Indeed, Balochistan is one of the major provinces amongst the four provinces of Pakistan. With vast territory and less population, it has the common border with Afghanistan in northwest, Iran in the west and in the southwest it has links with the Middle Eastern States and onwards to the Gulf regions. Balochistan is a richly mountainous region, most of them hard and tough but surely enriched by the hidden natural resources whose economic benefits and long lasting strategic impacts can never be denied.
If we closely analyze the given historical background, we will come to know that this province has played a greater strategic role in the past. This province had been an important strategic location for the
Britishers before the partition to contain the Great Russian powers in Afghanistan and in this context they had to fight three major wars with Afghanistan. Thus, Afghanistan with its rise and fall was made as a Buffer State between the British-India and Russia.
The New Cold war started in 1979 between the two major powers USSR and US in the wake of the period of normalization namely called the “The Period of Détente” which lasted for almost a decade.
This was when Russia the then USSR finally intervened into Afghanistan and through it, desired to approach the Province Balochistan and lastly the cherished dreams of the Russians to reach to the warm waters.
This was considered to be neither in the very interest of Pakistan nor in the strategic interest of the Russian counterpart US. We thus experienced, in the context of strategic importance of Balochistan, the influx of a huge aid into Pakistan and through this province Balochistan, Russia was contained.
Now once again the US along with the major powers has focused their attention to meet their interests. When on 9/11 the US World Trade Center was attacked by the terrorist elements, the US, immediately declared the war on terrorism blaming Taliban regime for the said terrorist attack. Afghanistan was the first country to be attacked and the Taliban Government was toppled. This was all possible due to the strategic attraction of Balochistan.
Therefore, it will not be wrong to say that this province is the central hub for the socio-economic and strategic attractions.
Amongst all the mega projects, Gwadar port is one of the major projects that has to be built finally. It is the port with whose construction not only Pakistan but also other family states will meet their interests and seek opportunities of trading through this region.
This will invite economic opportunities to the people of Pakistan, in general and Balochistan, in particular. The fishing industries will greatly be boated up and lots of fish would be exported to European states and other states in Asia, America and the Middle East thereby attracting lots of revenue. This will further bring economic stability in the region alleviating poverty and backwardness.
The genuine economic importance of this region can also be not denied when we see three major programs of Gas Pipelines into this province from Qatar, Iran and Turkmenistan.
If we closely analyze the three major projects, we will surely come to know that the pipeline project from Iran at the present scenario is more feasible and convincing as compared to other two-mega projects: for instance, Turkmenistan is a mountainous area and there are lots of zigzags for the pipeline to be passed through Afghanistan into Balochistan and there are also security problems in both Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.
While the gas pipeline from Iran can said to be more easing to be launched on the following reasons: First, the passage is plain and there are not any hurdles on carrying out this project. Second, the distance is not too long. But we can also see the shortcomings of this project that for the time being it might not well be materialized.
First, there have been US economic sanctions on Iran since 1979 and according to the US law, passed by the name ILSA in 1995, which reads that Iran cannot initiate any project that could cast more than $ 20 million while the current project on the table is of more than $ 5 billion. Pakistan argues that it would earn up to $600 million a year from the pipeline, which is close to the about $700 million Islamabad receives from Washington. The pipeline will also allow Pakistan to import about $ 1 billion gas every year from Iran.
Moreover, the pipeline project will create a major industrial infrastructure in Pakistan and generate new jobs, but we will have yet to see this how much US pressurizes Iran-Pakistan and India either to launch the project or not and whether the US probably would attack on Iran or not and if these states launch such project, what would be the reaction of the US?
These are the indicators that have yet to be seen and closely analyzed by the experts of all the states including the US whose interests in the South Asian Region most importantly in the province of Balochistan in terms of war on terrorism, futuristic economic opportunities and strategic location cannot be denied.
Intrinsically, Balochistan, both economically and strategically, would link the Central Asian States with the Gulf region including the Middle Eastern States providing a transit route with lots of avenues of economic opportunities, foreign investment, poverty alleviation and the removal of hunger, illiteracy and backwardness.
In order to bring all such mega projects to a success, there is a need of proper, management, coordination and smooth communication between the province of Balochistan and the federal government.
The people of Balochistan are bold, courageous, forward looking and compromising and are ready to go along with the objectives of Federal government if they are blessed with their fundamental rights and equal shares. The socio-eco-politico and strategic importance of this region can no longer be ignored. Therefore, it is intelligent to come to common terms of better understanding and move shoulder to shoulder to meet the supreme interest of the entire nation because this is not the question of one person or one province but here we talk of the interest of all as a whole.
So we will all have to travel in the same ship and benefit each other’s goals to meet both shorter and longer objectives for future of Pakistan through Balcohistan seems too be bright if all the misunderstandings and security problems are avoided.
On the other hand both India and Pakistan should push the peace initiatives and the process of normalization based on current CBMs to resolve all the outstanding issues including the core issue of Kashmir.
The current acceptance of Afghanistan as a permanent member in the SAARC organization is appreciative along with China and Japan who are given the “observer status”.
Both China and Japan would likely be given the permanent seats in the said SAARC organization in the coming years.
It seems that South Asian Region would get further shrink and might attract other powers too in terms of the true reality of Globalization. Iran might be predicated to be the member of this organization once the two economic giants China and Japan become its permanent members so would be the case of Russia. This is the time of globalization and economic competition whoever meets its interests would likely be termed as the winner of the course.
Therefore, there are greater opportunities along with the challenges for Pakistan to meet its own interests through the contemporary situations to understand the current moves of the globalization and the Great Game of the world powers with better understanding. I
f there comes the question of the greater interest of the nation, we will have to follow the fundamentals of the National Integrat-ion, but at the same times coordination and understanding amongst all the provinces and the federal government must also be kept into consideration so that such misunderstandings and brawls on the trifle elements must not occur during the developing stages of any mega projects. God Almighty has blessed this region with greater socio-eco-politico and strategic importance. Therefore, we will have to handle everything with greater care, intelligence and applied tactics to benefit not only the people of this province Balochistan but also to benefit the entire Nation.

