Daily Times Editorial Sept 8, 2013

General Kayani’s ‘non-involvement’ On Defence Day, COAS General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani delivered an important speech at the Military College Sui. General Kayani was visiting the area for the first time since 2007, when he was there in the aftermath of the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti. He took advantage of the occasion to reiterate that the military was not carrying out any operation in Balochistan and that it was the Frontier Corps (FC), police and Levies who were dealing with the law and order situation. The army, the COAS said, was carrying out development work in the province, ranging from education and health to infrastructure projects. To prove his point, General Kayani quoted facts and figures to illustrate the army’s contribution to the wellbeing of the province. These activities, he underlined, were to make Balochistan strong and prosperous, in which lay the guarantee of the defence of the country. The list of the army’s efforts in this regard appears impressive. General Kayani reeled off statistics of the army’s intervention in education, health and infrastructure development. He revealed that over 20,000 Baloch youth were enrolled in army- and FC-run educational institutions in the province and outside it. Employment had been offered to youth in projects such as marble manufactures and coal mining run by the army. In Dera Bugti, the army had established health centres and dispensaries and built roads, electricity and water schemes in Kohlu (Marri area). Recruitment of Baloch youth in the army was at 1.7 percent in 2007, far below the province’s due share on the basis of population of 4 percent. From 2010 to date, the army had accelerated its recruitment drive in Balochistan, lowering in the process its educational and physical parameters in order to increase the representation of the province in the armed forces. In this drive, 12,000 youth had been inducted into the army in this period, bringing the representation of the province in the army up to 3.5 percent. In the officer corps, 329 inductees from the province had brought the total Balochistan officers in the army to 759. The Military College Sui was originally one of three military cantonments being built in the troubled Bugti and Marri areas. Work on all these cantonments had been stopped and the Sui cantonment had been turned into a military college with the help and cooperation of the army, FC, provincial government, and Pakistan Petroleum Limited, which runs the Sui gas fields. Impressive as the peroration of General Kayani appears at first glance, there are many omissions in his telling, including some huge elephants in the room. In the first place, to say that the army is not involved in any operation in Balochistan is to hide behind a technicality. The FC, which is in the forefront of the campaign against the nationalist insurgency and has won ‘plaudits’ from all and sundry including the Supreme Court for being involved in the cruel and notorious ‘kill and dump’ policy, is commanded by serving army officers. To argue therefore that ‘this’ has nothing to do with the army is dissembling at best. Second, all the ‘development’ thrust of the army in Balochistan is predicated on the thesis that all that is required to wean away the youth of the province from the nationalist struggle is to offer them education, jobs, and economic opportunities, i.e. mainstream them, and they will become ‘good little boys’. Undeniably, for the poorest and least developed province of the country, such opportunities being offered for the first time will find many takers, as the COAS’s statistics show. However, this and infrastructure development will not by themselves solve the political problems of the province or the burning issue of the nationalist insurgency. It is interesting to note that most if not all of the social sector and infrastructural projects listed by the COAS fall within the areas infested by nationalist guerrillas. It would be difficult to resist the conclusion then that these ‘development’ efforts are actually the ‘soft’ face of the counterinsurgency drive of the military. Unlike the jihadi terrorism that afflicts the country as a whole, the problems of Balochistan are political, rooted in the unfortunate history of deprivation and oppression of Balochistan since Pakistan came into being. Political problems are seldom settled by force. Only political solutions can address long standing political and economic grievances. If only the military establishment understood the wisdom of engaging with the insurgents to resolve these admittedly difficult if not intractable issues, Balochistan and the country might be spared further bloodshed and ruin. A tall ask perhaps.