Reposted from Salem News | March 6, 2012 | Story

By Tim King

Tim King: Salem-News.com Editor and Writer. Tim King has more than twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. Tim is Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. His background includes covering the war in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, and reporting from the Iraq war in 2008. Tim is a former U.S. Marine.

"It is the most incredible, calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland." - U.S. official at time of Bangladesh Genocide

(SALEM) - In the rugged mountains of southwest Pakistan, exists a place of great violence, tremendous strife, and a distinct lack of world media attention, called Balochistan. Like so many places, the people of this place do not see themselves as part of the nation that swallowed them up in a post-WWII land grab that robbed their national autonomy like a thief in the night. Time and time again, Balochistan has been an ethnic battlefield for a never-ending conflict that came to be known as 'Pakistan's Dirty War'

This, Al Jazeera explains in their article, Balochistan: Pakistan's other war:

"... because of the rising numbers of people who have disappeared or have been killed on both sides. But the uprising against Pakistan's government has received little attention worldwide, in part because most eyes have been focused on the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in other areas of Pakistan." [1]

While the U.S. has looked the other way, time and time again, the Baloch people have been mowed over by Pakistan's military and every instance is accompanied by a host of violations of international law for war crimes including Genocide. Genocide... what a word it is.

There is no parallel to the horror of mass murder and ethnic cleansing. It is taking place all over the world in recent years. Just because the U.S. networks fail to address it does not mean it doesn't exist, and one place where human freedom itself is vastly under threat, is Balochistan. I suspect most readers have never even heard of it. Now you have, please remember what you learn in this article and educate others.

Pakistan's army and its civilian death squads keep this population in a stranglehold and like Vietnam, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Palestine and so many other places, it started in 1948, a year of supposed liberation and national autonomy. For many cultures it has been the dead opposite.

Balochistan was forcefully annexed by Pakistan in March 1948, against the will of the Baloch people.

The result of this occupation has been five armed insurgencies against the occupation of Balochistan by Pakistan. The fifth and the longest continued insurgency began in 2001 and intensified in 2005 when the Pakistan Air Forces (PAF) began bombing several parts of Balochistan- killing innocent women and children. In any war there are always unarmed civilian victims... so is the case in Balochistan.

In fact, Pakistan has a bloody and notorious track record of committing genocide, mass murder, collective punishment and conducting ruthless operations against any communities or nations that strived for rights snatched away by the fascist state.

On 25 March 1971, during the Bangladesh Liberation War, widespread human rights violations were reported in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)- acts of the Pakistan Army, which operated with support from local political and religious militias, particularly in targeting Hindus. Time Magazine reported a high ranking U.S. official at this point saying:

"It is the most incredible, calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland."

Officials in Bangladesh, said as many as 3 million people were killed. The descriptions of brutality leveled upon the people of this country are endless, and while Bangladesh would gain independence, no such prize awaited the people of Balochistan; whose minerals and resources continued to be exploited for the greater good of Pakistan.

After the killing ebbed, Pakistan's Hamoodur Rahman Commission, headed the official government investigation of suspected civilian deaths. My impression in reading about it, is that it is a strikingly similar case to Sri Lanka's current LLRC, (Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission) which investigated the recent Genocide of Tamil Hindus and Christians killed en mass at the end of that country's 30-year civil war.

The Hamoodur Rahman Commission in Pakistan, reduced the estimated three million dead civilians in Bangladesh; massacred in a record 6-month period, to 26,000. Sri Lanka's LLRC attributed almost all civilian deaths, tens of thousands in that case, to the Tamil Tigers, a semi-defeated resistance front. When Sri Lanka's LLRC report finally went public, their assessments of government responsibility ranged from low to non-existent. It seems clear that Sri Lanka took a lesson from Pakistan's post-Genocide rulebook.

The very idea of allowing the war crime suspects to investigate their own deeds would be like having the Nazi's stay in office while launching an 'internal investigation' in 1945.

Wikipedia states that international media and reference books in English have also published figures which vary greatly from 200,000 to 3,000,000 for Bangladesh as a whole. Either way, as a result of the conflict, somewhere between eight and ten million people fled Pakistan to seek refuge in neighboring India[2].

