Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Balochis can now print a whole book on the leaders who apologised to them. But unfortunately there is not a single word on any practical step for redressal. Unfortunately, I still do not see any urgency in the corridors of power. I wish there was a way for us to communicate our feelings and ideas to those who matter.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Personally I believe Balochistan should be the first priority of the government (at least after the recent events). The current situation of Balochistan is due to the indifference of all of us politicians, media and civil society. We have failed them! They fought for their rights against all odds and we were busy in our lives like nothing's happening there.
Anyways, now Balochistan is on the brink of breaking away. There is a big gulf between the nationalists, Pakistani politicians and the military and considering this miraculous efforts by all the concerned can now bring Balochistan back into the fold. I agree with you still the politicians are interested in scoring political mileage out of it but not resolving with the urgency it needs.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
If Balochistan was one the verge of breaking away, separatist politicians would have won the elections there. You have a small minority of vocal militants, who should not be allowed to deceive us into thinking they represent the majority.
The actual views of the Baloch will emerge this year or next year when we look at the results of the general election. For example, the main sign that East Pakistan was going to break away was not the militancy itself, but rather the strong performance of the Awami League despite its call for greater autonomy.
So if politicians who demand more autonomy for Balochistan (because calling for full independence it not allowed) win the elections, that it what should set off warning bells.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
While the situation is really grave, I also understand that the province is still not on the verge of secession. Those who are advocting separation, are still a minority. But the issue is the situation needs to be contained before it reaches point of no return. We should give violations of human rights as much importance as we give to dismemberment of the country.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
The balochi sardars want to use the East Pakistan boogeymen to maintain the status quo in balochistan which hasn't worked in the past. Awami League was at least democratic (after 1971 is another issue), while these sardars act like feudals. Musharraf had made many B areas into A areas in balochistan, but this govt came and reverse that along with ending the local govt system. Unless Pakistan becomes serious about ending these sub-ruling classes insdie the country, there is no hope for a prosperous Pakistan.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
A nation does not become strong by dividing itself into small piece it becomes weaker.
people of pakistan must be crazy to think like this.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
**If Balochistan was one the verge of breaking away, separatist politicians would have won the elections there. You have a small minority of vocal militants, who should not be allowed to deceive us into thinking they represent the majority.
The actual views of the Baloch will emerge this year or next year when we look at the results of the general election.** For example, the main sign that East Pakistan was going to break away was not the militancy itself, but rather the strong performance of the Awami League despite its call for greater autonomy.
So if politicians who demand more autonomy for Balochistan (because calling for full independence it not allowed) win the elections, that it what should set off warning bells.
Have the separatist politicians fought election? If they fight elections under Pakistani govt., then they are not separatist, they believe in the constitution of Pakistan.
I hope you share same feeling when results of general elections come out in Kashmir as well. People vote in Kashmir as well. Minority of people who do not vote in Kashmir should not be allowed to deceive you into thinking they represent the majority.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Have the separatist politicians fought election? If they fight elections under Pakistani govt., then they are not separatist, they believe in the constitution of Pakistan.
I hope you share same feeling when results of general elections come out in Kashmir as well. People vote in Kashmir as well. Minority of people who do not vote in Kashmir should not be allowed to deceive you into thinking they represent the majority.
Here we go with the Indians playing the Kashmir card while ignoring that not all Kashmiris live under the Indian occupied kashmir. You wont get a single vote in favour of India if you ask the kashmiris in Azad kashmir. I hope you will respect that vote as well. Furthermore kashmir is a disputed territory under the UN resolutions and they have been given a right to refrendum. Why dont you hold it and settle the issue once and for all. Baluchistan issue is the same as Khalistan where a minority is creating trouble. Don't bring Kashmir into the discussion.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
I hope you share same feeling when results of general elections come out in Kashmir as well. People vote in Kashmir as well. Minority of people who do not vote in Kashmir should not be allowed to deceive you into thinking they represent the majority.
Thank you for poking in our affairs and muddling our waters.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
For the past few years balochistan was a non issue for Pakistani media, now suddenly hyrbyar marri (advocate of baloch freedom) is on almost every television talk show.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
[TABLE]
Wooing 'naraz' Baloch
*Syed Talat Hussain *
*The government's idea of holding an All Parties Conference on Balochistan seems stillborn. Most of the parties while endorsing the need for dialogue over Balochistan privately admit that more talk is redundant on Balochistan. What is needed is action. But it is ironical that even the actions taken by this government---some of which have been quite substantive---have resulted in little improvement in the ground situation: violence has increased manifold in the province particularly the use of home-made land-mines (IEDs in common parlance.)
