Pakistan experiments with new ways to quell decades-old insurgency in Taliban’s backyard

Pakistan tries new counterinsurgency strategy

CHAMALANG, Pakistan — With every bag of coal Madad Khan dumps into trucks at this mine reopened with the army’s help, Pakistan hopes it is moving closer to quelling a 60-year-old nationalist insurgency in this restive southwest province where Afghan Taliban leaders are rumored to hide.

Echoing U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in neighboring Afghanistan, the army has peppered Baluchistan with dozens of development projects to win hearts and minds, an effort officials say has accelerated in recent months alongside a push by the federal government to address local grievances.

Pakistan hopes to replicate this counterinsurgency strategy in other areas along the Afghan border where the army is battling a separate rebellion led by the Pakistani Taliban. But like the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, many observers are skeptical Pakistan’s recent push in Baluchistan will succeed given the deep distrust of the state and security forces.

“They are unable to pacify the people because the political and economic alienation of the local population is huge,” said Riffat Hussain, professor of defense studies at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Baluchistan remains Pakistan’s poorest province despite the presence of vast natural resources that residents complain are mainly exploited to fill the central government’s coffers. They also chafe under what they view as effective military rule.

“The government has moved in the right direction, but the province is still virtually under the control of the paramilitary forces and particularly the army,” said Hussain.

Baluchistan’s geopolitical importance has grown in recent years with China’s construction of a huge port on the coast connecting Asia and the Middle East and a planned gas pipeline linking Pakistan and Iran. Many also believe Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar is hiding in Baluchistan, benefiting from instability in the province, which borders southern Afghanistan.

Pakistan has launched at least five separate military operations in Baluchistan, the most recent under former President Pervez Musharraf that killed one of the province’s top tribal leaders. The army pulled back to its barracks at the beginning of 2008, but federal paramilitary forces are still deployed throughout the province.

The provincial government has accused those forces and federal intelligence agencies of secretly snatching nearly a thousand people off the street and holding them for years without admitting it, a problem that residents and human rights groups say continues to occur.

“A history of neglect and betrayal over the decades coupled with systematic human rights abuses carried out with impunity has made a vast number of Baluch people desperate,” said the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a report late last year.

Insurgents have responded with a wave of assassinations against non-Baluch residents that have killed hundreds of people, many of them doctors and teachers from other parts of Pakistan.

The army has denied any involvement in the forced disappearance of people and has tried to improve its image in Baluchistan by spending more than $7 million in a development drive that first started in 2007 and has accelerated in recent months. Officials say they realize the conflict cannot be solved by force alone.

“We have learned from the past, and now there is a great realization that unless you go and touch the people’s lives, it’s not really going to be sustainable,” said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas during a recent visit to Baluchistan.

One of the army’s first big development efforts was a deal brokered between two warring tribes to reopen the Chamalang coal mine, which had been shuttered for more than 30 years. The mine, which taps into one of Asia’s largest coal fields, reopened in March 2007 and has produced more than $70 million worth of coal and employs about 70,000 people.

“The army has definitely improved its image with this mine,” said Khan, the 25-year-old coal worker who earns five times more money at the mine than he did working as a farm laborer in the provincial capital, Quetta.

Proceeds from the mine, which are split between the federal and provincial governments, are used to fund an army-run program that has paid for the education of more than 4,000 Baluchi students.

The army has also built or reconstructed more than a hundred schools, health clinics and mosques, provided about 1,000 Baluchi men and women with vocational training, and stepped up local recruiting into both the army and police.

Once there is sufficient security, the army hopes to undertake similar efforts in the country’s semiautonomous tribal region along the Afghan border where it has launched several offensives against Taliban militants. The rugged tribal areas are even less developed than Baluchistan and there is a similar distrust of the state.

The federal government also has stepped up efforts to improve the Baluchistan situation in recent months. It has raised Baluchistan’s share of federal tax revenue, passed a constitutional amendment to increase provincial autonomy, and approved a package of reforms aimed at addressing local grievances, including the status of missing people and the share of natural resource wealth.

But Baluchi nationalists have dismissed the measures as mere political promises that have little chance of being honored.

“For me, the Baluchistan package is nothing but a political gimmick,” said Tahir Bizenjo, the head of one of the province’s largest nationalist parties. “As far as these army development projects are concerned, you also have Baluchistan suffering the greatest human rights violations.”

Hussain, the defense studies professor, said the army’s projects are too small in scale to have a significant impact on the population of more than 7 million and are located outside areas where grievances and related instability are the highest — a problem the U.S. has grappled with in Afghanistan.

He said if the Pakistani government really wants to resolve the Baluchistan issue, it needs to follow through on its reform promises and begin a political dialogue with the insurgents that addresses human rights violations by the security services.

“These are very serious allegations and unless you address them in a credible fashion and bring the perpetrators of these atrocities to justice, you will continue to have a credibility problem,” said Hussain.