Sardari system
Amjed Jaaved

With Akber Bugti no longer present on the national scene, it appears unfair to criticise his person. However, viewing sardari system in retrospect and prospect may not be inappropriate.
No-one better knew the psyche of the feudal lords than the Englishman himself. Loyalty to the British crown was sine qua non of being a protégé of the British Raj. After all, the Wadera icons were the Englishman’s own creation. It was so easy to control dumb masses through a handful of chieftains. How obedient the chieftains were to the British Crown! In their trowels and eulogies at official functions, these chieftains even quoted verses from the Holy Quran to justify their loyalty to the British Raj.
In theory, sardari system stood abolished when the sardars accepted writ of the British raj in their fiefdoms. Sandeman administrative system was sequel to signing of the treaty between Baluch sardars, led by Khan of Kalat and the British-government representative in 1876. The treaty accepted the British Crown as final authority in local and external affairs and reduced the sardars to the status of agents paid out of Crown treasury. Subject to Crown’s discretionary powers, the sardars were given privileges like deciding family-affairs disputes and dealing in unlicensed liquor. Enforcement of penal laws and criminal-procedure code automatically abolished the sardars’ privileges. The English lords overlooked maltreatment of the sardars towards their own community for political reasons.
Nevertheless, even the Englishmen of good nature, like Churchill, disliked tyranny of the chieftains towards despised sections of their own communities. One thing continually badgered Churchill’s mind even when the British government had already consented to creation of India and Pakistan as independent states _ What shall become of the downtrodden masses groaning under tyranny of nawabs, waderas and chaudhris, after the Englishman’s exit from the Sub-Continent. Churchill believed that the Englishman’s legacy in the Sub-Continent was a modicum of justice and rule of law.
Servility to the raj had its rewards. For instance, Akber Bugti’s father, Mehrab Khan, was given title of `Sir’ by the English rulers and allotted land not only in the Punjab but also in the Sindh province. His son, Akber Bugti, owned houses in Quetta, Sibi, Jacobabad, Kendkot, Sanghar, besides his native house in Dera Bugti along with about 12,000 acreas of land.
Baluch sardars demand for gas royalty at higher rate may have been justified. But, by no stretch of logic, federal government’s eminent domain (public power to take over private property) could be challenged. Even the US government, a great proponent of individual rights possesses and exercises eminent-domain powers.
Pakistan’s industrial infrastructure mainly depends on the gas and coal of this province. The gas from Dera Bugti meets 60 per cent of Pakistan’s, mainly Punjab’s domestic and industrial needs. The province has 200 coalmines, which again meet the industrial requirements of Punjab. The province is rich in marble and mineral wealth, which is being explored by foreigners under contracts from the Government of Pakistan.
Balochistan benefits from the resources of the other provinces just as the other provinces benefit from the resources of Balochistan. In near future, the federal government’s development projects in Balochistan will begin to bear fruit.
A few months back, gas pipelines and other installations in Dera Baluchistan were attacked 1,081 times by missiles. The Sui gas works were attacked 23 times and railway installations 29 times. The troublemakers killed 292 innocent persons.
In his interviews with foreign media, late Nawab Akbar Bugti alleged that the other provinces had been ‘stealing’ the Balochistan. He further said that Bugti tribes were doing what the people of Kashmir were doing.
In the Sui-gas-fields area, Akbar Bugti initially owned no land. In collusion with revenue officials he got 7,000 acres transferred in his name. He had been receiving royalty from two gas companies at the rate of Rs. 14,000/- per acre, to the tune of ten crore rupees annually. But this land was the property of the Kalpar tribe.
In 1992, armed Bugti tribesmen forcefully evicted six thousand Kalpars and Masuri Bugtis and occupied their lands, gardens and houses. These people are wandering hither and thither in different districts. The federal and provincial governments should make the gas and oil fields safe, and return the lands allotted to Nawab Akbar Bugti to their real owners.
Not only the Western concept of `eminent domain’ but also Islamic concept of maslaha Mursala (broader public interest), entitles the government to a preferential claim on the natural resources. It can even forcibly acquire the gas-fields land. The government should bring home this point to the nawabs.
If the English rulers had an iota of suspicion that a sardar was not loyal to the Crown, he would have dis-knighted them without a moment’s hesitation. Not all the Nawabs are so malevolent, as some scions of our Baluch Nawabs. For instance, Nawab of Kalabagh tried to abolish the sardari system by setting up about 40 police stations in Balochistan. However, General Moosa was averse to the policy.
The government should seriously consider such steps as would effectively extend its writ in every nook and corner of Balochistan. A study should be undertaken to evaluate loyalty and political nuisance of the nawabs, sardars, waderas, and their ilk. For instance, we know that in the 1993 elections for the president, Akbar Bugti backed Sardar Farooq Leghari. As such, he enjoyed cordial relations with Leghari and Benazir Bhutto. By 1994, differences began to crop up between the PPP and Bugti’s Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP). These differences transformed into an open clash during election of the Chairman Senate in March 1994. Then, the PML candidate, Wasim Sajjad, won with support of the JWP.
Akber Bugti was asked by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s stalwart, Ghulam Mustafa Khar, then Punjab province’s iron-fist governor, to kill Chaudhri Zahoor Elahi (former prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat’s father) languishing in Kohlu prison (page 154 of Aqeel Abbas Jaffri’s ‘Pakistan key siasi wadehrey’). Bugti did not do so because of political expediency. However, he did kill Haji Haibat Khan, his brother Ahmed Nawaz Bugti’s khusr. Akber Bugti paid qisas of fifty thousand rupees to Haibat’s son (wali) to atone for his sin.
According to sardar Sherbaz Khan Mazari, Z. A. Bhuto was instrumental in getting Akber Bugti’s death sentence transmuted (page 438, ibid). Bhutto sacked Balochistan province’s government hands in glove with Akber Bugti, made the province’s governor for his services (page 440, ibid.).
If the sardars are not loyal to the national interests, what is the fun of propping them up with government’s financial patronage? Why not take corrective action to cut them to size?


