McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014 April, 2014 | Page 112

class barriers. However, the leadership of
the nationalist movement has remained
fragmented, an apparent success of the
Pakistani state’s divide-and-rule tactics. The
insurgencies have been led by predominantly
two tribes, the Marri, and the Mengal30.
As Wimmer posits, the arbitrary
formation of districts by colonial powers can
encourage the formation of ethnic groups
and consciousness corresponding to the
ethnography of colonial division, a process
known as “ethnogenesis31.” This is apparent
in the case of Balochistan, albeit along tribal
as well as ethnic lines. The Pakistani state
has retained the 30 administrative districts
created by the Raj, and has manipulated
territorial ‘ethnogenesis’. It has kept the
northern tribes of the Pashtun Belt loyal to
Islamabad (for instance by granting them
great representation in the powerful military
institution) to allow it to contain the Baloch
nationalist
insurgency32.
Balochistan
continues to be divided into ‘A’ and ‘B’ areas
– ‘A’ areas correspond to the purview of the
‘regular’ state apparatus, consisting of urban
centres under the purview of the Pakistan
Penal Code and its enforcing agencies, the
Balochistan Police and the paramilitary
Frontier Corps (FC). ‘B’ areas, comprising
90% of Balochistan’s territory, are the tribal
areas still controlled by ‘Levies’ drawn from
local tribesmen, where judicial matters are
resolved by local jirgas, and the writ of the
state is limited33.
Pliant sardars are still being rewarded
by the state which allows them to exercise
their autocratic rule over their subjects
as they please. As Lieven points out, in
2009, of the sixty-five members of the
National Assembly, all barring three were
in the provincial government as ministers,
who, in addition to their ministerial salary
and staff, receive Rs. 50 million each from
Balochistan’s development budget to
Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country, 348
31
“Ethnic Conflict in Post‐Colonial Societies,” 643.
32
Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country, 341
33
Feyyaz, “Baloch Militancy,” 115
30

112 | McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014

spend on projects as they pleased. Many
of these government elites are sardars – in
fact seventy-seven of the eighty sardars in
Balochistan in 2009 were participants in
the Balochistan Government34. This has
encouraged the formation of distinct client
groups within the Balochistan bureaucracy,
and has given it a communal tint as most
of these tribal elite distribute state goods
and funds selectively, giving preference to
members of their own tribe and ethnicity.
The ‘ethnicisation’ of the state bureaucracy
occurs when a majority ‘states people’ come
to dominate the state apparatus, and in the
case of a clientelistic central government,
which distributes state goods such as civil
jobs and licenses selectively35. This is very
much the case in Pakistan. As much as
80% of the military, and around 55% of
the federal bureaucracy is dominated by
Punjabis. While 50% of the labourers
working at the gas fields are local, only 3%
are represented in the managerial ranks,
and only 12 out of 3,000 workers at the Oil
and Gas Development Corporation that
operates in the gas fields at Dera Bugti are
local36. Even though 3.9% of central jobs
have been reserved for Balochistan residents
since the 1970s under the rule of General
Zia-ul-Haq, even today this quota has failed
to be met37.
Insofar as the bureaucracy is an arena
coveted and contested primarily by the
educated middle classes, it is evident that
the Punjabi-leaning ‘ethnicisation’ of the
Pakistani bureaucracy has led the relatively
nascent Balochi educated middle class to
perceive a systematic discrimination in
the distribution of state power and goods,
especially central bureaucratic jobs. This has
aligned the middle classes with the current
Pakistan: A Hard Country, 365
Wimmer, “Ethnic Conflict in Post‐Colonial Societies,” 635-6.
36
G S Cheema, “Intrastate Conflicts and Development Strategies: The Baloch Insurgency in Pakistan”
Development Strategies, Identities, and Conflict in Asia
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 139.
37
Bansal, “Insurgency in Balochistan,” 186
34
35

radical nationalist movement. Nationalist
violence has n