'Their backs against the wall, they've no option but to fight'

Asad Rahman went to Balochistan in 1971 at the age of twenty to develop a programme for social development in collaboration with the National Awami Party (NAP). During the 1973-77 Baloch insurgency, Rahman led guerrilla forces in the Marri tribal area in their struggle against the Pakistan Army. After the ceasefire, he moved to Afghanistan where he helped organise a refugee camp for around 5,000 displaced Baloch families. His vast experience and knowledge, especially as an educated Punjabi, of the history and demands of the Balochi people is crucial to understanding the present scenario.

By Babar Mirza

The News on Sunday: How would you contextualise the present unrest in Balochistan?

Asad Rahman: It's a little known fact that the Pakistani government had acknowledged the independence of Balochistan on August 4, 1947, and the Khan of Kalat had declared the same on August 15, 1947. However, Pakistani government coerced the Khan into signing the merger document on March 30, 1948, resulting in the first armed struggle of Balochs, led by Khan's brother Abdul Karim Khan, against the Pakistan army. However, physical control over the territory was not acquired until Oct 6, 1958, which resulted in the second Baloch insurgency led by Nauroz Khan.

Moreover, Balochis have been exploited for the past sixty years and have been given nothing in return. They have been pushed to the wall. The present confrontation, the fifth so far, started in 2002 when the late Nawab Akbar Bugti demanded the land rent, taxes and royalties that the federal government owed Balochistan -- a total of 88 billion rupees accruing since 1954 [Rs 128 billion according Balochistan Finance Minister Mir Asim Kurd]. The military operation launched to suppress this demand led to Bugti's assassination in 2006.

TNS: But the Musharraf regime did launch some development projects in Balochistan, especially the Gwadar Port project.

AR: There has been a demographic change in the district of Gwadar. No Baloch is employed in the Gwadar port. Instead, the jobs have been given to MQM supporters coming in from Karachi. This is being done to make Balochis a minority in this district and to ensure that the elected representatives from the district are not Baloch.

Musharraf has adopted a policy of genocide in Balochistan for the past five years. People are being forced to move out of their areas. 10,000 Baloch families have been displaced and 1,100 Balochis are missing. Balochistan is getting exactly the same treatment which was given to Bangladesh until it seceded.

TNS: The PPP-led central government recently apologised for the military action in Balochistan. How would it affect the ground situation?

AR: An apology cannot make up for the sixty years of bloodshed and injustice. Central government has been treating Balochis as third class citizens, and Balochistan as a colony. Just an apology cannot make things nice and happy. First and foremost, the central government would have to withdraw all military forces from Balochistan and release the 1,100 missing Balochis. Then it must sit down and negotiate with the Baloch nationalists to give them complete provincial autonomy. Excepting defence, communications, international affairs, international trade and currency, all other subjects have to lie with the provinces. And, of course, the Balochis must be given control over their natural resources. If the central government is not willing to do that, I do not see Pakistan lasting another five years.

TNS: Is their any hope for improvement under the fairly elected democratic government of Feb 18? Is the present political and military leadership really willing to sit down with Balochis and accept truth and reconciliation as was done in South Africa?

AR: I don't think so. None of them has that character. They are neither statesmen nor diplomats. Not even patriots. Most of them are self-serving individuals, and I do not see a politician on the scene today who is willing to do all this.

The politicians and military of today do not realise the gravity of the situation. When the country is faced with a secession movement and crises of food, energy and water resources, they are preoccupied with constitutional packages to get themselves entrenched in the present government. They don't have the guts to stand up against Musharraf, especially Zardari.

What I am trying to say is that the politicians in Islamabad are blind. They are only self-serving, and have no concern for the integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan.

TNS: So, what is the only option the Balochis have today?

AR: Secession. Under the circumstances, that's the only option they have.

TNS: Do the people of Balochistan support this cause?

AR: If you visit Balochistan, meet the students, tribesmen, politicians, even the settlers over there, you will realise that 95 per cent of the population of Balochistan wants independence and self-determination, which was promised to them by Quaid-e-Azam. This is a very important point. The stand-still agreement between Quaid-e-Azam and the Khan of Kalat recognised the independence of Balochistan.

TNS: It is widely believed that the sardars do not represent the will of the Balochi people. To what extent is this perception true?