The winds of change
Zan Jifang

Next to the Kanas Lake “monster,” to many people the Tuvans are the second most mysterious inhabitants of the Kanas region in northern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The Tuvans, however, actually are one of the oldest nomadic peoples in northwest China.
The Kanas region is the only place in China that is home to the Tuvans, who number 2,000 and mainly live in three villages around the Kanas Lake. There are about 200,000 Tuvans worldwide, with 30,000 living in Mongolia and the rest mainly in the Republic of Tuva, which is part of the Russia.
“We belong to the Mongol [tribe] and every Tuvan here considers Genghis Khan our hero,” said Buhedi, a 65-year-old resident of Hemu Village, one of the three villages of the Tuva in China. Tuvans believe they are descendants of Mongol troops, and they honor Genghis Khan by hanging a portrait of him on the wall of their wooden houses.
But the origin of the Tuvans remains a mystery. Some experts think that the Tuvans in China migrated from the Republic of Tuva 500 years ago but others argue that they are a branch of the Mongols as they are believed to be the offspring of the troops of Genghis Khan as he conducted his campaign of conquest.
Tuvans believe in Tantric Buddhism and have preserved the traditional beliefs of their tribe quite well. Religious and traditional festivals are always jolly and active.
For almost 500 years, the Tuvans lived in a picturesque and peaceful region generation by generation, separated from the outside world and undisturbed.
In the mid-1990s, however, Hemu Village began to open up to the outside world and tourism was introduced. Wooden cabins were rented to the tourists, horses were trained to carry the backpackers and rustic food and drink were served to the increasing number of visitors.
Profiting from tourism
Not long after, the tourism economy overtook the traditional agro-pastoral economy and became the main income source for the Tuvans. The per capita income rose to 1,900 yuan last year in Hemu Village, with tourism revenue accounting for 52 percent of the total, while in 1993, the average income was merely 356 yuan, according to Gerelit, the village’s deputy chief.
But the 1,900 yuan income in Hemu is low compared with that of Kanas Village, another area of the Tuva in China. Kanas Village started its tourism business a little earlier than Hemu Village and its per capita income reached 4,200 yuan in 2005, with 67 percent coming from tourism, according to the village’s official statistics.
“Tourism brings a lot of benefit to the local Tuva residents,” said Gerelit. “The most important result is that our income is increased, as is our livelihood. The quality of our people is also enhanced.”
The deputy chief’s house provides evidence for that assertion. The house is spacious and tidy, with large, delicate carpets covering the wooden floor. In one corner is a big-screen color TV.
Gerelit also mentioned the environmental problems that tourism causes. “Rubbish can be found along the road and the riverside,” he said. “But compared with the good results tourism has brought to us, such a problem so far hasn’t posed any serious threats to our natural environment and we already have this under control.”
In Kanas Village, however, the tourism business has grown a bit too fast and in recent years complaints from tourists have mounted, focusing on the shabby lodging and dining facilities.
Therefore, starting this year, most of the tourism establishments are being dismantled to protect the environment of the Kanas region. As compensation, every Tuvan household in Kanas Village will receive 20,000 yuan every year for five consecutive years. The money comes from ticket sales to the Kanas scenic area. In addition, the scenic area has employed 116 Tuvans to be forest guards, custodians and providers of other services.
Given all these measures, the total income of the 110 Tuvan households each year will come to 4 million yuan, 1 million yuan more than in the past, when the villagers rented houses and provided food for the visitors.
According to various tales, Tuvans are also famous for their alcohol consumption. But when asked about it, Gerelit, the deputy chief, had a quick response. “Don’t believe that,” he commented to Beijing Review. “Suppose we Tuvans were all alcoholics and went around with a bottle of wine in hand all day long; who do you think put up so many wooden cabins and fences and raised these horses?”
What has changed along with the economic pattern is the honest and simple ways of the people. One reporter complained that he was welcomed in a Tuvan family with milk tea and local pastries, which he thought was free, but when he was about to leave he was charged 45 yuan for the food and drink.
“I was pretty surprised and felt awkward about this, but it seems that free hospitality is a thing of the past already,” said the reporter.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)


