Far removed from the glare of the mainstream media apart from the occasional report here and there, two wars are being waged in Balochistan. Correspondingly, two types of casualties. The leaders and activists of the Baloch nationalist parties on the one hand and the Punjabi settlers on the other.
First, on the intransigent establishment. Immovable and impervious to the desires of the elected representatives, not just those of the province but also the federation, whose overwhelming majority seeks dialogue, its paradigm remains that of a paranoid, embittered old kingdom. There is no political space even for those emphatically expressing dissent within the framework of the Pakistani state what to speak of the disaffected lot who will openly talk of secession. The media machine will construct a particular image of these nationalist parties to justify a particular response to them. Who are these activists getting killed left, right and centre? They surely do not conform to the caricature that is being presented to us. Rather than tribal chiefs of their entranced tribesmen, those killed are the educated, progressive middle-class activists of the nationalist parties.
On the other hand, there are the enraged organisations lying on the fringe. The killing of the Punjabi settler population, a community that has done much work in the fields of health and education in the province, is deplorable. By what stretch of the imagination are the innocent settlers, descendents in most cases of the original camp followers that accompany new cantonments, responsible for the plight of the marginalised Baloch? Even at the federal level, some of the best articulation of the provinces grievances is done by civil servants belonging to this community. If only the state were to get its act together, these groups would lose whatever bit of diminutive support that they enjoy amongst the disenfranchised Baloch.
