Daily Times editorial Nov 14, 2009

Balochistan package

The real significance of the much-awaited meeting between Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif revolved around the proposed long gestated Balochistan package the government wishes to announce in the current session of parliament. Nawaz Sharif advised the prime minister to take the estranged Baloch nationalist leaders as well as the military into confidence before announcing the package. The former in particular had so far been conspicuous by their absence from the consultations on the package. Nawaz Sharif told the prime minister to end the military operation in the troubled province if any was being conducted, devise an exit strategy for the military, and withdraw all cases against Baloch leaders. The killers of Baloch political activists, particularly Nawab Akbar Bugti, needed to be brought to justice. Nawaz wanted all the missing persons traced, Balochistan reportedly providing the bulk of the government’s admitted 1,291 persons still unaccounted for. Nawaz’s suggested strategy on the package was to open it up for public debate after the consultation process with the Baloch nationalists was completed, arguing that only a broad national consensus on the package before it was presented in parliament would render it efficacious. However, this should not be an open-ended indefinite process, rather a timeframe should be given for the announcement of the long delayed package. He offered his and his party’s mediatory role if the government wished in contacting the angry Baloch leadership at home and in exile in order to provide momentum to the reconciliation process. Last but not least, Nawaz Sharif wanted the government to revisit the deployment of the FC in Balochistan, whose presence in and activities allover the province have become a bone of contention.
Balochistan has been embroiled in a low level nationalist insurgency since 2002, which took on a wider and more ominous hue after the assassination of Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006. That event brought even otherwise relatively pacific tribes such as the Bugtis into the fray, with the Nawab’s grandson Bramdagh said to be leading an armed struggle under the umbrella of the Baloch Republican Army. The earlier insurgency that began in 2002 is reportedly led by the Balochistan Liberation Army, whose commander, Balaach Marri, the son of Nawab Khair Buksh Marri, the chief of the Marri tribe, was killed in unexplained circumstances in 2007. These two killings are only the most prominent tip of the iceberg of the deaths and disappearances of scores of Baloch nationalist political workers in recent years. Such developments have only added fuel to the fire of nationalist resentment and demands for control over Balochistan’s natural resources and political rights. Unfortunately, because these issues and demands have not been meaningfully addressed, growing anger and resentment has stoked separatist tendencies in the province and given birth to three more nationalist insurgent groups. A relatively moderate Khan of Kalat, whose father was responsible for the controversial accession of Balochistan to Pakistan in 1948, has been so filled with disgust at the treatment of his people that he has chosen self-imposed exile and talked of approaching the UN and the International Court of Justice against this denial of rights, and even threatened to reopen the whole issue of the original accession of Balochistan by his father.
The PPP government, after coming to power in 2008, made all the right noises about applying a healing touch to Balochistan’s wounds, but the rhetoric has not been matched by practical steps. As Nawaz Sharif has implied, without getting the military on board regarding the need to pre-empt growing separatist sentiment in the province by initiating a genuine reconciliation process, the good intentions of the PPP government may only end up paving the way to hell. The strategic, economic and political importance of Pakistan’s largest in area but poorest province would in itself be sufficient reason to engage its people for a political settlement rather than the use of force. The longer term dialogue regarding the long standing claims of the people of Balochistan to be given control of their own natural resources has little chance of succeeding without going the extra mile to allay the seething anger amongst the province’s youth and applying soothing balm in order to convince an increasingly sceptical Baloch population that their future lies with Pakistan.