|
The Khan of Kalat, Mir Suleiman Daud, is speeding. He’s a
fast driver, but so expert a wheelman there’s no fear in the
wide black Hummer. “Who drives American cars?” he says,
mocking himself. “But when I saw this one, I knew it was my
toy.” Handsome and charismatic, Khan Suleiman enjoys hiding
his eyes behind Gucci shades, and prefers a ball cap to a
turban, according to a report published by The Brooklyn
Rail.
Add in the traditional long baggy shirts and baggy pants of
the region, what sounds like Pakistani hip-hop blasting, the
carload of his men packing pistols and Kalashnikovs that
rides behind us, and it feels like quite the posse. But
considering Khan Suleiman once took four AK47 bullets in the
gut and chest in the tribal equivalent of a drive-by and
lived, the bullet-resistant Hummer makes practical sense.
Khan Suleiman’s survival of that shooting was considered so
miraculous that there is a university doctor who teaches a
class in the incident. As for all the guns and ammunition,
Balochistan is one of the tribal provinces of Pakistan, and
in tribal regions, one needs protection. Especially the Khan
of Kalat, which literally means King of the Fort, the chief
of chiefs. But it’s not his own people he needs protection
from.
Khan of Kalat Suleiman’s country is rich in resources that
everyone wants to take and he doesn’t have the power to stop
them. “We sit on a mountain of gold,” he says, “and the
devil sits on us.” His people, the Baloch Nation, are being
indiscriminately bombed, arrested, and kidnapped, and he’s
powerless to stop it. Journalist Selig S Harrison has called
it a slow-motion genocide and human rights groups have
called it an ethnic cleansing. “We have 700 miles of coast
and oil and gas and gold,” says Khan Suleiman. “We try to do
something to have rights to it, we get spanked. We resist
every ten years and get spanked every ten years.” For the
past few years, he has been in the middle of an unseen war
that few beyond the regional press are reporting, the report
says.
But then something horrible happened and it radicalised his
people. In August 2006 the chief of the Bugti tribe,
79-year-old Newab Akbar Bugti, was allegedly murdered by the
Pakistan Army. “Bugti was buried with three locks on the
coffin,” says Khan Suleiman. “They thought his soul might
come back and make trouble. So the army put locks on it.
None of his tribe was around to see his body. Still they’ve
got a guard on his body.” The Baloch people were outraged by
the murder, and Khan Suleiman had found his moment, the
catalyst he needed. He called a national jirga, a meeting of
the tribes, the first in 130 years. He wanted to find out if
his sardars, his chiefs, the heads of tribes that have been,
on and off, at war with each other for hundreds of years,
could lay down personal disputes and unify for a common
cause: an autonomous Balochistan. Khan Suleiman’s allies
would be his former enemies. In the way of tribes, his
enemies are also his friends. He put out his call.
My first thought was: this man is a modern Sitting Bull.
Which makes him a sitting duck. Which is why he travels in a
Hummer and why his travel plans are never announced. What
Khan Suleiman has just done is akin to Sitting Bull asking
the Apache, the Cherokee, the Mohawks, all the major Native
American warring tribes to smoke the peace pipe and unify
against the migrating settlers that were stealing their land
out from under them.
Khan Suleiman’s historic jirga was attended by 1,500,
including 85 sardars and 300 tribal elders. The Baloch
people have always protested the Punjabi-dominated military
regime of Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf that
has been made rich off the Baloch province but gives so
little back in terms of resources and tax revenues that the
entire region still lacks the basic services that most
consider human rights. The province is rich in natural gas
yet only 6 percent of the Baloch have gas connections, less
than half the children get an education, and only 2 percent
of the population have clean water.
The answer to Khan Suleiman’s call for unification and
resistance against this state of affairs was a resounding
yes. “When you make a call you get an answer,” says Khan
Suleiman. “The answer means that Baloch is a nation. They
have problems, but they have roots. I know them 700 years
and they know me 700 years. I gave a call in the 21st
century and 95 percent answered. Students and prime
ministers agree. There are the rocket guys and the pen and
paper guys, but we come together directly or indirectly.”
|
Articles/Opinions
Cartoons
