An interview on Balochistan

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The war in Balochistan has gone on too long

Friends, welcome back for the March newsletter. Early this month I wrote an article for Globetrotter trying to imagine a development-first path to peace in Balochistan. The article was based on three interesting interviews – with Andrew Korybko, Shah Jahan Baloch, and Pervez Hoodbhoy. What was remarkable about the interview with Pervez was that I sent him a series of questions over email, and he replied with basically a highly polished Q/A. I quoted from it for the article but in my opinion it was too good to not put on the web somewhere. So, I’m sending it to you as a reward for being on this list. If not all of you know Hoodbhoy’s work, now would be a good time to find it – he’s required and prolific reading, on things Pakistan and well beyond. A good place to start would be the Eqbal Ahmad Centre for Public Education.

And now the interview. Have a good April and I’ll be back with something at the end of that month.

Justin Podur (JP): How would you characterize the demands of Balochistan’s movements at the moment? After many conflicts over the decades (four rounds, I believe based on my background reading), are there different tendencies with different demands, some for autonomy, a greater share of resources, and some for outright separatism?

Pervez Hoodbhoy (PH): In political terms, Balochistan has been in revolt since the birth of Pakistan in 1947. It remains so today as well. The nationalists speak of Punjabi occupation, the revival of Baloch independence (referring to the Kalat State) and the reunification of the historical Baloch territory now spread between three states and among numerous provinces within them. The 1973-1976 war was Marxist-led and followed a long train of abuses by the center, including the undue extraction of Balochistan’s mineral wealth. Bhutto’s order to uproot that insurgency in 1973 was a godsend for an army despondent after its surrender to Indian forces in 1971. The final cost of suppressing this insurgency stood at 3000-3500 soldiers, over 5000 Baloch fighters, and many thousand civilians.

JP: How are Baloch movements treated by the state? Is there some dialogue, some attempts to improve representation, along with the repression and human rights violations that we hear about?

PH: The army establishment uses all kinds of ploys but there’s no real softening. It sees Baloch nationalism as a threat to its hegemony and does all it can to crush it. This has become particularly important after the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which the Baloch resent. Like the dreaded generals of Latin America, Pakistan’s generals too have learned how to quell insurgencies. Over the years dead bodies have appeared on the roadsides with marks of torture and many thousand young Baloch men have gone missing, some forever. The Supreme Court of Pakistan expressed helplessness in face of numerous petitions. The establishment has willfully used extremist militant religious organizations like Sipah-e-Sahaba as an antidote to Baloch nationalism. It has worked up to a point – what was once a Marxist inspired insurgency as in the 1973 uprising – is now more ethnically oriented.

JP: Is there any joint struggle between Balochistan’s movements and other activists in Pakistan? Anything at the level of official politics? How is the situation in Balochistan seen in the rest of Pakistan?

PH: For much of Pakistan, Balochistan is far off distant land about which is little is known. The mainstream media may not comment upon Baloch matters. No journalist who reports accurately on events from Balochistan can expect to live too long. Balochistan is such a sensitive issue for the ruling establishment that Pakistan’s universities may not hold seminars or meetings and Baloch students in Punjab and Sind are closely watched by the so-called “agencies”. In January 2022, Baloch students were rounded up in Lahore, which is many hundred miles away, after a terrorist attack likely carried out by the Taliban.

JP: Is the Pakistani establishment feeling more confident now that the US has left Afghanistan? Does this have any impact on the Balochistan situation?

PH: In principle it should be but it is not. The US exit from Afghanistan and the rule of the Taliban has not lessened the anxiety of Pakistan’s Punjab-centered civil and military establishment. It is bent upon resource extraction and upon making Balochistan safe for the Chinese. It wasn’t ever that the generals feared the US. Rather it was India’s tit-for-tat in Balochistan that they were afraid of. Everyone knows that for decades Pakistan had helped fuel the insurgency in Indian-held Kashmir and now it was getting paid back in the same coin.

