Pashtuns too parters in crime against Baloch people

Khattak spooks play havoc in Balochistan; Pashtuns too partners in crime

QUETTA, August 27: Baloch freedom activists have reserved their ire against Punjabi officers and settlers, though some sections of the Pashtuns from the neighboring Khyber Pashtunkhwa province in the northwest of Pakistan are also involved in crimes against humanity against the Baloch people.

One of the most notorious are members of Khattak tribe, many of whom are high ranking officers in Pakistan's military and Military Intelligence, reports from the Baloch battlefields reveal.

The present Military Intelligence chief in Quetta is a Khattak. Interestingly the previous chief was also Khattak named Brigadier Saad Khattak.

Some of the Khattak tribe members are prominent Pashtun nationalists. One of them was Ajmal Khatak, a poet and nationalist leader, who passed away earlier this year. Another prominent member is Afrasiab Khattak, who was formerly the president of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and is now a senator.

Both Khattaks were at one time in Afghanistan when the communists were ruling Kabul.

A nemesis for the Baloch is the paramilitary Frontier Corp, whose rank and file soldiers are drawn from the same belt of Waziristan that is the stronghold of the Taliban in Khyber Pashtunkhwa, which was until recently called the N.W.F.P. or North West Frontier Province.

These tobacco-chewing Waziris have been brainwashed by their officers that the Baloch are anti-Islam and that they are fighting infidels in Balochistan, Pashtun nationalist sources say.

Ashrak Kakar, who now studies at the American University, says that when these Waziris come to Balochistan some local Pashtun nationalists jeer them and tell them why they want to take down innocent lives for less than a $100 a month.

“But these Frontier Corp sepoys respond that they have come to serve Islam as the Baloch are kafir,” Kakar said. Kafir in Urdu means infidels.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan military attacks on one of the main pockets of Baloch resistance continued unabated in Quetta.

On Thursday, Pakistan security forces raided New Kahan, which is also called the Gaza Strip of Balochistan.

New Kahan is home to thousands of Marris who had stayed in self-exile in Afghanistan under the leadership of the main icon of the Baloch resistance Baba-i-Azadi Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri for more than a decade, but returned to Balochistan in the summer of 1993.

“The area is still under siege,” said Faiz Baluch from London.

Pakistani troops lowered the flag of Balochistan form Marri Jirga Haal in New Kahan and took away the big gate of the jirga (meeting) compound because the gate was painted like the Balochistan flag as well.

“They burnt valuables and stocks inside the Haal,” said Faiz Baluch.

Last Thursday, on August 19, sleuths of the Inter Services Intelligence allegedly abducted a prominent lawyer Zaman Khan Marri from outside his law practice chamber in Regal Plaza, Quetta

The family believe plainclothesmen of Pakistan intelligence agencies oabducted Zaman Marri as they say they have do not have enmity with anyone.


Initially, a Press statement by the so-called Addozai Qaumi Ittehad had accepted responsibility for Marri's abduction, but they are now denying they have anything to do with it. In a news statement, the Addozais who inhabit a vast tract of land in and around Kandahar and Quetta, categorically said, "We have no enmity with any Baloch individual or group and we have not abducted Zaman Khan Marri".

Last month Zaman Marri's brother Azad Khan Marri and his four cousins were abducted and detained for three weeks; three of the abducted men including Azad Marri were released a week ago.

Azad Marri said his captors were agents of the I.S.I.

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http://www.examiner.com/foreign-policy-in-baltimore/khattak-spooks-play-havoc-balochistan-pashtuns-too-partners-crime-1