It seems that we have a case of the missing government in Balochistan on top of the case of missing persons. The respected judge of the SC was in earnest when he queried if there was any government in the province where law and order situation is deteriorating rapidly. Balochistan is indeed living through a grim dystopic reality. The five bullet-ridden bodies of missing persons that turned up yesterday is but one example of that. The HRCP reports that 59 mangled bodies of missing persons were found in the last year alone. The missing persons count stands at almost 5000 according to certain estimates and the SC intervention hasn’t led to much progress in their recovery.
The marginalised province is a farrago of resentments and grievances which have only exacerbated due to constant state high-handedness and the unfortunate use of military might. The state has constantly been at war with its own people in the province over the last sixty years: either directly through military operations or indirectly through material and cultural exploitation. Some thought that the advent of a democratic dispensation in 2008 which made all the right noises coupled with an apex court actively taking up the cause of the missing persons would make headway in addressing the feeling of exploitation prevalent but it has not amounted to much as little has changed on the ground. The Balochistan package announced with much fanfare has not been implemented and there have been no convincing efforts to reach out to the Baloch leadership. On the other hand, cantonmentisation of the province has increased with the hold of the FC increasing over the province. Clearly, how not to solve the problem.
The only possible solution is addressing the sense of extortion prevalent in the province by genuinely empowering them and ending the colonial treatment of the province at the hands of its own state. But to the blinkered logic of our deep state, might is still right and a clear stamp of authority can wipe out the problem. It would still rather paint genuine grievances as treason and the festering unrest being stoked by “foreign hands” than face up to the real issues on the ground. Six decades of mishandling the situation has clearly taught our establishment nothing.
