Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar condemned the move. Gilani described the resolution as an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty. Khar termed it as an ‘act of foolhardy global-vigilantism’ and said such acts could only aggravate Pakistan’s already estranged ties with US. “It would distance the two allies even further”, she cautioned.

Rohrabacher resolution is clearly meant, and has been taken, as a warning to Islamabad from sections of the US political and security establishment: If Pakistan does not fall in line with the US agenda, it could find its soft underbelly coming under attack.

It is elementary that Pakistan’s human rights record is poor and Balochistan province has been battling with the phenomenon of missing persons – suspects picked up at random by security agencies, tortured and held incommunicado or disposed off without much fuss.  

The US wants Pakistan to cooperate with its Enterprise Iran and allow listening posts on Balochistan’s border with Iran, just as it had allowed the use of Shamsi airbase of Balochistan for drone attacks until recently. In recent years, the CIA has developed extensive ties to Jundallah, a Sunni Islamist group fighting to separate Iran’s Baloch region. Tehran believes that the group has sanctuaries in Pakistan. Islamabad is keen to see Balochi nationalist groups on the US terrorism list. Washington has no such interest.

Like in politics, in diplomacy, all the messages are not conveyed raw. The signals and the response there to, are always nuanced.

The American embassy in Islamabad tried to douse the flame. The US respects Pakistan’s sovereignty and does not support independence for Balochistan, the embassy said in a statement. Senior Congressional leaders quickly visited the Pakistani capital and conveyed the same message.

On its part, the Obama administration wasted no time to distance itself from the Rohrabacher resolution, for it is anxious for Pakistan to resume full and open support for the reconciliation process in Afghanistan.  

Congressman Rohrabacher, who leads the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, has a history of supporting aggressive anti-Pakistan measures in the US House of Representatives. “They’ve constantly been a two-faced enemy of the United States,” he said in an interview with the New York Times.

Rohrabacher introduced the resolution just a week after convening a Congressional hearing on Balochistan that included “expert” testimony on human rights abuses committed by Pakistani authorities and a call from Ralph Peters, a retired US military officer, for the US to break ties with Pakistan and support the creation of an independent Balochistan.

Balochistan is the richest province of Pakistan endowed with natural wealth but its people are the poorest in the country. They lack basic services like clean drinking water, health care, and education. Natural gas produced in the Sui gas fields doesn’t light their homes but is the engine of growth in the politically powerful Punjab province.

The appalling neglect has long fuelled resentment among Balochis and stirred up nationalist sentiment among the Balochi elite. Army action has made the whole province a battle ground; military and intelligence agencies are accused of kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial killings, since 2004 when the present cycle of savage repression started.

The bullet-riddled bodies of 231 Baloch nationalists were found by roadsides in Balochistan in 2011, according to the Centre for Research and Security Studies. Recently, several high-profile killings of Baloch politicians have sparked strikes and demonstrations. On January 31, the wife and daughter of Mir Bakhtiar Domki, a member of the Pakistan Assembly from Balochistan, were shot dead in Karachi while going to a wedding.

The Congressional resolution is a piece of Realpolitik. It supports the Balochi people, declaring that they “have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country” and “should be afforded the opportunity to choose their own status.” In making the case for a sovereign Baloch state, the resolution’s sponsors note that Balochi people are subject to violence and extrajudicial killings at the hands of Pakistan’s security services: “The political and ethnic discrimination they suffer is tragic and made more so because America is financing and selling arms to their oppressors in Islamabad.”

The resolution received strong backing from Baloch nationalists, though not all of them stand for ‘independent Balochistan’.

“This is a very big achievement,” said Suleman Daud, an exiled Baloch tribal leader who reportedly assisted Rohrabacher in drafting the resolution. In an article published by the Longview, Texas News-Journal, Louie Gohmert boasts that he and the resolution’s two other sponsors met with Balochi nationalist leaders in Germany last month.

Many of the nationalist groups represent privileged sections of the Baloch society like the feudal sardars. Groups such as the Baloch Republican Party (BRP) and Baloch National Party (BNP) have repeatedly targetted Punjabi and Pashtun migrants.

President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani have taken some initiatives to find a solution to the Baloch imbroglio. Success did not come their way. Gilani has given a call for an All Party Conference (APC), though he did not fix a date for the meet. The call met with lukewarm response with some nationalist leaders asking whether the Army Chief also would be invited to APC.   

Undoubtedly, American interests in Balochistan go beyond the local political and insurgent issues. The area has geopolitical significance as it contains the Gwadar deep-sea port, which Beijing has developed to gain secure access to the West Asian energy corridor.
    
For the present, however, Balochistan will remain a small blip on the American radar as the immediate objective of mending US-Pak relations has been met. It will not like to let the Balochistan issue to interfere with the larger goal of cooperation on the Afghan theatre.  The Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar had a useful meeting in London on the sidelines of a global meet. It was the first top level meeting between the two countries since the November air strike.

US-Pakistan relations can be expected to be fully normalized in March. Pakistan has already softened its stance on NATO supplies and air supply route is back in full operation. Pakistan is also facilitating US-Taliban talks in Qatar.