JP: It seems to me that US and Pakistan relations are at a low point, including the financial sanctions of FATF and other impacts. Does this have any impact on the Balochistan situation – in terms of US covert operations in Balochistan (and/or Afghanistan pre- and post-2021…)

PH: Pakistan’s generals are rather miffed that, now that their boys have won in Afghanistan, the US does not seem to care much about them – or for Pakistan – any more. After all they had made a killing for decades from the Coalition Support Funds driven by NATO’s need to truck supplies into land-locked Afghanistan. The loss of geopolitical importance after last August means that the gravy train has stopped. China has not taken up the slack – it has put in $62 billion into Pakistan but these are all loans and investments, almost no aid. Our generals would like to give the US bases for use in Afghanistan on the sly, but the US has pretty much burnt its boats there – it does not seem to have any large scale military ambitions in Afghanistan presently. Instead it would rather ally with India against China; allying with both India and Pakistan is very difficult.

JP: Is Balochistan one area where Pakistan’s relationship to India isn’t really relevant? Or is it still relevant?

PH: Well, on every occasion when the security forces or Chinese nationals have been attacked in Balochistan, the Pakistani establishment has blamed India. The capture of Kulbhushan Yadhav in 2017, an Indian national with a faked passport, was held as one solid proof of Indian involvement in seeking to subvert CPEC. Could this allegation be correct? Possibly so. As a general rule, whenever a population is angry with those who it sees as an occupying power, it is not hard for enemies of that power to find domestic allies. This is exactly why Pakistan was able to successfully recruit Kashmiris on the Indian side of the LOC. And this is also why Balochistan is now an arrow in India’s quiver against Pakistan.

JP: Another question is how Pakistan seems to have lost influence in Kashmir, and whether that is a temporary situation or not.

PH: India has so thoroughly fenced off the Line of Control in Kashmir that Pakistan based jihadis are finding it near impossible to breach it. But even more, the jihad infrastructure has had to down-sized because international monetary sanctions, in particular FATF (Financial Action Task Force), has arm twisted Pakistan into dropping support for cross-border activities. However, India has not been able to translate Pakistan’s loss into its gain. The Hindu nationalism of India’s ruling party is unacceptable to the majority of Muslims in the Kashmir valley. So there is a lull, but neither India nor Pakistan seem to learn from history.

JP: Why has Islamabad gone to such extreme lengths to protect China’s interests in Balochistan? Why are Baloch insurgents targeting Chinese projects?

PH: Islamabad’s czars have made sure that the Balochistan assembly and various chief ministers have almost no say in matters related to the $62 billion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project of which Gwadar is the linchpin. The port of Gwadar, which was historically a fishing village, is China’s future base in the Persian Gulf. China is therefore viewed as an accomplice of Islamabad and Chinese businessmen, engineers, and technicians are seen as fair game for assassination and kidnapping. The 2018 attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, and on the Pearl Continental Hotel in Gwadar in 2019, were claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army and sent shockwaves down the CPEC corridor.

In December 2021, protests in Gwadar became so visible and loud that it became impossible for the establishment to hide or suppress the fact. These drew tens of thousands of people, including women and children, day after day for three weeks from nearby areas of Gwadar including Turbat, Pishkan, Zamran, Buleda, Ormara and Pasni. They were protesting against the treatment of locals, and particularly the paucity of drinking water and intrusions by Chinese fishing vessels. The sense of deprivation is felt far and wide in Balochistan. Baloch nationalists feel they have always been sold out by the center. For example in 1974, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who met with Nixon twice in the White House, had offered Gwadar to the US with the view that it could use it as a naval base. The US, however, rejected the proposal because the US already had ships in Chabahar under the Shah of Iran’s pro-American government!

JP: What possibilities and prospects exist for improving the situation?

PH: The diversity of its various peoples means that ethno-nationalism will always to be a challenge to the center. But this, by itself, is not a bad thing. India with far greater diversity could nevertheless succeed in evolving a stable political dispensation. The devastation of Pakistan in 1971 showed decisively the hollowness of its belief that religion can suffice to cement disparate peoples together. Nor will raw force work forever. The key to Pakistan’s stability does not lie in making the Army’s fist yet harder or peddling hard varieties of religion in an attempt to contain nationalist discontent. Instead it must be found in sharply limiting the power of the federation, sharing power between provinces, equitably distributing resources, and giving Pakistan’s various cultures and languages their due. In the long run, only a system where all have a stake can survive and prosper.

