Reposted from BalochWarna | November 12, 2010 | Read story

by Dr. Shahswar K

Part I, Oct 20, 2010

The recent unprecedented degree of cruelty of the states of Pakistan and Iran towards Baluch people is a clear intensification of Baluch struggle for their democratic rights. It is also a deep-sited quandary that requires a surgical solution, which in turn will undermine the foundation of these rogue states. Unless they employ extreme force their artificial structure is not and will not be attainable but extreme force will not last long and the status quo will crumble because of the use of continual brute force.

Their harsh treatment of nations under their subjugation is backfiring and will eventually bring about the demise of these arbitrary structures. Colonialism in case of Pakistan and Iran or other arbitrary countries with similar status are parallel to the earlier era of European colonizers and the ancient conquerors and plunderers. The conquered nations under these artificially structured countries are simply stripped out of their most basic rights. There are many contributory factors for these countries in the way that they deal with the nations that are under their occupation:

1) The Euro-centric notion of colonialism

2) The historical misinformation

3) Absence of any credible democratic force among the domineering nations.

Among the educated class of these countries colonialism is seen only as a European phenomenon. More specifically, it is seen as an act that can only be associated with the white European ethnic groups. In this way they conveniently justify the illegal occupation of the nations under their bondage. The fact is that the occupation of other nations is not exclusive to one race or a nation. Throughout human history stronger nations from different continents have been involved in invading and subjugating weaker nations. On that account, one cannot deny the fact that the leading perpetrators of modern age colonialism were primarily from the European decent.

Embedded in this notion is the belief that once a nation falls a victim of colonialism that nation will not become a colonizer itself. It avoids invading and subjugating other nations. This is merely a fallacy. There are many cases that an ex-colony turns into a major colonial power itself. The Dutch were the colony of the Spanish Empire. In fact, it was the first nation in modern sense of the term that liberated itself from the yoke of Spanish domination in the seventeenth century. Not long after its liberation Netherland transformed itself into a major colonial power.

Both the First and the Second World Wars were the teaching ground to reveal the true nature of colonialism. By the end of the Second World War colonialism became an indefensible policy among educated classes of developed nations. Their control over nations in Africa and Asia were acknowledged of being undemocratic and inhumane but the same rights have not been given to the nations that had been the victims of the same European Imperial powers in the first place and then after their departure, the victims of the countries that they artificially created. While, on one hand colonialism of developed countries has gone out of favour, the subjugation of other nations by arbitrary created countries that are undeveloped is overlooked and remains at large.

A forceful subjugation of a nation should not be acceptable no matter who the guilty party maybe. That is why the occupying establishments will do their outmost to present a bogus history of their fake past and borders. For this reason the nations under their military boots are systematically deceived about their true history. The occupiers forge a series of events skilfully to justify their invasion. Historical misinformation, therefore, is one of the principal characteristics of these fake states.

Ask any pseudo-educated person from the ruling establishment about the nation they have occupied. You will be struck from their sheer ignorance and the much intended deception about the nations that are under their occupation. They see their right to control the subjugated nations as something unyielding and eternal. Employing a bit of imagination, common sense and humanity will disclose the extent of absurdity of this craze. No division of a nation into two or more parts is done voluntarily and democratically. Splitting up a nation into a number of parts is always done by a superior invading force so such actions are inherently inhumane and undemocratic.

Surely the Baluch nation, as a relatively unified and homogenous entity, can resolve its social, economic, political issues much more effectively when they are free and together compared to when they are forcefully subjugated to Pakistani and Iranian establishment. Moreover, it is within the frontier of rational way of thinking and democratic codes to obliterate the colonial wrongdoings. That is to say, allowing the nations that have suffered from these historical injustices to decide democratically their own destiny.

We can demonstrate the ludicrousness of current state of affairs in a few simple questions. Why the Baluch should not be with the Baluch and Kurdish with Kurdish people? What is stopping them to get united? Is it according to their free will or is it from above by means of a tyrannical external force? Is it not the case that they cannot even mention the term unification? When they ask for this right they are subjected to the most heinous imprisonment, torture and death? What is wrong with a simple democratic demand for the nations that have been divided by the past colonial powers to get united and return to their original form? Is it not the interest of undemocratic and exploitative of the invading establishment that stops these nations from determining their own future? The reason evidently stems from one and only one underlying source. This is the repressive and exploitative nature of the ruling establishment of these arbitrary countries that prevents the invaded and divided nations to be free and united.