And all the while, Pakistan has remained a U.S. ally. It is mind-bending, but then the United States has no problem with Genocide; Iraq is a war that cost one and a half million innocent lives because a U.S. president and his men wanted to go to war, nothing else, all based on lies. Then there is Israel, Rwanda, Cambodia.

Did American officials know what was taking place in Bangladesh when three million perished? Could it be possible that a Genocide claiming half the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, could have taken place without America raising attention to this and intervening? Would U.S. politicians, i.e. the Nixon administration, have allowed this terrible act to take place without doing something about it?

"On 16 December 2002, the George Washington University's National Security Archive published a collection of declassified documents, consisting mostly of communications between US embassy officials and USIS centers in Dhaka and India, and officials in Washington DC. These documents show that US officials working in diplomatic institutions within Bangladesh used the terms selective genocide and genocide (see The Blood Telegram) to describe events they had knowledge of at the time. The complete chronology of events as reported to the Nixon administration can be found on the Department of State website." - Wikipedia

During the Bengali Genocide, along with mass murder, around 400,000 Bengali Women were raped by the Islamic Army of Pakistan by some estimates. The exact numbers are not known and are a subject of debate with several sources quoting the 400,000 figure.

Wikipedia states: "One particular revelation concerns 563 young Bengali women, some only 18, who were held captive inside Dhaka's dingy military cantonment since the first days of the fighting. They were seized from Dhaka University and private homes and forced into military brothels, with some of the women carrying war babies being released."

Among other sources, Susan Brownmiller refers to an even higher number of over 400,000. Pakistani sources claim the number is much lower, though having not completely denied rape incidents. Brownmiller quotes:

"Khadiga, thirteen years old, was interviewed by a photojournalist in Dacca. She was walking to school with four other girls when they were kidnapped by a gang of Pakistani soldiers. All five were put in a military brothel in Mohammedpur and held captive for six months until the end of the war.[3]

Balochistan

G.W. Bush had the resistance in Sri Lanka designated as 'terrorist' and that is the very reason their president was able to launch his troops into civilian areas killing everyone in sight. Bush's entry into office certainly coincided with Pakistan's latest extermination in Balochistan; even in retrospect, the patterns are alarming.

In Balochistan Genocide unfortunately, is not a new phenomena; some 15,000 Marri tribesmen were killed, others banned in exile after the 1973 insurgency. During the 1992-1998 military operation, some 15000 Urdu-speaking Muhajirs were killed by the same Pakistani army, with the help and approval of dominant Punjabi elite, in Karachi.

From the December 2011 article, Its Punjabi Army---Baluchistan at point of no return - published by StopPressBd.com:

"This fame of atrocities of Pakistan taught a new lesson to the military establishment of committing selective genocide instead of mass genocide. This time when Baloch raised voice of their right to self-determination and independence of Baloch occupied state, Pakistani establishment and intelligence agencies adopted the new strategy of forced disappearances, and 'kill and dump' policy. Under this policy they torture these victims in secret torture cells and after acquiring information or finding the victim irrelevant they are killed and bodies are dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads, bearing the scars of great cruelty. They all killed in similar fashion; their arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognizable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the head and upper torso.

In last 15 months more than 350 such bodies of Baloch students, political activists and intellectuals (Journalists, poets, teachers, doctors, lawyers and social activists) have been found who were earlier picked up by Pakistan's Para military forces operating under the name of Frontier constabulary (FC).

Torture and mutilation of bodies dead and alive is more problematic, if only because it is odious to civilized society. Throughout the years, those cultures which have "seen the light" have been horrified by the desecration of bodies committed by barbarians of other cultures. We think of the Nazis in World War II who justified torture and mutilation of live bodies for "scientific" purposes. The communists in Russia, especially under Stalin, committed similar atrocities on ethnic groups. The Khmer Rouge beheaded and chopped the limbs from innocent people and left them by the thousands in the killing fields of Cambodia. European tribes beheaded their foes posting the heads along roads or at the town gates as a grisly warning to those who would oppose them. The Catholic Church in Europe, especially Spain, during the Inquisition tortured and mutilated those who it thought were possessed by the devil or those it simply wanted to get rid of for political reasons[4].