Pervez Hoodbhoy is a an Islamabad based physicist and social activist

Scramble for Africa 14: France saves Sadok Bey of Tunis from a nonexistent threat and steals the country 1881

The French steal Tunisia

After a bit of comparing and contrasting French colonialism with the British type, Dave tells us about the French Foreign Legion; Then we’re on to a key piece in France’s Scramble for Africa, the theft of Tunis from the Bey, Muhammad Sadok. In the process, the French colonizers insisted they were saving Sadok Bey from a threat from local tribes. He insisted he didn’t need the help, but in the end, Tunisia became a French protectorate.

AER 105: Are your favorite academic theorists really CIA spooks? With Gabriel Rockhill

Is French Theory full of CIA spooks?

Talking to Gabriel Rockhill, professor and director of the Critical Theory Workshop. Ever wonder why the CIA thought it was worthwhile to sponsor European left-wing academic theories? We talk about Derrida, Foucault, Arendt, and why even if you think obscure academic theory isn’t important, you might be mistaken. Author or editor of nine books, Rockhill is currently working on a book tentatively titled The Intellectual World War: The CIA’s Failed Attempt to Kill the Idea of Communism.

Scramble for Africa 13: France in the Scramble – the Algeria Precedent and Abdelkader’s Resistance

The Algeria Precedent

We talked about France’s colonization of Algeria back in Civilizations Episode 15 (in August 2020). We revisit it now, as France’s entry point into the Scramble for Africa. Algeria was France’s template for colonizing Africa and many of the dynamics of France’s African colonial crimes can be seen developing in Algeria. We end up focusing quite a bit on Abd el Kader’s Resistance to colonization. And the depopulation of Algeria under colonialism: between 1830-1872, the country’s population went from 3 milion to 2.125 million, by one estimate. 

Scramble for Africa 12b: The British Sack Benin in 1897

Using Dan Hicks’s 2020 book The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, Justin tells the story of how the British destroyed Benin, stole their stuff, and put it in museums. It’s part of the story of the British Scramble for West Africa, but we give it its own episode to show you Hicks’s research. 

AER 104: Will Ukraine be Putin’s Afghanistan? With Scott Ritter

Will there be “another Afghanistan”?

I interviewed Scott Ritter, former Marine, weapons inspector, and current author and writer about the war in Ukraine. We start with his experiences as a young member of the US military studying the Soviet Union and preparing for war with Russia; then talk about the surprises when he actually met Russians under conditions of detente. I asked him, since everybody seems to be an armchair military analyst, how we could be better at it. Then we talk about Russia’s goals, the situation in Ukraine, how Russia’s conducting the war so far (we talked on Day 9), and the prospects for Ukraine becoming “another Afghanistan”.

AER 103: Vaccine Mandates and Dispersed Convoys

Anti Empire Radio 103

I’m joined by AER’s favorite doctor Tarek Loubani and by another doctor (this time a doctor of history), Dorotea Gucciardo, a lecturer in the history of medicine. I ask Tarek why he believes vaccine mandates work; I ask Dorotea how, as a non-scientist, she evaluates medical information. Then we talk about the Ottawa convoy, which has now dispersed to Canadian cities, and local efforts to prevent the convoys from preventing medical workers from doing their work.

AEP February newsletter: Peace is the priority

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Dear friends,

I don’t have a February article to share (my China-Africa article came out in FAIR on Jan 31) but I have had inquiries about what someone who runs a site called the “Anti-Empire Project” has to say about the war in Ukraine.

I have been tweeting about it and today what I mainly had to say was expressing hope that the negotiations yield something. I’ve been told they’ve already broken off and amounted to nothing, but I can’t verify that and anyway that’s how negotiations go – they yield nothing until they yield something.

You can look back at the archives on my site and see that Russia and Ukraine aren’t areas that I cover extensively – though of course as an antiwar activist you’ll find a few items on it – like this interview from 2017 with academic Halyna Mokrushyna from the early days of the podcast (can’t say much about the audio quality, but Halyna was insightful if you’re looking for background). But it’s impossible to not pay attention to this so instead of claiming any instant expertise that I do not have, let me say a few things about my approach to these situations and then a few things that I’m reading.

