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Editorial
Afghanistan
as a sanctuary Coming
home to conflict insight Incentives
amid military offensives
It has been some months now that we did a Special Report
on how the mainstream media, including ourselves, was ignoring Balochistan.
The bags with mutilated bodies were the order of the day then. They still
are.
This barbaric use of force is the classic response of a
security state. It thinks in terms of ‘strategy’; a few thousand
hardcore militant separatists need a few hundred mutilated bodies. The rest
will take cue and things will turn hunky-dory again. End of insurgency.
Period.
Unfortunately, strategies don’t always work as
desired. A similar strategy backfired in East Pakistan. The only lesson that
the Pakistani state seems to have learnt is that now it raises cries of
‘external involvement’ long before the involvement actually starts. The
robust media in Pakistan, apart from reporting these external-hand theories,
has not brought to light a single proof of the state’s claims.
Meanwhile, the political leadership continues to become
radicalised and leave the country. After the first crop, the second tier
managed for some time before it too became radicalised and left, leaving no
choice for those held back except to become more radicalised than them all.
This is the Balochistan that we have created and this is
the Balochistan that we must deal with.
It is in this backdrop that the Republican
legislators’ resolution demanding right of self-determination for the
Baloch came. For the rest of the country, Balochistan is Pakistan’s
internal matter that they will resolve eventually. For the Baloch, external
involvement has become mandatory. It did after all provoke a belligerent
response from the Pakistani state. Breaking its prolonged silence, the media
too started talking about the generic issue of missing persons; of course,
it does look the other way when the relatives of the Baloch missing persons
talk about the men in FC uniforms and intelligence agencies.
Balochistan is being finally heard. The right questions
are being raised like never before. Before development, autonomy, lack of
media coverage and even before missing persons is the question: who controls
Balochistan? That’s where we begin our Special Report today. Most of our
commentators are based outside the province; those who aren’t make a
polite request for a change of name. This is just to give an idea of the
scale of the problem.
overview A recent report-launching ceremony on the current
scenario in Balochistan by a Pakistani think-tank reminded me of how not
just Balochistan territory and its people but the Pakistani mindset remains
firmly under the control of the state’s historically hegemonic institution
— the Pakistan military. While the report claims to hold a ‘mirror’ to the
acts of violence in present-day Balochistan, it only goes so far as to say
that the state agencies are “allegedly” involved in kill-and-dump
operations of Baloch civilians and, furthermore, that the security agencies
should “come clean” on such allegations so that the “hidden forces”
seeking Pakistan’s destabilisation may be revealed. It unleashes a barrage
of criticism on the province’s elected representatives which it claims are
merely corrupt and accuses both the federal and provincial governments of
being “disinterested” in resolving the Balochistan conflict. It makes no
mention of the provincial government’s puppet-like status — typical of
local governments operating under colonial state structures — and the fact
that the elected head of the provincial government has publicly admitted
that the FC (which should not be understood as anything but the military)
runs a parallel government in the province. The question of who controls Balochistan has, in my
experience, never received the unequivocal answer in Pakistani discourse
that it so clearly deserves. References to the role of state agencies —
now impossible to ignore — are always sidetracked with the usual
nationalist rhetoric of “foreign hands”, corrupt elites, and “tribal
sardars”. These think-tank people should be asked if they honestly believe
that these corrupt, “lazy” and disinterested sardars are organising the
systematic abductions of Baloch students, political workers, singers,
artists, farmers and women in broad daylight? Are the sardars hiring
professional torturers to brutalise and maim Baloch civilians, borrowing
vehicles that look awfully similar to those used by the Pakistan military to
conduct door-to-door surveillance of ordinary families in virtually every
Baloch district and village, renting helicopters from which to throw the
mutilated corpses of “missing persons”? I doubt that even the most fervent Pakistani nationalist
could answer yes. Unless we have started to think like tanks. So, who controls Balochistan? The answer is simple.
