Mengal (Balochi: مینگل) is an ethnic Brahui tribe inhabiting Balochistan, Pakistan.[1]
According to the official list by Mir Ahmad Yar, the last Khan of Kalat, Mengal was originally one of the Jatt tribes inhabiting Balochistan.[2] In the Balochi language, plurals of substantives and collective nouns are formed, generally, by adding the suffix "gal" to the noun itself, tribes like Jadgal, Kurdgal are formed in this manner, similarly the term Mengal (Meng-gal,) merely denotes the Meng (Ming, or Men, or Min) name of a tribe and the suffix "gal" means (Speech and group), thus meaning (the group of Mins).[3]
The Mengal tribal area is around 70,000 square miles (180,000 km2), stretching from the Helmand River in the North to Lasbela District in the south, and bordering on the province of Sindh to the east.[4]
For many years the Mengal tribe has been seeking greater autonomy from the Pakistan government.[5][6][7] The Pakistani government and the Mengals have been clashing for the past four decades, for various reasons.[8][9] Large-scale military operations were carried out in the area of Khuzdar 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 8,000 Baloch fighters and 6,000 army soldiers were killed.