Mengal (Urdu: مینگل) is a Brahui tribe in Balochistan, Pakistan. The Mengal tribal area is around 70,000 square miles, stretching from the Helmand River in the North to Lasbela District in the south, and bordering on the province of Sindh to the east.[3] For many years the Mengal tribe has been seeking greater autonomy from the Pakistan government.[4][5][6] The Pakistani government and the Mengals have been clashing for the past four decades, for various reasons.[7][8] Large-scale military operations were carried out in the area ofKhuzdar in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1973, the Pakistani government headed by the former Prime Minister Late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, with support of the Shah of Iran, carried out one of the bloodiest military operations in the history of Balochistan against the Mengal and Marri tribes which lasted for 5 years, during which around 35,000 Baloch fighters and 6000 army soldiers were killed.
The Mengal tribe has over 250,000 people and they speak Brahui, a Dravidian language that has been heavily influenced by other Iranian languages spoken in the area, especially Balochi.[1][2] The Mengal are now closely linked to the Baloch people, with whom they have substantially intermingled and whose cultural traits they have absorbed. The tribe can be divided in two major branches: Zagar Mengal andShahizai Mengal.[edit]Demographics
Tribal area
Politics
Prominent People
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Mengal Tribe
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