Clearly, current defined borders of Baluchistan are the work of colonial powers. They are drawn undemocratically to serve the interests of colonial and local powers when these borders were drawn. Even this simple factual historical incident has been turned into a taboo to the Baluch people. The invading ruling establishment of Iran and Pakistan are fearful of the Baluch knowing even this trivial fact about their past history. It is merely a truism that an occupied nation and its people cannot and will not have equal rights as long as they are under occupation of another nation. Unless this historical misinformation is acknowledged candidly none of the solutions presented to resolve the problem of Baluchistan will be democratically credible. Explicit recognition of this fact is merely a first step towards a genuine attempt for a just and democratic solution to Baluchistan's problem.

As the foundations of these countries are inherently undemocratic their governments will always remain dictatorial. Therefore, the ruling establishment of these arbitrary countries will never resolve the problem of the nations that they have annexed forcefully in the first place. This is because the malady is embedded in their very structure. There is only one way to preserve the current structure and that is the use of sheer raw force. Relying merely on naked force, however, is not an effective instrument. It is a blunt tool and yet a very destructive one. This is not the panacea for prolong the survival of autocratic systems but the right venom that will hasten their demise.

Another major factor that has helped the preservation of these repressive structures is the absence of a credible democratic force among the nations that are in charge of these countries. The make-up of the establishment of the nation in charge does not just comprise the state and all its functionaries that are ruling the country at any given point in time but also the overriding ideology that supports such structures. It comprises all political parties and sentiments that are in favour of this undemocratic entity. The nations that have the political, military, cultural and economic monopoly in Iran and Pakistan have not yet been able to nurture even a basic democratic and tolerance political philosophy. Their political parties, both on the left and on the right, are in agreement with the oppressive establishment in subjugating the weaker nations. They all want to keep the present arrangements by all means. In the name of the false notion of national integrity and sovereignty they openly reject the most basic democratic rights of the weaker nations. One cannot be a genuine democrat if he or she desires more rights for his or her domineering nation at the cost of the nation that they have forcefully occupied.

Equal rights must apply for all nations no matter how big or small they may be. You cannot be a democrat if you justify the illegal occupation and subjugation of a nation because it happens to be your nation that has the upper hand. Denying the basic right of being free from forceful occupation and not allowing them the right of breaking free from occupation is simply inhumane and undemocratic. This right must be honoured regardless of who the perpetrator maybe or whenever the act of subjugation has happened. It is the most basic democratic right of a nation to break free from illegal occupation and to regain their independence if they wish to. Whoever denies this right simply cannot be a democrat. Placing greater priority to domination and exploitation rather than in liberation and respect to the rights of other nations is contrary to any democratic values. Recognition of the same democratic rights for all nations is what puts all nations at par.

Dissent from this elementary principle can have terrible implications. If the same rights are not applied to the people of all nations then all sorts of forceful annexation, subjugation, colonization, and exploitation can be justified. Baluchistan is a case in point. Ever since the forceful occupation of Baluchistan, Baluch people have met a degree of suffering that is incomparable both in scale and scope in its entire known history.

Killing, imprisonment, torture, displacement of Baluch people have been the norm ever since. Baluchistan is now trapped between the two most tyrannical Islamic fundamentalist regimes of our time. For over sixty years they have been enduring the burden of the Islamic fundamentalist state of Pakistan and from 1979 the Islamic fundamentalist of Iran.

In March 1948 Pakistan illegally occupied Eastern Baluchistan but in order to control it they have launched five military operations ever since. As result of these operations many thousands of Baluch have been abducted, imprisoned, tortured, displaced and killed. In addition, successive Pakistani governments have plundered Baluchistan's natural resources and turned its economy into complete wreckage. All other aspects of life that will form and nurture a healthy and prosperous society such as language, literature, music, culture, social, ethical and legal values have equally been undermined by the occupying states.

The current structure of Pakistan and the use of violence are inextricably linked. They are inseparable. The use of violence goes hand in hand with the artificial formation of Pakistan. This was one of the two countries in which its foundation was set in extreme religious fundamentalism. The division of the Indian subcontinent on religious ground was one of the worst violent events of the twentieth century. This was, not to forget, the most violent century in entire human history. The British Empire's decision to help Indian Muslim fundamentalist to break up from the Indian subcontinent caused mass ethnic cleansing, massacre, rape, and abduction and forced migration of millions of Indians. The estimate of uprooted people of all ages, gender and social backgrounds from this fundamentalist political counterfeiting goes in the range of 10 to 12 million (Partition-August 1947, GlobalSecurity.org).

Uprooting and fleeing of millions of people from their ancestral homeland cannot be done without a blind and extremely violent force. The main agitator and architecture of this malevolence venture was the All India Muslim League Party. They are in effect responsible for the death toll that ranges from 200,000 to 1.5 million people.

