Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
I completely agree with this part of your post. I have seen the insurgencies in India vanishing with the improvement of their economy. Indian muslims who used to feel sidelined in the 1990’s, now I find (mostly) them to be proud Indians. On the other hand during the late 80’s and early 90’s when Pakistan was doing reasonably well we were much better integrated, but the problems started appearing with the deterioration of economy. At the moment the Pakistan that we see is mostly Rawalpindi/Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. The new government should develop those cities further, but the real focus should be in other smaller towns. Doing that the migration of people to bigger cities will be halted and the development will be more evenly distributed throughout the country.
The situation in which we are in now, is mostly due to dictatorship during the 2000’s. From 1977 to 2000, the same sardars were in those areas who were politically involved in the process. But due to the operations some of the people became militants, and the other nationalist parties became sidelined. The government needs to differentiate between the nationalists and the separatists, and try to bring the nationalists back into the mainstream. If you see in Indian Held Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti’s party which used to be more aligned with APHC and wanted referendum for Kashmir, but once they got involved in the political process now they want the solution within the Indian framework. Because with the nationalists out we are left with PPP, PMLQ, JUI and PMLN in Balochistan. Apart from JUI I am not sure how much the other parties represent the people from that province as the number of seats won by PMLQ and PPP during the previous elections was partly due to the boycott of the elections by the nationalists.