BLUNT BUTCHER
JAMMU: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 12th August path-breaking statement in the All-Party meeting at New Delhi on Kashmir unrest on Balochistan has created a noble situation in the enslaved, exploited to the hilt and brutalised resource-rich region. The wounded and bleeding Blochs felt so happy and so overwhelmed that they thanked our Prime Minister and expressed the hope that he would help them get political emancipation from the aggressor Pakistan and lead a dignified life in their own autonomous region. Their leaders were in tears; they saw in the Prime Minister’s suggestion a ray of hope and promise for the future.
What is the conflict between Balochistan and Pakistan all about? Balochistan was an autonomous region before 1948. That year, Pakistan annexed it through aggression, rape, loot and plunder. This region, which constitutes 47 per cent of the Pakistan’s territory, wanted to merge with India but it didn’t happen because it was not contiguous with India. Obviously, the other choice of the people of the region was independent and sovereign region and they have been struggling since then to achieve their most cherished goal. In the process, they have suffered huge losses both in terms of men and natural resources. According to one report, several thousand Baloch nationalists have been liquidated and 17,000 Balochs have disappeared. Their whereabouts are not known.
The nationalists accuse them of kidnapping them and weakening their liberation movement. The Balochistan conflict is actually a guerrilla war waged by Baloch nationalists against the successive oppressive governments of Pakistan. Balochistan consists of certain regions of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. However, it is Pakistan, which has become the epicenter of the conflict between the Balochs, mostly Shiite Muslims, and Islamabad. They want greater autonomy, increased royalties from natural resources and provincial revenue, and status of an independent nation-state.
In Pakistan’s Balochistan province, insurgencies by Baloch nationalists have been fought in 1948, 1958-59, 1962-63 and 1973-77 – with an ongoing and reportedly stronger, broader insurgency beginning in 2003. The insurgency gained impetus or fillip in “conjunction with the deteriorating law and order situation in neighbouring Afghanistan and instability at the federal level”. Baloch nationalists have attacked “almost all prime installations” of the Pakistani Government and all symbols of Pakistani state, including the military cantonment in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital; important government buildings and killed many senior government officials. One foreign-based Baloch journalist, Malik Siraj Akbar calls anger over military operations among people in the province “growing and often uncontrollable”.
Although it has vast natural resources, Balochistan is one of the Pakistan’s poorest regions. Baloch nationalists say day in and day out that the Punjabi-dominated Government of Pakistan is systematically “suppressing” development in Balochistan to keep the Balochs weak, voiceless and unreal, whilst the aggressor Pakistan argues that international business interests have been unwilling to invest in the region due to the continuing unrest. Indeed, a bogus argument. The fact of the matter is that it is Islamabad which is doing all that it could to fleece the region and keep the foreign multi-national companies, and even the locals out of the developmental processes.
Pakistan terms the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) as a terrorist organisation. Significantly, Britain and many human rights organisations also hold the similar view on the BLA, thus suggesting that Pakistani propagandists or lobbyists have succeeded to influencing opinion of certain nations and human rights organisations.
On Sunday, the Baloch nationalists in exile said that while “Pakistan is celebrating 14th August, the Balochs are bleeding”. Fatima Baloch, an activist in a tweet said: “Pakistan is celebrating 14th August, on the other hand, Balochistan is bleeding”. Indeed, Pakistan has unleashed a reign of senseless brutalities on the Balochis. They need international support. It was great that PM Modi took the initiative and reassured them of taking up the issue of human rights violations. It is hoped that he would take all the necessary steps at international level to educate the world community about the plight of the Balochis. Such a policy would help India in two ways. One, it would have a friend in a region known for radicalisation and anti-India forces. On the other hand, it would weaken Pakistan and the ongoing Jihadi movement in the Valley.
Let PM Modi replicate Bangladesh in Balochistan whose case is different from that of Jammu and Kashmir. Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India as per the constitutional law on the subject, whereas Pakistan annexed Balochistan against its will.