Everyone knows it. It is about time we said it. The Pakistan military. Every phase of Baloch resistance — in 1948, 1958,
1962, 1973, and the current post-2000 phase — has been met with a military
action. However, the persistent use of military force is not the equivalent
of making a case for the military’s hegemonic status in Balochistan.
Indeed, persistent use of military force and its monopoly on violence has
enabled the military to entrench itself well into the province’s
governance structures, but does not in itself demonstrate that the military
controls Balochistan. So let’s ask the question: what does the military
actually control in Balochistan? Roads. Any local (particularly of a Baloch-dominated
district) will testify to the heavy presence of security forces (mainly the
FC, and in the coastal areas the Coast Guards and Rangers) which police a
vast range of territories ranging from the major highways, the
national/international borders, down to Quetta’s tight lanes and the small
unpaved routes even on the village/district level. Control over the roads in essence means control over
movement — of goods, of vehicles, and of people. And hence control of
trade (or smuggling, however you’d like to see it), of mined minerals, of
oil tankers (read: NATO supplies), of cross-border ‘movement’ and of
‘disappearances’, too. Eyewitnesses have testified that people are
offloaded from public buses at security checkposts, bundled into military
vehicles, only to return dead or not to return at all. The military, i.e.
Coast Guards, also control Policing and Customs duties along the coastal
routes, which are typically civilian functions. The military is a large landowner in Balochistan. Apart
from its acquisition of vast tracts of land, both along the coast as well as
inland, for ‘security purposes’, i.e. the building of cantonments, safe
houses, and district headquarters, the Defence Secretary in 2005 admitted in
a briefing to the Parliamentary Committee that land was allotted to
“defence forces”, the purpose, quantum, and locations of which were not
disclosed to the Committee but which can be assumed to be private allotments
made to military personnel in reward for their ‘services’ to the nation.
Despite the Committee’s assertions for details on these allotments, this
information has still not been made available even to members of parliament. The military is also entrenched in various economic
activities in Balochistan. It has dabbled in the lucrative mining business
both through informal deals with local tribes as well as formally through
its subsidiaries such as Mari Gas Company (a subsidiary of the Fauji
Foundation). Retired military personnel are installed as the heads of
influential oil and gas companies such as Sui Southern. The FWO, a
subsidiary of the Fauji Foundation, has the largest share of construction
contracts in Balochistan. Perceptions of the transparency and credibility of the
electoral process, while low everywhere in Pakistan, are particularly low in
Balochistan where everyone from the ordinary worker to the minister are
unequivocal in their view that the political fate of Balochistan is
determined by ‘the military and the agencies’. Rhetoric of “foreign hands” has allowed for further
militarisation of Balochistan and given the military a license to seal the
province and make it a no-go zone where it can abduct, torture, kill and
display bodies with impunity, extract Balochistan’s resources under the
barrel of a gun, use Balochistan territory to conduct nuclear tests and
garner lucrative ‘development’ projects through its subsidiaries. The
security apparatus’s failure to protect journalists despite the heavy
presence of security forces on the ground, has effectively restricted any
independent news sources from emerging. So the military controls the news,
too. There is one thing, however, that the military in
Balochistan does not control: the spirit of the Baloch people. The writer is a
researcher on the Baloch National Movement and a lecturer at Quaid-e-Azam
University, Islamabad
Afghanistan
as a sanctuary Though it wasn’t the first time — and no longer a
secret — that Baloch nationalists and guerilla fighters have long sought
refuge and sanctuaries in neighbouring Afghanistan, the case of late Nawab
Akbar Bugti’s grandson Bramdagh Bugti attracted attention internationally
as President Hamid Karzai conceded to the US as well as UN officials about
his government hosting him in Kabul. As WikiLeaks revealed, Karzai told a senior UN official
in February 2009 that Bramdagh was in Kabul even though his spokesmen had
earlier denied that Afghanistan was sheltering him. WikiLeaks also disclosed
on the basis of the US embassy reports that Karzai had told the visiting