The ruling class of newly forged state of Pakistan turned the partition of Indian subcontinent into a religious war. In religious wars all sorts of barbaric methods are justified to eliminate whoever they perceive to be on the wrong side of their beliefs. Cutting people by axe and burning them alive regardless of their age and gender were the common acts of this massacre. All massacres tend to have a well organized structure and executor (Partition-August 1947, GlobalSecurity.org). The frenzy craze of fanatic masses and their mad dash over defenceless people usually is backed by a fixated ideology and the Machiavellian concept of the position of individuals in a political set-up.

This was the political psyche of the founders of Pakistan. Their legacy is a political and military establishment that in the first few months of its creation was responsible for at least a million deaths and up to 12 million displaced people. The same mindset has permeated the ruling establishment and army of Pakistan ever since. The suffering of a weaker nation that fall a victim of this kind of mindset would be unthinkable. Illegal occupation of Eastern Baluchistan by Pakistan, only after eight months of its creation, and the way they treated the Baluch population is a clear verification of the conduct of this mindset.

The same mindset was behind the political philosophy of those who led the 1979 Iranian revolution. The Iranian theocratic regime is different from the Pakistani regime on the ground that they follow two different sects of Islam. Pakistan government adheres to Sunni fundamentalism and Iranian government to Shiat fundamentalism. The thing that the two systems have in common is use of extreme violence and Baluch bear the brunt of these two Islamic fundamentalist states.

Baluchistan was divided into two parts by the "˜Goldsmith Line' in 1871. This was an agreement signed between the Qajar King Nasir-al Din Shah (1848-1896) and the British Empire. Subsequently, the Western Baluchistan was given to Persia. Few decades later the Persian lost control over Western Baluchistan. By 1916 Bahram Khan Baluch effectively became the ruler of Western Baluchistan, which was also acknowledged openly by the British. Almost a decade and half later in 1928 Reza Khan Military Forces occupied Western Baluchistan and illegally annexed it to Iran.

Reza Khan and his son Mohammed Reza ruled Western Baluchistan with Iron fist. The end of their era in 1979 merely substituted their brutal and merciless reign with by far a crueller regime headed by a fundamentalist Shia cleric. The Islamic regime of Khomeini has in effect re-conquered Western Baluchistan and has been treating it accordingly. The Baluch under Islamic regime of Iran are considered, by and large, as conspirators. At best they are classed as being not one of their lots. Consequently, they have applied the degree of violence in handing the Baluch people that is unprecedented in the entire recorded history of Western Baluchistan.

It was only a few months after formation of Islamic regime of Iran that Baluch had the first close contact with Islamic military functionaries. No Baluch that have the first hand experience of invading Islamic crusaders in Baluchistan can forget their first raids. They were dispatched as fanatic mercenaries who saw every Baluch as an impending enemy. Their influx across Baluchistan was ferocious and cunning. It was an undeclared war that meant to conquer and subdue another nation.

n no time the Islamic mercenaries quartered wherever they fancied and took possession of whatever valuable they encountered. They became in charge of everything: education, employment, law and order, in one word the master in someone else's homeland. The pictures of Shah and his cronies were replaced with larger number of pictures of Khomeini and his associates. Iranian educated and uneducated alike, all of a sudden saw the picture of fundamentalist shia clerk Khomeini on the Moon. The tragedy of this sad saga was that those who were sent to re-conquer Baluchistan were amongst the most devoted of this mania. These were among those individuals whose capacity to reason is limited to the power of their swords and some mumbo jumbo superstition.

Barely two years passed of the presence of Islamic regime in Baluchistan that it practically annihilated the entire progressive and politically active section of the Baluch society. The Islamic regime's intention was to exterminate Baluch intellectuals and political opponents once and for all. It arrested the most gifted and effective critics of the regime and brutally tortured and killed the most enlightened ones. Those that were saved from the wrath of Islamic regime were found themselves unwillingly scattered as political refugees mostly in western European countries and North America. This was the first generation of Baluch intellectuals in Western Baluchistan who could articulate the pains and demands of the generations of Baluch in a modern political language. They were the pioneering few who could articulate eloquently their demands for their democratic rights.

Baluch students and few intellectuals that comprised the backbone of this forward-looking political movement did not believe in use of violence to achieve their goals. They relied on their pens and rational debates even though somewhat amateurishly. Their aim was to strive for their democratic rights through lucid and rational discussions and critical debates. Nonetheless, these activities are most lethal to dictatorial political systems. For the Islamic regime of Iran's continued existence nothing can be more detrimental than a political arena that is open and democratic. Nothing could have been more alien to such system than rational critical thinking and a decision making process that is open and transparent. It is the absence of these venues that state violence replaces the legitimate democratic channels. The more undemocratic the political system the greater would be its reliance on brute force.

