Word: baluchistan
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...years old, but Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, a feudal lord in Pakistan's rugged Baluchistan province, wants to fight to the death. A Kalashnikov rifle strapped to his back, Bugti travels by camel through desert ravines and hobbles up cliffs to hidden caves where he plots ways for his Baluch tribesmen to ambush the Pakistani army. "It's better to die?as the Americans say?with your spurs on," says Bugti. "Instead of a slow death in bed, I'd rather death come to me while I'm fighting for a purpose." That purpose is to make life as difficult...
...That's not going to be easy. The Baluch, a distinct ethnic group spread over Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, are fiercely independent and have been a thorn in Islamabad's side for decades regardless of who is in power. Baluchistan is rich in gas and minerals, yet it is Pakistan's poorest province. The government says it wants to develop the territory to improve the lives of the Baluch and to secure the country's energy needs. But the Baluch say they have been marginalized and do not receive adequate royalties from the central authorities for the extraction...
...granted access to piped gas from the Sui fields on their land only a few years ago even though the gas had been pumping for decades and had already been flowing to major cities and towns. The government is also building a multimillion-dollar port, Gwadar, off Baluchistan's southern coast, which Musharraf hopes will one day rival Dubai in the nearby Gulf. The Baluch fear, however, that Gwadar will draw so many settlers from Pakistan's other provinces that they will become an underclass minority in their own land...
...Baluch clans have gone on the offensive. They are sabotaging railways, blowing up gas pipelines and electricity cables, and attacking soldiers both in their garrisons and while they are on patrol on Baluchistan's desert roads. A mysterious group calling itself the Baluchistan Liberation Army has also sprung up. Bugti and the other tribal leaders say they have no link to the B.L.A., but Islamabad says the group is a creation of the feudal chieftains and that the insurgency is backed by India?an allegation New Delhi denies. B.L.A. snipers use World War II-vintage Lee-Enfield rifles to pick...
...Bugti symbolizes Baluchistan's character. He says he killed his first man when he was just 12, and his life ever since has been a series of unending blood feuds with other clans and with the Pakistani military. Bugti sees himself as a warrior fighting a noble cause. He is self-taught and an avid reader?until March, the library in his rambling, earthen castle was lined with hundreds of books on philosophy, Western and oriental religions and the European classics. Then the castle, and the library with it, were destroyed by army cannon fire. Bugti is a vegetarian...