Word: baluch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...until March, the library in his rambling, earthen castle was lined with hundreds of books on philosophy, Western and oriental religions and the European classics. Then the castle, and the library with it, were destroyed by army cannon fire. Bugti is a vegetarian, a rarity among the meat-chomping Baluch, and sups every night on a bowl of green chili peppers, according to a frequent guest. He once served as a federal cabinet minister?and later spent years in jail for insurrection. His band of men move between mountain hideouts, sleeping in caves. Bugti says he uses "a rock...
...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...
...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...
...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...