The recent fight between BLA and BLF is not a sudden rift that has been caused by nothingness. It is the latest expression of antagonisms that have been fancying at the fire over the years. What once was shrouded in platitudes, corporate claims and well-preserved silence is now right in front of our faces. The words have fixed, the accusations have been blown off and the image of a united front has already started to sink into its own crudities. The real crisis cannot be ignored as soon as the groups that claim to be fighting on the same side start accusing one another of being state agents. That is no talk of faith. It is the tongue of terror and distrust, a battle of strength between the rulers who can now count not even upon themselves.

That is why the conflict in question matters. It tells us that it is no longer a question of strategy, ideology or resistance. It is about power in the movement per se. Who has land, who has warriors, who has access to money and arms, who only has rights to decide who to be loyal, who determines who is to be loyal. As soon as the movement reaches the stage, when the internal opponents are primarily a threat even greater than the so-called enemy, the political claims of this movement begin to lose their validity. It cannot be a movement that by the aftermath of suspicion and sectional retaliation consumes itself on behalf of the people. after which the strongest of the instincts is no longer a representation. It is survival.

Here, especially eye-opening is the evidence that can be linked to Sarfraz Bangalzai. In interviews published by PTV, ARY News and Geo News he has referred to a climate where even suspicion is a death sentence. It is a cold thought, but it gives good sense to much that is now coming into view. Loyalty is not really a safeguard in such a culture because even an imputation can be enough to destroy an individual. A fighter will never die in the state or in battle with a foreigner. He can die simply because a colleague within his own organization realized he was overly learned, he had crossed the line or he was a pain. 

That is why it is hard to concur with the idea that this war is largely ideological. The front of the crowd is often ideology. Control is the real contest. Control over space, over routes and over power, over the distribution of resources. The galling fact is that money, logistics and command structure squabbles have an extensive past record of turning fatal in armed organizations. The charge of betrayal begins to play a functional role when there is scarcity or rivalry of resources. They remove rivals. They silence dissent. They pose a threat to low rung warriors. Traitor is not the only term that has been used there. It becomes a weapon.

This is worse still in terms of the dimension of classes. That BLA leadership still remains rooted on a Sardari elite and that BLF is further turning to middle and lower classes as its foundation is no sociological nitpick. It goes to the nub of what is causing these divisions to become all the more acute. The difference of classes defines the listeners, the givers of orders, the ones to take orders, as well as a life to be discarded. Without a movement that projects the hierarchies in the society to the movement, the same patterns of domination will be replicated. And there are not two only armed groups fighting. It also falls between two political cultures all founded on inherited authority and the other founded on amassed resentment. Tension like this does not persist forever.

The dark picture is further grim thanks to the history of splinter groups and former commanders. People who have been linked to groups such as UBA have already reported that organizations such as these are not tolerant of dissent. They crush it. This is significant because at one point or another a movement that does not embrace criticism turns all questions inside it into security issues. The other opinion is faithless. A personal disagreement is conspiracy. One of the foes heads is turned into a traitor. Only a silence can be impressed by such a structure; it cannot exude trust. It instils fear and fear is not a stable foundation of mass politics.

BLA is also reported to have the same attitude towards smaller groups such as BRA. Such a scornful treatment of lesser actors and even an eagerness to relegate the memory of a historic figure as historically central as Akbar Bugti shows that prestige in this space is not based on a bedrock of memory and sacrifice. It is pegged on existing leverage. Whoever is fuller of men, and farther, and seen more in operations, hath a right to say, who is legitimate, and who is false. The rest are all expected to follow suit or be washed away into irrelevancy. That is not unity. Discipline in the form of dominance.

Better still, have there been charges that the commanders have been spied out through informers and spies among themselves. Suppose, then, that this is so, then it follows that these parties are not selling propaganda per se. They are competing by equipping each other with what they know. It signifies the loss of secrecy about operations and, with it, the last pretense of a common purpose. That it is dangerous on the battle field, is no more just, to common soldiers, than that it is dangerous in the underworld. It is in the room, in the camp, on the chain of command. This friend of to-day will be the persecutor of to-morrow. And then it becomes common, paranoia is no longer an exception. It happens to be the operating system.

© Eurasia Review