AR: There are a lot of misconceptions about the tribal system in Balochistan. The sardars are very much representative of their tribes. They are not like the maliks and chaudhris of Punjab. This is because sardars and nawabs are not among the ruling elite. They are not rich politicians like the Bhuttos and the Sharifs. If you go see their homes, the way they treat their tribes, the way their tribes treat them, you'd realise that the notion that it's the war of sardars and ordinary Balochis have nothing to do with it is a complete misconception and sheer central government propaganda. How can you say that when people have supported their sardars in all the five civil wars that have been fought so far? It was people who were fighting, not the sardars!

TNS: In your opinion, what's the normative argument in favour of provincial autonomy?

AR: The first thing you must recognise is that Pakistan is a multinational state and not a homogenous nation-state. Then you should look at the stages of social, political and economic development of various regions of Pakistan. Rural Sindh is 100 per cent feudal, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur are post-feudal but pre-capitalist. Balochistan and NWFP have tribal systems. Parts of Punjab are tribal, parts feudal and parts pre-capitalist. How can you have a singular social or economic policy when you have such diverse cultures and development stages? This is the argument for provincial autonomy: each province should be able to set its own priorities and develop itself according to its own conditions, and not according to what is discussed in Islamabad.

Islamabad is divorced from the realities of the people. They make policies for towns and villages that they have not even heard the names of. The point that I am trying to drive home is that they sit in their cocoons in Islamabad and think they know it all, when actually they know nothing.

TNS: Are Baloch nationalists likely to receive any help from outside?

AR: In the present geo-political situation of the region, there are many players who are going to help them, for example, the US, UAE and Iran, the last in its own defence. The US is very active in this region and is, in fact, financing an anti-Iran militant group called Jindallah.

Moreover, the current US strategy is to achieve the balkanisation of Pakistan, leaving Punjab as a landlocked Pakistan whose nuclear capability could thus be neutralised. This is evidenced by the new map of the Middle East prepared by a US think tank which shows Sindh as part of Rajasthan, NWFP as part of Afghanistan and Balochistan as an independent 'Greater Balochistan' including Baloch areas in Iran and Afghanistan. In this weak economic military state of Balochistan, the US hopes to control its natural resources and seal its border with Iran. The US also plans to use the cantonments being built in Balochistan in their operations against Iran.

The US has dropped Musharraf by the way. He is no longer the US administration's boy, but only Bush's boy. But Bush will be out in November. If you have been following their statements and discussions, you can see that they have dropped Musharraf.

TNS: How would Balochi members of parliament respond to this situation?

AR: In the National Assembly session of 2nd June, Taj Jamali, former chief minister of Balochistan and current member of the House, said that Musharraf must be tried for all the deaths in Balochistan and if anyone had to shoot him, he would be the first person to do so. These remarks, expunged by the Speaker, were by a Baloch leader who is considered to be the most moderate, and show that Balochis are at the end. Their backs are against the wall, and they have no option but to fight.

Danger of ideas II
Obscenity, Sacrilege and Sedition
-- reasons why the law does not approve of certain
publications

By Babar Mirza

On the 6th of February 1957, police raided a book shop on Temple Road in Lahore and seized 22 albums mostly containing life-sized nude pictures of females. The shop owner was charged with offending the law against selling obscene books, magazines, etc. After a couple of appeals, the case eventually reached for revision before Justice Faruqi of the Lahore High Court to determine whether the photos were obscene.

During the proceedings, the court heard the opinions of doctors, professors, students and some exponents of art. Most of the witnesses -- including such eminent figures as Shakir Ali, Ishfaq Ahmad, professor Sirajuddin (Principle of Government College, Lahore), Rashid Akhtar (Pakistan Radio's assistant director) and Mrs. Anna Molka (head of Punjab University's fine arts department) -- testified that the pictures expressed the beauty of the human form and were not sexually stimulating or obscene.

Justice Faruqi however held otherwise, but with some very interesting reasoning. He accepted the rule that 'obscenity as understood in law consists of publishing or exhibiting such matter or object which has the tendency to corrupt the minds of those who are open to immoral influences by exciting in them sensuality and carnal desire,' but didn't apply this subjective standard of morality in its conventional form.

He noted that except for three photographs, the 22 albums forfeited from the bookshop contained only photos of nude females. Questioning why the beauty of the human form could only be expressed through females who are naked, he quoted a research concluding that photographs of nude females were produced primarily for the consumption of males, majority of whom were erotically aroused by the photos 'just as they were aroused upon observing living females.' Using this reasoning, Justice Faruqi held nude to be obscene.

Sadly, gone are the days when we had so many exponents of art and a feminist judge. In 1992, the law changed as well. Deciding on a petition filed by Habibul Wahab Al-Khairi, the Federal Shariat Court held that Islamic law did not acknowledge the 'accepted morality' of the people and 'the shameful deed is to be analysed objectively in the light of the teachings of Islam.' Subsequent case law and my own knowledge do not contain much understanding of the Islamic concept of obscenity, but I must humbly submit that the idea of an objective morality sounds like a unicorn to me.

