http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/184308 February 22, 2007 Haroon Siddiqui

Baluchistan an 'administrative nightmare'

QUETTA, PAKISTAN"“As NATO troops in Afghanistan, including the Canadian ones, nervously await the spring offensive by the Taliban, there's greater focus on the Afghan-Pakistan border area.

Only parts of the 2,397-kilometre border are under anyone's control. Most of the uninhabited mountainous part cannot really be controlled.

Drawn in 1890-95 by the colonial British, the Durand Line begins at Iran and extends to China.

There are different bilateral issues along different locations.

In the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), there's the alleged cross-border movement of the Taliban/Al Qaeda from North and South Waziristan, and also from further east, south of the Tora Bora mountains, from whence Osama bin Laden disappeared five years ago.

Here in Baluchistan, there are three contentious issues:

· The sensational allegation by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that Mullah Omar and other top Taliban leaders are hiding here.

The Taliban are Pushtun, a.k.a. Pukhtuns, who straddle the border. To add to the complication, Pakistan is host to 2.6 million Afghan refugees, mostly Pushtuns, a third of whom are in Baluchistan and 400,000 in this provincial capital, alleged hosts to Omar.

· The Pakistani allegation that arms and money are flowing from Afghanistan to an indigenous "terrorist insurgency" here by the Baluch tribe, after whom the province is named.

They have long been agitating for a bigger share of the resources, especially natural gas, and also for such pending projects as the development of gold and copper mines jointly by Barrick Gold of Canada and Antofagasta of Chile.

· Much of the Afghan opium is smuggled through Baluchistan's western desert region, some to Iran but most to Arabian Sea ports, bound for Europe and Canada.

At 347,056 square kilometres, Baluchistan is the largest of Pakistan's four provinces but the least populated, at 6.2 million people.

Presiding over this vast expanse of mostly autonomous tribal people is its governor, Owais Ahmad Ghani. He lives and works out of an elegant residence of high ceilings and teak floors, built in 1876 for the British resident.

"Baluchistan is an administrative nightmare," says Ghani, an expert on the northern areas. He is a native of the NWFP who served in the provincial cabinet there before being named a federal minister and then governor here.

But I want to talk about Omar being in Quetta.

"That's a lie," he says, firmly and without hesitation. "It's frivolous nonsense, meant for public consumption.

"Suppose Mullah Omar is here. Why doesn't Karzai tell us where, so we can go and pick him up? The worst way to catch him is for Karzai to make a public statement, so that Omar is forewarned and leaves. Karzai can't be serious."

What about cross-border movement of the Taliban?

"They are firmly entrenched in Afghanistan where they control vast areas. They don't need Pakistan. If they are here, it's not written on their foreheads that they are the Taliban. They are part of the Pushtun people.

"But there's no organized Taliban activity in Baluchistan that we can see. Suppose we are letting the Taliban cross the border. Why aren't they being picked up when they step onto the Afghan side? American troops are there, Canadian troops are there, other NATO troops are there."

But the International Security Assistance Force is not in the business of controlling the border, I say.

"They are in the business of controlling terrorism, aren't they?" he replies.

Ghani is even harsher about the way the Karzai government and his western allies have turned a blind eye to opium production. "I've been telling everyone for years that the real problem is poppies. Three years ago, it was 30,000 acres in Afghanistan and 10,000 in Baluchistan. We have eradicated it on our side, but now it's way more than 300,000 acres in Afghanistan.

"Opium has criminalized the Afghan economy. It has criminalized Afghan politics, with warlords under American and Afghan patronage benefiting from it and it is criminalizing the Afghan population."

It is also causing problems galore for Baluchistan, where "the narcotics traffic is run by heavily armed gangs, with machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, rocket launchers, land mines and anti-tank mines."

Ghani said the West should worry less about Bin Laden and Omar and more about eradicating opium.

"Buy off every farmer, with whatever it takes. That would be cheaper than what we are spending fighting it and also the insurgency it is financing.

"Hit the heroin labs, bomb them from the air. That'd be better than killing innocent civilians in anti-Taliban operations and turning the Afghans against the allies."