Selig S

Selig S. Harrison

Selig S. Harrison is the author of the definitive study of Balochistan and the Baloch problem, “In Afghanistan’s Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations”, published by the Carnegie Endowment in 1980. He is also the author of five other books on Asia, including, India: The Most Dangerous Decades and Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of Soviet Withdrawal. He is currently a Senior Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy.

Remarks by Selig S. Harrison, Moderator, at WSI’s lecture entitled, “Human Rights in Focus”, Longworth House Office Building, Washington, D.C. March 7, 2005.

Before we begin our discussion of the present situation in Baluchistan, I would like to take you back thirty years to the events that set the stage for what is happening today. Then, as now, the Pakistan central government denied economic and political justice to the Baluch, and then, as now, a bitter insurgency erupted. It lasted from 1973 to 1977 and involved some 80,000 Pakistani troops and 55,000 Baluch tribesmen at various stages of the fighting.

At first the Baluch guerrillas cut off the main roads linking Baluchistan with the surrounding provinces. Then they disrupted coal shipments to Punjab by blowing up railroad lines. They attacked oil drilling operations and the Army responded with ever increasing brutality, using air attacks with Chinook helicopters supplied under the U.S. military aid program. That didn’t crush the Baluch so the Pakistan air force borrowed 30 deadly Huey Cobra helicopter gunships from Iran that the U.S. had given to the Shah. Those helicopters could fire 750 rounds a minute.

Ironically, some of the planes provided by Iran at that time were piloted by Iranian pilots. That’s ironic because in the current fighting, there are accusations in Pakistan that Iran is funding and arming the Baluch guerrillas today as a reprisal for Pakistan’s help for U.S. Special Forces units believed to be operating undercover in Iran.

To understand the anger that has led to the Baluch insurgency today you have to understand just how brutal Pakistan’s repression was thirty years ago. Let me tell you about the atrocities committed by the Pakistani air forces in a battle at Chamalang in the Marri Hills of Balochistan. Three bloody days of battle in early September, 1974. I’m going to read briefly from a reliable book by an author named Harrison.

Every summer, the Marri nomads converge on the broad pasture lands of the Chamalang valley, one of the few rich grazing areas in all of Balochistan. In 1974, many of the men stayed in the hills to fight with the guerillas, but the women, children, and older men streamed down from the mountains with their flocks and set up their black tents in a sprawling, fifty-square mile area. Chamalang, they thought, would be a haven from the incessant bombing and strafing attacks in the highlands. As the fighting gradually reached a stalemate, however, the army decided to take advantage of this concentration of Marri families as means of luring the guerrillas down from the hills. The Pakistani officials calculated-correctly-that attacks on the tent villages would compel guerillas to come out in the open in defense of their families.

After a series of preliminary skirmishes in surrounding areas, the army launched Operation Chamalang on September 3^rd, 1974, using a combined assault by ground and air forces. Interviews with Pakistani officers and Baluch participants indicate that some 15,000 Marris were massed at Chamalang. Guerrilla units formed a huge protective circle around their families and livestock. They fought for three days and nights, braving artillery fire and occasional strafing attacks at F-86 and Mirage fighter planes and Huey Cobras. Finally, when the Baluch ran out of ammunition, they did what they could to regroup and escape.

I was able to reconstruct what happened at Chamalang by interviewing Pakistani officers and leaders of the insurgency who had escaped to Afghanistan. This time it’s harder to pin down the facts. We know that Pakistan gets Sui gas from Baluchistan to meet 22 percent of its gas needs. We know that the central government has consistently refused to pay fair royalties for that gas to Baluchistan for its development. We know that on January 7^th insurgents blew up some of the Sui gas installations and that the army sent in massive forces to retaliate. But just what is happening militarily is not really clear because the army has not announced an operation in Baluchistan or admitted that there is one. Some say there are as many as 10,000 Pakistani soldiers in Baluchistan. The Pakistani publication Newsline says there are 4,000 organized Baluch insurgents operating out of at least 15 base camps in the Kohlu mountains. The facts about the military situation aren’t clear, but it’s very clear that human rights violations by the Pakistani forces are occurring on a large scale and that is the focus of our meeting today.