Balochistan: In the Crosshairs of History

Abstract

B alochistan is one of the most restive areas in Pakistan that has endured systematic and extraordinary suppression at the hands of the Pakistani State and its security forces. The Baloch form a distinct ethno-national identity, and dream of creating a Baloch nation-state, but this runs contrary to the overarching Pakistani identity and State, attracting their fury. The Baloch have struggled for decades for international recognition of their plight but have hardly received any support. It is not only political apathy but the lack of academic attention on the plight of the Baloch people, their struggles, history, identity and culture that has hurt the Baloch cause. Sandhya Jain through her meticulous and well-researched book has attempted to fill this gap by chronicling the history, culture and the struggle of the Baloch people of Pakistan. She takes a long view of the Baloch problem in locating it to the political churn witnessed in the subcontinent during the independence struggle that eventually led to Partition in 1947 with India and Pakistan emerging as two independent States. The author has argued that Balochistan’s fate was primarily sealed by the great game between then Great Britain and Tsarist Russia and the ideological confrontation ensuing after the Second World War. She has underscored how power struggles and Mir Ahmad Yar Khan Ahmadzai’s—the Khan of Kalat’s—decapitated leadership resulted in its annexation by Pakistan. Finally, the availability of natural resources, central to the sustenance of the Pakistani State, sounded the death-knell for any hope for carving a Baloch ethno-national State. However, how the British duplicities are portrayed gives the impression that it was the exception and not the norm. Instead, as historical events highlight, such ruthless realpolitik strategies remained central to the colonial power’s agenda across its vast empire. The introductory chapter could have benefitted by briefly drawing parallels with the British colonial practice of promising more than what it could deliver to many ethnic, tribal, regional and religious leaders, and who continue to suffer, such as the Kurds or Palestinians, as they did with the Khan of Kalat. The book should also have, at the outset, underlined that India’s resistance to any further exploitation, militarily and politically in the post-independence era, of its land and resources to advance and preserve British interests as a proxy State, inevitably pushed the latter to ensure Kalat’s annexation in 1948 to the newly-formed Pakistan. Strategic Analysis, 2022 Vol. 46, No. 5, 548–550, https://doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2022.2115231