The Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) | [date: early 2012?] Click for pdf of full article

By Jason Heeg

The Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas is an open source research organization of the U.S. Army. FMSO conducts unclassified research on foreign perspectives of defense and security issues that are understudied or unconsidered.

Biography

Jason Heeg is an Intelligence Officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He is currently attending the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and completing a Master of Arts in Security Studies with Kansas State University. He has deployed multiple times to the central command area of responsibility. His research interest includes insurgency, terrorism, and the cultural and tribal dynamics of south Asia.

Abstract

The emphasis placed on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Prov­ince) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has left the issues in the western Balochistan province under-ap­preciated. While there has been some focus on the Taliban's government-in-exile, the Quetta Shura, which operates from the Baloch capital, there has been little attention applied to Baloch nationalism. Counter-intuitive to the common American point of view, Baloch separatism is a much greater issue to the Paki­stan military than the situation in the FATA. Since the partition of British India in 1947, there have been five periods of insurgency in Balochistan.

The primary grievances of the Baloch population are economic internal colonialism, ethnic disparity, the desire for political autonomy, the cycle of the Pakistani govern­ment granting and later withdrawing or violating amnesty, creating bad blood and lack of trust. In order to address the current separatist insurgency in Balochistan, as well as the Islamic totalitarian influence, Pakistan has devel­oped an extensive security architecture in the province. This paper will provide a historical overview and review contributing factors to the Baloch separat­ist insurgencies, analyze the current situation and argue that the insurgency will not end until the underlying issues are resolved in the eyes of the Baloch people. Balochistan offers many challenges and opportunities to United States foreign policy in the region. This paper provides an enhanced understanding of the current insurgent situation and counterinsurgency efforts for policy makers and military planners working in the Central Command and Pacific Command Area's of Responsibility.

Conclusion

This paper provided a background on Balochistan and an overview of the five periods of insurgency conducted by the Baloch separatists in western Pakistan. The four periods of historical violence: 1948, 1958, 1963 and the 1970s were analyzed and compared to the current insurgency. The analysis exposed two significant trends: first, the propensity of the federal government to renege on their commitments to the Baloch population; second, the cycle of heavy handed tactics followed by a negotiation of unstable peace which appeases the population until the next flare up. Moreover the attempted functionalist concessions by the federal government to appease the Baloch population are not sufficient to override the primordial cause of the violence.

Balochistan offers many challenges and opportunities to United States foreign policy in the region. This paper provided an enhanced understanding of the current insurgent situation and counterinsurgency efforts for policy makers and military planners working in the Central Command and Pacific Command Area's of Responsibility. The current situation appears to be entering the negotiation phase of the cycle as Gillani is taking a softer approach, along the lines of Zia in the late 1970s. These actions will not be successful because they do not address the true underlying grievances of the Baloch people which are ethnic parity and political autonomy.