Once again, it has reached a boiling point with 8-9 rockets fired and 41 bombs exploded in the Sui gas plant in the last six month. Rockets and bomb attacks on government installation were always routine earlier as well. But this time around, the situation obtaining in the province is more than ordinary and has reached a crisis level. In early January, unknown people rained rockets on Sui's giant gas plant. The damage inflicted was so intensive that the plant had to be shut down for several days affecting gas supply all over the country for domestic use as well as CNG for motor vehicles. The saboteurs also blew up the pillars of electric transmission lines, plunging a large part of the province in darkness.

President Musharraf's angry reaction was to threaten stern action against the so called nationalist and sub-nationalist elements. He told a private television channel: "Don't push us. This is not the '70s. They will not even know what has hit them." And as an immediate measure, the federal government has deployed strong paramilitary contingents to guard the vital installations. To this, the nationalist Baloch leaders have reacted with defiant statements. At an all party conference in Balochistan, the leaders demanded immediate withdrawal of the troops.

Notwithstanding Islamabad's bravado, the concerned Pakistan's have likened the situation to that of East Pakistan in 1971. They find an unmistakable similarity between the situation, now prevailing in Balochistan and one that existed in East Pakistan thirty-four years before: the same exploitation of the provincial resources, keeping their people away from the corridors of power, and a growing alienation with the centre. Yet in the face of the arrest of the provocations, a military crackdown has been ruled out at least for the present. There is an absolute unanimity among the politicians and policy makers in the country on the imperative of avoiding a military action.

This is because much of the country, including the neighbouring regions, is already in a state of turmoil. Up in North Waziristan there is still unrest, although South Waziristan was "pacified." In South Afghanistan, violence and armed attacks by the remnants of Talibans continues. The Gilgit region is tense after the killing of the venerable divine Agha Ziauddin. The countrywide law and order situation continues to be bad.

In the middle of January, as the troops were taking position in Sui to protect its mammoth gas purification plant much to the disdain of the locals, everything around was hostile to them. In an unsavoury security milieu exacerbated by deepening mistrust and bitterness in Sui itself over the proposed garrison there, the forced land acquisition, the rape of a female doctor in Sui's field hospital and the harassments of the locals at the hands of Defence Security Guards, Islamabad can ill afford a showdown with its resource rich and strategic province.

Therefore the country's politicians and policy makers have rightly voiced their opposition to any military crackdown on the neglected, deprived, and oppressed people of Balochistan, although the army along with paramilitary forces have already taken up positions and dug bunkers along the route right from Kashmir to Sui and Dera Bugti. The checkposts are manned by ever vigilant rangers. The Rambare Rifles have taken up positions on mountain tops overlooking Dera Bugti where Nawab Akbar Bugti is based. Both sides are eyeball to eyeball in Dera Bugti where Bugti tribesmen have also taken up position.

In spite of this war-like situation, the army is rather circumspect and likely to avoid a clash. Notwithstanding the provocation of the tribals who are not in the least intimidated by the army's all out preparation, the army is seldom oblivious of the experience of 1971. It burnt its fingers in the furnace of East Pakistan and learnt its worst ignominy.

In 1971 no one could prevent the Pakistan army from pouncing on the unarmed people of East Pakistan, with the lust for power and domination together with a measure of hate, contempt, and vendetta, a heady brew was prepared in Islamabad for its self-perdition, bringing it the ignominy of defeat, surrender, and dismemberment of the nation.

Pakistanis are still haunted by the bitter memory. Pakistan has produced luminaries in various disciplines as well as visionaries in statecraft, but it is a pity that no one could stop its deliberate, cold-blooded murder of innocent millions. Balochis are perhaps lucky that no one can push the Pakistan military against them if, of course, they leant any lesson in East Pakistan and have remembered it.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.