Punjabs Delightful Baluchistan Girls

Baluchistan is a
province of
contrasts. It has
some of the bleakest
landscape in the
country with grim,
jagged mountains,
barren and arid land
where the sparse
greenery shrivels
and wilts, but
hidden away are some
stunningly beautiful
places.

Baluchistan is the
biggest of
Pakistan's four
provinces in terms of
area, accounting for
44 percent of the
total. it has
the smallest
population, with
roughly 10 million
of Pakistan's
170million people
living there. It
borders Iran to the
west, Afghanistan to
the north, and its
southern coast runs
along the Arabian
sea,
providing historic
links to the gulf
Arab lands.

It is part of other
provinces, Sindh,
Punjab and north
west frontier
province.
Baluchistan is an
anti-clerical
province whose
tribes have nothing
to do with the sort
of Islam-ism of the
Taliban or Al Qaeda.
Yet the Pakistani
government has tried
to tar the Baluchistans
with the Islam's
brush, in part to
keep the
international
community from
paying more
attention to the
real problems in the
province. The
central government
in Islamabad also
has sought to blame
the unrest on
"foreign hands,"
with the main
culprits being
India, Iran and the
u. , depending on
who the audience is.
Lately, the
government says
"criminal elements"
lay behind the
insurgency. The
truth is that the
development level is
abysmal throughout
the province. Many
of the baluchis'
claims could have
been satisfied
without jeopardizing
the country's
territorial
integrity. The
leaders of the
baluch nationalist
movement have made
it known that they
would be satisfied
with a generous
version of autonomy.
Instead, the
conflict is now
spreading.
Reconciling
conflicting
interests and
seeking fair
allocations of the
costs and benefits
of development is
what governments are
supposed to do. And
history suggests
that democratic
governments, for all
their drawbacks,
tend to produce
fairer allocations
than dictatorships
do. Baluchistan is
one of the tribal
provinces of
pakistan, wedged
between Afghanistan
and india, and in
tribal regions, one
needs protection.
Especially the khan
of kalat, which
literally means king
of the fort, the
chief of chiefs. But
it's not his own
people he needs
protection from.
Khan suleiman's
province is rich in
resources that
pakistan wants to
continue to plunder
and lease, without
proper revenues to
the baluch people.
As we sit on a
mountain of gold,
he says,   the
devil sits on us.... the
baluch nation, are
being
indiscriminately
bombed, arrested,
kidnapped, and
disappeared by the
pakistan military,
and he's powerless
to stop it. Harrison
has called it a
slow-motion
genocide, and human
rights groups refer
to it as ethnic
cleansing. We
have 700 miles of
coast and oil and
gas and gold,âs says
Khan Suleiman,
referring to
baluchistan's perch
on the arabian sea.
 We try to do
something to have
rights to it, we get
spanked. We resist
every 10 years and
get spanked every 10
years. and for the
past few years, he
has been in the
middle of an unseen
war that few beyond
the regional press
have reported.
Baluchistan is
sparsely populated
and overwhelmingly a
land of rocks.
Flatbed trucks pass,
carrying enormous
marble hunks as big
as cars. An old man
sits by the side of
the road, a mountain
of stones to his
left, a pile of
smaller stones to
his right, he in the
middle with a
hammer. But the more
one looks at these
majestic, dusty
gray-brown
mountains, the more
one sees they are
not at all dull, but
coyly streaked in
color. rubies,
diamonds, lapis
lazuli, gold,

emeralds says
Khan Suleiman. â it
is, of course, the
enormous reserves of
natural gas that
have perked up the
eyes and ears of the
major powers.  He lists
the US, Iran, India,
China, and Russia.
We pass walls
scrawled with
graffiti, written in
delicate urdu
script.
 We
pull into a gas
station, and the
khan is met by a
group of men that
somehow knew he'd be
stopping here.
Baluchistan is the
backbone of
Pakistan.