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher in January 2007 that more than
200 Bugtis had fled to Afghanistan and that Bramdagh wasn’t a terrorist as
“fomenting an uprising does not make one a terrorist.” In his view, the
real terrorists were Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad
Omar. The 29-year old Bramdagh has now reached Switzerland and
applied for political asylum. Once his application is approved, he would be
free to travel like the Khan of Kalat, Mir Suleman Dawood Khan, and Hyrbyar
Marri who were granted asylum in United Kingdom and campaign for an
independent Balochistan state. In his meeting with Boucher, Karzai asked his American
visitors to suspend the note-taking as the presence of Pakistani Baloch
nationalists in Afghanistan was a sensitive issue. Though he said he
wasn’t interested in having them in Afghanistan as it meant too much
trouble, Karzai showed no inclination to expel his Baloch guests or deliver
them to Pakistan. It would have been out of character for an Afghan ruler to
refuse protection to guests, particularly Pakhtun and Baloch from a part of
Pakistan to which Afghanistan had been laying claim by refusing to accept
the Durand Line border and by sponsoring the Pakhtunistan movement. Dissident Pakhtuns and Baloch facing persecution in
Pakistan have received hospitality and refuge on many occasions in
Afghanistan. The Taliban went a step further by hosting al-Qaeda members
including bin Laden and refusing to expel them despite the threat of US
invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. The Pakistanis who at different times have sought refuge
in Afghanistan include Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Ajmal Khattak, Afrasiab
Khattak, Azam Hoti, Juma Khan Sufi, Nadir Khan Zakhakhel, Wali Khan Kukikhel,
Mahmood Khan Achakzai and his relation Ayub Khan Achakzai, Shahzada Abdul
Karim, Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, Sher Mohammad Marri, Mir Hazar Bijarani and
two brothers of Sardar Attaullah Mengal. Mir Murtaza Bhutto and his brother
Shahnawaz Bhutto and their al-Zulfiqar comrades were also welcomed in
Afghanistan during General Ziaul Haq’s rule and the younger Bhuttos also
ended up marrying Afghan girls. In a tit-for-tat reaction, Pakistan has also been giving
refuge to Afghan dissidents and rebels ranging from the Mujahideen to the
Taliban. In fact, both countries continue to practice the same policy
despite promising non-interference in each other’s affairs.
Coming
home to conflict In her home on Saryab Road, Quetta, the frail and ailing
mother of Hafiz Saeedur Rehman is waiting for her son to return. Her wait
isn’t about to be over, despite the passage of eight long years. (Hafiz
went missing on July 4, 2003.) “My mother is completely shattered; she doesn’t want
to live any longer,” says her daughter Saima, torn with grief. Saeed’s family was able to register a complaint about
his disappearance with the local police after a delay of two weeks. The young sister of Saeed has joined the agitation camp
set up for the recovery of missing persons with the hope that her voice may
be heard by those at the helm of affairs. The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) — an
organisation that was formed to raise the issue of ‘forced
disappearances’ in the province — claims that the number of missing
persons from Balochistan runs in thousands. “About 300 mutilated dead
bodies have been found in Balochistan, and of the 8,000 Baloch missing, we
have collected complete record of 1500,” says Nasrullah Baloch, Chairman
VBMP. We are protesting peacefully against the Baloch disappearances and
urge the human rights organisations to take notice of the pathetic situation
in Balochistan. Before the human rights organisations, there is another
factor that hampers the case of missing persons in Balochistan and that is
the blackout of Balochistan from the mainstream media. Those who are
protesting against the disappearances must go to Islamabad or Karachi to
force the mainstream to take note of their plight. Journalists based in
Balochistan find it increasingly difficult to report what’s happening on
the ground. Regarding the missing persons, the most effective story
to have emerged and widely read in recent days is by celebrated author and
journalist Mohammed Hanif in a mainstream paper. In the piece ‘The Baloch
who is not missing’ for Dawn.com, he begins the story thus “In the last
week of November 2011, Qadeer Baloch, a retired UBL employee from Quetta did
something that no grandfather should have to do. He held his four and a half
year old grandson’s hand and took him to see his son Jalil Reki’s
mutilated bullet-riddled body and made sure the kid got a good look at it.
