Balochistan’s current slide into chaos, despite its potency, has failed to draw attention of the authorities towards it in earnest. Mere visits and a few words of solace acknowledging the wrongs that the Baloch people have suffered is surely not enough. In fact, throwing money where no effective mechanism to handle funds and implement projects is one of the most outrageous plan that is doomed to failure from its onset.
Multiple cases of missing persons await to be addressed, thus giving rise to fear and anguish among the people. Lawlessness is at its peak where all sorts of criminal activities and illegal practices have overtaken the entire province buttressed by the wrong moves played by the government, one after the other thus allowing the situation to reach rock bottom.
The decision to convert the previously demarcated A-Area into B-Area where there is no presence of the civil security and law enforcers is probably the worst. Not only does smuggling become easy in this backdrop where the law aids not the normal public but the criminals and scoundrels, but offenses such as car thefts and kidnapping for ransom are increasing with alarming intensity. Can this dangerous trend stop or be reversed ever at all? What plans has the provincial government come up with for such a change?
That Balochistan’s security culture has always been influenced by a discriminatory central policy is more than evident as the current situation becomes almost irretrievable after four decades of nothing but turmoil. The skewed distributions of wealth, power and natural resources has been the primary source of inter-provincial tensions that has become instrumental in the emergence of disparate ethnic and provincial identities. Maleeha Lodhi has very effectively elaborated in ‘Beyond a Crisis State’ that “great power interest and dysfunctional geo-political strategies successively pursued by Islamabad intersected to aggravate the country’s challenges.”
Tensions rising from these challenges were further exacerbated by the indifference of the provincial governments that is being banked upon to bring a tangible change. Whatever projects that have been undertaken by the army in Balochistan serves as starters that is not being followed by the main course. Who will serve this much awaited meal to Balochistan?
Is the situation in Balochistan stable enough to allow the provincial government to move about its leisurely pace? Or are they patiently waiting for disaster to strike first? What are the ingredients that call out for imposing an emergency? Does Balochistan not fit the bill? Who will decide? Who will save Balochistan?
DR NIDA SHAMI
Ontario, Canada