PM Modi's Russian Roulette in Balochistan

The Baloch are a distinct ethno nationality, and their culture goes back to ancient times The place is fertile ground for outside interference - given ethic tension, difficult terrain and international rivalry.

PM Narendra Modi thanking the citizens’ of Balochistan for recognising the help rendered by India in his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort ramparts radically alters India foreign policy. 

This new approach towards the insurgency - if thought through - could provide a broad tactical counter thrust to India’s diplomatic efforts. It could match the challenge in Kashmir - and yet remain below the thermonuclear threshold. 

The aim of such a policy is not an independent Balochistan overnight. It just makes Pakistan’s repression in the province costlier and also pins down greater Pakistan forces to counter the insurgency.  

The X Corps in Rawalpindi is bound to look at this public announcement with some trepidation.  In the short run, things could get hotter in the Kashmir valley, but India must brace for the long run. 

However, if it turns out that the PM just wanted to reassure the domestic audience by some tit for tat rhetoric - it could badly backfire. One assumes that the PM understands the import of an Independence Day speech from the Red Fort fully – and Ajit Doval can be trusted in making it all about policy and not politics. 

Given that that Pakistan cannot win a frontal war against India, it has for 70 years taken to terrorism. It has fought a bloody war, hitting at the time and place of its choosing in the valley and beyond.

Unfortunately for the Islamic republic, it has a few spots of its own. Its biggest province – Balochistan is probably the softest. Ever since 1947, when Pakistan air force bombed the Baloch king into submission in the greatest heist in history - the province has witnessed a bloody insurgency.   

The insurgency is armed and the repression bloody. 

Three main armies fight for the cause. The Balochistan Republican Army is the best equipped. There is also the Balochistan Liberation Army and the United Baloch Army. 

Finally, there is a shadow group that has lately been very active - the Baloch Republican guard.  

Random killings, mass disappearances and torture are routine here. 

For an Amnesty International report writer, this province is a dream come true. It is desperately poor, and its gas and gold resources feed energy-starved cities of Lahore and Islamabad. Culturally, it is telling that, like with Bangladesh, the Pakistani army has a very low opinion of Baloch fighting skills. 

The Baloch are a distinct ethno nationality, and their culture goes back to ancient times. There is evidence that they traded with the Indus Valley civilisation. The place is fertile ground for outside interference - given ethic tension, difficult terrain (the same terrain where Alexander’s invading army almost died of thirst) and international rivalry.

If India plays its cards well, it can disrupt the one-sided terror discourse that Pakistan has so far enjoyed.   

Covert intervention in the Pakistani province has already had some effect. It is thanks to it that Pakistan has to maintain at least three divisions of its army and 30,000 paramilitary troops on permanent deployment in the region.  

India can tie down a large number of Pakistan forces in this province.

The bonus for India in Balochistan is that it only needs to do so much. Afghanistan claims vast areas of the region denied to it by the Durand line. And lately, Shia Iran has also gotten active in the area.  

It is reassuring that the Iranian PM Hassan Rouhani himself publicly denied teaming up with India on Balochistan in March 2016 at a press conference. 

Having itself issued similar denials with regards to Kashmir for years - the Pakistani establishment must have got the message!  

The PM has introduced a new way of thinking in the balance of power in greater South Asia. In 1971 the Islamic Republic of Pakistan discovered that Islam is an inferior glue. 

With help from India, Iran, Afghanistan and a coalition of the willing keen to keep Islamic terror emitting from Pakistani soil in check – Islamabad may yet find out that the nuclear bomb is an uncertain guarantee.