Qadeer Baloch also had a chat with the boy and told him who had killed his
father and why”. Hanif had spoken to Qadeer Baloch in Karachi. But Hanif
was most effective and potent. Back in Quetta though, rubbishing the figures produced
by the VBMP, the home department of Balochistan maintains that only 148
applications have been received for the recovery of the missing persons of
which 43 have got back home. A commission comprising members of the
concerned departments and joint task force has been constituted for the
recovery of the rest of the missing persons. “About 100 such cases have
been resolved, and only 48 are pending,” claims provincial home secretary
Naseebullah Bazai, while talking to TNS. The issue of missing people has assumed alarming
dimensions in Balochistan. The Baloch nationalists groups are now demanding
the government to produce before the court of law those involved in criminal
activities. Senator Mir Hasil Bizenjo, Senior Vice President of
National Party, who has been waging a war for the Baloch rights through
political means, says Balochistan has two burning issues: “missing persons
and mutilated dead bodies. Unless these issues are resolved, no
constitutional or economic package will put down the fire.” He also says that such issues should be resolved on
priority basis, “before it’s too late”.
insight Balochistan’s unheard voices gained Himalayan
attention after the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs
loudly raised its concern over the appalling rights violations and
systematic repression by Pakistan’s ethnically-structured State apparatus
against Baloch people. The hearing was followed by the introduction of a
three-member bill that called for Balochistan’s right to
self-determination. Instead of admitting heinous crimes committed by the
state agencies and providing a clear road map for addressing Balochistan’s
indisputable grievances, the Pakistani political and diplomatic machinery
responded illogically and reacted violently — enforcing their outright
authority — and claimed that Balochistan was their internal “subject”.
Pakistan cannot claim its copyright on Balochistan and
its people. Looking at history, any protracted conflict unresolved for years
is bound to attract international attention. Countless researchers are
working on the subject and think-tank organisations are encouraging their
policymakers to pay more sober attention to the Texas-sized Baloch-land, a
region with immense natural wealth — and known as strategic jewel of
south-west Asia. Nevertheless, Islamabad’s ethnically structured
civil-military establishment is indifferent to the issue. Their
shortsightedness with regard to Balochistan has resulted in the wholesale
alienation of the Baloch masses. Except in countless military garrisons,
naval bases, Frontier Corps’ facilities or government buildings in Quetta,
the so-called enforced writ of the government is completely diminished. The super-costly military operation to deal with the
very political question is yielding no positive outcomes. The policy of
silencing moderate Baloch voices through kill and dump backlashed, the
blood-littered mutilated bodies of innocent victims are transmitting a more
powerful picture and message of ground realities to the outside world. Besides the recent US hearing on gross human rights
violation and the resolution in Congress, several national and international
human rights organisations have criticised the oppressive regime of security
forces in Balochistan. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, in its June
2011 report, titled ‘Blinker slide into chaos’, blamed non-native
Frontier Corps for the abductions and killings and regarded the provincial
government as non-existent. Amnesty International including New-York-based rights
group Human Rights Watch, in its July 2011 detailed report titled ‘We Can
Torture, Kill, or Keep You for Years’, highlighted the fact that security
agencies are involved in abductions, torture and extrajudicial killings in
the province. No doubt, over the past few days, Pakistani media is
debating Balochistan but not in support of the helpless Baloch — they are
wrongly focusing just on the US hearing and the resolution tabled in the US
Congress. However, our vector of analysis is Balochistan and the gross
violations over the last 10 years which no one has bothered to pay attention
to. In the last one decade, around 10,000 people have been
killed, thousands rendered homeless, hundreds disappeared, all of which has
affected the lives of over thousands of Baloch families. This despair and social anger has impacted much more
than the lack of development itself. Abductions, torture, killings,
intimidation and large-scale displacement and injustices have created an
extreme divide between Islamabad and Balochistan. Addressing this divide
will require perhaps double or triple the time the establishment has taken
to disrupt Balochistan’s social and political fabric. This divide is now
