If Not Now, Then When?
Balochistan’s tribal chiefs and feudal lords are remarkable in one respect: when they are in government, or when they have a government of their own, they become patriots and admirers of Pakistan’s political system. However, when they are excluded from the political arrangement or no longer control the government, they do not even maintain the courtesy of professing patriotism. Some take to the mountains and establish hideouts in Afghanistan, while the rest become spokespersons for these armed men and promote narratives on their behalf. Presenting these militants as oppressed, deprived and aggrieved, and portraying their terrorism as justified, becomes their duty. Balochistan’s history has continued to revolve around this same cycle. Some become disgruntled, while others carry the case of these disgruntled elements into politics, journalism and society.
No one asks these advocates of the gunmen what deprivation or injustice Bashir Zeb and Dr Allah Nazar personally suffered; what poverty or hardship compelled Hyrbyair Marri and Javed Mengal, while sitting in Britain, Switzerland, Geneva and Dubai, to raise armed groups against the state; or which rights were denied to Khair Bakhsh Marri, Ataullah Mengal, Nawab Akbar Bugti and Balach Marri that supposedly drove them, in retaliation, to take up arms or facilitate those who did. No one asks who has governed Balochistan from the creation of Pakistan until today. Did governors and chief ministers come from Punjab to rule Balochistan? Were Marri, Bugti, Mengal and the other nawabs and sardars themselves Balochistan’s rulers, or was it someone else? What a contradiction: you are the rulers, yet you also claim deprivation; you are the chief ministers and governors, the assembly is yours, the tribal authority is yours, the lands are yours, the resources are under your control, and yet you still present yourselves as oppressed and deprived. On the stage of history, such an openly contradictory role can perhaps be performed only by Baloch tribal chiefs; it is difficult to find such morally compromised audacity elsewhere.
Will Balochistan’s history continue to revolve in this same circle, or will the force of social evolution finally succeed in breaking it?
I believe conditions will not remain this way forever. The tribal chiefs and Baloch elite who have staged this ugly game of alternating between rule and rebellion are now being exposed. Ordinary Baloch people are slipping out of their grip. The military has gone to the grassroots and launched exemplary development and social-welfare projects, whose benefits are being delivered directly to the Baloch people by bypassing the feudal lords and tribal chiefs. The abolition of the Levies Force, one of their major sources of power, and the curbing of smuggling at the border are measures that have caused the mafias to cry out. Ordinary Baloch citizens are gaining confidence and becoming participants in governance. The military is risking lives in the fight against terrorists while also carrying out work that should ordinarily be done by the government.
Whether these are development projects, education initiatives, employment programmes or projects designed to give Baloch youth a better future, military officers and soldiers are working day and night to complete them. In response, the Baloch elite—which has in reality turned into a Baloch mafia—and its facilitators have united to sabotage all these initiatives. The unity currently visible under the military’s leadership against BLA terrorists and their facilitators must be maintained so that the Baloch people can be permanently freed from the grip of coercion. At present, the political facilitators of terrorists are even more dangerous than the terrorists themselves, because they are confusing and misleading ordinary people. They must be held accountable, and their blackmail must be rejected.
Pakistan and the Baloch people have repeatedly suffered the consequences of the game played throughout history in the name of dialogue and political reconciliation. Political blackmailers have always prevailed; this time, victory should belong to the people. The country must be freed from blackmailers, and terrorists and their facilitators must be isolated from the public and brought to their logical end with complete resolve. If blackmail is accepted once again in the name of reconciliation, this opportunity will never return.
