Page 2 of 2 Drama in a theater of despair
By Ajai Sahni
However, Islamabad’s direct rule has allowed Pakistan to engage in a vast
campaign of demographic re-engineering, opening up the region for colonization
by Sunnis who are brought in with a number of incentives, including ownership
of land and forests. Following the construction of the Karakoram Highway
connecting Pakistan to China in 1978, the region saw a swelling Sunni influx
from the Pakistani "mainland" - essentially Pashtuns. Sources in
Gilgit-Baltistan indicate that large tracts of land continue to be allotted to
Afghan refugees and Pashtuns from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).
BNF’s Nawaz Khan Naji observes:
... the Pathans [Pashtuns] are buying
property and our cities are becoming Pathan-majority cities, where our locals
are becoming minorities. We have no right to cast votes in Pakistan, nor in
Azad Kashmir. Like a no-man’s land. We are the last colony in the world.
A sectarian polarization has been continuously encouraged in
Gilgit-Baltistan since the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto regime in the mid-1970s. When
Sunnis in Gilgit objected to Shi'ite processions and the construction of a
stage on the city’s main road, these activities were immediately banned.
Shi'ites subsequently protested the ban and the police fired on them.
The seeds of a sectarian polarization had been sown, but the situation worsened
dramatically under General Zia ul-Haq, when the military dictator encouraged
cadres of the radical Sunni Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) to extend its
activities to the Gilgit-Baltistan region. A local (Shi'ite) insurrection broke
out in Gilgit in May 1988, with people demanding wider rights.
To suppress the rebellion, the Special Services Group of the Pakistani army
based in Khapalu was dispatched. Former president Musharraf, then a young
brigadier, was in charge of the operations, in which he used Sunni tribal
irregulars to execute a brutal pogrom against the locals, earning himself the
sobriquet "butcher of Baltistan". Truckloads of Sunni tribals were sent in from
the Afghan border to the region, and they indulged in anti-Shi'ite brutalities
unprecedented in Pakistan’s history. After eight days of sustained violence,
the army "stepped in" to "restore peace".
The anti-Shi'ite pogrom resurfaced in 1993, when sectarian riots started again
in Gilgit, leading to the death of 20 Shi'ites. Later, the Shi'ite population
was further alarmed when large numbers of Sunnis were brought in from Punjab
and the NWFP to settle in Gilgit. This government-supported migration towards
Gilgit-Baltistan has been hugely successful and, according to unofficial
estimates, the 1:4 ratio of non-local to local people in the region, which
prevailed in January 2001, had dipped to an alarming 3:4 by June 2004.
The Shi'ites retain a slim but continuously diminishing regional majority, but
there are areas where concentrations of Sunnis already outnumber them. A cycle
of sectarian killings has, moreover, become a continuous feature of the
Gilgit-Baltistan political landscape, escalating repeatedly during religious
festivals and periods of political tension.
Cyclical tensions and strife compound an extended campaign of intimidation,
terror and inspired sectarian violence. There is cumulative evidence of an
accelerated radicalization of Sunni organizations in Gilgit-Baltistan,
especially since 2001, with the shifting of base of a number of terrorist
groups - some affiliated with al-Qaeda - to "Azad Jammu and Kashmir" and to
Gilgit-Baltistan. Abdul Hamid Khan of the BNF records:
There has ...
been a steady inflow of Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives into the Ghezar Valley
... Terrorist training to Afghan mercenaries and various groups active in
Indian-held Kashmir is being provided in the remote hilly areas of Hazara,
Darel Yashote, Tangir, Astore, Skardu city and Gilgit city.
There
is, moreover, "evidence to indicate that the sectarian violence in the NAs, in
particular at Gilgit, is being planned and orchestrated from other Pakistani
provinces, especially the North West Frontier Province".
Very significant quantities of weapons have also been seized in
Gilgit-Baltistan, and are shipped in from the neighboring provinces, even as
"the tactics used by sectarian terrorists in places like Quetta, Karachi,
Islamabad, Lahore and elsewhere are now being employed in the Northern Areas".
As the Nicholson report clearly noted, moreover, the entire Gilgit-Baltistan
region remains mired in extreme poverty and backwardness, with a pervasive
absence of most basic amenities. Even the Kashmir Affairs and Northern Areas
(KANA) Ministry, which is charged with the development of the region, conceded,
in the late 1990s, that the "Northern Areas" "have been neglected for the last
50 years ... [and] still rank in the most backward areas of the country."