of hearts and minds, not to be filled by the so-called All Parties
Conference or by allocating petty developments projects. Conflict in Balochistan is neither about Sardars
(tribalism) or non-Sardars; it is about Islamabad and the Baloch people. Had
Islamabad used logical and genuine development tools to bring the province
at par with the rest of the country, it would have won credibility. But it
used the policy of guns and canons to maintain its flawed rule. Even as we
are reading these lines, hundreds are protesting for their loved ones to
come back home. Rapidly changing geo-strategic dynamics in the region
demands greater understanding and swift modification of obsolete policies
concerning Balochistan. Security-centric policy of centralised governance,
implemented by ethnically-structured security apparatus is yielding
disastrous results. There is common but genuine perception among the Baloch,
based on historical facts, that Pakistani leaders are not remotely
interested in peace on terms that would satisfy even the minimum Baloch
demands and needs for justice. Due to this Himalayan mistrust between Balochistan and
Islamabad no talks and efforts will produce encouraging results. Genuine
Baloch leadership and true stakeholders will not negotiate any political
deal with Islamabad without direct mediation and international guarantees. Islamabad has to offer an extra attractive alternative
to the Baloch demand. Paying lip-service and using deceitful tactics would
further inflame the situation. Empirical evidence suggests that many intractable
conflicts have been resolved with the help of international experts,
reliable mediators and granters. No doubt, Pakistani establishment lost a
major part of Pakistan in 1971 due to its arrogance, less flexible and
shortsighted approach. There is little hope that Islamabad will consider
internationally mediated and guaranteed solution of Baloch-Islamabad
conflict. The writer is a
Baloch leader who resigned from the Upper House in protest against
Islamabad’s discriminatory policies against Baloch people. He can be
reached at balochbnp@gmail.com
Incentives
amid military offensives On November 24, 2009,
Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani announced the
Aghaz-e-Huqooq-e-Balochistan (AHB) package with great zeal. The package
included six constitutional, five political, 16 administrative and 34
economic proposals. The government promised to implement all recommendations
and proposals in three years. The main motive to announce this package was
to address the concerns of the people of Balochistan — the most backward
province of the country and to pacify the Baloch nationalists and bring them
back to table for talks. Although the federal
ministers and government officials claim around 80 percent of the promised
package has been implemented, the situation on ground is different. Even the
brother of the chief minister of Balochistan, Senator Mir Lashkari Raisani,
said on the floor of the Upper House on February 12 that there was a long
list of discrepancies not yet addressed. This despite the PM’s
reassurances that talks with the disgruntled Baloch leaders were in process.
“Come to think of it, 19 key proposals cannot be implemented even 27
months after the announcement of the AHB package,” he said recently. A senior official in
establishment division who has been dealing with the said package tells TNS
that most of the constitutional commitments have already been honoured
whereas “with the political commitments we are halfway through. Around 90
percent of arrested political workers have been released while 20 out of 27
unanimous resolutions of the Balochistan Assembly since 2002 have been
implemented.” On the administrative
level, the official says, the role of federal agencies like the military,
the Frontier Constabulary and intelligence agencies have already been
reviewed. “Army has been replaced by the FC and the construction of
cantonments has been put a stop to. The powers of Coast Guards have also
been withdrawn while most checkposts have been removed. Additionally, all
‘B’ areas have been de-notified and converted into ‘A’ areas in the
province.” The federal government has
also formed a commission on missing persons, although the figures about
these people remain disputed. “The judicial inquiry of Turbat incident was
also initiated as promised under a judge of the High Court but it is true it
was not effective as no witnesses showed up,” the official adds. “A
fact-finding commission on Akbar Bugti’s killing is also on the cards but
since High Court has taken up the issue, the matter is sub judice. In July
last year, an inquiry commission under a judge of the High Court was also
formed in order to investigate the allotment of lands in Gwadar.” The government also claims
providing 1,200 scholarships to students from Balochistan, while a sum of Rs
3 billion has been allocated for another 600 scholarships in local and
foreign universities under the package. “About 5,000 educated youngsters