"2011/8/13 Occupied Balochistan: The Pakistani security forces and police raided the houses of Nawabzada Jamil Akbar Bugti and former chief minister of Balochistan Mir Humayun Marri during a search operation and claimed that huge amount of weapons and explosive materials were recovered; meanwhile Jamil Bugti said that the security forces are using these tactics to pressurize them to withdraw from Akbar Bugti killing case.

2011/8/12 Occupied Balochistan: Central spokesperson of pro-independence Baloch political party BRP (Baloch Republican Partry), Mr. Sher Mohammad Bugti, has rejected Pakistani government/Military's claims that there was no operation taking place in Balochistan and military's failed attempts to try to disassociate themselves form in-custody killings of Baloch activists across Balochistan. He termed such statement an attempt by the military to mislead the world about Balochistan's issue.

2011/8/10 Occupied Balochistan: Another bullet-riddled body of a person, previously abducted by Pakistan FC during a raid on his house, was found dumped in the industrial town of Hub on Tuesday. Police took the body to a nearby hospital where the deceased was identified as 40-year-old Mir Khan Marri S/O Lal Jan Marri, a resident of Hub Chowki.

How Long Will Balochistan's Genocide Continue?

Pakistani media reported in August, that US and Indian officials have been conducting meetings with Balochi leaders in exile in London. In fact the report is dated August 15, 2011. Even if this is true, which is doubtful, the Balochi are a oppressed people ever since they declared independence on August 15, 1947. Many have died fighting for their freedom from the renegade State of Pakistan and now the Baloch women are stepping forth to fill the roles left empty by the deaths of their husbands, fathers and sons[5].

International human rights organizations like Amnesty international, Asian human rights commission, etc., have raised their concerns over such incidents, which triggered an alarm among the Pakistan intelligence agencies and as a result they started operating with fake names to avoid detection.

Many armed organization such as Musalah Defah tanzeem, Sipa-e-Shudah-e-Balochistan and Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e Aman Balochistan have been formed using their agents like Shafique Mengal, Siraj Raisani, Kohi Khan Mengal, Imam Bheel, (who is also the sole financier of NP, a Pro-Pakistan Political Party), Atta ur Rehman Mengal etc.

They're known for recruiting religious extremists, thugs, criminals and drug dealers to work mercenaries.

These rogues are provided incentives and license to rob on highways, attack NATO supplies when they were still crossing through Pakistan, and they also smuggle drug from the Afghan border to anywhere in country while also kidnapping people for ransom.

Pakistani intelligence agencies have vast experience in establishing and controlling such underground groups to carry out illicit government deeds, often acts of state terrorism.

They have been used in different parts of the world; some of the organizations which took birth from the womb of ISI and their area of operations are as follows:

Name of Organization, Area of Activity, Leaders

1. Al Shams, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)

2. Al Badar, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)

3. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Afghanistan

4. Taliban, Afghanistan, Mullah Umer

5. Lashkar-e-Thayaba, Indian Kashmir

6. Ansar-ul-Islam, Indian Kashmir

7. Jesh-e-Muhammad, Indian Kashmir, Moulana Azhar Masood

8. Sipa-e-Sahaba, Pakistan (targets Shia Sect of Islam), Maulana Tariq Azam

9. Lashkar-e-Jangvi, All over Pakistan (target is Shia Sect of Islam)

10. Sipa-e-Shudah-e, Balochistan: (targets pro-freedom Baloch students, Political workers, Journalists), Shafique Mengal S/O Senator Naseer Mengal

11. Baloch Musalah Defah Tanzeem, Balochistan: (targets Baloch students, Political workers and Journalists), Atta-ur-Rehman Mengal and Kohi Khan Mengal

12. Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Aman Balochistan, Makuran Region (targets Baloch students, Political workers and Journalists), Nawabzada Siraj Khan Raisani, Imam Bheel, Mullah Barkat

13. Bugti Aman Force, Dera Bugti Balochistan, (working against the loyalists of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti), Ghulam Qadir Massori Bugti

14. Bijrani Marri Levis Force, Kohlu and Chamalang areas of Balochistan, Mir Hazar Khan Ramkhani

In war or armed conflicts, truth is the first casualty. Who is abducting the Baloch people and dumping their mutilated tortured bodies remains a mystery to the military and Pakistani media, StopPressBd.com writes.

