The Baloch in the Persian/Arab Gulf Region

This chapter will open the discussion on people from South Central Asia and their role in the Persian/Arab Gulf region and beyond during the 19th and 20th centuries. The major motivations to Asian movements were originated from environmental issues as well as from socio-economic conditions in their land. These conditions implied numerous consequences such as the expansion of lawless habits throughout their region, enslaving by external powerful groups, and the progressive creation of new roles in the Persian Gulf region such as the military one. Very little has been published about these socalled “diasporas communities”. For a long time available literature, not generous at all on this particular topic, did portray the Asians as a monolithic group of people who migrated in search for a better life. Nevertheless, we try to re-read the role of the Asian communities and especially their migrations throughout the Persian Gulf region. Within this framework, the realities of terrain, climate and maritime connections and interconnections played a crucial influence on the construction of the Asian identity throughout contemporary history. This paper aims to focus on more than one littoral and more than one region, with the object of analyzing different perspectives both chronologically and methodologically. It should be noted at the outset that ethnocentric views–especially Eurocentric ones–have informed numerous studies for a long time, and sometimes still do. In this regard, most of western oriented strategic studies and analysis on the role of South Central Asian region and of their people throughout history did focus on external menaces, interests and priorities. Therefore, the gradual creation of an empty space power in this area often lead to wrong focuses on the processes of dominance; at the same time, numerous contemporary local and regional interpretations were too blinded by resentment, sorrow and injustice to offer lucid analysis. International, as well as regional policies that did ignore consistently both of these perspectives were, and probably will, destined to fail. Consequently, we believe that an inward looking to the region and to the, true, identity of Asian groups and tribes, essentially a cultural identity regardless of political boundaries, could ease new, and more empathic approaches to the study of their roles throughout the broader Persian/Arab Gulf region.