Anti-Muslim campaign in Australia raises fears
Ghali Hassan

The situation has become so bad for Australian Muslims that it has forced the Federal Police Commissioner to intervene and speak out against the persecution and alienating of the Muslim community, including racial profiling and victimization.
“As I travel around the country and speak to different Islamic communities, I hear more and more stories of treatment of the Islamic community that really is substandard by members of our own wider community, such as vilification or picking them out of the crowd because they dress or speak differently”, said Mick Keelty. However, Keelty should be more concerned with the government policy — institutionalized racism and the new laws that specifically target Muslims.
Racism has deep roots in Anglo Australia. Its roots are nurtured and propagated by politicians, and the inherently racist media. As the domination of Australia by white Anglo settlers over the native and nonwhites prevailed, racist notions emerged as justification for white privilege and power. The arrival in Australia of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East resulted in racial confrontations with the Anglo settlers, promoting discrimination against Muslims. The violent attacks against Muslim Australians of Middle Eastern origin in the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla was one recent example of Australia’s underlying racism.
Viewing Muslims as different and inhumane, Anglo Australians institutionalized racism patronized by the elites in the government, the education system and the justice system, which they feed to the media.
Muslims are vilified and demonized in order to justify greater violence and destruction against Muslims in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. The slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim women and children in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine has not shaken anyone’s conscience. Whether it is the Murdoch press (led by the warmongering, The Australian), the ABC, the mainstream TV Channels, the Sydney Morning Herald or the more jingoist, The West Australian, they are all promoting a racist ideology.
The media has also enlisted native informers to confirm it for Australians that attacks on Muslims and Islam are justified. Tanveer Ahmed, an anti-Arab vulgar from Bangladesh has become a household name in Australian media. His distorted comparison of Islam with communism won him many anti-Muslim fascist friends, including those in the Catholic Church’s hierarchy. Ahmed is telling the media what the media wants to propagate against Muslims. He is blaming the Muslims for their own suffering and frees the government from any responsibility. It is like telling members of the Jewish community that “anti-Semitism” is your problem and you should do something about it.
Likewise Andrew Robb, the parliamentary secretary to the minister for immigration and multicultural affairs, reiterated on Sept, 16, 2006, the government’s official line of holding the Muslim community solely responsible for a set of conditions generated as a consequence of a brutal and oppressive Western ideology. He stated: “And, because it is your faith that is being invoked as justification for these evil acts, it is your problem”, ignoring that the illegal invasion of Iraq was the most violent act of terrorism on a defenseless Muslim nation.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister John Howard always refers to Muslim Australians in the third person as “they” and “them.” As a result of the Howard government’s policy, racial abuses and violent attacks directed against Muslim Australians have increased dramatically.