have been hired as teachers and assistant lecturers in high schools. The
federal government has already provided money for their salaries for four
years to the provincial government; from 2013 onwards, Balochistan will be
able to pay their salaries. Around 2,700 educated Baloch youth have been
hired in the federal departments in Islamabad, while more than 4,000 have
joined the Army, over 2,000 the FC and 100 the Coast Guards. The royalty of
gas has also been rationalised whereas the federal government has agreed to
pay arrears worth Rs 120 billion to the provincial government in 10 equal
installments. We have already paid two installments of Rs 10 billion each to
Balochistan in the past two years. Besides, uniform gas prices have been
implemented. Representation of Balochistan has been increased in big
corporations of the government.” The official blames the
government of Balochistan for its failure to translate “most of the
development projects into reality. The federal government has released its
share of funds but the provincial government has not been able to pool in
its bit.” On the other end,
political analysts believe if any of the said projects had been implemented,
the lives of the ordinary Baloch would have changed for good and their
resentment would be gone. As analyst Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur puts it, “the
withdrawal of the Coast Guard and the replacement of the FC under the Chief
Minister are limited only to paper, because whoever determines what the
territorial limits of the Coast Guards should be? “The FC is certainly not
working under the CM or the Governor both of whom have on record accused it
of running a parallel government,” he adds. “Last month, at the
convocation of Balochistan University, Zulfiqar Magsi was critical of all
concerned authorities and said that not all promised scholarships were meant
for the Baloch and that the figure quoted was unverifiable. More recently,
Baloch students based in Multan protested the stoppage of their stipends.
The Baloch in general resent the involvement of the Army in educational
programmes because they identify the establishment as perpetrators of
problems.” A lot of Baloch locals are
loath to even discuss the AHB package. “It’s a fraud; I don’t want to
talk about it,” says Talal Bugti, son of the slain Baloch nationalist
leader Akbar Bugti, talking to TNS. “Balochistan has reached a point of no
return. The corpses keep appearing on daily basis and then they [the federal
government] talks about its package. Let me state this loud and clear — we
shall not settle for anything less than complete provincial autonomy! There
is no other solution of the problem.” Senator Dr Abdul Malik, a
senior member of the Baloch National Party (BNP), believes “instead of
giving people their rights as a favour — which crushes their self-esteem
— the government needs to address the basic issue of military operation in
the province. “Theoretically speaking,
there is no military operation going on in the province but the military is
ruling the province through the FC and is duly guided by the ISI. Until and
unless the issues of missing persons, target killings and appearances of
mutilated bodies of political activists are addressed, no economic
incentives shall bring the Baloch youth over to the table.” The Senator says that the
solution of the problem is “still possible if there is a political will
and the situation is revisited honestly. According to a news report, a few
days back, some 50,000 FC personnel were deployed in Balochistan. This means
for every 131st person in the province, there is one FC Jawan. On the other
hand, we have less than 1,600 registered doctors in the province which means
one doctor for 4,198 people. Can somebody please stand up and question the
justification for such discrepancies?” Mir Sadiq Umrani,
President, PPP Balochistan chapter, and a provincial minister, also says the
federal government has done nothing so far under the package besides hiring
5,000 teachers. “There is no communication infrastructure in the province,
80 percent population does not have basic health facilities or access to
drinking water, and on the other hand mutilated bodies of political workers
are found everyday in the province. Bureaucrats sitting in Islamabad and
federal agencies in Balochistan are the main hurdle in the implementation of
the package.” Renowned Baloch
development expert Syed Fazl-e-Haider, in his January 15 article, drew an
analogy with the administration of former US president George W. Bush
launching aerial attacks against Afghanistan while also dropping food items
for the war-affected people of the country. “Military offensives and
political initiatives cannot go together,” he wrote. “Economic packages
to compensate for the destruction caused by military action will not be
acceptable to the Baloch.” |Home|Daily Jang|The News|Sales & Advt|Contact Us| |
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