Ataullah Mengal - Differences With NAP Leaders

Differences With NAP Leaders

By this time a clear divide between NAP leader Wali Khan and Baloch leaders Ataullah Mengal and Ghaus Bux Bizenjo. Mengal and many other Baloch nationalists increasingly believed that the Army was responsible for a brutal military operation and that they should be opposed by force, whereas Wali Khan felt more personal bitterness towards Ali Bhutto as he felt Bhutto had ordered his assassination on more than one occasion. This divide turned into a total split when Ataullah Mengal allied himself with Khair Bakhsh Marri and attempted to take over the National Democratic Party (a successor to the then banned NAP). Sherbaz Khan Mazari, president of the National Democratic Party and a champion for the Baloch cause tried to reconcile these differences but did not succeed. When this attempt failed Ataullah Mengal left the party.

After Bhutto was deposed in a military coup by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1977, Rahimuddin Khan was appointed the province's governor and martial law administrator, beginning a tenure characterized by hostility towards the sardars. Mengal subsequently went into exile and took sanctuary in the United Kingdom that year, where he established contact with the authorities of the erstwhile Soviet Union through the regime in Kabul and received financial and logistics support from Moscow.

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