Sources: You will have figured out that there is an “information war” happening as part of the actual war. When you see a claim about something that happened in the war, you have to apply the usual tests – what are the interests of the source? Does the information fit the source’s biases or run against them? What is the source’s past record – what were they working on and doing before this current conflict started? Not just what kinds of things, but how accurate were they? Do they have good academic practice (do they reveal their sources and research methods so that you can follow their trail)? Start with the CRAAP method (Currency, Relevance, Accuracy, Authority, Purpose) and go from there. Know that during wars there is 10x more disinformation than usual and there’s a lot in normal times.

Analysis: At the risk of having some of you new subscribers flee, you should know that my point of view is that there is only one empire in the world today. That’s why this site isn’t called the “Anti-EmpireS Project”. There are many relationships between states and there are big states that exert disproportionate influence on their smaller neighbours. But when you hear me talking about “the Empire”, I’m referring to a whole background of the events of the past 250 years or so, when first the British Empire and now the American Empire ruled (and a pretty smooth transition between these two). If you’re skeptical about this, I doubt I’ll be able to convince you in one paragraph of a newsletter but I am planning to do at least a podcast episode on this topic some time soon. The point here though is that I do understand the context of this to be NATO expansion and the US desire to prevent any rivals from presenting any challenge to its influence, and to try to ensure that the only power that can set red lines is the US.

The only other point of analysis that I’d suggest is that you reject any personal, psychological or pseudo-psychological, explanations of the situation (e.g. “Putin is a madman”). These are a substitute for hard thinking and information, and get you away from thinking about political and economic issues that are key to understanding the problem and its solution. The same goes for demonization, and though you know I am no fan of “both sides” type analysis, this is a case where demonization should be strictly avoided, on “both sides”. Nazi-type parties polled around 2% in the 2019 Ukraine election, despite their high visibility. Ukraine and Russia are neighbours and will have to live as neighbours when this is over. It would be unhelpful to that future to do demonizing if you lived there. To do demonizing from elsewhere is reprehensible.

Peace is the priority: If this is an anti-empire project, one premise is that war has a pro-empire bias and peace has an anti-empire bias. I know that you could read the whole history of wars of national liberation otherwise – but even wars of national liberation end with peace agreements and it’s my belief that the faster and less destructive the path to a peace agreement, the better. Another related point is that, as many have said, peace deals are made between enemies, not friends – the right people to talk are the people who are fighting and the right time for a peace agreement is yesterday if possible, but right now will do.

Alright. Some readings:

-Michael Hudson, America Defeats Germany for the Third Time – the author of Superimperialism explains some of the economics.

-Ivan Timofeev, Ukraine: Three Scenarios – a Russian writer outlines three scenarios a month ago, and we are in scenario 1.

-MA Bhadrakumar – an Indian ex-diplomat runs a well-informed blog, Indian Punchline, on world events with lots of information on Ukraine-Russia right now.

-I’d also recommend watching the US-based, well-connected John Meirsheimer’s lecture from 2015, “Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault?” and his updated talk from last week, given to a university audience in London over Zoom.

There is more, but I’ll leave it there. I’d be happy to hear from you what you’re reading and thinking about this, and whatever you think could help nudge the situation towards a peaceful resolution.

-Justin

Scramble for Africa 12: The British Scramble for West Africa

The British Scramble for West Africa

We start this episode with a few minutes of reading reviews – from fans and not-fans! Perhaps this will inspire you to review us too. Then we’re on to the British Scrambling for West Africa. Some of the Africans who fought back, of course, notably Bai Bureh and Yaa Asentewaa. Lord Lugard’s ideas of the Dual Mandate and the debate on indirect rule. The trickery and wars that led to the consolidation of Nigeria into a British colony. Some tales near the end of the incredible missing imperial records — too many to be coincidental.

AER 102: Are we in a multipolar world? And the trucker convoy, with Ben Norton

Interviewing the multipolarista himself

Ben Norton of the new site multipolarista.com joins me to talk about a wide range of anti-imperialist topics, from Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to Ortega and Maduro. We end up trying to figure out “patriotic socialism”, support for the “trucker convoy” (which is opposed by most truckers and which has very few truckers). Towards the end there’s a detailed theoretical discussion of how differences and splits occur not just among socialists but also among right-wing conservatives, and what the class basis for these kinds of splits might be. Are we in a multipolar world?