*
**Not a day passes without random killing and acts of sabotage getting reported from trouble-infested districts. On top of it, Baloch politicians sound more alienated than before, and their narrative, even in the mainstream of provincial politics, is tilting towards separatism rather than simple demands for more provincial autonomy. So why a reworked NFC award, more funds allocation---more than ever in Balochistan's history---and greater devolution of power and authority has not resulted in addressing the situation in the province? The simple answer is "lack of attention and a complete absence of any vision."
**The government, through its agaz-e-haqooq-e-Balochistan initiative, had actually accurately identified the near-full spectrum needs of the province, but later on, had reduced its implementation to only those provisions that required nothing other than throwing money at the problem. Funds were funneled in Balochistan without creating any effective mechanism to supervise the disbursement and impact assessment of these funds. The special committee on Balochistan whose job it was to keep an eye on where the money was going has met only three times since its inception and has been dormant for all practical purposes. The money that could have gone into alleviating Baloch's sense of deprivation has been gobbled up by greedy, useless politicians.
The federal government also did not tackle head one the issue of challenges to the writ of the state. The "naraz baloch bhai" theme is great---and they have solid reasons to be naraz---but that cannot be confused with the deliberate effort to break up the country. *The groups that are funded from abroad and that that have declared war on the state needed to be separated from the rest of the lot in order to ensure that Balochistan's problems were not mixed up with foreign-sponsored terrorism. That required forward thinking---in fact just 'thinking' would have been enough---and persistent focus. Regrettably, the present government could not do that, attentive as it is to only one aspect of power----to grab more. The result is that even after conceding practically every demand of the Baloch political parties, the centre has not gained anything in return. The problem is not just intact, but it has also got aggravated.
*
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
An old article from 2009…
Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan
**REBR@NDING THE LONG WAR, Part 2
Balochistan is the ultimate prize
**By Pepe Escobar
PART 1: Obama does his Bush
impression
It’s a classic case of calm before the storm. The AfPak chapter of Obama’s brand new OCO (“Overseas Contingency Operations”), formerly GWOT (“global war on terror”) does not imply only a surge in the Pashtun Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). A surge in Balochistan as well may be virtually inevitable.
**Balochistan is totally under the radar of Western corporate media. But not the Pentagon’s. An immense desert comprising almost 48% of Pakistan’s area, rich in uranium and copper, potentially very rich in oil, and producing more than one-third of Pakistan’s natural gas, it accounts for less than 4% of Pakistan’s 173 million citizens. Balochs are the majority, followed by Pashtuns. **Quetta, the provincial capital, is considered Taliban Central by the Pentagon, which for all its high-tech wizardry mysteriously has not been able to locate Quetta resident “The Shadow”, historic Taliban emir Mullah Omar himself.
**Strategically, Balochistan is mouth-watering: east of Iran, south of Afghanistan, and boasting three Arabian sea ports, including Gwadar, practically at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.
Gwadar - a port built by China - is the absolute key. It is the essential node in the crucial, ongoing, and still virtual Pipelineistan war between IPI and TAPI. IPI is the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the “peace pipeline”, which is planned to cross from Iranian to Pakistani Balochistan - an anathema to Washington. TAPI is the perennially troubled, US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, which is planned to cross western Afghanistan via Herat and branch out to Kandahar and Gwadar.
**
**Washington’s dream scenario is Gwadar as the new Dubai - while China would need Gwadar as a port and also as a base for pumping gas via a long pipeline to China. One way or another, it will all depend on local grievances being taken very seriously. Islamabad pays a pittance in royalties for the Balochis, and development aid is negligible; Balochistan is treated as a backwater. Gwadar as the new Dubai would not necessarily mean local Balochis benefiting from the boom; in many cases they could even be stripped of their local land.
**
**To top it all, there’s the New Great Game in Eurasia fact that Pakistan is a key pivot to both NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), of which Pakistan is an observer. So whoever “wins” Balochistan incorporates Pakistan as a key transit corridor to either Iranian gas from the monster South Pars field or a great deal of the Caspian wealth of “gas republic” Turkmenistan.
**
The cavalry to the rescue
Now imagine thousands of mobile US troops - backed by supreme air power and hardcore artillery - pouring into this desert across the immense, 800-kilometer-long, empty southern Afghanistan-Balochistan border. These are Obama’s surge troops who will be in theory destroying opium crops in Helmand province in Afghanistan. They will also try to establish a meaningful presence in the ultra-remote, southwest Afghanistan, Baloch-majority province of Nimruz. It would take nothing for them to hit Pakistani Balochistan in hot pursuit of Taliban bands. And this would certainly be a prelude for a de facto US invasion of Balochistan.
