schools and health centers which receive enormous local support. Several Baloch politicians were eager to share their creative ideas for development in the province. Following the February 18 elections, newly elected members of the Provincial Assembly have formed their own coalition--echoing that of the center--and elected a Baloch Sardar as Chief Minister on April 7. Their hope is cooperation with the National Assembly will be strong enough to bring new attention--and development funds--to the province. End summary. Balochistan: The Neglected Province 3. (SBU) On Eighteenth Century French maps, this part of the world is marked "Terre des Balodges, feroces et guerrieres," land of the Baloch, fierce and warlike. Not much has changed. In the sixty years since it was incorporated into Pakistan, Balochistan has generated countless independence movements and uprisings, peaking in 1971 - 74 when then-Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto sent in helicopter gunships and thousands of Baloch rebels died. While a self-styled Baloch Liberation Army still exists in the mountains, its threat to the stability of the province is small, causing (or at least claiming) occasional assassinations of police and Frontier Corps troops, including two in Quetta during PolOff's visit. (The killings are real; whether they or other groups are in fact the culprits is unclear.) 4.(C) Although the fighting for independence has died down, the spirit lives on, at least in the hearts of ardent students, members of the Baloch Students Organization at the University of Balochistan. PolOff met with six such students at the Serena Hotel in Quetta (where, for security reasons, all meetings took place but for a call on the city's Nazim, or Mayor). All introduced themselves with the last name Baloch, were articulate and uniformly polite, and all had memorized the wrongs done to Balochistan by Pakistan, starting when the Khan of Kalat was forced to sign the Instrument of Accession by Mohammed Ali Jinnah in 1948. (Kalat, a princely state in India, formed the largest part of today's Balochistan province.) They assured PolOff the majority of their fellow Baloch students shared their passion for independence. 5. (C) More senior interlocutors we met have mellowed on this ISLAMABAD 00001573 002.2 OF 003 issue and assured us such feelings are held only by students from a limited number of tribes, and they, too, mellow with maturity. But no one we met, businessman, NGO worker or politician, denied the province has been badly neglected by the central government since independence. All stressed that Balochistan's mineral wealth--particularly natural gas, produced there since the 1950s--has contributed greatly to Pakistan's treasury, with the province receiving little in return. As Ms. Rubina Erfan, a political activist and past and present member of the provincial assembly for the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) noted, a sign of the center's neglect was that PML leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussein never once visited the province, despite the fact its Chief Minister came from his party. 6. (C) Another factor holding the province back is local tribal practices, especially among the Baloch. Many of those we met readily acknowledge that the more traditional tribal leaders still resist development in their areas lest it reduce the reliance of tribal people on their leaders. Former provincial governor Lt.Gen.(ret.) Abdul Qadir Baloch noted that the northern third or so of the province, dominated by Pashtuns, is far more educated and developed than the rest of the predominantly Baloch areas and in turn reflects a lessening of Pashtun tribal ties over the years. Baloch, the first of his ethnic group to become a general in the Pakistan Army, is not a Sardar and clearly has little time for them. "Look who gets elected here," he told us; "not Sardars," and with few exceptions he is right (as exceptions see the current Assembly in para 9 below). A current popular leader, in jail in Karachi for political agitation, is Sardar Akhtar Mingal. "He is important not because he is a Sardar, but because he is a party leader," the General stressed. Some Good Work Gets Done 7. (SBU) Despite all this apparent gloom, we encountered some genuine enthusiasm for change in Quetta. NGOs, businessmen and politicians are all making their mark. PolOff met with workers from NGOs Strengthening Participation Organization (SPO) and South Asia Partnership/Pakistan (SAPP), both funded by foreign aid, whose organizations teach political rights to political party workers, low-level bureaucrats and ordinary citizens. Ms. Yasmin Lehri of SPO, a previous USAID grantee to the East-West Center, has established 10 village girls' schools and mother-child health centers in District Bolan. In all of them, the villagers build the facilities and participate in their management. SPO, SAPP and Kamal Siddiqui, a successful businessman and philanthropist, who has built some 100 schools under a similar program, all confirm that the villagers' support for these programs is so strong that other villagers are calling for similar schools and health centers to be built in their areas. 