Akbar Bugti
Sardar Akbar Shahbaz Khan Bugti is the Tumandar (head) of the Warrior Bugti tribe, and leader of the most fierce armed resistance against the Pakistan Army & Government, operating mostly in Balochistan, Pakistan. He is a true Baloch Nationalist who has currently waged a war against Pakistan and vowed to make General Musharraf's life difficult.
He is the son of Nawab Mehrab Khan Bugti and a grandson of Sir Shahbaz Khan Bugti. He was born in Barkhan on July 12, 1927. At present (2006) , he is 79 years old. He was educated at Oxford but he lives by laws more than a thousand years old. Legend has it that he killed his first man when he was only 12, and that he killed another 100 men to avenge the murder of his favorite son. It's not his values, but his authority over a well-armed tribe of 187,000 people in Pakistan's Balochistan Province that worries the government.
President Pervez Musharraf issued threats against Nawab Akbar Bugti saying, ‘You wont know what hit you!’ with Bugti saying, ‘Now, we’ve gone into the “guerilla mode” of warfare, I’ll give you a war you wont forget and send you back to the barracks where you belong!’
He is accused of being a Warlord and having a private militia (army) numbered in thousands, hundreds of murders, torture, running private prisons and courts and is currently in hiding from government forces in the mountain ranges of Dera Bugti.
Jamil Akbar Bugti, Talal Akbar Bugti and Shahzwar Akbar Khan Bugti are the sons of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti. Brahamdagh Bugti is the grandson of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.
Slyvia Matheson wrote a book on him called ' The Tigers of Balochistan'.
Background
Nawab Akbar Bugti was elected in a bye-election to the National Assembly of Pakistan in May 1958 to fill the vacancy created as a result of the assassination of the incumbent, Dr Khan Sahib and sat on the government benches as a member of the ruling coalition.
Nawab Akbar Bugti (Republican) served as Minister of State (Interior) in the government of Prime Minister Sir Feroz Khan Noon (Republican) from September 20, 1958 - October 7, 1958, when the cabinet was dismissed on the declaration of Martial Law by President Iskander Mirza.
He was arrested and convicted by a Military Tribunal in 1960, and subsequently disqualified from holding public office. As a result of his legal battles, he did not contest the 1970 general elections. Instead he campaigned on behalf of his younger brother, Sardar Ahmed Nawaz Bugti, a candidate of the National Awami Party.
However, Nawab Akbar Bugti developed differences with the NAP leadership, especially the new Balochistan Governor, Mir Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo. Nawab Bugti informed the Federal Government and President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Pakistan Peoples Party) about the alleged London Plan, which resulted in the dismissal of the provincial governor as well as the Chief Minister Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal and his cabinet on February 14, 1973.
The next day the Federal Government appointed Nawab Akbar Bugti as the Governor of Balochistan, and the Pakistan Army was deployed in the province as part of a crackdown on the National Awami Party.
Nawab Akbar Bugti resigned on January 1, 1974 after disagreeing with the manner in which the Federal Government was carrying out policies in Balochistan.
There was a lull in his activities when General Rahimuddin Khan was appointed as Governor of Balochistan in 1978. Bugti remained silent throughout the course of Rahimuddin's rule, which was often characterized by hostility towards the Baloch Sardars.
In 1988, Nawab Bugti joined the Balochistan National Alliance and was elected Chief Minister on February 4, 1989. His government frequently disagreed with the Federal Government led by the Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan Peoples Party).
Nawab Akbar Bugti resigned on August 6, 1990 when the provincial assembly was dissolved by Governor of Balochistan General Muhammad Musa Khan in accordance with the instructions of President Ghulam Ishaq Khan exercising his authority by virtue of Article 58 (2 b) of the Constitution of Pakistan.
The incoming caretaker Chief Minister Mir Humayun Khan Marri was the son-in-law of Nawab Akbar Bugti.
For the 1990 General Elections, Nawab Akbar Bugti formed his own political party, the Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP), being Balochistan's single largest party and was elected to the provincial assembly.
In 1993, Nawab Akbar Bugti was elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan representing the JWP in parliament.
Bugti was involved in failed insurgencies in Balochistan in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He is at the forefront of a tribal war of independence, currently waging in Balochistan. Bugti provides the public face and political support for the insurgency while his grandson Brahamdagh Bugti leads the Bugti tribesmen.
