Independence of Post-Colonial Pakistan and the sovereignty of Balochistan

By Athithan Jayapalan
On 14th August when Pakistan celebrated its Independence Day, pro-Baloch independence parties and organizations boycotted the occasion, marking it as Black Day. Subsequently black flags were hoisted on houses and people donned black armbands. Braving the Pakistani military occupation the Baloch people reiterated their national aspirations and commitments. The Baloch nation in the diaspora and in the occupied homeland while protesting the Pakistani Independence Day, also vividly commemorated their own day of independence on 11 August with a renewed pledge to continue the struggle for national liberation and independence.

Pakistani security forces stepped up its counter-insurgency (COIN) against the Baloch national movement in occupied Balochistan ahead of 14 august. More than 200 Baloch civilians were reported to have been either abducted or unlawfully detained the week ahead of Independence Day. From August onwards the abduction, assassination, extra judicial execution and dumping of Baloch activists has continued relentlessly. Furthermore dozens of military operations have collectively and deliberately targeted the Baloch people in several areas of occupied Balochistan. One must bear in mind that over 18 000 Baloch are reported as still missing since the 2000s as documented by the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP).

Despite the mammoth efforts of the occupational force of the genocidal Pakistani state, the sovereignty of the oppressed Baloch nation has proven to be resilient and its bearers the Baloch people have shown the greatest of fortitude. To this effect the Baloch nation has previously mobilized four national liberation wars, each being brutally crushed by Pakistan and its allies, and since the early 2000s launched its 5th liberation war against Islamabad.

The spirit of resistance and the commitment to the cause of Baloch sovereignty and national independence have run strong among the Baloch. This is amidst multiple efforts by the Pakistani state to disrupt Baloch unity and mobilization.

A corrupt provincial government has been in place with an impotent Chief Minister to legitimize Islamabad’s sovereignty through a farce of self-governance. What civil governance can transpire under heavy military occupation? Moreover what sort of compromise and political solution is provincial governance in the face of genocide and economic exploitation? It is simply a farce when the oppressor nation and state insist on being a stake holder in deciding the collective future and self-determination of people they oppress, moreover so when the Baloch have consistently struggled for national independence and sovereignty.

Such a feeble provincial system supposedly to provide a semblance of devolution is in reality a devious attempt by the oppressor state to contain the aspirations for genuine independence for the oppressed nation, and such has also been implemented in the Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka, in the Tamil homeland after the genocidal massacres of May 2009 which enabled the annihilation of the LTTE.

The undemocratic foundation of the post-colonial states

Oppressed nations in South-Asia, in particular the Baloch and Eelam Tamils are both secular in nature and oppressed by the virtues of their independent and indigenous ethnicity and national existence within the post-colonial comprador states of Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The chauvinist states have devised and implemented several plans of coordinated actions aimed at the destruction in whole or part the Baloch and Eelam Tamil nations. This is unabated genocide, yet the so called international community and the established solidarity movements have both adversely neglected the plights of the oppressed nations as well as consistently failed to grasp the very nature of the structural violence perpetuated against the Baloch and Tamils. The international left, if existent, has failed a historic task in acknowledging the very anti-imperialist nature of these oppressed nations’ liberation struggles, which aim at eradicating oppressive and undemocratic state structures which were laid by the imperialist powers during the colonial period and are supported by them till date.

In fact, it is the colonial geo-politics, in which the British colonial rulers dealt with the comprador classes of the Punjabi and Sinhala nation respectively, which laid the foundations for the national oppression in which the Baloch and Tamils would be grappled within.

For the Baloch people the undemocratic and colonial processes culminated in the drawing of the Durand line in 1893 between the British and the Afghan monarch demarcated modern day Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Consequently the Baloch homeland was dissected, divided into three and delegated to a Punjabi chauvinist state and an Iranian monarchy. Likewise the colonial conquest of the Eelam Tamils in which their sovereignty was usurped by Western imperialists resulted in the undemocratic unification of the island under the centralized rule in Colombo. The British upon independence handed over Tamil sovereignty ceremonially to the chauvinist comprador class of the Sinhala nation.

Despite the geo-political machinations, the Baloch State of Kalat declared its independence on 11 august 1947 which predated Pakistan’s existence by three days. Moreover the independence of Balochistan was acknowledged upon in a tripartite agreement between the political leadership of the upcoming Pakistan, the British Raj and the Prince (Khan) of Kalat – then ruler of Balochistan. Soon the Khan formed the Balochistan House of Lords and the House of Commons and all members in both Houses had unilaterally denounced any proposal to merge with Pakistan.

Nevertheless on 27 March 1948, the Pakistan armed forces forcefully annexed Balochistan and enforced a military occupation. The Baloch demonstrated their resistance to the occupation the very next day when the younger brother of the Prince of Kalat mobilized the first national war of liberation which was brutally crushed by the Pakistani and Iranian state. The Baloch have consistently marked Pakistani independence as a black day ever since the Pakistani occupation commenced in 1948.

