The people of Balochistan must have listened to Amry Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayanis speech with interest and heaved a sigh of relief to hear from him that a plan to build more cantonments in the province has been abandoned. The one already established at Sui has been converted to a military college which was inaugurated by the COAS on Monday.
The announcement was accompanied by his promise to withdraw troops from Sui within the next two months when the last battalion deployed in the town would return to the barracks. And once the process is complete there will be no presence of army in the province outside of the cantonments. The Army Chiefs addresses at Sui and Gwadar appeared to be aimed at pacifying the nationalists who have been demanding greater autonomy for the province, Baloch control over their resources and an end to military operations which continued to exacerbate their sense of deprivation during the Musharraf era. But what might remain a cause of concern for the people of Balochistan is the decision to shift the security responsibilities of Dera Bugti to the Frontier Corps since it had been and is still involved in torturing and kidnapping civilians. Last week, the FC conducted an operation in a small town of Khuzdar District and killed three young activists of the Baloch Student Organization. The Force which was previously blamed for committing human rights violations has now started killing people on the mere suspicion of their links with insurgents.
General Kayani has very rightly pointed out that maintenance of law and order is primarily the responsibility of the provincial government but the fact remains that it was the militarys intelligence apparatus which had brought more miseries to Balochistan in the past. What needs to be understood is that peace will remain elusive to the province without putting an end to the covert operations being conducted by the agencies. The federal government cannot delay the implementation of the Balochistan Package but this process has to go in tandem with tackling the issue of security and safety of the local population.