Descent Into Chaos (53 page)

The reorganization of the Taliban in FATA enabled al Qaeda to reestablish a base area and pursue its role in providing training and financing to its global affiliates. Pakistani groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba provided a constant flow of foreign recruits and would-be suicide bombers, among them British Pakistanis. The first port of call for foreign recruits was the countrywide network of madrassas controlled by extremist groups. These madrassas had undergone neither reform nor change, despite all the promises made by the regime. Before he left his command in Kabul in 2005, Lt.-Gen. David Barno had prophetically warned, “Al Qaeda clearly still wants to see the Taliban stage some kind of a comeback in Afghanistan. . . . They’re still providing financing, with guidance, training, support and selected individuals that help lead and motivate the operations in Afghanistan. They clearly want to use the Taliban as they have in the past.”
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The U.S.-led war in Iraq provided al Qaeda with an unexpected new battlefield and perhaps its greatest military successes, under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian aged forty. Al-Zarqawi had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1989 and returned to Afghanistan in 2000, when he developed differences with bin Laden. After arriving in Iraq in 2002, he declared his loyalty to bin Laden and named his group “al Qaeda in Iraq.” Zarqawi developed independent links with the Taliban, and by 2005 there was a steady traffic of extremists between Afghanistan-Pakistan and Iraq. The Taliban traveled to Iraq via Iran and Turkmenistan, often in the company of drug smugglers. Arab trainers, explosives experts, and financiers from Iraq traveled in the opposite direction. In Iraq the Taliban learned the latest military techniques in preparing mines, improvised explosive devices, and ambushes.
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In November 2006, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, admitted that “the lessons learned in Iraq are being applied to Afghanistan” by al Qaeda.
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By 2006 potential suicide bombers traveling from Europe and North Africa to join al Qaeda operations in Iraq were increasingly being diverted to Afghanistan. French intelligence monitored a new route for militants from North Africa that ended up in Peshawar. “There is less need for them in Iraq,” said Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, director of the DST, France’s counterterrorism agency. “The Iraqi insurgency is now very well organized around Iraqis. In contrast in Afghanistan there are certainly many Pakistanis and people from Arab countries and some from North Africa.”
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Dozens of British Pakistanis and half a dozen Germans traveled to FATA. With the right Pakistani extremist contacts, it was now easier than ever for foreigners to get in touch with al Qaeda. Whereas before 9/11 it could take several months before a recruit could join an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, now it took just a few weeks for a recruit to find himself in Waziristan.

The worsening situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with more al Qaeda plots for attacks being uncovered in Europe, prompted U.S. intelligence to reevaluate al Qaeda’s potential. In January 2007, John Negroponte, the outgoing director of national intelligence, told Congress that “al Qaeda is the terrorist organization that poses the greatest threat,” and pointed to Pakistan as its leadership base. “They are cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders’ secure hideout in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.”
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In mid-July a National Intelligence Estimate issued by the entire U.S. intelligence community stated that al Qaeda was based in FATA and that the United States would not hesitate to bomb or even invade any part of FATA if bin Laden was found to be hiding there.

In the past six years the Pakistan army had virtually ceded its writ in FATA to the Taliban, in sharp contrast with how it reacted in another insurgency -hit region—Balochistan. The Baloch insurgency was to provide greater justification for the army to continue support to the Taliban and to castigate Karzai for allowing India to undermine Pakistan. The Baloch tribes, numbering just five million people, occupy the largest land area in Pakistan, much of it desert and arid mountains, agriculturally unproductive but rich in untapped mineral resources including oil, gas, and uranium. There are small Baloch minorities in eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan. Traditionally the tribes have been seminomadic, grazing sheep, goats, and camels within specified tribal boundaries, but hundreds of thousands have sought work in Karachi and Dubai. Sixty years after independence, 45 percent of the Baloch are estimated to live below the poverty level.

