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For Amita Chakraborty & Keshab Bhattacharya, my
parents who introduced me to the global map...
Contents
The Question of Balochistan
Notes
About the Author
The Question of Balochistan
The unending strife between India and Pakistan entered a kind of
recess in December 2017. As a special gesture, coinciding with the
festive season around Xmas, Islamabad granted India’s request for
the mother and wife of Kulbhushan Jadhav to meet him.
In March 2016, Kulbhushan Jadhav, a former Indian Navy
official, and now a death row prisoner, was ‘arrested’ for planning
attacks in the province of Balochistan, a mountainous desert
administered by Pakistan. India had vociferously protested against
what it termed a case of unlawful detention, and alleged that he was
‘kidnapped’ from the Iranian side of ‘Balochistan’, where he ran a
business at the port of Chabahar, located on the Gulf of Oman. As
was widely reported in the press, despite the so-called special
gesture, the meeting between Jadhav, his mother, and wife did not
go well—Pakistan showed discourtesy to the two women, and
something which more than diplomatic impropriety, was viewed as a
cultural affront.
In the backdrop of the unfolding case of Kulbhushan Jadhav,
and his alleged activities in Balochistan, I had an opportunity which
comes but rarely to a foreign affairs reporter. I met a man from the
Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an outfit that was branded as a
terrorist organisation by Pakistan after its cadre had carried out
attacks against its former president, General Pervez Musharraf in
i
2005.
Even as I was planning to meet the mysterious Baloch rebel,
Indo-Pak ties were at their worst. Allegations and rebuttals were
flying thick and fast — Pakistan used Jadhav’s video confession to
prove that India was fomenting terrorism in Balochistan, a claim
which was strongly rubbished in India. Amongst several other
reasons, argued experts, how difficult was it for Pakistan to make a
hapless Indian sing in custody?
Given the circumstances, my meeting with the Baloch man
gained more significance, for I wanted to know first-hand what he
thought of India’s ‘alleged’ role in Balochistan, and Indians, in
general. However, not for a second did the thrill of meeting him make
me forget that it was the first time when an active insurgent from
Balochistan, a man who had fought the Pakistan Army in the
mountains, had agreed to speak about his life and mission to an
Indian journalist in New Delhi.
Finally, I met him — he asked me to call him Qazi, just that, no
surname, which was odd for a fugitive, considering he was a marked
man and I’d presumed, must have had several aliases! I was
readying myself for the dialogue and imagined all kinds of things, but
as it turned out, he appeared, for the lack of any other word,
‘normal’. Qazi left me little scope to initiate the conversation; he
wove a compelling narrative, and laid out the background of his
armed struggle.
The hot Uzbeki naan was perfect for the early winter Delhi dinner on
26 November 2017. There were just two guests at this special dinner
—the Baloch rebel, and I. An hour before dinner, I’d reached a shop
in Lajpat Nagar (a well-known South Delhi colony) which had
Persian or Farsi alphabets painted on its facade. I then proceeded to
dial a number which was given to me by an anonymous online
Baloch source. A few minutes later, a twenty-something man came
out of a housing society in the locality and escorted me to a first floor
flat.
Dressed in a sky-blue shalwar, seated cross-legged on a bed,
was the man I had been waiting to meet for months. A surgical mask
covered his face. A pile of medicines and the odour of disinfectant in
the room was evidence that the man had recently undergone a
medical procedure.
‘Hamara tallukh BLA sey hai,’ (I am affiliated to the BLA) said
the Baloch rebel, uttering the unmentionable — the organisation
certified as a terror group in Pakistan. I responded with a nod, almost
saying: why else would I be here! We began talking after going past
the initial hesitation, and the food worked as a perfect foil in taking
our conversation forward.
Two plates of chicken curry were kept on his bed which served
as a dinner table for the evening. His curry was without salt. A plate
of palak-paneer was brought in only for me.
’The doctor has advised me to avoid salt and spices for
sometime. So, my assistant cooks the chicken with just tomatoes,’
he said inviting me to join in the dinner.
After a few bites of the curry from the plate, he tore the naan
with his fingers and dipped it in the palak-paneer curry and paused,
as if caught between the temptation to eat spicy food, and the desire
to survive following a complex kidney transplant operation.
His hands were shaking even as he abruptly dropped the naan.
‘No, I shouldn’t eat it as yet. The doctor hasn’t allowed me to begin
eating such stuff,’ he said. The next moment, he insisted I address
him as ‘Baloch’, and avoid using the nom de guerre, ‘Qazi’.
‘We are all soldiers,’ he announced by way of an explanation
how every Baloch fighter takes on a special name once he becomes
a rebel.