Continuing the armed resistance against Islamabad in the present, Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) spokesman Meerak Baloch announced that their forces have attacked the residency of M.A. Jinnah, founder of the Pakistani state and its first Governor-general. Both armed resistance and political means are used by the Baloch national liberation movement in successfully rejecting the sovereignty of Pakistani state while sustaining the struggle for national liberation.

There were also reports stating that in Baloch populated areas the Pakistani flag and cars bearing it were burned while the flag of Balochistan was hoisted on buildings, cars and houses.

Simultaneously fighters from the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Balochistan Republican Army (BRA) and Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) carried out multiple attacks on Pakistani security forces, government buildings and against collaborators in Balochistan.

Recently there have been multiple coordinated military operations in Baloch areas collectively targeting the Baloch nations and its civilians, activist and rebels. The boycott of Pakistan’s Independence Day and commemoration of the Baloch Independence Day amidst such state terrorism reflect the resolution of the Baloch nation to strive for independence. Likewise the attack on Jinnah’s residency symbolizes the rejection of the very concept of the Pakistani state.

The intersection of genocide and post-colonial national oppression

It is noteworthy that the oppressors of the Baloch nations, both the Pakistani and Iranian state are blatant supporters of the Sri Lankan state. This has been reflected in the increasing interaction between Tehran, Islamabad and Colombo over the past decades. Thus the oppressed nations whose sovereignty was usurped and contained due to colonial geo-politics are now in the post-independence subjected to a range of geo-political enterprises. Both the Pakistani and the Sri Lankan state utilize COIN, bilateral deals and strategic economic and military concessions to forge a geo-political dynamic conducive to their genocidal campaigns against the Baloch and Eelam Tamils. Through such maneuvers they have enlisted the aid of various conflicting regional and international powers in enhancing the pursuit of a military solution to handle the national questions of the Baloch and Tamils.

In addition to the similarities in this international linkage, Colombo and Islamabad has tightened direct connections between their states. In that spirit Sri Lankan military officers have recently been consulting the Pakistani establishment on the deployment of COIN strategies as used against the LTTE and the Eelam Tamil nation. These COIN methods are thus employed to destroy the Baloch liberation movements through committing genocidal massacres.

In recent months, the Pakistani establishment has pursued intensified military operations and its use of Islamist gangs to target Balochi activists, youth and women.

Moreover the use of Pakistani ISI backed jihadists against the Baloch national struggle has become an institutionalized practice in Pakistan, in which these groups are used as proxies in the genocidal war against the Baloch. The sophisticated manner in which the genocidal crimes of Islamabad is masked and camouflaged is indeed reminiscent of the manners in which the Sri Lankan state has utilized proxies of various sorts to implement collective targeting of Tamils. Also noteworthy is that ISI connected Pakistani embassy officials in Colombo have attempted to recruit Tamil Muslims in a bid to strengthen religious identities and disunity. The Sri Lankan state is well known to have enlisted religious fundamentalism since the 1980s in order to create friction between Tamils and Tamil speaking Muslims in the east of the Island in an insidious attempt to weaken a burgeoning and secular Tamil national armed resistance.

Recently with the upsurge of the Islamic state (IS) in the Middle East and its consistent attacks against the secular Kurd nations, Jihadists groups operating in Balochistan with the backing of the ISI and Islamabad, have expressed an admiration for the IS and have wowed to target the secular Baluch nation. In particular has Zikris and Hindus been pointed out as infidels awaiting death. As a response the Sarmachars of the Baloch nation have declared that the Baloch are secular, and that they will not tolerate any form of persecution in their land, pledging to protect their minority Hindu and other religious groups.

Such an upsurge in fundamentalist religious mindsets and groupings with the backing of Islamabad is as pointed out by leaders and activists of the Baloch liberation struggle, a bid to dissect the Baloch nation by dividing them into religious identities and stir up sectarian violence, ultimately weakening the national unity and struggle against Islamabad. The strength of national resistance lies in the egalitarian principles espoused by the national mobilization of the oppressed, in which tribal or caste affinities, regional belonging, religious divisions and etc. are overarched and endeavored to be rendered insignificant by a national identity emphasizing equality based on common language, homeland, history and socio-cultural practices.

Thus both in militarily occupied Eelam and Balochistan the oppressor ingeniously disrupt the unity and social fabric of the Tamils and Baloch as components of multifaceted genocide.

The fact that the Baloch and Eelam nations are subjected to genocide, military occupation, colonization and national oppression at the hands of chauvinist states backed by rivaling world establishments, represents a burning necessity for stronger interaction, dialogue and cooperation between the respective struggles. Solidarity between nations without states holds the potential of a powerful transnational solidarity based on equality between nations and the right to self-determination, and the legitimization of armed national resistance. Integration between the secular Baloch and Eelam nations is also further warranted due to the ancient bridge between these two through the mutual belonging to the Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro civilization.