#16 From an Atimes article
He's 80 years old, but Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, a feudal lord in Pakistan's rugged Baluchistan province, wants to fight to the death. A Kalashnikov rifle strapped to his back, Bugti travels by camel through desert ravines and hobbles up cliffs to hidden caves where he plots ways for his Baluch tribesmen to ambush the Pakistani army. "It's better to die—as the Americans say—with your spurs on," says Bugti. "Instead of a slow death in bed, I'd rather death come to me while I'm fighting for a purpose."
Bugti symbolizes Baluchistan's character. He says he killed his first man when he was just 12, and his life ever since has been a series of unending blood feuds with other clans and with the Pakistani military. Bugti sees himself as a warrior fighting a noble cause. He is self-taught and an avid reader—until March, the library in his rambling, earthen castle was lined with hundreds of books on philosophy, Western and oriental religions and the European classics. Then the castle, and the library with it, were destroyed by army cannon fire. Bugti is a vegetarian, a rarity among the meat-chomping Baluch, and sups every night on a bowl of green chili peppers, according to a frequent guest.
Unlike the Taliban and al-Qaeda operating further north along the mountainous Afghan border region, however, the Baluch are not Islamist militants. "They are secular and anti-Taliban," says Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group, "yet American guns are being used against them." (Bugti says he's an agnostic, and some clan leaders espouse socialist values and enjoy whisky.) Baluch sources say that U.S. surveillance aircraft and Cobra gunships have targeted tribesmen. The State Department official says, "We've seen no evidence that our equipment has been used to violate human rights."
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QUETTA: Tribal chief Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, who was killed in a military operation on August 26, was laid quietly to rest amidst tight security at 10am in Dera Bugti on Friday.