Unlike the Pashtuns, the Baloch are markedly secular, and mullahs have no standing in Baloch society, which has remained untouched by the waves of Islamization that have swept the region. Instead, Baloch leaders have joined up with secular Sindhi and Pashtun nationalists to oppose what they consider Punjabi hegemony. Since 1948, the Baloch have been demanding greater autonomy, more control over revenues from their gas fields, and greater funds for development. These demands have been ignored by the federal government and as a result Baloch nationalists have waged four insurgencies—in 1948, 1958-1959, 1962-1963, and 1973-1977—all of them brutally suppressed by the army. In 2003 a fifth rebellion got under way, led by the underground Balochistan Liberation Army, or BLA.

For centuries the Baloch have lived peacefully with other ethnic groups, especially the Pashtuns, who occupy a narrow band of territory along Balochistan’s desert border with Afghanistan. However, Baloch tolerance was sorely tested in the 1980s when millions of Afghan refugees arrived, grabbing Baloch grazing lands and tilting the ethnic balance in favor of the Pashtuns. Baloch nationalists opposed the army’s backing of the Afghan Mujahedin in the 1980s and of the Taliban in the 1990s because they saw the army strategy as one that favored Pashtun fundamentalism to the detriment of Baloch rights. Increasingly the Baloch have found themselves a minority in their own land.

Ever since he came to power, Musharraf had ignored Balochistan, treating it as a playground for the army’s strategic aims in supporting the Taliban. In 2002 the army rigged the elections in favor of the Pashtun fundamentalist and pro-Taliban JUI Party, at the expense of Baloch nationalist parties. Quetta was turned into a Taliban town. The army’s construction of new cantonments for troops and, with Chinese help, a naval and commercial port at Gawadar, on the Makran coast, was seen by the Baloch as a colonial incursion by an occupying military.
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In Gawadar, local fishermen and farmers were deprived of their land, homes, and jobs to facilitate the building of the new port, and massive property speculation, much of it carried out by army officers, created widespread hatred for the military. The Baloch saw an unholy alliance of the ISI, JUI, and Taliban depriving them of their rights.

In 2003-2004 the BLA carried out hit-and-run raids against the military and the province’s infrastructure, blowing up gas pipelines, electricity pylons, and telephone exchanges. In May 2004 this violence escalated dramatically when the BLA killed three Chinese engineers in Gawadar. The BLA had emerged out of the insurgency of the 1970s, which was led by two nationalist sardars, Khair Bux Marri and Ataullah Mengal, who led the Marris and Mengals, the two largest fighting tribes. At that time their opponent was a former colleague and chief of the Bugti tribe, Sardar Akbar Bugti, who was allied with the central government to crush the insurgency. A mercurial insomniac who could be both viciously cruel and intellectually engaging and charming, Bugti regretted his role in the 1970s and now tried to make amends in his old age by joining hands with the BLA, which was led by his grandson, Baramdagh Bugti, and Balach Marri, the son of Khair Bux. Ostensibly the BLA was demanding greater autonomy; in reality it was now fighting for an independent Balochistan.

The key to the conflict was the pittance of revenue that the Baloch and the Bugtis in particular received from the gas fields operated by a state-owned company at Sui, in the Bugti tribal area. The Sui gas fields provide some 45 percent of Pakistan’s gas needs. Eighty wells in Sui produce between 720 and 750 million cubic feet of gas a day, which generates an estimated $1.4 billion in revenue for the central government In 2005, only $116.0 million was returned to Balochistan in the form of royalties. Tensions around Sui escalated dramatically in January of that year when a five-day battle ensued between the Bugti and the army. Pipelines were blown up and the supply of gas to the rest of the country came to a standstill. The army rushed 2,500 troops and tanks to defend Sui as Musharraf threw fuel on the fire by taunting the Baloch: “Don’t push us. It isn’t the 1970s when you can hit and run and hide in the mountains,” he said. “This time you won’t even know what hit you.” Ataullah Mengal promised the Baloch would fight “till the last drop of our blood.”
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Fighting continued around Sui as the Bugtis ambushed army convoys and the besieged military in Sui responded with artillery strikes. The rebels blew up pipelines, railway tracks, and electricity pylons across the province. Opposition politicians warned the army not to create “another Bangladesh”—referring to the 1971 civil war that divided the country. The civilian government tried to broker peace talks with Bugti, and a parliamentary committee tasked with compiling a report on Baloch grievances made considerable headway, offering the Baloch greater provincial autonomy, additional gas royalties, and jobs. However, the deal collapsed after Musharraf told the politicians to stand down.

