January 18, 2011

By Wendy Johnson

The only slow-moving part of the slow-motion genocide described by Selig Harrison in 'Pakistan's Baloch Insurgency' is now the reaction time of the international community. While the U.S. (a major funder of the Pakistan military), the UN and major human rights organizations worry how to, or whether to, approach Pakistan about its extrajudicial killings in Balochistan, it's as if Pakistan's security forces and military have suddenly upgraded from dial-up to high-speed internet connections--with bodies discovered often at the rate of one to three per day. In an editorial dated January 7, 2011, Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) wrote, "Seventy-two bullet-riddled bodies of young men have been found in Balochistan in the past six months." Balochi language newspaper The Daily Intekhab counts eleven Baloch murdered during the period January 4 to January 17.

Photo: Naseer Kamalan Baloch, abducted November 5, 2010; found January 17, 2011

Photo: Ahmad Dad Baloch, abducted October 3, 2010; found January 17, 2011

Old Tactics

In the past Pakistan's military forces have used a variety of tactics to hunt the Baloch resistance*. In "˜Pakistan's Baluch insurgency,' Selig Harrison notes a "climactic battle" in 1974 when "Pakistani forces, frustrated by their inability to find Baluch guerrilla units hiding in the mountains, bombed, strafed and burned the encampments of some 15,000 Baluch families who had taken their livestock to graze in the fertile Chamalang Valley, forcing the guerrillas to come out from their hideouts to defend their women and children." Similarly he writes that with the fighting that began in 2005 "F-16s and Cobra gunships are again being used to draw the guerrillas into the open. Six Pakistani army brigades, plus paramilitary forces totalling some 25,000 men, are deployed in the Kohlu mountains and surrounding areas where the fighting is most intense."

New Strategy

Mr. Harrison described a new development in 2006: "In the past Baluch activists were generally arrested on formal charges and sentenced to fixed terms in prisons known to their families. This time Baluch spokesmen have reported large-scale kidnappings and disappearances, charging that Pakistani forces have rounded up hundreds of Baluch youths on unspecified charges and taken them to unknown locations."

Since 2006, the sporadic bombing and strafing of certain towns and/or targets, still indiscriminate in nature, has continued in more or less the same fashion. What appears to have changed, however, is the military's strategy**. No longer are Baloch activists arrested and sentenced to fixed terms in prisons or simply disappeared, rather activists and non-activists alike are abducted and killed, their tortured and bullet-ridden bodies left at roadsides for random passersby to discover. This new tactic of kidnap, kill and dump (KKD) represents an evolution in strategy.

To 'KKD' a person has nothing to do with flushing out resistance fighters with the ultimate goal of defeating the Baloch resistance. These abductions take place in both urban areas and rural areas where young men are removed from buses, vans, cars or streets. They occur where no guerrilla unit is present and they take the lives of people who are not involved with the insurgency. While at first blush one might think these KKD killings are a tactic in a strategy designed to undermine the resistance's ability to wage war, the idea being that the general population will grow demoralized by bearing witness to this loss of life and somehow influence the resistance to give up its own goal--now independence from Pakistan--no one familiar with the situation suspects this is the case. And if Pakistani forces ever did harbor such hopes, by now they know that the discovery of bodies at roadsides only serves to further fuel the rage of the entire Baloch population and that their strategy has been a failure. No, this is decidedly not a tactic in a strategy designed to undermine the resistance, rather these are acts of vengeance. The strategy is one designed to terrorize the population by committing cold-blooded murder.

What has not evolved in relation to the Pakistani military and/or security agency policy of kidnap, kill and dump is the international reaction to the murder and mayhem in Balochistan. For too long, the response from the U.S. State Department, large human rights organizations and, in the case of Ehsan Arjemandi and the Norwegian government, has been one of hand wringing. At this point it might be worthwhile to solicit the help of an organization that has taken some very principled stands in relation to crimes against humanity, the International Criminal Court.

The International Criminal Court would have the ability to investigate and issue arrest warrants for responsible officials in Pakistan for crimes against humanity and war crimes, as it did for the former Minister of State for the Interior, Ahmed Haroun, and a Janjaweed leader, Ali Kushayb, in 2007, or for orchestrating genocide, as it did for Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir in July, 2010. While Pakistan is likely to respond, as Sudan did, that the ICC has no jurisdiction to try Pakistani citizens, it may inspire others to pay attention to the carnage. Wikipedia details that the ICC "can exercise its jurisdiction only when national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute such crimes." In the case of Pakistan, this is certainly the case where in the vast majority of cases, the families of victims are even unable to file First Information Reports (FIRs).

Only an investigation can determine from which level in the command structure comes the order to torture and commit murder. These killings are so widespread across Balochistan, however, that one can safely assume that these murders are not the work of a few serial killers within Pakistan's military ranks or its security forces. While Balochistan is small enough in area that a handful of individuals could conceivably commit these murders and drive across the region to dump the bodies, the publicity over the cases is so widespread that no group of individuals could pass unnoticed by high-ranking military or security officials. One can, therefore, assume the worst-"”these murders are tacitly agreed to or sanctioned by high-ranking officials. These murders have been committed in cold blood. The persons responsible must be held accountable.

*Some 6 million Baluch were forcibly incorporated into Pakistan when it was created in 1947. This is the fourth insurgency they have fought to protest against economic and political discrimination. In the most bitter insurgency, from 1973 to 1977, some 80,000 Pakistani troops and 55,000 Baluch were involved in the fighting. (Selig Harrison, "˜Pakistan's Baluch insurgency,' Le Monde diplomatique, October 2006)

**There may be a mix of military/security/intelligence agencies responsible for individual killings.