Anatomy of a
Blunder
By Nasim Zehra
The distressing
events following the Pakistani political leader
Nawab Akbar Bugti’s death on August 26 have
created an environment of acute distrust between
the government and the rest of Pakistan. Quite apart
from anyone’s own political leanings and views
about the controversial political leader Nawab Bugti,
it is continuous unfolding of dreadful, almost surreal,
developments that are the talk of the county.
His death in normal circumstances would have been
noticed by Pakistanis as the passing away of a Baluch
leader, a charismatic, well-read, self-respecting
and also occasionally brutal man. An old guard of
the Pakistani feudal class, who supported the Quaid
as a young man, Bugti would have been recalled as
the Baluch leader with the routine feudal paradox
that haunts much of rural Pakistani politics. While
the voice for Baluch rights, Bugti conceded perhaps
only minimal rights to those he ruled with an iron
hand, a militia and a jail. But now it’s a
different story.
His killing and what followed subsequently, he could
be the martyr in the multiple narratives of Pakistan
- the narrative of the State versus the politicians,
of the people versus the State, of the Baluch fighting
the domination of the Punjab. Narratives, the modern
folklore, make potent political tools. Not always
factually accurate, they combine the power of emotive
story telling packed with passion and conviction,
traveling through cyberspace, faster than the speed
of sound. In the way Nawab Bugti died, Islamabad
lost its voice in all the narratives,. It emerges
now as the “other.”
In fact on Baluchistan Musharraf had emerged the
maverick. He understood both the development and
the political dimension of the Baluchistan question.
No other government in Islamabad made as much of
a practical contribution to the development of Baluchistan
that Musharraf did.
Others too identified the issues, Musharraf pushed
for practical steps; dams, schools, electricit ,
more royalty, more developments budgets, greater
presence of the Baluch in the security agencies
etc. He led the political initiatives too. Despite
his initially damaging comments about hitting the
‘Baluch insurgents’ Musharraf did leave
behind his institutional proclivities. When this
round of crisis erupted in 2004 he fully backed
the formation and the work of the parliamentary
Committee on Baluchistan. The Committee’s
report was supported by Nawab Bugti and people like
Pakistan’s human rights icon Asma Jehangir.
Musharraf promised to implement its recommendations.
It was the first detailed documentation of the Baluch
grievances with recommendations.
In fact when it came to the crunch, the negotiations
on pickets and posts, Musharraf supported the civilian
interlocutors despite the strong reservations of
certain groups in the security establishment. The
negotiations did produce a break through in April
2005, over the question of a military cantonment,
and simultaneous removal of Bugti pickets and Frontier
Constabulary posts. But then two developments; one
the foot-dragging by the FC and the heightened sabotage
activities on the ground by the Baluchistan Liberation
Front, derailed the political dialogue.
A dynamic of distrust replaced the fragile trust
that was beginning to emerge between the interlocutors.
While the government’s civilian interlocutors,
Musharraf’s National Security Advisor and
initially Musharraf understood the need to continue
on the political track, a section with the security
believed in the force option. With sabotage on the
rise and endless intelligence reports claiming the
Indian, the Afghan and many other ‘hands’
in all of this, the political track was abandoned.
That was the cardinal error.
Islamabad should have stayed with both tracks, with
the political leading the force track. But with
military ascendancy in the power structure, any
political negotiations was viewed as a ‘surrender
to the enemies of the State.’
The civilian politicians, as the army’s junior
partners, were unable to have their way. Confronted
with sabotage and armed opponents the Pakistan army
saw Baluchistan as a battleground where it was about
‘do-or-die.’ This is how they are trained
to think of national good. In black and white terms,
not greys. The army is trained for battle , not
for compromises and adjustments. They do have a
role in dealing with insurgencies and armed resistance,
but are often not capable of making policy. Bhutto’s
seventies policy on Baluchistan was questionable
too but he combined it with political content. Today
after Bugti’s death Islamabad has no allies
in the Baluch political landscape. Only the anti-Bugti
tribals it was cultivating.
As if the death of the Pakistani political leader
Nawab Akbar Bugti was not itself a devastating blow
to this government’s own agenda of “provincial
harmony”, at a dizzying speed the government
made a further hash of matters. The most appalling
of all have been the circumstances in which Nawab
Bugti was buried September 1.
A padlocked box was lowered in the grave. No family
member present. According to media reports some
of the government-sponsored political opponents
of Bugti, some officials and a group of journalists
participated in the rapidly performed last rites.
He body was refused to his family; his six daughters
and his two sons were not able to have a last glimpse
of their father. They refused to follow the government’s
reported directive that only two male members of
the Bugti family could participate in the state-arranged
burial of their father in Dera Bugti. They wanted
to take Nawab Bugti’s body to Quetta. Dera
Bugti, they claimed had become “hostile territory”
for the family. After all only two days before Bugti
was killed in the army operation a government-sponsored
jirga was held in the Dear Bugti stadium. This government
jirga had announced the end of the sardari system
and stripping Bugti of his title. Also with Dera
Bugti months before having become a battle field
from which Bugti, his family and his militia had
to beat a retreat, was not ‘safe territory.’
At the burial a single independent person was allowed
to have the last look at Bugti. Only the maulvi
the government had brought in to say the brief namaz-i-janaza
said he saw Bugti’s body in the padlocked
box. There was a pair of glasses and a watch for
public viewing to establish the identity of the
man being buried. Two men , quite opposed in their
political leanings, and friends of this government
pointed out the disturbing symbolism of such a bizarre
burial.
MQM leader Altaf Hussain complained that even a
man who is hanged to death, the State returns his
body to his family. The other is Yusuf Haroon. Lamenting
the death of Akbar Bugti he wrote, “I condole
with the Baloch nation and with the family of the
late Nawab, and urge the government not to follow
Imperial rules, and to hand over the body for a
public funeral.” Earlier Sherbaz Mazari had
urged Musharraf in rather strong terms that if he
had “a decent bone left in his body he should
return the body to the family.”
God knows what prompted the government to take the
indecent and callous decision of denying the body
to the Bugti family. It is worse than what the Bhutto
family experienced when the body of the hung leader
was delivered in his hometown. National security
considerations, politicization of the funeral or
a botched up operation? There are many questions
that require answers.
The Bugti killing does not mean dams of discontent
will burst tomorrow. It’s about space for
consensus that is shrinking, it’s about the
Pakistan soul not being at peace within, it’s
about principles carved forever on shifting sands
and of processes that are gone with the winds of
opportunism. It does however raise the fundamental
question of how will we manage the successful functioning
of the federation of Pakistan. How do we measure
the wrong that has been done, by the damage that
has been caused? Not by how many people pour out
on the streets or how successful have been the strike
calls. Instead by how the State protects the rights
of its citizens, do citizens enjoy political rights
which alone give citizens a say in the exercise
of power, what is the mode of settling political
disputes, does rule of law figure in the tool-kit
of dispute settlement etc.
But for now let us mourn the tragic end of a man
who as a politician of Pakistan, as seen in a photograph
by an English daily, begins with deferentially bending
forward to shake hands with the Quaid of Pakistan
in 1947 and ends in 2006 with his death as an outlaw
in the mountains of his own land. This should not
have been. More importantly more of this should
not be. For that compassion, fair play and a credibly
functioning democratic system is an imperative -
a survival imperative in fact.
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