Thursday, November 04, 2010

Dr. Allah Nazar: A Legendary Figure of Balochistan

By: Shabir Ahmad Baloch

Balochistan (Baloch-land) covers an area of 690000SK and divided into three parts by the then imperial power of Britain. Each one of the parts was distributed among Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. In 1871 and 1895 Anglo-Iranian border commission allotted a large portion of southwestern Balochistan to Iran, and a small area in the northwest was ceded to Afghanistan where the British Imperial power played a key role for this division. Therefore, the remainder was subject to British authority from the 1880’s until the founding of Pakistan. But the Baloch never accepted the division of their ancestral homeland and resisted vigorously. Many Balochs have martyred in that struggle.

Before the inception of Pakistan on August 14, 1947, Balochistan emerged on the map of the world as an independent and sovereign country on August 11, 1947. Balochistan was officially annexed into Pakistan on April 1^st, 1948 by force and with the support of the British Empire to occupy Balochistan and “April-fool” the Baloch nation.

Subsequent to the short transitional periods of military and civilian rule, the pro-Pakistani parliamentary leadership and tribal chieftains adopted a supportive policy towards all genres of governments in the Pakistani capitol. The subservient ruling elite and parliamentary politicians have become involved in massive corruption and plunder of their own people and resources under both military and civilian rules. They were isolated from the people and were branded as Trojan horses or Fifth columnists for the British left over of the Pakistani establishment. This double-crossing parliamentary and pseudo-tribal leadership was leading the Baloch nation into a cull de sac.

Since the Pakistani occupation of Balochistan until the year 2000, there were four major military operations in Balochistan, carried out by the Pakistani regimes to crush the Baloch uprising. All of a sudden, in 1999, Dr Allah Nazar Baloch emerged as a heroic and audacious leader after breaking up all of his ties with the parliamentary politics. He was out spoken and unequivocally demanded the independence of Balochistan.

Dr Allah Nazar was born on October 2, 1966. He belongs to a lower-middle-class family from Mashkay, a town in the Awaran district, Balochistan. In 1986 he started his political career as a member of the Baloch Students Organization (BSO), the students' wing of the Balochistan National Movement (BNM), now the National Party. After parting ways with the then BNM, Dr Nazar formed his own faction of the Baloch Students Organization (BSO Azad) in 2001. He got arrested immediately. He was tortured and pressurized to withdraw from his stance but he stood his ground. He observed a long hunger strike and the government authorities were compelled to release him in 2002.

Consequently, he went to the mountains to organize and wage effective guerrilla warfare against the tyrannical colonial rule of Pakistani state by forming his own militant wing of the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF). Baloch nation supported him and he became a national hero. He got arrested again on March 25, 2005 from a flat in the Gulistan-e-Jauhar area in Karachi. After having remained missing for around a year, he resurfaced on August 12, 2006 and was jailed in Quetta for several months. After his release on bail (June 20, 2006), he went into hiding again, where he says he "witnessed slavery and oppression very closely in those torture cells" says a bitter Dr Nazar. And now "The aim of my life is to purge Balochistan of Punjabi Army."

Ever since then, the Pakistani media is spreading vicious propaganda against him and labeling him as a “terrorist”. Dr Allah Nazar once said in an interview, “my land is rich and full of resources and I do not want any body else to have it but Baloch”. He goes on to say that, “if someone is powerful, then he is tagged as “good” and if someone is weak then he turns out to be “bad”; we must be brave but careful; if the power could only be acquired through the gun then we must prepare ourselves for death fighting against alien domination.” He continues to say that, “the colonist will continue to rob us if we keep complaining; if we protest they will thrash us out; we have no other way to get rid of them but to fight till the victory.”

We are the people, whom the Iranian and Pakistani state have to deal with; no other colonial power in the world has ever encountered with more formidable opponent than the Baloch in Pakistan and Iran; where torture, oppression, repression and disappearances are in their full swing now a days. Despotic Iranian butchers are torturing the Balochs in their torture camps and executing them publicly, and Pakistani agencies are dumping the dismembered or mutilated dead bodies of stalwart Baloch youth and young children in the streets in large numbers every day.

Thus, Dr. Allah Nazar perceives that the only possible way to attain our national aims and objectives is to continue the armed struggle in order to end Pakistani reign over Balochistan. He succeeded in gaining mass support because the people are fed up with the occupation and unjust murderous incursions by the bloodthirsty and barbaric Pakistani Army and its agencies who have adopted the policy of genocide of the Baloch people.

Even ordinary Baloch knows that the treaties with Pakistan are nothing but only ink on a piece of paper and the true power lies under the shadow of swords. That is why; all the Baloch areas are breeding grounds for the freedom fighters; all the Balochs are in favor of a violent freedom movement against the belligerent foreign state. Because, Pakistan is using brute force to suppress the Baloch movement with an immense US financial and military assistance.

More than 10,000 Baloch people are abducted and disappeared. Daily 5 to 6 persons’ dead bodies are being recovered from the streets. Certainly, tortured, murdered and mutilated by the Pakistani intelligence and law enforcing agencies. The international community must play its role to exert pressure on Pakistan to resolve the Baloch issue. And if the international community has to purge the region of extremists and Talbanization then they will have to support iron willed adroit leader, Dr Allah Nazar Baloch and all the other key figures of the Baloch liberation movement. The international community must come forward to play its role by fulfilling its responsibilities of preventing an all out genocide in Balochistan.

South Asian, Middle Eastern and Central Asian peace and stability depends on the peace and stability in Balochistan. And the peace in Balochistan is only possible with the establishment of a totally independent and sovereign state of Balochistan. As we all know that the Balochistan region is located on the tri-junction that connects these three regions. The region will remain in turmoil as long as Balochistan remains occupied. There will never be any stability due to the Iranian clerical rule and Pakistani backed religious extremists i.e. Taliban, which is nothing but a brain child of Pakistani ISI to counter the Baloch and other national movements all around this tri-junction.

 

Therefore, today Baloch nationalism has pushed these extremist elements out of Balochistan. And if the Baloch movement is allowed to be crushed by Pakistan with the financial and military assistance from the USA then all the Baloch areas will be engulfed with the ISI supported Taliban bases, which will always remain a haunting threat to the world peace.

 

Reference:

v     Baloch, Inayatullah. 1987. The Problem of Greater Balochistan: A Study of Baloch Nationalism. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH

v     Barakzai, Arif: Arif Barakzai Paper, 2009, Sayad Hashmi Reference Library

v     Rasheed, Ahmad. 2004. The Taliban

v     Steel Nerved: Dr. Allah Nazar. Baloch, Ometan 2007, Kohsaar Publications

v     Dr Allah Nazar prefers books to guns. By Sajid Hussain, Tue, 05 Oct, 2010