24 February 2006
Sui: A 107 mm missile whizzes past over a visiting team of journalists and crashes just a few feet away from pipelines supplying gas to the compression station of Pakistan's biggest Sui Gas Field.
Luckily, the missile missed its target, but Baloch tribal militants blew up pipelines of two other nearby fields the same day all located in the rugged Dera Bugti district Pakistan's energy-line, which meets nearly 32 per cent of the country's natural gas demand.
"Only God is so far averting a disaster," said an engineer at the field. "Any direct hit to purification or compression plants not just means huge destruction on the ground, but snapping off Pakistan's main energy source," he said.
His worries are understandable. There are days when militants fire a barrage of rockets and missiles at the field often missing key installations by barely a few feet.
It has been more than a month now that the Dera Bugti district has been simmering with violence as Nawab Akbar Bugti, the powerful tribal chief, pitted his men against the security forces, demanding what he calls greater political and economic rights for his people.
Officials, however, say that the Nawab, now in hiding in mountains, is creating trouble to win more concessions and oppose the return of dissidents from his own tribe to their native place under government protection.
Thousands of Kalpars a sub-clan of Bugti were forced to flee in the 1990s due to political rivalry with their Nawab.
Now hundreds of them have returned last month a move seen by analysts to counter Nawab and his loyalists adding more fuel to fire.
Col Furqanuddin, commandant of paramilitary Bambore Rifles, said that since January 26 people, including six security officials, have been killed in the violence.
"We have killed 20 miscreants and wounded 29," he told reporters. The tribesmen killed six security officials and wounded 34 others during the period through hit-and-run attacks, bombings and triggering landmines, he said. Attacks on the Sui Gas Field, one of the biggest and oldest in Pakistan, have also intensified with militants slamming more than 1,000 rockets in the first six weeks of 2006, compared with a little over 500 fired in 2005. The three other nearby fields of Loti, Pirkoh and Uch, are also the target of militants.
The government says that militants received funds and weapons from Afghan warlords and India. Baloch nationalists, however, reject the claim and accuse the government of exploiting resources of their province.
The almost daily exchange of rocket and gunfire between the security forces and militants forced civilians to migrate, transforming Dera Bugti town, 40 km from Sui, into a ghost town.
"Nearly 80 to 90 per cent of about 30,000 residents of Dera Bugti town have migrated," said Abdus Samad Lasi, top civilian official, who shifted his own office to Sui.
Raziq Bugti, spokesman of Balochistan Government, said that violence erupted because government was trying to establish its writ in this lawless region where even in the 21st century people live under the tribal system.
"They are not fighting for more schools, hospitals, jobs and development," he said. "They are fighting to resist development endangering a centuries old tribal system."
By Mujahid Ali
Gulf News 2006. All rights reserved.