In Hiding: It started last year when the clashes between the government forces and the Bugti tribesmen had ensued after Musharraf and Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti had publicly traded threats following rocket attacks on Sui gas plant, presumably by the Bugti tribe to blackmail the gas company into increasing the rent of its land on which the plant is located. In fact Musharraf had all but carried out his threat (they would not know what hit them) when a couple of bombs landed in the house of Akbar Khan. He escaped narrowly. Two others were not that lucky. Indeed, there never was any doubt in anybody’s mind about the brute capability of the government forces to wipe out the opposition in no time. But what perhaps had stopped the government from taking the plunge was the determined display of an equally brute resolve by Akbar Khan to fight to his last man. Not that it was not known to Musharraf how Akbar Khan would react to the threat of use of force or its actual use. Still, he had perhaps thought that the shock and awe that he seemingly believes his Army exudes in Pakistan would terrorise Akbar into blinking. But instead we saw Musharraf blinking and sending his political arm into the fray to broker a ceasefire. But even Shujaat, a family friend could not persuade Akbar Khan to vacate the forward positions his tribesmen held without the government forces doing the same simultaneously from across the road. This was a question of saving your face. But perhaps to his foreign friends who have been providing Musharraf with a helping hand to do what he pleased in his country as long as he kept capturing Al Qaeda terrorists, it was not a very reassuring sight to see their hero getting entangled in a war of his own which could divert his attention from the "real war". That the US has an interest in Balochistan has already been established in a recent story in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh. The story had recounted how Washington had been using the province to mount commando operations inside Iran. So, the ceasefire on Akbar Khan’s terms. But if one knew the nature of the two contesting sides, one would be too reluctant to bet on the ceasefire holding for too long.
Since fresh military operations began early this year against Nawab Akbar Bugti, he has been in hiding with anti-personnel mines encircling his mountain hideout, the octogenarian warrior mixes 17th century guerrilla tactics with modern weaponry to take on the might of Pakistan's security forces after fierce fighting broke out between his tribal forces and the Pakistani Paramilitary Forces in 2005. The cause of the fighting was an attack by Bugti tribesmen on paramilitary troops, which was a violation of a peace accord Bugti had reached with the government. Bugti now regularly issues threats from his secret cave hideouts while his loyal tribesmen attack government forces and installations. Nawab Mohammed Akbar Khan Bugti, a former provincial governor and chief minister, has taken to the hills of his fiefdom in the south-west province of Balochistan to direct an increasingly bloody insurgency. He has sought refuge in a series of large caves in the mountains of his 5,000 sq mile tribal area, Dera Bugti. All his men have spread out in large numbers in different areas of the mountainous region to engage in 'guerrilla warfare' with the Pakistan Army while thousands are said to have been protecting and guarding Nawab Bugti from any kind of attack from the Pakistani security forces, be it air or ground attacks. The Nawab hastily left his home town with several thousand armed tribesmen a few months ago after the Pakistan military bombed it and surrounding villages as part of a wider campaign against Baloch leaders. He keeps changing location in order to avoid being spotted by government spy planes with his band of guerrilla fighters who're armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated weapons and are numbered in thousands. They are equipped with Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, mortar shells, anti tank and anti aircraft guns, night vision goggles, generators, satellite phones, and powerful wireless sets that match the ones used by the security forces. Security officials say Nawab Bugti is not only financing the rebels, he is also taking care of the logistics of providing them with communications equipment, food and arms. Government officials say they are being supplied weapons and food on a daily basis by the Bugtis, who often use camels to transport the supplies across the hills as the roads are blockaded by the Frontier Corps. Frontier Corps officials estimate that logistics alone are costing Nawab Bugti upwards of $2,000 a day.
External links
 | This Pakistani biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4680290.stm
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4652882.stm
3. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C04%5C08%5Cstory_8-4-2006_pg3_4
4. http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2006-weekly/nos-19-03-2006/dia.htm#1
5. http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0603/dis_moore.html
6. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/21/wpak21.xml
7. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4372789.stm
8. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4371641.stm
9. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4216965.stm
10. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4243129.stm
11. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4195933.stm
12. http://www.dawn.com/herald/marmain06.htm#3
13. http://www.dawn.com/herald/feb06.htm#2
14. http://baltimore.indymedia.org/mod/search/dosearch/index.php?dosearch=1&medium=&searchtext=Bugti&form_section=&lang=en_US&month_start=&day_start=&year_start=&month_end=05&day_end=18&year_end=2006&orderby=score+DESC&submit=Search
15. http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-03/2006-03-02-voa52.cfm
16. http://www.flonnet.com/fl2302/stories/20060210000706200.htm
17. http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/28/stories/2006032804231000.htm
18. http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/05/23/pakistan.baluch.ap/
19. http://www.dawn.com/2005/01/19/nat5.htm
20. http://balochwarna.org/modules/articles/article.php?id=128
21. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/world/asia/02pakistan.html?ei=5088&en=bc5195902af514ae&ex=1301630400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
Open the links below in Windows Media Player or RealPlayer and watch:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/news_web/video/40958000/bb/40958435_bb_16x9.asx
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news_web/video/9012da680048130/bb/09012da6800483cc_16x9_bb.asx