Growing support for Iraqi resistance
Haifa Hussain

The photograph of an elderly Iraqi carrying the burned body of a child at Fallujah, widely shown during the chemical weapons controversy of recent days, is almost a copy of an earlier one that Iraqis remember — from Halabja in March 1988. Both children were victims of chemical weapons: The first killed by a dictator who had no respect for democracy and human rights, the second by US troops, assisted by the British, carrying the colorful banner of those principles while sprinkling Iraqis with white phosphorus and depleted uranium.
The Fallujah image is emblematic of an unjust occupation. We read last week that US troops were “stunned by what they found” during a raid on a Ministry of Interior building: More than a hundred prisoners, many of whom “appeared to have been brutally beaten” and to be malnourished. There were also reports of dead bodies showing “signs of severe torture”. Hussein Kamel, the deputy interior minister, was “stunned” too. This feigned surprise is a farce second only to the WMD lie. Torture has continued as under Saddam’s regime in detention centers, prisons, camps and secret cells well beyond Abu Ghraib.
While the US and British governments have spent the 30 months of occupation arguing for the legality of chemical weapons and the “usefulness” of torture to extract information, Iraqis have been engaged in a different struggle: To survive the increasingly harsh occupation, and to define democracy and human rights accordingly. Experiences of collective punishment, random arrest and killing are the defining features.
On Oct. 16, for example, a group of adults and children gathered around a burned Humvee on the edge of Ramadi. There was a crater in the road, left by a bomb that had killed five US soldiers and two Iraqi soldiers the previous day. Some of the children were playing hide and seek, and others laughing while pelting the vehicle with stones, when a US F-15 fighter jet fired on the crowd. The US military said subsequently it had killed 70 insurgents in air strikes, and knew of no civilian deaths.
Among the “insurgents” killed were six-year-old Muhammad Salih Ali, who was buried in a plastic bag after relatives collected what they believed to be parts of his body; four-year-old Saad Ahmed Fuad; and his eight-year-old sister, Haifa, who had to be buried without one of her legs as her family were unable to find it.
US forces increasingly use airstrikes to reduce their own casualties. They also work with Iraqi forces on search-and-destroy missions to retaliate after a successful attack on their troops, or to intimidate the population ahead of a US-choreographed political process.
Most Iraqis are indifferent to the political timetable imposed by the occupiers — from the nominal handover of sovereignty to the bizarre three months of sectarian and ethnic wrangling about the interim government and the declaration of a “yes” vote on the draft constitution by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice within hours of the ballot boxes closing. They think the whole process is intended to divert their attention from the main issues — the occupation, corruption, pillaging of Iraq’s resources, and the interim government’s failure on human rights.
A recent Human Rights Watch report gave fresh details of torture of detainees by US forces in Iraq. At a military base near Fallujah, Mercury, abuse was not only overlooked but sometimes ordered. The report describes routine, severe beatings of prisoners, and the application of burning chemicals to detainees’ eyes and skin, to make them glow in the dark. Thousands have been kept for more than a year without charge or trial, including the writer Muhsin Al-Khafaji, who was arrested in May 2003.
Women are taken as hostages by US soldiers to persuade fugitive male relatives to surrender or confess to terrorist acts. Sarah Taha Al-Jumaily, 20, from Fallujah, was arrested twice: On Oct. 8 she was accused of being the daughter of Musab Al-Zarqawi, despite her father, a member of a pan-Arab party, having been detained by US troops for more than two months; and on Oct. 19 she was arrested and accused of being a terrorist. Hundreds of people demonstrated, and workers went on strike to demand her release. The Interior Ministry states that 122 women remain detained, charged with the novel crime of being “potential suicide bombers”.
As large-scale US-led military operations continue, the health situation on the ground is at breaking point. The Iraqi health infrastructure, doctors and hospital staff are unable to cope with the deepening humanitarian crisis. No wonder more Iraqis are supporting the resistance.
Armed resistance is in accordance with the 1978 UN General Assembly resolution that reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence ... from ... foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle”. The Iraqi National Foundation Congress (INFC), an umbrella group of parties and civil society organizations, is leading political resistance. There is also civil and community resistance, involving mosques, women’s organizations, human-rights groups and unions, which are linking up with international anti-war groups and anti-globalization movements.
Most Iraqis believe that they have a right to more than a semblance of independence. The lesson history taught us in Vietnam, that stubborn national resistance can wear down the most powerful armies, is now being learned in Iraq.

