The Tiger of Balochistan was born Sardar Akbar Shahbaz Khan Bugti. Tracing a lineage of prestige and power, he was the tumandar of the Bugti tribe.

But the man, who commanded the unquestionable loyalty of a well-armed Baloch tribe of around 2,50,000 people and went on to mentor the guerrilla Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), had his beginnings at the Lahore and Karachi Grammar School and Oxford University. Legend has it that he commited his first murder at the age of 12 and killed another 100 men to avenge the assassination of his son Salal Bugti.

When Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf threatened him, the man is known to have told the General: “I’ll give you a war you won’t forget and send you back to the barracks where you belong!” For more than a decade, he waged a shadow war against the Pakistan Army, from the mountain ranges of Dera Bugti.

In 1958, Bugti was elected in a by-election to the National Assembly of Pakistan to fill the vacancy created after the assassination of the incumbent Dr Khan Sahib and sat on the government benches as a member of the ruling coalition. He was minister of state (Interior) in the government of Prime Minister Feroz Khan Noon for a brief period in 1958 till the cabinet was dismissed on the declaration of martial law by President Iskander Mirza.

Bugti was arrested and convicted by a military tribunal in 1960 and disqualified from holding public office. So he did not contest the 1970 general elections but campaigned for his younger brother, Sardar Ahmed Nawaz Bugti, a candidate of the National Awami Party (NAP).

... contd.