ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Key U.S. ally Pakistan must appease its impoverished ethnic-Baluch minority after the killing of a renegade tribal leader or risk a widening domestic insurgency that could increase tensions on its volatile border with Afghanistan and undermine the government's authority, analysts said Thursday.
Military officials, meanwhile, said soldiers on Thursday removed the body of Baluch tribal chief Nawab Akbar Bugti. Bugti's body was pinned underneath a boulder in his collapsed mountain hide-out where Pakistani forces and rebels clashed Saturday, leaving the 79-year-old, several supporters and five army officers, dead.
The body was returned to tribal chiefs in Bugti's ancestral home of Dera Bugti for burial on Friday, a military official said on condition of anonymity as he was unauthorized to speak to the media.
Bugti's killing sparked five days of rioting and protests that left at least six people dead, dozens wounded and at least 700 arrested. But the situation was reported calm on Thursday throughout southwestern Baluchistan province, an impoverished region bordering Iran and Afghanistan that has witnessed decades of low-level violence.
Pakistani and foreign analysts, including a former U.S. envoy to Pakistan, agreed that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's military-led government must quickly settle long-running grievances with Baluch tribespeople or risk, at least, a continuation or widening of the current conflict.
"It is so important for the government to reach out to the Baluch people as quickly as possible," said Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. "I don't think they can leave off political negotiations too long because then it gets harder to get them back on track."
Bugti, a leading Baluch politician and militia leader, led an often violent campaign to win greater autonomy and control over natural resources extracted in Baluchistan for its tribespeople.
Pakistani officials acknowledged that Baluchistan — the poorest of Pakistan's four province — has not received the government assistance that it has long required.
Despite possessing one of the country's largest sources of natural gas and large coal and oil reserves, just 25 percent of villages in Baluchistan are electrified and only 20 percent have safe drinking water.
Musharraf's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, said violence in the province had halted government development projects from going ahead, such as school, hospital and dam building.
"Baluchistan has been neglected in the past and the people have suffered," Sultan told The Associated Press. "Things need to be done to fix the problems."
Bugti's son, Talal, scoffed at the government's sincerity to help Baluch tribespeople, citing his father's death Saturday in a Pakistani military raid as an example of how Islamabad truly regards his people.
Talal Bugti also accused the government of detaining and "making disappear" hundreds of Baluch activists and tribespeople in a campaign to crush opposition to the government.
"The public is feeling insecure and as if anything can happen to them," he said in a telephone interview from Quetta. "Baluch people need full autonomy and control over their resources instead of the federal government taking them."
Robert Oakley, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan from 1988-92 who traveled widely in Baluchistan with Bugti, said Musharraf's government must reach out to ethnic-Baluch leaders like it has done with tribal chiefs in North Waziristan.
Dialogue in North Waziristan has brought a temporary halt to violence that has pitted Pakistani troops against pro-Taliban insurgents and al-Qaida militants since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"For the past year, the Pakistani government has taken the approach that we want to crush resistance (in Baluchistan) and haven't really succeeded. And they haven't worked out a new political approach," said Oakley, now a consultant specializing in Pakistan, Afghan and NATO affairs with International Defense University in Washington D.C.
Bugti's death, while unnecessary, could provide a "watershed" opportunity for Pakistan to mend fences with disgruntled Baluch opponents, said Patrick Cronin, an American expert on U.S.-Asian affairs at the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies.
But if they miss the chance, Musharraf may attract increased political and public opposition ahead of next year's vital elections for Pakistan's parliament, which is charged with choosing the next president.
"If there is not a perception of progress being made by the election, there is bound to be further tumult inside Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons, terrorists running around the region and militants wanting to get a hold of weapons of mass destruction," said Cronin. "This is a very volatile cocktail that may blow up."
"The body of Nawab Akbar Bugti has been pulled out from the cave and his funeral will be held Friday in (the town of) Dera Bugti," Sultan said later.
But another of Bugti's sons, Jamil, said the military had not notified the family of the body's retrieval and demanded it be sent to Quetta, where Bugti's family lives, not his ancestral home Dera Bugti.
Bugti's death even stirred up separatism calls among angry protesters at a funeral prayer service attended by more than 10,000 this week in Baluchistan's capital, Quetta.
But serious attempts to promote Baluch independence from Pakistan, which was founded in 1947, seem unlikely considering the regional Baluchistan government support of Musharraf. Large numbers of Punjabis and Pashtuns also live in the region, diluting the province's ethnic makeup and often enflaming tribal tensions.
Ethnic-Baluch leaders say greater regional autonomy and control over natural resources is what they want, not separatism.
"We do not want to break up Pakistan, but government is pushing us in a direction where we do not want to go," said Habib Jalib, a former lawmaker and a senior figure in Baluch Solidarity, an alliance of four Baluch nationalist groups.