The Islamic regime of Iran has no single day to spare without use of extreme violence. It is simply impossible to describe the fate of anyone who is a captive of the Islamic regime of Iran. What they have done and would do to their victims is just incomprehensible to any sane mind. When it comes to a captive that happens to be a Baluch they find no boundary in what they are allowed and prepared to do. Implementation of this policy has resulted in numerous Baluch families being denied even the bodies of their loved ones. These victims are tortured to such extent that the regime officials do not want for anyone to see.

For the Islamic regime of Iran political opposition is tantamount to opposition with their God and for that offence you are hanged. This law is universally applied to everyone within the boundary that is under authority of the Islamic regime. But in context of Baluchistan dabbing in any intellectual territory specially if it is to do with Baluch culture, language and history you will soon find yourself in murky deep water of being recorded on the list of their "˜Moharebs'. The Islamic regime just like the Nazi colonists are interested in expropriation of the conquered land. The people of conquered lands are their slaves and as the Nazi used to say "the slaves do not need culture."

For Islamic regime the topmost priority in Baluchistan is to be in command of the incarcerated Baluch population no matter what. Human cost has no place in their ethical calculation. The use of extreme violence in case of Baluchistan is an official policy and the Islamic regime cannot be without it. Extreme violence is the essential ingredient for the regime's presence in Baluchistan. As a result, the Islamic regime has malformed Baluchistan into a vast torture camp for its trainee murderers. Giving its imported henchmen free hand to deal with Baluch population in whichever way they wish. Hence, it has generated tension between the native Baluch and for some settlers the outcome of which is simply inconceivable. It is also the case that Baluch, under tyranny of the Islamic regime, are totally powerless. They find it unable, in every respect, to hold anyone from the state functionaries accountable for their crimes that they constantly commit. So, years of escalating accumulation of unaccountable violation of Baluch basic rights has made Western Baluchistan a compressed volcano that may erupt at any time. The Baluch youths, in the absence of any rational and secular democratic political platform, security, employment and hope in their own homeland, can and will turn to methods of resistance that will harm all parties concerned.

The Islamic regime of Iran has turned the Western Baluchistan into a no go area for journalists and human rights activists. The regime is left free-handed. According to the Human Rights Activists of Iran Baluchistan is one of the areas where "there is no accurate information on the number and identities of the tens of thousands of Baluchi political prisoners in south eastern Iran. As a result of the tight grip maintained by Intelligence services in this region and the absence of civil rights institutions, this region is among a number of areas which is suffering from a lack of surveillance by human rights organizations." http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/iran-executions-send-chilling-message-2010-03-30

Compounding this matter is the systematic prejudice and ignorance of Iranian establishment both in left and right side of the spectrum on the question of Baluchistan. Whenever the issue of Baluch democratic rights and the forceful occupation of their homeland are raised, both sides either keep silence or endorse the Islamic regime's policies. This policy does not only apply to the political establishment but also Iranian academic circles, political and social activists and Journalists. The narrow-minded and partial culture of Iranian journalists is not confined to those who are currently working in Iran but also those Iranian journalists who work for international media and institutions such as BBC.

If we look at the number of hanging, execution and extrajudicial killing in Western Baluchistan and compare this to its population we will find out that for some years Baluchistan had the highest concentration of such types of state violence in the world. According to Amnesty International from the year 2004 to 2009 the Islamic regime of Iran has executed about 1481 persons. This is out of the total population of 75 million. The number of Baluch victims in the same period in Western Baluchistan is about 800 individuals. This is out of a population of about three million people (Balochistan Human Rights Activists Association), which is about 55% of total victims that have been executed and hanged by the Islamic regime of Iran during this period. On the basis of these data one can reach an alarming conclusion about the extent of cruelty of the presence of Islamic regime in Baluchistan. That is as a proportion to their population, the Baluch in Western occupied Baluchistan have endured the highest concentration of death penalties in the world since the year 2004.

The Human Rights Watch in March 2008 quoted Hossein Ali Shahryari, a member of Islamic Regime Parliament, who confirmed a long list of 700 individuals being on death row in Baluchistan (http://hrw.org/wr2k8/pdfs/iran.pdf). Nobody outside the Islamic regime circle knows much about the misfortune of these victims. The figure itself, however, clearly verifies the conclusion drawn above about the state policy in Baluchistan.

In the next part of this paper we shall look at Pakistan atrocities in East Bengal. We shall explore how the state boundless violence drew the Bengalis to a point of no return and ultimately to their independence.

To be continued . . .

Dr Shahsawar K is a University lecturer and a Baloch Human Rights activists based in the United Kingdom