PakAlive

Balochistan Map in 1860

BALOCH INSURGENCIES 1948-1977 Wahe Wata n O Hushkien Dar The fatherland even barren is worth anything Balochi saying People with a warlike spirit, wearing exalted plumes, like the cocks comb, on their turbans. Firdausi in Shahnama The present day insurgency in Balochistan is a continuum of the intermittent guerrilla struggle against the Pakistani state that has characterized Balochistan since 1948. The insurgency in 2004-05 is only different from the ones in 1948-52, 1958-60, 1962-69 and 1973-77 in the scale of the violence and the geographical spread of the insurgency. The causes, the issues, the demands and the goal continue to be the same. On August 15, 1947, a day after Pakistan came into existence, the Khan of Kalat had declared independence. Kalats independent status had been affirmed several

WHEREAS the Indian Independence Act, 1947, provides that as from the fifteenth day of August, 1947, there shall be set up an independent Dominion known as PAKISTAN, and that the Government of India Act, 1935 shall, with such omissions, additions, adaptations and modifications as the Governor-General may by order specify, be applicable to the Dominion of Pakistan; AND WHEREAS the Government of India Act, 1935, as so adapted by the Governor-General provides that an Indian State may accede to the Dominion of Pakistan by an Instrument of Accession executed by the Ruler thereof:

The Khan of Kalat, who had expressed his enthusiasm for Pakistan as had Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was the leader of the Muslim League and went on to become the first Governor General of Pakistan, in his payrolls as the legal advisor to the Kalat state, resorted to the legal position that with the lapse of paramountcy, leased out territories around Quetta that would return to Kalat and so also Kharan and Las Bela would be left independent to decide to rejoin Kalat.

Inayatullah Baloch writes in his book, The Problem of Greater Balochistan , that the British ignored all evidence of certain areas coming under the jurisdiction or influence of the Khan of Kalat and gifted them away to either Iran or Afghanistan, in a bid to placate the rulers in these two countries and befriend them in apprehension of an attack from the Russian side. This was the Great Game of those times and the Baloch had to pay dearly for the selfish motives of the colonial rulers. In fact, a secret diary prepared by the British representative at Kalat on April 20,1872, to the British Government of India suggested that Sardar Ibrahim Khan Sanjrani of Chakansur (Outer Seistan) acted as a vassal of the Khanate. Sir Robert Sandeman, in the letters to Lord Curzon dated November 22,