 

French musings
Faisal Abbas

I have been following the events in France over the last few weeks with increasing alarm. From the beginning I was struck by the similarities between what is happening there with what is happening here. The French are facing the problem of integrating a large number of foreign people (mostly, but, not exclusively Arab and Muslim) into their society.
This problem began when France, along with other European countries, imported large numbers of laborers right after the end of World War II to help in the rebuilding of France and to fill the large gap in the labor market. The effort led the way to the swift recovery of the French economy and the resulting boom in the postwar period.
This country following the oil boom of the 1970s had a similar need for a large influx of skilled and unskilled labor to meet the huge demands of our expanding economy that was coupled with an equally huge shortage of Saudi labor. The solution for us was to do what the French did in the postwar period.
There was and is a big difference with the way we have dealt with this group of people, who are proportionately of greater numbers here than in France. In France many of the workers were given French citizenship in recognition of their long stay and the continued need for their services.
The French believed that they would be able to integrate them seamlessly within their society and absorb them by erasing their national or ethnic identity and turning them into French clones. The problem is that the French did this in ways that were deemed by their targets to be inappropriate and insensitive to their culture and beliefs.
This coupled with a certain amount of perceived racism on behalf of French authorities has led to a great sense of alienation of this group. It was this that contributed to triggering the events of the last few weeks. Here in Saudi Arabia we have, on the other hand, resisted giving citizenship to members of this group as much as possible. We have cherished the idea that at some point they would all just go away. Unfortunately, there is no sign that we can do without them yet and that they will all go away.
We have instead offered work permits coupled with a curious system we call “Kafala”. The idea behind “Kafala”, which means surety, is that a person is given a permit to stay in the country to work under the responsibility and surety of a Saudi. Needless to say, this has led to a number of abuses without any obvious benefit to Saudi business or society.
In addition, there are restrictions on foreign workers’ right to be treated in Saudi state hospitals and to educate their children in Saudi state schools. They are also banned from sending their children to state universities. This is in sharp contrast with France where immigrants are treated in state hospitals at state expense and no restrictions are applied in the education of their children in state schools or universities. The French even provide pensions to immigrants and free housing.
All this, however, did not prevent the rioting of the last two weeks. The main reason being that the young people of that community are tired of living on government handouts that are demeaning to them. They would rather work and earn their living thereby gaining self-respect.