Word: baluch
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Selig Harrison, a Southwest Asia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that the U.S. should encourage the Zia regime to try to placate these minority groups-for instance, by granting a measure of autonomy to the Baluchs of southwestern Pakistan. During a 1973-77 rebellion, Harrison recalls, the Pakistan air force used Iranian-supplied U.S. helicopters to raze Baluch villages indiscriminately, thereby unleashing "a legacy of hatred that has merely intensified separatist feelings." Recently, however, some Baluch leaders have told U.S. diplomats that they are worried about the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, and would settle for regional...
...excess of what was needed to quell an internal insurgency. Afghanistan, according to these suspicions, could be only a steppingstone on the way to further military aggression, either west into Iran or possibly south into Baluchistan. Straddling both Iran and Pakistan, this area is inhabited by fiercely independent Baluch tribesmen who have long sought autonomy from both countries. The other school maintained that the Soviet move was basically a defensive, self-contained operation aimed at rescuing a crumbling client regime. The military overkill, one Western European envoy argued, simply represented "typical Russian thoroughness-using more force than necessary in order...
...Soviets were to launch a military attack, chances are that it would be not in the Northwest Frontier but along the 300-mile stretch of border that cuts through lands occupied by the rebellious Baluch peoples, who live astride Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Baluchis, who have long yearned for autonomy, might welcome a Soviet-inspired Afghan invading force that would promise to honor the Baluchis' "legitimate aspirations" -as Afghanistan's new President, Babrak Karmal, has vowed to do. A friendly regime in a breakaway Baluchistan would give the Soviets an outlet to the Arabian...
...invasion, although the possibility that Soviet troops might cross the border in hot pursuit of the Afghan rebels could not be ruled out. Some Washington contingency planners feared that the Soviets might use their new base in Afghanistan to encourage unrest among the Pushtun and Baluch peoples who populate the border areas and are openly hostile to the Pakistan government. A major fear was that the Soviets might sponsor a revolt by the Baluch, whose traditional homeland stretches along the Arabian Sea into eastern Iran. Such a breakaway by Baluchistan would give Moscow access to ports leading into the Indian...
...Baluch separatist stronghold on the Afghan side of the border, grown men and teen-agers can be found drilling with 14-lb. Lee-Enfields and pre paring for an uprising in the indefinite future. Says Chakar Khan, 28, secretary of the Baluchistan People's Liberation Front: "We're weaning them away from tribalism. Today they're beginning to understand that we're not fighting the whole of Punjab province, but only a ruling clique." While Chakar Khan dreams of a Communist "chain across the subcontinent," there are, in fact, no more than 600 fighters...