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EDITORIAL: State of affairs in Balochistan

The Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF) has killed the Balochistan Education Minister Shafiq Ahmed Khan outside his residence in Quetta. The slain minister was a member of the ruling PPP but was Punjabi by extraction. He is the second Balochistan minister to be killed in the last two months. The terrorist “liberators” of the province have killed scores of Punjabis mostly engaged in the education sector as “foreign” settlers to highlight their separatist ideology.

Promptly, someone has put the blame on India. Talking to Daily Times, Quetta’s Commerce College Principal Mirza Amanat Ali Baig said, “Since India has increased the number of consulates in Afghanistan, troubles have enormously increased for us, as terrorists are coming from Afghanistan and getting full support from there”. This may be a good way of explaining the activity of the Baloch insurgents based in Balochistan, but it hardly helps in analysing what is happening in Balochistan or saving Mr Baig from being killed.

A fringe Baloch nationalism has always wanted Balochistan to separate from Pakistan. The genuine grievance of Balochistan against the treatment it has received from the federation has never stopped lending strength to this fringe. But its dominance comes, not from its numbers, but from its ability to practise violence and intimidate. In this its power is no different from the terror practised by the Taliban in Swat. The outreach of BLUF and other extreme nationalists into the lives of the citizens is scary indeed.

It is a pity that at the very moment when violence has increased in Balochistan, the rest of Pakistan is completely in favour of meeting its demands and giving it a better economic deal. Gallup polls and opinion surveys show that the people of Pakistan side with the Baloch cause and wish to punish those who have used violence against the people of Balochistan. At the level of the political parties too there is a consensus over yielding to the demands of Balochistan. The current discussion in the National Finance Commission (NFC) has clearly signalled an unprecedented economic package to Balochistan.

But Balochistan is no longer under any cohesive administrative control to take advantage of the good times that are in store for it. No one otherwise convinced of the new popular attitude towards Balochistan is willing to stand up in Quetta and speak optimistically. Those who kill ensure that no one adopts a positive attitude towards the changing mood in the federation. Elected politicians complain of lax security but collectively demand a shrinking of the role of the police in the province.

The province is unique in having big tribal leaders among the Baloch who are enlightened and influential. Just three or four will swing the opinion of the province this way or that. Since the tragic death of Nawab Akbar Bugti, however, their attitude has stiffened and their demands may have gone beyond the demand for a fair economic deal including possession of the natural resources of the province. The moderate person in Balochistan who prefers the middle course is a very scared and muffled man.

One way Islamabad avoids handling the problem is to emphasise the “conspiracy” theory about Balochistan. It says Balochistan is fine but India is causing all the terrorism happening there. There is no dearth of the “conspiracy theory” among the Baloch too but they see their land being assailed by competing superpowers like America and China, and lesser regional powers like India, Iran and Russia. Islamabad says it has all the proof of India fishing in the troubled waters of Balochistan but will not show it “till it is appropriate to do so”. It keeps on claiming that Balochistan is clean of the Taliban but no one in Quetta believes it.

All kinds of terrorists have assembled in Balochistan partly because of the “strategic depth” policies of the past. There are Afghan refugee camps in the province serving as breeding grounds for jihad against whomever they see as their enemies, including the Shia Hazaras of Quetta. The Iranian Baloch too take shelter in the province and strike across the Iranian border; and there is Lashkar-e-Jhangvi from Punjab which is enslaved to Al Qaeda and its plans in Balochistan. Tragically, those who support separation have no idea of the kind of ethnic-linguistic inferno they are inviting on to themselves. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Turkey and Pakistan

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit should mark a new milestone in Pak-Turkish relations. There is a history of goodwill between the two nations, something always felt but not always explained rationally. Mr Erdogan is a very important man because he represents a new Turkey that wishes to make a break with its internal order of the past and show the world what the Turkish people really think.

Bilateral warmth has transcended the internal orders, but Pakistan needs to look carefully at what the Turks, who have a special policy towards Central Asia, have thought about Pakistan’s policy in Afghanistan. Now that the war in Afghanistan is going to enter another phase, the two countries must see that they are on the same page on how they think of the Northern Alliance composed of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Pakistan has erred by focusing only on its own interests in Afghanistan. It is time to pay heed to the interests of other friendly countries.

Economic relations have not worked although the new resolve is to take bilateral trade to $5 billion. From 1964, the two were members of Regional Cooperation for Development (RCD) together with Iran, but no great trade developed among them. Pakistan became more interested in exporting manpower to the Gulf, and projects with neighbouring Iran didn’t flourish as they should have. Turkey was remote and manufacturing the same sort of things, while its contractors in the construction sector did make some headway in Pakistan.

In 1979 the RCD collapsed. In 1985, the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) came into being, adding the Central Asian states to the old RCD members. It vowed to make the region a free trade area (FTA) in 2015, but Pakistan, stuck on India and balking at trade routes — except for President Zardari — is still in the jihad mode. *

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