Word: baluch
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...Beneath their homeland's soil lies a treasure trove of natural gas and oil reserves, which, while largely untapped, yield revenues from which the Baluch feel excluded. Successive generations have waged armed rebellions against Pakistani rule - in 1948, 1953, through the 1960s and 70s, and now. According to analysts, continued abuses at the hands of security forces and Pakistan's shadowy intelligence agency, the ISI, have intensified separatist feeling to an unprecedented scale. "Baluch nationalism is more broad-based, is a more serious phenomenon than at any time in the past," says Selig Harrison, a leading authority on the Baluch...
...state. The province of Baluchistan, situated along Pakistan's west and northwest borders with Iran and Afghanistan, comprises more than 40% of Pakistan's landmass but less than 5% of its people. Its unforgiving deserts nearly annihilated the armies of Alexander the Great as they marched home. The native Baluch, descendants of nomadic tribes who roamed these arid wastes, number around five million and have for years complained of marginalization and mistreatment, particularly at the hands of the Pakistani military...
...population. The rest of the country is a mishmash of ethnic minorities, various religions, Muslim sects and semi-nomadic tribes. None has been entirely happy living under the mullahs' Shi'ite theocracy, especially Iran's Sunni citizens, which make up 9% of the population and include most of the Baluch. Iran's minorities have been susceptible to outside influences, but rarely have they felt strong enough to take on Tehran - which fears that that could change with the chaos at its borders. If, for instance, the U.S. were to suddenly pick up and leave Afghanistan, would the new Taliban government...
Tehran immediately blamed outsiders - the U.S., Great Britain and Pakistan - for Sunday's suicide bombing because it cannot admit that it has its own homegrown Taliban. Whatever Iran says about Jundallah, the ethnic Baluch group that claimed responsibility for the attack, it's an indigenous movement. The body of its financing comes from Baluch expatriates, many in the Gulf, and Islamic charities. Its weapons and explosives are readily available in the mountains that span the border between Iran and Pakistan. (Read "Pakistan: Behind the Waziristan Offensive...
...been a favorite target of insurgents. In February, John Solecki, the head of the U.N. refugee agency's office in Baluchistan, was kidnapped by Baluch separatist fighters and held for two months before being released. In June, the U.N. was forced to pull its staff out of Peshawar, the capital of the lawless North-West Frontier Province, after a vehicle laden with explosives slammed into the side of a hotel in the city, killing 17 people. Just hours after Monday's attack, the U.N. said all of its offices in Islamabad would be closed indefinitely. That could severely hamper relief...