"The stunning lack of interest in Balochistan's greatest murder mystery shows the resolve of the government and the military in solving Balochistan issue. The mighty military men disown involvement of intelligence agencies in committing such barbaric acts at least in front of the media while in gathering of personal nature they openly claim how they are inflicting miseries on the Baloch people. The Wild West mindset did not got them anywhere in Bangladesh and surely the same strategy will get them nowhere in Balochistan.

Siraaj Raisani with his private Militia

The resistance says Pakistan's powerful military and its unaccountable intelligence gang of sadistic serial killers, are running a barbaric show in Baluchistan.

While headlines in Asia constantly report the latest victims, Gen Javed Zia in his press conference made a remarkable statement: "... 'patriotic elements' had hit back against Baloch insurgents and those involved in desecrating the Pakistani flag."

These so called "Patriotic Elements" are in fact the creation of intelligence agencies that are also spotted around roaming in cities with their private militias in non tax paid smuggled vehicles with jet black tinted glasses.

In Pakistan army and its civilian death squads: How they are Governing Occupied Balochistan? - , balochistanwatch.blogspot.com writes:

"No one dares to raise the question that how come the victims of enforced disappearances who were arrested by FC and Police in broad daylight in front of dozen of witnesses or at least the family members of the victim get transferred to the Hands of these so-called 'Patriotic Elements'[6].

"Late in 2011, Nawabsada Siraj Khan Raisani's Tehreek-e-Nifaz-Aman Balochistan claimed that they are have thirty people from Chamalang in custody who were arrested by FC in Chamalang after an operation.

Similarly, this criminal group claims to be holding fifteen people from Dera Bugti; these 15 were also arrested by Pakistan Para-military forces during an offensive operation from different regions of Sui and Dera Bugti.

If these criminals gangs are not the civilian death squad of Pakistan Army, then how come these people arrested by Para-Military (FC) are now in Mastung in Siraj Raisani's Torture cells?

In addition, the Musallah Defa Tanzeem and Nefaaz-e-Aman have recently released a list of at least 35 Journalists from Balochistan and warned them to stop writing about Pakistani atrocities in Balochistan; otherwise they will be killed one after other.

Prior to the issuing of this list the Nefaaz-Aman-Balochistan had threatened to kill Journalist and writer Abdul Hafeez aka Hafeez Hasanabadi.

They had also said that the Organisation would kill his family members in most gruesome way by inflicting brutal agony on them. Ironically, the Criminal group quoted Ahmar Mustikan a, US biased blogger and self-proclaimed journalist, to back their accusations against Mr Hafeez. It is not yet clear whether Ahmar has any affiliations with this killer group or they just took advantage of Ahmar's anti Hafeez propaganda.

Samad Tagrani, the finance secretary of Baloch National Movement getting arrested by local Policemen and Intelligence agencies from Hub town, his dead tortured marked body was found at Windar town, Balochistan balochistanwatch.blogspot.com

As this picture shows, Samad Tagrani, finance secretary of Baloch's National Movement was arrested by local Policemen and Intelligence agencies from Hub town; his dead and torture-marked body was located in Windar town, Balochistan- also sometimes written as Baluchistan.

There are dozens of such incidents where local Police authorities picked up victims, or FC picked up a victim in a Raid and later their bodies were found with confession letters from the so-called Patriotic Groups.

The same bloody game is being repeated again, the same strategy is being adopted again and the same tools of death has been used again to deter what the army thinks as an insurgency.

The number of killings and deaths will lead to more people joining the ranks of the Baloch freedom fighters in order to take revenge of the atrocities committed to them or their family members by the military establishment.

At the moment it seems that there will be no end to this sorry saga of executions in Balochistan.

References:

[1] Balochistan: Pakistan's other wa - al Jazeera

[2] 1971 Bangladesh atrocities - Wikipedia

[3] Case Study:Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971

[4] Its Punjabi Army---Baluchistan at point of no return - StopPressBd.com

[5] Breaking News - Pakistan occupied Balochistan - Genocide continues - marculyseas.wordpress.com

[6] Pakistan army and its civilian death squads: How they are Governing Occupied Balochistan? - balochistanwatch.blogspot.com