Pakistan's Other War

The conflict in Baluchistan has consequences beyond its desert wastes. Pakistan is one of Washington's bulwarks in the war on terror, and receives around $600 million a year in U.S. military aid. According to Baluch rebel sources in Quetta and military sources in Islamabad, U.S. helicopters supplied to Pakistan for hunting members of al-Qaeda have been redirected to Baluchistan's deserts to fight Bugti and his two comrades-in-arms. Three Cessna aircraft, outfitted with sophisticated surveillance equipment and given to Pakistan last year by the U.S. to help catch heroin smugglers, have also been drafted into service against the Baluch rebels. Quetta military base sources say that when U.S. antinarcotics agents examined the Cessnas' flight records last month, they found that only seven hours were spent chasing drug runners, while most of the flying time was logged over Bugti's craggy domain scanning for rebel camps.

The U.S. military partnership with Pakistan was designed principally to take the fight to al-Qaeda and those members of the Taliban who have fled across the Afghan border. But a Pakistani military official in Islamabad says the Bush Administration is "fully in the know" that U.S. weaponry is also being used against the Baluch insurgency. "This is all part of a bigger battle against troublemakers challenging the state," says the official. A U.S. State Department official told Time that there's nothing in the agreement with Pakistan to prevent Musharraf using U.S. military aid against Baluch insurgents. "When we transfer the equipment for them, it's for internal security and self-defense," the official says. "There's no 'for al-Qaeda use only' tag on it." Unlike the Taliban and al-Qaeda operating further north along the mountainous Afghan border region, however, the Baluch are not Islamist militants. "They are secular and anti-Taliban," says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group, "yet American guns are being used against them." (Bugti says he's an agnostic, and some clan leaders espouse socialist values and enjoy whisky.) Baluch sources say that U.S. surveillance aircraft and Cobra gunships have targeted tribesmen. The State Department official says, "We've seen no evidence that our equipment has been used to violate human rights."

The fighting is taking an increasing toll on civilians, say Baluch sources and independent observers. Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for the New York City-based Human Rights Watch, says that "scores of people have disappeared." Musharraf's forces, he says, are carrying out "a policy of abduction, illegal confinement and torture." The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has documented claims that after a truck hit a land mine on Jan. 11, killing three Frontier Constabulary guards, government security forces went on a rampage executing 12 civilians. Two tribal elders sent to recover the bodies were also shot, says the Human Rights Commission. Pakistani army officials deny that soldiers have engaged in abuse or indiscriminate killing. A Pakistani military commander in Baluchistan told Time that "the reason we are not going for a massive, one-to-end-it-all strike is the fear of collateral damage."

Pakistani officials say that Bugti and the others are desert relics, feudal lords willing to sacrifice their men in battle and delay progress, just to retain their power. Bugti says that a deeper issue of autonomy as at issue. "We Baluch believe that the best way to die is to die fighting," says Bugti. "Are we Baluch the masters of our own destiny? Because if that's taken away from us, then life doesn't really matter."