Daily Times

Apparently, the Pakistan Army has decided to call it a day in one of the tempestuous and conflict-ridden provinces of Pakistan, i.e. Balochistan. Perhaps the realisation of sailing too close to the wind has forced the army to reconsider its strategy about this ill-fated, segregated and demonised piece of land. Has good sense finally prevailed or the grim reality of the East Pakistan debacle has suddenly come to haunt the top echelons when so much was surrendered to save the hideous structure of a rogue class? Alternatively, has the army decided to bid farewell to its Bonapartist character, at least for the time being?

In Balochistan, the ‘relations of production’ have not altered yet. Having a strong tribal base, the superstructure refuses to allow any change in content or contour. The relations between the chieftains and the army have been no different from that of a ‘comprador bourgeoisie’ that only survives through actual and active connivance and collaboration with the foreign colonial master. In a continuous process of exploitation of the people and their natural resources, these sardars remained hand in glove with the state and foreign capital. In fact, the presence of this class, which is always eager to accept a client relationship with foreign capital, is a precondition for neo-colonialism. The same class helps to depoliticise its own people, making them indifferent to their social conditions. In this way class conflict and any meaningful resistance are circumvented.

After the fall of Dhaka, the humbled army was forced to hand over power to the then elected representatives of the remaining Pakistan. Had the country remained united the realities of today could have been very different. In the case of united Pakistan, land reforms might have broken the shackles of feudalism but the country was left exposed to the same predators who were ruling the roost ever since its conception. Those who preferred political independence to economic freedom were proved wrong yet again. Z A Bhutto immediately decided to unleash the scourge on the remaining liberal forces. In Karachi state terrorism was let loose on the working class, which included members of the Baloch community. Shortly thereafter, it was time for the governments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then NWFP) and Balochistan to meet their nemesis. A few of the tribal heads decided to ‘liberate’ the province through an armed struggle while the Brutus Bugti joined the ranks with the feudals of Punjab and Sindh — only to become the victim of the same class a couple of decades later. Governor Bugti was set in motion to watch the interests of his class even after his seeming betrayal of the same. Most of these tribal heads are merely the forces of the status quo in the province where the people’s road to emancipation is abysmally derailed. The army always remains an ally of these hegemonic classes that assert the ‘social function’.

Under the garb of cultural norms, the most backward chiefs commit heinous crimes against humanity. Only last year three young girls were buried alive on the behest of some princely lords while in the Senate one of their representatives with impunity flouted the norms of humanity by attributing this callous deed as a scared custom of the Baloch, not to be fiddled with by ordinary mortal beings. His response was nothing but a manifestation of the prevalent relations of production. Marx as a philosopher has already solved this sadistic attitude by saying that real love is a distant dream in a class-based society.

Balochistan is richly endowed with mineral wealth. This makes its misery even worse. Apart from natural gas and coal, it has huge reserves of copper and gold. After the onslaught of the ill-planned nationalisation of Bhutto, the revival of Pakistan’s bourgeoisie was sclerotic. The freezing of foreign currency deposits — carried out by the raw ingenuity of Nawaz Sharif — was probably the final nail in the coffin. These setbacks have subjugated the bourgeoisie to the feudal hierarchy. It does not possess the surplus capital to mine the natural resources of Balochistan, hence leaving the field open for the foreign ‘rentier capitalism’, which can and will explore and exploit at will while the state remains a mere spectator eyeing its own share from the leftovers of these multinationals. Thus far, only 25 percent has been promised to the provincial government and that too if it manages to invest an almost equivalent amount during the process of exploration. To achieve their malicious ends, the possibility of fulminating the already ignited civil war, which is irrefutably a class war, cannot be ruled out. The US never ceases to blame the presence of innumerable religious fantasists in this region of natural wealth. Under such pretence disguised American capital can — if not already in action — hunt for its interests.

The Pakistan Army has possibly achieved its aims or has realised the fruitlessness of protracting its stay, which is proving to be more of an embarrassment to its marred reputation since the other more coercive force — the Frontier Corps (FC) — is already in place. Perhaps such an arrangement is intended to appease some of the nationalist organisations struggling for liberation and/or mollify the people who have lost their relatives in thin air. As far as the ‘liberators’ of Balochistan are concerned they may like to pause and reflect on the outcome of such metaphysical liberations, which are mere clichés. Bangladesh is one such example which, even after separation, is in a dismal economic state, one of the most pauperised nations on this planet where the military frequently runs amok. Rosa Luxemburg’s saying is more pertinent in this regard: “So long as capitalist states exist, i.e. so long as imperialistic world policies determine and regulate the inner and the outer life of a nation, there can be no ‘national self-determination’ either in war or in peace.”

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com