Islamabad: Pakistan risks a widening insurgency on its volatile Afghan border unless it quickly settles long-running grievances of its impoverished ethnic Baloch minority that erupted in unrest after the killing of a renegade tribal leader, analysts said.
Bugti's killing had sparked five days of rioting that left six people dead, dozens wounded and 700 under arrest, and his supporters had warned of continued violence unless his body was recovered.
His death even stirred up separatism calls among protesters at a funeral service attended by more than 10,000 in Balochistan's capital, Quetta.
Bugti led an often-violent campaign to win greater autonomy and control over natural resources extracted in Balochistan, an impoverished region bordering Iran and Afghanistan that has witnessed decades of low-level violence.
Grievances
Pakistani and foreign analysts, including a former US envoy to Pakistan, agreed that President Gen Pervez Musharraf's military-led government must quickly settle grievances with Baloch tribespeople or risk a continuation or widening of the current conflict.
"It is so important for the government to reach out to the Baloch people as quickly as possible," said Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. "I don't think they can leave off political negotiations too long because then it gets harder to get them back on track." Pakistani officials acknowledged that Balochistan the poorest of Pakistan's four province has not received the government assistance that it has long required.
Despite possessing large reserves of natural gas, coal and oil, just 25 per cent of villages in Balochistan are electrified and only 20 per cent have safe drinking water.
Neglected
Musharraf's spokesman, Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan, said violence in the province had blocked government development projects, including schools, hospitals and dams.
"Balochistan has been neglected in the past and the people have suffered," Sultan told The Associated Press. "Things need to be done to fix the problems."
Bugti's son, Talal, scoffed at the government sincerity in helping Baloch tribespeople, citing his father's death in a Pakistani military raid as an example of how Islamabad truly regards his people.
Talal Bugti also accused the government of detaining and "making disappear" hundreds of Baloch activists and tribespeople in a campaign to crush opposition to the government.
"The public is feeling insecure and as if anything can happen to them," he said in a telephone interview from Quetta. "Baloch people need full autonomy and control over their resources instead of the federal government taking them."