**What would the Balochis do? That’s a very complex question.
Balochistan is of course tribal - just as the FATA. Local tribal chiefs can be as backward as Islamabad is neglectful (and they are not exactly paragons of human rights either). A parallel could be made with the Swat valley.
Most Baloch tribes bow to Islamabad’s authority - except, first and foremost, the Bugti. And then there’s the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) - which both Washington and London brand as a terrorist group.** Its leader is Brahamdagh Bugti, operating out of Kandahar (only two hours away from Quetta).
In a recent Pakistani TV interview he could not be more sectarian, stressing the BLA is getting ready to attack non-Balochis. The Balochis are inclined to
consider the BLA as a resistance group. But Islamabad denies it, saying their support is not beyond 10% of the provincial population.
It does not help that Islamabad tends to be not only neglectful but heavy-handed; in August 2006, Musharraf’s troops killed ultra-respected local leader Nawab Akbar Bugti, a former provincial governor.
There’s ample controversy on whether the BLA is being hijacked by foreign intelligence agencies - everyone from the CIA and the British MI6 to the Israeli Mossad. In a 2006 visit to Iran, I was prevented from going to Sistan-Balochistan in southeast Iran because, according to Tehran’s version, infiltrated CIA from Pakistani Balochistan were involved in covert, cross-border attacks. **And it’s no secret to anyone in the region that since 9/11 the US virtually controls the Baloch air bases in Dalbandin and Panjgur.
In October 2001, while I was waiting for an opening to cross to Kandahar from Quetta, and apart from tracking the whereabouts of President Hamid Karzai and his brother, I spent quite some time with a number of BLA associates and sympathizers. They described themselves as “progressive, nationalist, anti-imperialist” (and that makes them difficult to be co-opted by the US). They were heavily critical of “Punjabi chauvinism”, and always insisted the region’s resources belong to Balochis first; that was the rationale for attacks on gas pipelines.
**
Stressing an atrocious, provincial literacy rate of only 16% (“It’s government policy to keep Balochistan backward”), they resented the fact that most people still lacked drinking water. They claimed support from at least 70% of the Baloch population (“Whenever the BLA fires a rocket, it’s the talk of the bazaars”). They also claimed to be united, and in coordination with Iranian Balochis. And they insisted that “Pakistan had turned Balochistan into a US cantonment, which affected a lot the relationship between the Afghan and Baloch peoples”.
As a whole, not only BLA sympathizers but the Balochis in general are adamant: although prepared to remain within a Pakistani confederation, they want infinitely more autonomy.
**Game on
**
**How crucial Balochistan is to Washington can be assessed by the study “Baloch Nationalism and the Politics of Energy Resources: the Changing Context of Separatism in Pakistan” by Robert Wirsing of the US Army think-tank Strategic Studies Institute. Predictably, it all revolves around Pipelineistan.
China - which built Gwadar and needs gas from Iran - must be sidelined by all means necessary. The added paranoid Pentagon component is that China could turn Gwadar into a naval base and thus “threaten” the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.
The only acceptable scenario for the Pentagon would be for the US to take over Gwadar. Once again, that would be a prime confluence of Pipelineistan and the US empire of bases.
**
**Not only in terms of blocking the IPI pipeline and using Gwadar for TAPI, control of Gwadar would open the mouth-watering opportunity of a long land route across Balochistan into Helmand, Nimruz, Kandahar or, better yet, all of these three provinces in southwest Afghanistan. From a Pentagon/NATO perspective, after the “loss” of the Khyber Pass, that would be the ideal supply route for Western troops in the perennial, now rebranded, GWOT (“global war on terror”).
During the Asif Ali Zardari administration in Islamabad the BLA, though still a fringe group with a political wing and a military wing, has been regrouping and rearming, while the current chief minister of Balochistan, Nawab Raisani, is suspected of being a CIA asset (there’s no conclusive proof). There’s fear in Islamabad that the government has taken its eye off the Balochistan ball - and that the BLA may be effectively used by the US for balkanization purposes. But Islamabad still seems not to have listened to the key Baloch grievance: we want to profit from our natural wealth, and we want autonomy.
So what’s gonna be the future of “Dubai” Gwadar? IPI or TAPI? The die is cast. Under the radar of the Obama/Karzai/Zardari photo-op in Washington, all’s still to play in this crucial front in the New Great Game in Eurasia.
**Pepe Escobar is the
author of Globalistan:
He may be reached at
pepeasia@yahoo .com.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales,
syndication and republishing.)
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Now in this particular thread there are 100s of articles saying that Baloch people are being abducted and killed and related thing, but do we have article about the teachers, doctors and other civilians who have been shot in cold blood by none other than these very baloch terrorists?