On December 14, 2005, Musharraf was addressing a rally in the Marri area when the BLA fired eight rockets upon the gathering and on a helicopter carrying a general and his deputy, seriously wounding both men. A humiliated Musharraf ordered a major offensive against the BLA. Hundreds of guerrillas and civilians were killed as helicopter gunships, provided by Washington to fight the Taliban, were redeployed against the Baloch. Musharraf insisted that only three sardars were causing the trouble while the rest of the Baloch supported the government. In July, after his home in Dera Bugti was shelled, Akbar Bugti, seventy-nine, suffering from severe arthritis and unable to walk, mounted a camel and took to the mountains with hundreds of fighters. “I have had a good and full life—it is better to die quickly in the mountains than slowly in your bed,” he ruminated. “If we are removed from the scene, I can guarantee the government will have a heck of a time from the younger generation because they are more extreme.”
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As he had wished, his end came quickly and fiercely. On August 26, Bugti was killed, along with thirty-five followers, after a cave he was resting in was bombed. Some sixteen soldiers, including four officers, were killed in a fierce battle over possession of Bugti’s dead body. The army had hoped also to kill Baramdagh Bugti and Balach Marri, but the two escaped. The entire province erupted in fury. Quetta and all major towns were shut down for a week as mobs rampaged through the streets, attacking and burning banks, vehicles, and government buildings. Protests intensified after the government refused to hand over Bugti’s body to his family and buried him in a now-deserted Dera Bugti. In a later interview to an Indian television station, Musharraf acknowledged that Bugti had been deliberately targeted. “Anyone who maintains a military and tries to challenge Pakistan . . . there is no doubt in my mind . . . there is no duplicity in this—we will crush him,” he said.
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The media asked why, if the army could bomb Baloch rebels, it was unable to crush the Taliban. The ruling PML asked Musharraf to resume talks with the Baloch, but he refused.

The flight of BLA leaders to refuge in Afghanistan, harsh military action, and the mass arrests of thousands of civilians led to a temporary decline in guerrilla activity in Balochistan. There is no doubt that the BLA had escalated the conflict and underestimated the army’s reaction. However, by killing Bugti, Musharraf had earned the permanent enmity of the Baloch people. The wave of anti-army feeling in Balochistan spread to Sindh and the NWFP. The government was further humiliated when it tried to hold a Jirga of all the Baloch sardars and they refused to attend. Instead, the Khan of Kalat, Mir Suleiman Daud, the titular head of the Baloch sardars, called a Loya Jirga in September, which was attended by eighty-five sardars and three hundred tribal elders. They condemned the army and decided to ask for justice from the International Criminal Court, in the Hague.
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The significance of the Baloch insurgency was that it provided the military regime with another excuse to accuse India and Afghanistan of supporting dissidents in Pakistan. Islamabad accused the Afghans of permitting the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad to funnel arms and money to BLA insurgents. In February 2006, when Karzai presented Musharraf with yet another list of alleged Taliban leaders hiding out in Balochistan, Musharraf retaliated by giving Karzai reports of Indian involvement with the BLA via Kabul.
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There was little doubt that India was supporting the Baloch insurgency, but the question was, from where? New Delhi had supported previous Baloch insurgencies, just as Islamabad had backed Kashmiri separatists. Each country had run dissident movements in the other’s state, in a proxy war that had continued for half a century.

Western intelligence officials in Kabul said that India was not using Afghanistan—rather that Indian money was being funneled to the Baloch from Dubai, where many Baloch nationalists were living. Pakistan demanded that Dubai arrest another son of Khair Bux Marri, who was living there. Western officials also claimed that Iran was providing training camps to the Baloch. Other conspiracy theories swept through the Pakistani media. There were allegations that the United States and Britain were supporting the Baloch insurgents in order to counter the Chinese naval presence in Gawadar, that Dubai was doing the same because Gawadar would draw away sea-borne trade from Dubai port, and that Russia wanted to break up Pakistan. Although none of these theories appeared credible, the insurgency in Balochistan was now internationalized.