I noticed how the Baloch was playing the perfect host; oblivious
of the fact that it was he who was a guest in Delhi.
During dinner, I finally caught a glimpse of his face when he
removed his surgical mask. The long spell of illness had left dark
circles under and around his eyes, but they still had an innocence
about them. The Baloch was a short man with a large face, framed
by remarkably large eyes that shifted constantly. He looked
emaciated, obviously because of the illness, but his thick neck was
evidence that he must have possessed good health at one time.
Before our meeting, he’d spent several months in virtual solitary
confinement in South Delhi — his only companion was his
‘comrade’, who had also fought for the liberation of Balochistan.
Qazi’s real identity was obviously kept hidden from his doctors who
probably treated him like another Urdu-speaking Afghan requiring a
kidney transplant.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) is one of the most dreaded
separatist outfits in the nation’s struggle for independence from
Pakistan. According to several institutes that study and watch
militant groups across the world, the BLA consists of approximately
ii
6,000 members, and several sympathisers. It is well known that for
many years now, Pakistan has pointed fingers at India and its
consulates in Afghanistan, of extending support to the BLA.
Before meeting Qazi, I had read up the latest on the BLA, that
its core aim was to secure regional autonomy. But Qazi pointed out
the information available online to be inaccurate, and said that they
now demanded nothing less than complete freedom from Pakistan.
‘It’s a war now. They don’t spare us, and we don’t spare them.’
On the one hand, if Pakistan accused India of creating trouble in
Balochistan, there were reports that Baloch rebels were also backed
by a few Western Intelligence agencies. But it needs to be
mentioned here that none of these accusations have ever been
proven, despite the shrill debates on Pakistan’s television channels.
‘The doctors in India have been very nice to me. It took me a while to
find a kidney donor, but once I did, there was yet another problem. I
had to prove my relationship with the donor, and that took a long
time,’ he said. I was getting used to Qazi. Strangely, a few hours
after our meeting, he began looking healthy to me, and definitely not
someone who’d had a kidney transplant recently.
‘The doctors often asked me: “Where is the patient?”’ he said
laughing loudly. I asked him if it was because of what he had eaten
all his life — bread, meat and khurud, the nutritious Baloch diet that
is a robust mix of proteins, calcium and carbohydrates — which
made him look far healthier than an average man with his medical
condition. He just smiled at my question, as if all that belonged to a
different time and suddenly turned morose. He recalled what he’d
lost — his family, livelihood, and a past which sounded familiar to
me.
The Baloch aka Qazi went to Balochistan Residential College, a
quasi-governmental institute in the mining town of Khuzdar. It was
during this phase when he and his best friend were indoctrinated and
joined the rebels. Qazi pulled out his mobile phone and said to me,
‘He is here. In my phone all the time,’ and showed me a pencil
sketch of a young Baloch man, his friend who had died fighting the
war.
‘College was so charming. We weren’t even aware of the
hardships which existed around us. By the year 2000 I’d passed out
of college, even as the movement was beginning to take shape.’
Qazi soon turned into a full-fledged revolutionary insurgent
mainly due to three reasons: radical teachings and propaganda
amongst his peers; the overall tension in his community; and most
importantly, General Pervez Musharraf, who was bitterly opposed to
Baloch radicals and didn’t spare a single opportunity to target them.
But Qazi kept his ‘crossing over’ a well-guarded secret, because of
his mother.
‘But Ammi got to know. I don’t know how she figured out. But
she was very proud that I was fighting for the rights of my people.
She always prayed for our safety,’ said Qazi.
Once he joined the movement, his life changed overnight, and
so did his understanding of Balochistan. He wanted change in his
country, but the war had altered everything around him, including his
family which disintegrated. At war, he had to acquire a new identity;
he had a new name.
‘My name is not important. We are all soldiers, fighting for our
motherland. We neither want to be big leaders, nor follow the sardar
(chieftain) culture any more in the way that prevailed for hundreds of
years in our society. The younger generation needs change.’
All of a sudden, Qazi looked old and fatigued. I realised that he
had lived the life of a militant for over a decade, hiding like a fugitive
for many years from the Pakistan army and its law enforcement
agencies. The cruel mountains of Balochistan must have taken its
toll, I asked him.
He described the mountains of Balochistan as a ‘shield’, and
extolled the fabulous wildlife which he said was fast depleting. Qazi
recalled the good old days of cooking a Baloch delicacy called sajji,
which was made out of a whole lamb, with his fellow-rebels. The
lamb would be cut and placed on hot charcoals with just salt. This
smoky lamb dish which cooked in its own fat was one of the main
sources of animal protein for the Baloch, said Qazi. In camps,