Not very long ago when a lady teacher was killing in Quetta, then a male teacher who was originally from Punjab ( could have made decent living in Punjab by having a private school of his own) who was teaching in remote area of Balochistan was killed by the terrorists, may be his only crime was he was teaching poor kids for free and ofcourse education and awareness is the only thing these baloch sardars cannot afford for the their common balochi..
Or should i talk about the incidents, where the public transport vehicles is stopped and everyone have to show their id card and who ever is not balochi is just taken out of the bus and then shot in broad day light....
Not to mention, many balochs who refused to share their income from the chrome mine project operated by the engineering wing of Pak-Army were harrased by Murree's men and Nawab Murree has to say that the he didn't feel weak when his sons were killed but since the people of village are getting better in the economic terms... he is loosing grip on them???
should i continue.. i may not have articles after articles to post here but there are more to what the picture is being portrayed here and on the internet...
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
You are free to post articles and news from the other side as well.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Now in this particular thread there are 100s of articles saying that Baloch people are being abducted and killed and related thing, but do we have article about the teachers, doctors and other civilians who have been shot in cold blood by none other than these very baloch terrorists?
Not very long ago when a lady teacher was killing in Quetta, then a male teacher who was originally from Punjab ( could have made decent living in Punjab by having a private school of his own) who was teaching in remote area of Balochistan was killed by the terrorists, may be his only crime was he was teaching poor kids for free and ofcourse education and awareness is the only thing these baloch sardars cannot afford for the their common balochi..
Or should i talk about the incidents, where the public transport vehicles is stopped and everyone have to show their id card and who ever is not balochi is just taken out of the bus and then shot in broad day light....
Not to mention, many balochs who refused to share their income from the chrome mine project operated by the engineering wing of Pak-Army were harrased by Murree's men and Nawab Murree has to say that the he didn't feel weak when his sons were killed but since the people of village are getting better in the economic terms... he is loosing grip on them???
should i continue.. i may not have articles after articles to post here but there are more to what the picture is being portrayed here and on the internet...
You can post all you want, but the fact is many peaceful Baloch have been tortured to death, not militants.
That is why people are angry, and that is a big reason why there is an insurgency.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
^^ No, one writes articles for the other side... they are just news... and by the way do you know what was the size of Balochistan when it joined Pakistan??? any idea????
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
You can post all you want, but the fact is many peaceful Baloch have been tortured to death, not militants.
That is why people are angry, and that is a big reason why there is an insurgency.
And it was the teachers, the doctors ( among them were women ) who killed these peaceful baloch? no question on resolving the baloch conflict but can you tell me what the conflict is to start with??? be precise and let it be brief !!! i don't think these Murrees, Mengals, Bugties and many other give a shyt about the balochi people to start with... or are you of the view that these Baloch sardars are dying and taking bullets on their chest because they feel about the their people???
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
I know that killing of doctors, teachers and poor labourers have taken place in balochistan as well which will further impact the general public of that province. We also know that the killing of settlers began well after the operation in balochistan began (collateral damage?). Killing of even a single innocent person is regrettable, but now the things have become very complex. A big and dangerous game is being played in Pakistan between china, Russia and the us. It seems that the help that Pakistan had provided to the Americans (to the detriment of pakistan) in Afghanistan is not working and they are looking for some easy way to get a permanent foothold in the region, in the mean while taking control of the future pipelines, balochistans mineral resources and gwadar. In the grand scheme of things the stability/integrity of the country is at stake and that the government should try to address as a result the settler issue will automatically get resolved.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
I know that killing of doctors, teachers and poor labourers have taken place in balochistan as well which will further impact the general public of that province. We also know that the killing of settlers began well after the operation in balochistan began (collateral damage?). Killing of even a single innocent person is regrettable, but now the things have become very complex. A big and dangerous game is being played in Pakistan between china, Russia and the us. It seems that the help that Pakistan had provided to the Americans in Afghanistan is not working and they ate looking for some easy way to get a permanent foothold in the region, in the mean while taking control of the future pipelines, balochistans mineral resources and gwadar. In the grand scheme of things the stability/integrity of the country is at stake and that the government should try to address as a result the settler issue will automatically get resolved.
And this is the reason you are posting the articles about the BLA, making them look like victim and agencies making them look like a monster here?
In this game, there is no right or wrong, there is and will gonna be winner or loosers, the winner will be considered right and loosers will be perceived as wrong ones... so pick you side??? who's side are you on? 1) Pakistan 2) China 3) Russia 4) US 5) India .. please dont post the crap that you are on the side of humanity... because in that case your article search should be upon the cruelty (and i using polite words here) committed by the sardar and their family men on the common balochs...
can you tell me what makes common baloch's life this hard? or who make it hard on them?