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Associated Press writer Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Key U.S. ally Pakistan must appease its impoverished ethnic-Baluch minority after the killing of a renegade tribal leader or risk a widening domestic insurgency that could increase tensions on its volatile border with Afghanistan and undermine the government's authority, analysts said Thursday.
Military officials, meanwhile, said soldiers on Thursday removed the body of Baluch tribal chief Nawab Akbar Bugti. Bugti's body was pinned underneath a boulder in his collapsed mountain hide-out where Pakistani forces and rebels clashed Saturday, leaving the 79-year-old, several supporters and five army officers, dead.
The body was returned to tribal chiefs in Bugti's ancestral home of Dera Bugti for burial on Friday, a military official said on condition of anonymity as he was unauthorized to speak to the media.
Bugti's killing sparked five days of rioting and protests that left at least six people dead, dozens wounded and at least 700 arrested. But the situation was reported calm on Thursday throughout southwestern Baluchistan province, an impoverished region bordering Iran and Afghanistan that has witnessed decades of low-level violence.
Pakistani and foreign analysts, including a former U.S. envoy to Pakistan, agreed that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's military-led government must quickly settle long-running grievances with Baluch tribespeople or risk, at least, a continuation or widening of the current conflict.
"It is so important for the government to reach out to the Baluch people as quickly as possible," said Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. "I don't think they can leave off political negotiations too long because then it gets harder to get them back on track."
Bugti, a leading Baluch politician and militia leader, led an often violent campaign to win greater autonomy and control over natural resources extracted in Baluchistan for its tribespeople.
Pakistani officials acknowledged that Baluchistan — the poorest of Pakistan's four province — has not received the government assistance that it has long required.
Despite possessing one of the country's largest sources of natural gas and large coal and oil reserves, just 25 percent of villages in Baluchistan are electrified and only 20 percent have safe drinking water.
Musharraf's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, said violence in the province had halted government development projects from going ahead, such as school, hospital and dam building.
"Baluchistan has been neglected in the past and the people have suffered," Sultan told The Associated Press. "Things need to be done to fix the problems."
Bugti's son, Talal, scoffed at the government's sincerity to help Baluch tribespeople, citing his father's death Saturday in a Pakistani military raid as an example of how Islamabad truly regards his people.
Talal Bugti also accused the government of detaining and "making disappear" hundreds of Baluch activists and tribespeople in a campaign to crush opposition to the government.
"The public is feeling insecure and as if anything can happen to them," he said in a telephone interview from Quetta. "Baluch people need full autonomy and control over their resources instead of the federal government taking them."
Robert Oakley, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan from 1988-92 who traveled widely in Baluchistan with Bugti, said Musharraf's government must reach out to ethnic-Baluch leaders like it has done with tribal chiefs in North Waziristan.
Dialogue in North Waziristan has brought a temporary halt to violence that has pitted Pakistani troops against pro-Taliban insurgents and al-Qaida militants since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"For the past year, the Pakistani government has taken the approach that we want to crush resistance (in Baluchistan) and haven't really succeeded. And they haven't worked out a new political approach," said Oakley, now a consultant specializing in Pakistan, Afghan and NATO affairs with International Defense University in Washington D.C.
Bugti's death, while unnecessary, could provide a "watershed" opportunity for Pakistan to mend fences with disgruntled Baluch opponents, said Patrick Cronin, an American expert on U.S.-Asian affairs at the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies.
But if they miss the chance, Musharraf may attract increased political and public opposition ahead of next year's vital elections for Pakistan's parliament, which is charged with choosing the next president.
"If there is not a perception of progress being made by the election, there is bound to be further tumult inside Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons, terrorists running around the region and militants wanting to get a hold of weapons of mass destruction," said Cronin. "This is a very volatile cocktail that may blow up."
"The body of Nawab Akbar Bugti has been pulled out from the cave and his funeral will be held Friday in (the town of) Dera Bugti," Sultan said later.
But another of Bugti's sons, Jamil, said the military had not notified the family of the body's retrieval and demanded it be sent to Quetta, where Bugti's family lives, not his ancestral home Dera Bugti.
Bugti's death even stirred up separatism calls among angry protesters at a funeral prayer service attended by more than 10,000 this week in Baluchistan's capital, Quetta.
But serious attempts to promote Baluch independence from Pakistan, which was founded in 1947, seem unlikely considering the regional Baluchistan government support of Musharraf. Large numbers of Punjabis and Pashtuns also live in the region, diluting the province's ethnic makeup and often enflaming tribal tensions.
Ethnic-Baluch leaders say greater regional autonomy and control over natural resources is what they want, not separatism.
"We do not want to break up Pakistan, but government is pushing us in a direction where we do not want to go," said Habib Jalib, a former lawmaker and a senior figure in Baluch Solidarity, an alliance of four Baluch nationalist groups.
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Associated Press writer Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.