8. (SBU) PML Assembly member Ms. Rubina Erfan ("call me Rubina"), who married into the still-powerful family of the Khan of Kalat, is tireless in her efforts to bring development to her district. Recently, President Musharraf granted Balochistan legislators several million dollars each for special development funds. Rubina confronted him, said, to his apparent amazement, that her villages had yet to see electricity, and she needed much more if she was to make any real progress in her district. She is a forceful woman, if our meeting was any guide, and Musharraf acquiesced. Electricity is reaching her villages in Kalat for the first time now and with it tube wells and a reliable source of water, an incalculable boon in an area where in the dry season water was a day's camel's ride away. A New Provincial Assembly 9. (SBU) Almost two months after the February 18 general elections, the Balochistan Assembly met for the first time on April 7. Endless shifting party allegiances resulted in a People's Party of Pakistan (PPP)-dominated Assembly with the virtual unanimous election of PPP member Nawab Muhammad Aslam Raisani as Chief Minister and another Baloch Nawab, Zulfiqar Magsi, as Governor. The PML, which won 20 seats in the 62 seat Assembly, versus the PPP's four, gradually dissolved to favor a coalition mirroring the one in the center. This, PML, Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), and PPP politicians told us, should strengthen Balochistan's efforts to get attention--and aid--from the center. It seems to have already helped. PPP co-chairman Asif Zardari recently reached out to ISLAMABAD 00001573 003 OF 003 the people of the province, calling for an inquiry into the thousands of Baloch and Pashtoons who have "disappeared" in police and intelligence roundups there over the past few years. 10. (SBU) On April 6, the new Governor announced that Chief Minister Raisani has just initiated contacts with Baloch insurgents in an effort to end the long-simmering insurgency. "No one has tried to talk to Baloch fighters in the past," Magsi is quoted in the press as saying, noting that the GOP has always engaged in force in dealing with them. (Comment: Former Governor Lt.Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch told us the President fired him as Governor several years ago for proposing talking to rather than fighting the insurgents. End comment.) The Baloch insurgents have long demanded more autonomy and more control of the province's resources, and to bring attention to their cause have generated a number of murders and other law and order problems, the extent of which our interlocutors could not gauge. What is their "work" in the province, particularly in Quetta, and that which is generated by the Taliban (and less likely, al Qaeda) is apparently conflated by local law enforcement, complicated by claims (and blames) that usually go to the "Balochistan Liberation Army." Energy in the Air 11. (C) Comment: PolOff's brief visit revealed a surprising number of bright, energetic Baloch and Pashtoon men and women who are fighting the many obstacles they face to bring progress to their far away province, despite all its problems. One grandmother, Ghazala Gola, PPP member of the Provincial Assembly, is still ready to fight for Balochistan's needs as she did when she started working for her party 30 years ago. The dynamic Rubina Erfan, mentioned above, heads the girls' soccer leagues for all of Pakistan, and sends teams from Balochistan to national competition in Islamabad (and proudly announced "we beat the Afghans!"). Former governor Baloch is in a major Islamabad thinktank, Pildat, with some of Pakistan's best minds. The huge port of Gwadar (see reftel), on Balochistan's border with Iran may, just may, become a gateway for trade with central Asia, and as a major deep water port, a transshipment point for smaller ships going to Gulf ports. But land access to the port is still only by rough road, and the province's poor road and limited rail system will continue to hinder Balochistan's economic prospects for some time to come. The province's use by the nastiest elements in Afghanistan will likely continue unabated for the near future. But with more attention from Islamabad, the small cadre of energetic people we met will grab every opportunity they have to improve their home province. End comment. PATTERSON |