Obscenity is not the only reason why the law does not approve of certain types of publications. In fact, the Press and Publications Ordinance 1963 contained fifteen sub-sections on the basis of which published material could be forfeited and the publishers and writers punished. In 2002, the government had the good sense of repealing this law in favour of the relatively limited (though still absurdly broad) provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code.

The provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code assign punishments for producing material which is obscene, seditious, creates disharmony among different classes or groups of people, maliciously and deliberately insults the religious beliefs of a class or group or defiles the sacred name of the Prophet. Moreover, some provisions introduced by General Zia ul Haq provide for exceptional limits on Ahmadis regarding their freedom of expression. Depending on the provision violated, punishments range from three months to death. Publications punishable under the Penal Code are also liable to be forfeited by the government under the Criminal Procedure Code.

These laws are predictably broad and boring, but its through cases that you learn that the long arm of the law in this case is attached to a small brain. Since Saadat Hasan Manto was sentenced to pay a fine of 300 rupees for writing and publishing 'Thanda Gosht,' there has hardly been any conviction on the grounds discussed in the last paragraph (though Ahmadis are still the exception). The reason has nothing to do with the merits of a case, but the fact that officials exercising legal authority have always made glaring procedural errors which showed their slothful and discriminatory approach.

In 1964, the governor of West Pakistan ordered the owner of a printing press to deposit Rs. 20,000 as security for having published two books titled 'Jawani Ke Raaz' and 'Shab-e-Aroosa.' This order was held to be illegal by the Lahore High Court in 1976, as it was not preceded by a show-cause notice (which implies the right to hearing). For the same reason, the court declared illegal the order of the provincial government to forfeit three books written by Fakhar Zaman (the order of forfeiture was issued in 1978 and the judgment was given in 1996).

In some other cases, the authorities lost their case because failed to point out any specific grounds for forfeiting a publication or fining a publisher. These include cases involving Mahmood Khan Abbasi's book 'Khilafat-e-Muavia wa Yazeed' (1961), a review of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's book 'Myth of Independence' published in Fahmida Riaz's magazine 'Awaz' (1982), Yousuf Saleem Chisti's book 'Tareekh-e-Tasawwuf' (1985) and Ghulam Ahmad Parvaiz's booklet 'Firqay Kaisey Mit Saktay Hain' (2006).

In two cases, the officials felt so relaxed as to even forget to produce the material the alleged possession of which was punishable under law. In the first case, a publisher, a bookseller and a peon in WAPDA were convicted in 1976 by the military court for possessing obscene literature. It took three years before the Lahore High Court found that 'this so-called 'obscene literature' allegedly recovered from the petitioners in the case is not forthcoming on the record,' and therefore, the decision of the military court was illegal.

Similarly, in 1979, the summary military court of Gujrat sentenced Attaur Rehman, who was Yehya Bakhtiar's private secretary, to rigorous imprisonment for nine months and a fine of Rs. 5,000 for possessing booklets titled 'General Zia Ki Taqreer Ka Post-mortem' and 'Reply to General Zia's speech of June 25, 78.' The High Court reversed this decision next year on the grounds that nothing had in fact been recovered from the accused and that no public witness had come forth to support the case of the prosecution.

In a 1960 case, certain passages from the book 'Mizanul Haq' -- which compared Christianity and Islam and tried to show the superiority of the former over the latter -- were held to have the deliberate and malicious intention to insult the religious feelings of Muslims. On an assurance by the Bishop of Lahore, the court allowed the publishers to delete the offensive passages from the future editions of the book but did not reproduce them in the judgment.

In a 1962 case, certain passages from Duncan Macdonald's book 'Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory' -- which was also part of Punjab University's Masters in Political Science syllabus -- were also accused of intentionally insulting the feelings of Muslims. This time, the court did reproduce the relevant passages, but didn't order for their expulsion from the text: Chief Justice Kayani re-wrote the passages to make them legally acceptable.

Thus we see that the legal standards to determine what's obscene, seditious, or religiously insulting are quite vague under Pakistani law. Except for a few early cases, courts seem to prefer a case-by-case approach to avoid having to come up any standard definition. More importantly, the added callousness of state officials suggests that any alleged violation of these laws would seldom lead to legal sanction, provided, of course, the alleged violator doesn't go missing or die at the hands of a fanatic.