In late August 2005, a 10-member group from the HRCP visited the Northern Areas
to assess the level of social services and infrastructure in the region. The
mission was fiercely critical of the inadequate structures of governance, the
appalling justice system, and the paucity of social services available to the
people of the region.
An index of regional backwardness can be found in the education sector. While
current data for the region remain unavailable, in 1998/99 the overall literacy
rate in the Northern Areas was estimated to be 33% - substantially below the
national rate of 54%. There were significant disparities between the male and
female population: the estimated literacy rate for males was 40%, whereas the
estimate for females was only 25%.
More significantly, there are wide disparities even between the number of
educational institutions in Gilgit-Baltistan and "Azad Jammu and Kashmir",
reflecting Islamabad’s peculiar orientation towards, and biases against the
former: Thus we find a total of 787 educational institutions at all levels,
servicing a total population of 870,347 in Gilgit-Baltistan, as against 6,094
institutions in "Azad Jammu and Kashmir", servicing a population of 2.97
million (population figures: 1998 Census).
A comparison of the number of public health facilities in the Gilgit-Baltistan
and "Azad Jammu and Kashmir" again reveals Islamabad’s partiality.
Gilgit-Baltistan has a total of 305 public health facilities in all categories,
hospitals, dispensaries and first aid posts. "Azad Jammu and Kashmir", in sharp
contrast, has a total of 4,585 public health facilities across a much wider
range of categories. Most of Gilgit-Baltistan’s settlements lack proper
sewerage and drainage systems, with the result that virtually all the water
supply is contaminated with human and animal waste, leading to a wide range of
diseases. In January 2000, for example, the Army Field Hospital at Gilgit
reported that some 47,152 patients had been treated for cholera over a period
of just four months.
The region also suffers from under-utilization of its natural resources.
Although the Northern Areas have tremendous potential for hydropower
generation, and are, indeed, seen as a primary source of both water and power
for the rest of Pakistan, the region fails to meet its own energy demands.
Gilgit-Baltistan currently has the lowest per capita rate of energy consumption
in Pakistan and firewood is still the main source of domestic energy. Field
surveys conducted by the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) with
German technical assistance revealed that 99.6% of all respondents used
firewood as fuel for domestic purposes. Kerosene is currently the second most
widely used energy source in Gilgit-Baltistan. Even in its "electrified"
regions, kerosene is commonly used because of limited coverage of the
population and frequent disruptions of the power supply. There is a large and
rapidly growing gulf between existing supplies of electricity and regional
demand.
Despite a long history of protests against Islamabad’s discriminatory policies,
against growing sectarianism and violence, and against brutal state repression,
Gilgit-Baltistan remains a neglected center of inequity and widespread
suffering. Pakistan has utterly and continuously suppressed the people of
Gilgit-Baltistan; denied them the most basic constitutional and human rights;
blocked access to development and an equitable use even of local natural
resources; and repeatedly and brutally suppressed the local Shi'ite majority,
even as it seeks to violently promote Sunni sectarianism in the region.
Gilgit-Baltistan remains an "area of darkness", of deep neglect and
exploitation, and of the denial of political rights and identity - indeed, a
violation of every conceivable element of the very "self-determination" that
Pakistan advocates abroad. Circumstances in Gilgit-Baltistan constitute an
international humanitarian crisis. Yet, for decades, Pakistan has set a
distorted international agenda of discourse, treating areas under its
administration - "Azad Jammu and Kashmir" and Gilgit-Baltistan - as settled
issues, even as it violently promotes and stridently proclaims a "dispute" over
the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Note
1. Gilgit-Baltistan is an autonomous region in northern Pakistan. It was
formerly known as the Northern Areas. It is the northernmost political entity
within the Pakistani-administered part of the former princely state of Jammu
and Kashmir. It borders Afghanistan to the north, China to the northeast, the
Pakistani-administered state of Azad Jammu and Kashmir to the south, and the
Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir to the southeast. The area
became a single administrative unit in 1970 under the name "Northern Areas",
formed from the amalgamation of the Gilgit Agency, the Baltistan District of
the Ladakh Wazarat and the states of Hunza and Nagar. With its administrative
center at the town of Gilgit, Gilgit Baltistan covers an area of 72,971 square
kilometers and has an estimated population approaching 1,000,000. This area is
part of the larger disputed territory of Kashmir between India, Pakistan and
China. - Wikipedia
Ajai Sahni is the editor of the the South Asia Intelligence Review;
executive director, Institute for Conflict Management.
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