Akbar Bugti, the 79-year-old historical Balochi leader, was assassinated and a state of emergency was declared in Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan, where riots broke out when his assassination was announced.

Balochistan? The Balochs? Those words are totally unknown in France. The Palestinian issue was ignored until the 1970s, the Kurd issue was ignored until the 1990s, so is the Baloch issue nowadays.

The Balochs are a nation made of 12 million people, divided by the imperialists between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran; in each country, the Baloch regionsare the poorest and most oppressed.

In Pakistan, 55% of the Baloch population lives under poverty line; the literacy rate is 34 % among men and 14,1 % among women, 25% of the villages have an electricity access and 20% have an access to safe drinking water.

Revolts are drown in blood; torture and « disappearances » are used as well as bombings and military operations, which made over the very last years 300.000 Baloch refugees.

Historically, the English imperialism acted so that its former India Empire divides into various States founded on religious bases (India and Pakistan/Bangladesh); it also acted so that Pakistan strengthens by invading in 1948 the State of Qalat, which declared its independance in 1947.

The State of Qalat, which matched up approximatively to Balochistan, had been colonized by the English during the 19th century; Balochistan was partly dismembered : a part accrued to Iran in 1871 (the Goldsmith line), another part accrued to Afghanistan in 1895 (the Durand line).

Afganistan also planned in 1947-48 to invade the region, considered as its southern appendix.

Akbar Bugti, who has just been assassinated, used to be one of the leaders of the Baloch national liberation movement; he was the source of the Balochistan Liberation Army.

Despite his old age and the fact that he did not lead the military operations himself, he used to be an important national personage and therefore a first choice target for the Pakistani army, inter alia because he pointed up the presence of the US imperialism as a major hurdle to the realization of Balochistan.

Indeed, Akbar Bugti noticed well that the USA want to build the largest military base in Central Asia, in the « made in China » Gwadar port.

Akbar Bugti was aware that the huge natural resources of Balochistan captivate the imperialists’ attention.

The Pakistani army took a chance on killing him, to the great displeasure of Pakistani left-wing, mourning the devastating effect it will have, since Akbar Bugti used to be a leader of one of the two largest tribes : the Bugtis (made up of about a hundred thousands people, the second one is the Marris).

Indeed, the Baloch nation is made up of 500 tribes, the main ones being the Rinds, Lashers, Marris, Jamots, Ahmedzais, Bugti Domkis, Magsis, Khosas, Rakhashanis, Dashtis, Umranis, Nosherwanis, Gichkis, Buledis, Sanjarani and Khidai.

The Baloch nation has been fighting for 50 years. The Baloch Liberation Front awas founded in 1964, followed by the Balochistan People’s Liberation Organisation; during the insurgency in 1973-1977, the Pakistani army sent 100.000 soldiers and, with the help of the Iranian army, crushed the rebellion in bloodbaths.

The Baloch region in Iran (the provinces of Sistan-Balochistan, Khorasan and Golestan) is actually a « special security zone », a victim of the most brutal national oppression, and the rebellions keep spreading as well as national structures (such as the Balochistan United Front founded in 2003).

The US imperialism, in its competition with the French, Russian and German imperialists for the control of Iran, benefits from that oppression in its attempt to manipulate the Baloch organizations, in the same way that it attempts to benefit from the claims of the national minorities in Iran (such as the « Congress of Nationalities » – Baloch, Azeri, Kurd, Arab and Turkmen – which was held in London in 2005 and was concluded with a « Manifesto » for a federal, democratic and secular Iran).

The Baloch national liberation movement needs a large internationalist support, in order to avoid the traps set by the imperialisms just like in Palestine or Kurdistan.

It is very important, not to be trapped in the totally wrong talk about a « war against Islam », only aiming at disguising religious reactionary ideas with a revolutionary style.

Likewise, all the talk about the « Arab-Islamic world » must be rejected. It is a disaster that the « Collective to support the resistance of the Middle Eastern people » founded in Paris talks about « the total war engaged by the American and Israeli governments against the people of the Arab-Islamic world since September 11, 2001, that is to say the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the aggressive plans against Syria and Iran. »

This thesis is ridiculous because neither Afghanistan nor Iran are Arab countries, because there are Christian minorities in the Arab countries, because numerous oppressed people and nations do not have an Arabi culture (Balochs, Kurds, Assyrian Chaldeans, Laz, etc.) and not even an Islamic culture.

Balochistan is not an Arab country and is oppressed by States upholding Islam. Kurdistan is not an Arab country and is oppressed by a non-Arab secular State.

But aren’t their national liberation movement topical?

The current events are actually the birth and development of a second great revolutionary wave which, after the first one going from Russia in 1917 to the cultural revolution in China in 1966-1976, signals a still greater and larger assault against imperialism.

What must be the focus of every revolutionary is this revolutionary framework, proletarian internationalism, and not the sole « resistance » to imperialist policies, because reformism – even armed – is not revolutionary and will always eventually sell itself to the imperialist power competing with its own enemy, in the same way that the Eastern European countries sold themselves to the US and Western European imperialisms in their attempt to free themselves from the Russian social-imperialism.

The current struggle is neither the one of imperialism against the Arab-Islamic people, nor the one of the Western world against Islam; the current struggle is the international proletariat’s rising against imperialism and marching towards world people’s war, of which the people’s wars in Peru, India, Philippines, Turkey… are but the very dayspring.

« Only when imperialism is eliminated can peace prevail. The day will come when the paper tigers will be wiped out. But they won’t become extinct of their own accord, they need to be battered by the wind and the rain. » (Mao Zedong)

Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist Maoist) August 2006