The situation in Baluchistan has reached a point of no return: AFB

By Ahmar Mustikhan

WASHINGTON DC: A premier Washington DC-based Baluchistan organization has called an announcement made by Islamabad that President Asif Ali Zardari will be announcing an amnesty for Baluch freedom fighters "a mere eyewash."

"The situation in Baluchistan has reached a point of no return. No power on earth can close the floodgates of freedom that have opened in Baluchistan, right from Tump to Mashkey to Dera Bugti and Kohlu," two presiding council members of the pro-independence American Friends of Baluchistan, Rasheed Baluch of Dallas, Texas, and Ghafoor Baluch of Miami, Fla., said Tuesday.

The AFB statement came in the backdrop of reports that government of Pakistan was considering amnesty to Baluch sarmachars, or freedom fighters, demanding independence, including Sardar Brahamdagh Bugti, the political heir of former governor and chief minister of Baluchistan, Nawab Akbar Bugti, 79.

Nawab Bugti was killed on the orders of Pakistan coup plotter and then army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, on August 26, 2006. Musharraf has now been ordered by the Baluchistan High Court to appear before it for the extra judicial killing of the Baluch statesman on October 6.

"Mr. Zardari, with a begging bowl in his hands, is seeking funds for the Punjabi mercenaries who have turned Baluchistan into a killing field," the two AFB activists said. "This army is sincere with none, and is especially insincere with the International Security Assistance Force [in Afghanistan]. We call upon US special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke and Secretary Hilary Clinton not to be misled by the Pakistani soldiers who are the single most potent threat to world peace," the two AFB activists said.

"The Baluch do not trust the Pakistan army, which is an occupation force in Baluchistan. President Zardari's announcement of an amnesty is nothing more than a mere eyewash," they added.

They said seldom have security forces targeted women in the region but Pakistan's fanatically jihadist Frontier Constabulary last week opened fire on a peaceful rally in Tump in which a Baluch women teacher Shahnaz Baluch was wounded as the bullet pierced through her neck and her cousin Mushtaq Baluch, 20, died on the spot.

A new Youtube video shows the peaceful rally was attacked as a female speaker Banuk Andaleeb Gichki was telling the crowd gathered at the Tump High School to mourn the earlier killing of poet Meerjan Meeral Baluch that the Baluch had not gone to Islamabad and Lahore to attack anyone so how could they be called terrorists.

She said the Pakistani authorities were using the same divide and rule policy that was used by the British when the pitted Muslims and Hindus to prolong their rule in India.

As Gichki was speaking, the Frontier Constabulary opened unprovoked firing, the Youtube video shows.

"No honorable Baluch can tolerate such atrocities against their womenfolks," the AFB activists, who are US citizens, said.

According to secular Pashtuns, the soldiers in the Frontier Constabulary, who get less than $100 each month to play the role or mercenaries in Baluchistan, say they are serving Islam by targeting Baluch.

The two AFB activists welcomed the statement of Baluch national hero Hyrbyair Marri in which he made it clear the Baluch have chosen the lofty goal of independence of their motherland and that there would be no compromise on this single, most important clause.

The AFB welcomed Islamabad's assurance that it was abandoning its plans for new garrisons in occupied Baluchistan, but said the Pakistan army announcement fell far short of the Baluch national expectation and aspiration of complete pullout of Pakistani troops and paramilitary force from Baluchistan.

"Pakistani forces must be replaced by an international peacekeeping force, possibly by broadening the terms of reference of the International Security Assistance Force to include Baluchistan if the US and the West really want to solve the issue of global terrorism," they urged.

The AFB hailed the salient features of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, with its thrust of socio-economic development, but urged the funding must be done on the basis of the geographic size of Baluchistan and directly through USAID and other international non-governmental organizations, rather than allowing US taxpayers monies to go waste through phenomenal corruption at the hands of Pakistani managers.

Texas-sized Baluchistan was illegally annexed into Pakistan at the point of gun through a so-called Instrument of Accession in Macrh 1948 -- more than seven months after the British left India -- and is in the throes of a bloody independence struggle, which the Baluch call the Fifth War of Liberation.