The triumph of weapons was, however, short-lived. After the first flush of victory, the Pakistan army in East Pakistan faced broader resistance. Bengali nationalism replaced demands for autonomy within a federal Pakistan as the Bengalis’ aspiration. Seeing themselves as freedom fighters, the Bengalis secured help from India and the Pakistan army faced an ignominious defeat and surrender. But even that experience has not made Pakistan’s generals wiser to the need for politics as opposed to their preference for the logic of brute power.

The consequences of Nawab Bugti’s assassination are likely to be monumental. Pakistan’s generals might think that the situation in Balochistan is different from that in East Pakistan because the army’s logistics and supply situation is better. More troops can be brought in from cantonments around the country to Balochistan and much faster than was possible during the civil war in East Pakistan.

Moreover, Balochistan does not border India and the prospect of a foreign military intervention in favour of the Baloch is unlikely. But these soldierly obsessions miss the crucial point. Should the conduct of the armed forces of a sovereign independent nation be the same as the behaviour of the British Indian army? Shouldn’t a modern independent state draw its legitimacy, not from force, but from the consent of the majority of its own citizens?

Husain Haqqani is director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations and Co-chair of the Hudson Institute’s Project on Islam and Democracy. He is the author of the book Pakistan Between Mosque and Military.

The Indian government has put out the line that Baloch tribal leader Nawab Akbar Bugti’s death is a “tragic loss” for Pakistan. While Pakistan has rejected India’s concern as interference in its internal affairs, Indian analysts as well as officials argue that their comments on what is happening in Pakistan are pegged on India’s desire to see a more democratic Pakistan as a non-democratic Pakistan puts regional security at risk.

This is supposed to be a rejection of Pakistan’s allegation that India is fishing in Balochistan. Highly debatable as this is, let’s leave aside the justification (or the lack of it) of the military operation and consider some facts instead.

Nawab Bugti’s own record as a sardar (Dera Bugti has the worst human development indices in entire Pakistan); the sardari system and how this system has stymied progress in Balochistan; the fact that successive governments have shied away from tackling Balochistan; and, of course, the broader question of whether it is prudent for India — or even possible — to try and have a democratic Pakistan while claiming to not interfere in Pakistan’s internal affairs.

Bugti was never a Baloch hero; in fact, during the military operation in the early ’70s, after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto dismissed the first-ever elected government of Chief Minister Attaullah Mengal, it was Bugti who Bhutto rewarded with the governorship of Balochistan for having broken away from his Marri-Mengal nationalist colleagues. Bugti was interested primarily in keeping his fiefdom intact and extracting a price from Islamabad.

This has been the case with the other sardars also. Islamabad pursued the policy of bribing them and controlling the province through them. It looked like a good policy because of the steeply hierarchical Baloch tribal structure, but it had the great disadvantage of keeping the common Baloch away from the federation and under the oppressive rule of the sardars. Different governments, at different points in time, courted one or the other Baloch sardar out of political expediency without expending any effort to reach out to the people directly or bring development to Balochistan.

With the changing configuration in the region, Islamabad is compelled to bring Balochistan into the ambit of municipal law. With too much at stake in Balochistan in both economic and military-strategic terms, the Baloch resistance, funded from outside, is a development no Pakistani government can tolerate. The province has to be developed and the sardars feel threatened not because they are fighting the common man’s war but because they want to maintain the status quo.

Not long ago, the very nationalists who want the federal government out of Balochistan today would grumble that Islamabad took no interest in the construction of a port at Gwadar; they also wanted the Mirani Dam, the Coastal Highway, the Kachhi Canal and other projects.

But when the government started these projects, they began to oppose development. Also, some twenty years back, the Balochistan Assembly was replete with supporters of the three renegade sardars, Nawab Akbar Bugti, Sardar Attaullah Mengal and Khair Bakhsh Marri; today, even the nationalists are represented by the National Party, which comprises the small educated middle class of Balochistan.

India is ignoring the fact that harnessing Balochistan would also be in India’s interest if New Delhi remained committed to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline. But on that score India’s interest seemed to have waned, though it is still playing along.

India’s interest in presenting Islamabad’s efforts in Balochistan negatively has been evident for some time now and relates to the evolving thinking in New Delhi that India should have its own version of a Monroe doctrine. While this thinking targets the entire region, in relation to Pakistan it has been unfolding under the overhang of the India-Pakistan rivalry.

The question of why Balochistan is important for India can be answered with one word: Gwadar. The Gwadar port, which is being built with Chinese help on the Makran coast, is economically significant for Pakistan, as any port would be. But more than that, it is the strategic significance of Gwadar, represent as it does the Sino-Pakistan relationship, that India considers a threat.

For Pakistan, Gwadar’s strategic importance has to be seen in the context of, first, India’s ambition to have a blue-water navy that can dominate the Indian ocean and also show its flag outreach in the South China sea and Oceania; and, secondly, the consequences of such naval power for Pakistan’s security.

The mainstay of Indian naval strength in the coming years, then, would be, first, the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, and, secondly, an SSN force, though its Advanced Technology Vessel project, an euphemism for a nuclear-powered submarine, has not been a success so far.

Add to this the India-US strategic partnership and Pakistan’s security compulsions become clear.

For China, which has financed a large part of the Gwadar project, the port means the ability to monitor the sea channels, just 250 miles from the Strait of Hormuz, a key trade route and more importantly, a crucial passage for world oil supplies. Being at Gwadar also gives China direct access to the Persian Gulf while for Pakistan the Chinese presence serves as ‘forward defence’.

Analyses coming out of India suggest that it would be in India’s interest to focus on and deepen the faultlines in Pakistan. If this can be done through exploiting the bad mood in Balochistan, given also that Pakistan might be thinking of using the Gwadar port to balance Indian naval strength, it would make eminent sense from India’s viewpoint.

Hence, moves to undermine Pakistan’s economic and strategic arrangement with China via Gwadar should be expected. India’s interests in Balochistan and in highlighting Baloch ‘oppression’ should also be clear.

Indian strategic analyst Bharat Karnad, in his book, Nuclear Weapons & Indian Security: the Realist Foundations of Strategy, laments that “whale-sized” India has traditionally acted like a minnow. He grounds the imperative for India’s outreach — India’s own Monroe doctrine — in the Vedic concept of chakravartin, which presents the concept of power projection.

The writer is Assistant News Editor, The Friday Times, Lahore