Pushp Saraf
Balochistan, one of the four provinces of Pakistan, is boiling. There is anger against denial of basic rights, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and branding of innocent citizens as terrorists. The ordinary people have been staging peaceful protests with a woman leader Mahrang Baloch, a young firebrand doctor, of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) in the forefront. Mahrang’s father was abducted in 2009 and his tortured remains were recovered in 2011. The BYC campaign has the support of Baloch nationalist parties seeking an independent state. The provincial government has bought peace with them by entering into an accord. That has not dissuaded the authorities from preventing Mahrang from travelling abroad. She was barred from boarding a flight to New York to attend a Time magazine function.
She was also booked in a terrorism case over allegedly inciting people by levelling “allegations against security institutions”. She termed the case “fabricated”, saying it showed “how the state has grown increasingly uncomfortable” with her activism. “My peaceful activism will not be deterred by such illegal, unconstitutional and coercive tactics,” she said in a post on X.
The situation in Balochistan is best described in the words of the prominent Pakistan politician Akhtar Mengal, who belongs to the province, in his resignation letter from the National Assembly underlining the reality that the Baloch were being deprived of genuine representation in the parliament. He stated: “”It has become increasingly clear that our attempts to speak or protest are met with hostility; our people are either silenced, labelled as traitors, or worse, killed. Under such circumstances, I find it impossible to continue in this capacity, as my presence here no longer serves any purpose for the people I represent…Our province has consistently been marginalised and ignored by this house. Each day, we are pushed further against the wall, leaving us with no choice but to reconsider our roles…This is pathetic; our daughters and elderly women are protesting and spending nights out in the open only to highlight their concerns, but no one in the entire assembly is even bothered to ask a question or raise a point of order in the house.”
The Tehreek-e-Tahafuz-e-Ayeen Pakistan (TTAP), alliance of opposition parties, has described Mengal’s resignation as “a regrettable development”. It has emphasised the need to address the grievances of “our estranged Baloch brothers”. Mengal has rebuffed all efforts to persuade him to withdraw his resignation.
The militant bodies mainly the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which wants an independent state, are on the rampage against the symbols of the Pakistani establishment. The BLA has been hyperactive against Pakistan and the outsiders especially the Chinese engaged in development activities in the province and the workers from Punjab province evidently identifying them with the ruling Punjabi establishment in the country.
It shook Pakistan on August 26 when it triggered multiple attacks causing more than 50 deaths including those of as many as14 security personnel. The mayhem included the targetted killing of 23 Punjabi passengers in the province’s Musakhail district. Armed men forcibly removed passengers from trucks and buses on a highway and shot them after verifying their identities. According to official accounts, 21 BLA activists dubbed as “terrorists” were killed during the clearance operations. Seven labourers from Multan city in Punjab were killed in sleep in an under-construction house in Panjgur town on September 28. Dawn described it as “gruesome episode” and remarked: “Balochistan continues to sink into an abyss of violence and despair.” Three security personnel lost their lives and four were injured in a remote-controlled roadside bomb blast in the Kalat area on October 5 night.
There was “a daredevil and apparently well-planned attack on Chinese nationals” killing two of them, both engineers, on the main thoroughfare near the Karachi airport on October 6 night. On October 11, as many as 21 miners were killed and seven injured in an attack by armed men on a private coal mine in Balochistan’s Duki area. The victims belonged to various regions of Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan.
Well-known strategic expert Muhammad Amir Rana noted in Dawn: “The Baloch insurgency has undergone a drastic shift, with the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) playing a key role in reshaping the movement. Meanwhile, security institutions are struggling to adapt their counter-insurgency strategies to keep pace with these changes. Last week’s attack on Chinese nationals in Karachi by the BLA showcased its growing operational capabilities, as its suicide squad successfully targeted a heavily protected convoy of Chinese nationals. The BLA has a history of launching high-intensity terrorist attacks in Karachi, and the recent attack was its 11th out of a total of 17 – five attacks were carried out by the banned Balochistan Liberation Front and one by the banned Baloch Nationalist Army. It was the fourth strike on Chinese interests in the city since 2012, and one of the worst since the attack on the teaching staff at the Confucius Institute of the University of Karachi. The area around Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport is part of a high-security zone. Previously, it was the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, which breached airport security in 2014 and launched a terrorist onslaught inside the premises.”
Pakistan Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi told the Senate Standing Committee on Interior: “The incident on August 26 was orchestrated by banned organisations, involving multiple groups.” According to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based think tank, 28 out of the 59 terrorist attacks across Pakistan in August occurred in Balochistan, just one fewer than in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The BLA was involved in 26 of the attacks in Balochistan. In KP, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) carried out cross-border assaults from Afghanistan, where the group has taken refuge.
Except for agreement with the Yakjehti Committee, Pakistan’s response is that of a police state. While the BLA has already been banned, the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group and the Majid Brigade have also been formally banned on July 18 and July 25, respectively. The Hafiz Gul Bahadur group, which was once dubbed as “good Taliban” since it fought against the anti-Pakistan terrorist groups in the erstwhile tribal areas, turned against the state after Pakistan launched massive military operations in the territory. It now operates from Afghanistan and has targetted security forces including in Bannu Cantonment in KP province in which eight Pakistani soldiers were killed. The Majid Brigade, known as the BLA’s suicide squad, has earlier carried out assaults on the Pakistan Stock Exchange, Chinese Consulate in Karachi and Confucius Institute at the Karachi University.
In a meeting in August, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called upon the Pakistan Government to “investigate and prosecute” all reports of enforced disappearances involving the Baloch, politicians, administrators, media persons and human rights defenders, ensure penalties and provide restorative justice – restitution of dignity, rehabilitation, compensation and an end to the practice.
Dawn noted in an editorial: “In the context of Baloch missing persons, Pakistan has made feeble attempts to address impunity and the role of intelligence agencies. While the Supreme Court instituted a Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in 2011, it took 12 years and a high court’s intervention for the Balochistan government to form a committee. Under the PTI, a bill pertaining to enforced disappearances, passed by the National Assembly, went ‘missing’ after it was sent to the Senate.”
The prestigious newspaper called for introspection and made a telling observation that Pakistan “has consistently violated international treaties, including the torture convention and the accord on civil and political rights. Second, lawmakers’ tenures will remain tainted without strong laws banning all forms of state-ordained abductions, ending impunity and bringing the intelligence machinery under the law’s purview. Third, our touchy establishment needs to understand the gathering storm of retaliation. It stems from pain; the culture of Balochistan stands altered as its women confront oppression. Moreover, every arbitrary confinement, regardless of duration, must be defined and treated as an illegal act.”
Journalist-Author Zahid Hussain has pointed to the grim situation: “Extrajudicial killings and the illegal detention of political activists have pushed many educated and disgruntled youth to the wall. A large number of Baloch students have been picked up allegedly by security agencies from university campuses in the country. The fear is that they will never come home. Such draconian measures and denial of democratic rights have been the major reason behind the rise of separatist militancy in the province.”
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