Through the length and breadth of the country, a chorus of troubled voices is sounding the alarm on Balochistan. Asked to comment on this mounting sense of panic, a senior army officer told The Friday Times: “This is mere alarmism. Alarmists have succeeded in creating a sense of imminent doom.”
In other words, chill out; no big deal.
Except common sense begs the question: if what is happening in Balochistan is no big deal, why does the army’s – and the state’s – response, today and in the past, wreak of alarm – even fear?
The killing of civilians by militants and indiscriminate use of force, disappearances of political activists and human rights abuses by the military and paramilitary forces: no cause for anxiety . Wiping out popular indigenous Baloch leadership and supporting apolitical, pro-establishment tribal chiefs as an alternative: a policy only a complacent state could follow for decades . The Frontier Corps being allowed to establish a parallel government in Balochistan; opening fire on a student protest and killing two students and injuring four more in January this year: smells like nonchalance to me.
So, all those who think there’s anything wrong with Balochistan, think again.
Speaking to a local daily last week, a high-ranking army officer said as much: given that there are 100,000 security men in the province, “at most there will be a few thousand among the Baloch population capable of causing trouble. They will never be able to create big mischief .”
One can only wonder what counts as ‘big mischief’. Target killings, road side bomb blasts, land mine explosions and attacks by militants on police check posts, trains, gas pipelines and electricity lines: do these make the grade for ‘big mischief’? Since January this year alone, more than 250 people from other provinces who had settled in Balochistan have been killed in attacks; does that count as big mischief? Does the killing of Baloch leaders by their own militant Baloch friends constitute ‘big mischief’? Is the growing religious radicalisation of Balochistan something we can consider the result of ‘big mischief’? Perhaps we can choose not to be alarmed about this; perhaps we can ignore the radicalisation of Balochistan as we did that of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA.
Except with regards to Balochistan, the Pakistan Army – if one were to believe on- and off-the-record statements by army officers – seems peculiarly unalarmed for an army that uses alarm over an India-threat as the very reason and condition for its constant expansion. If the fuss about Balochistan is really just that, fuss, then why, over the course of six decades has Islamabad failed to come to terms with Baloch nationalism; why has the province almost always been under the effective control of the army and intelligence services; why has indiscriminate, brute force been used time and again? It was certainly an arrogant, but not unalarmed, Musharraf who warned Baloch militants during an interview in January 2005: “It isn’t the 1970s when you can hit and run and hide in the mountains. This time, you won’t even know what hit you.”
What hit them was a military operation complete with helicopter gunships – again, the recourse of an unalarmed Islamabad, of course. Indeed, it was a similarly unalarmed Pakistan Army that killed the 80-year-old Nawab Akbar Bugti with the help of modern precision weapons in September 2006. The Pakistan Army gave itself a good pat on the back and told doomsayers to relax: getting rid of Bugti and the broader insurgent leadership would provide the final answer to the active anti-Centre campaign mounted by the renegade Baloch; the situation in Balochistan could not escalate; Balochistan was different from East Pakistan; and so on.
Even if the political blunder that was Bugti’s killing was not the result of alarm, unfortunately for the government and the army, the reaction to Bugti’s killing was so alarming that the central government, unalarmed as ever, had to deploy the paramilitary Rangers, arrest over 450 people and impose an indefinite curfew. Musharraf went from cocky to, yes, alarmed , overnight. The mask of complacency worn by state officials was shed and a weak-kneed director-general of Inter-Services Public relations, in complete contradiction to earlier official statements, suggested that a ‘mysterious blast’ had led to Bugti’s killing; that 21 army personnel, including six officers, were also killed when the cave collapsed – in other words, that the state had, perhaps , not intended to target or kill Bugti.
It’s hard to accuse the Pakistani state of steadfastness. But that’s not the reason the Bugti episode comes to mind. It comes to mind because history, to teach important lessons, has a cruel way of making heroes of even dubious types like Akbar Bugti. His killing was meant to remind us of the devastating results of military dominance in Pakistan – dismemberment, violent sectarianism, Al Qaeda and Talibanism – and warn us of the terrible consequences for Pakistan if Balochistan were sucked into a new great game to redraw the map of the region once more. More than anything else, it was meant to remind us that while this wasn’t the worst that could happen, the worst wasn’t far around the corner if things didn’t change. In a word: that it was time to be alarmed .
The situation in Balochistan has reached its lowest ebb since the military operation that began in January 2005 and one thing is clear: the state apparatus in Islamabad has learnt nothing from the past. If there is anything to suggest that the civilian government still has no control over the army establishment, it is Balochistan. As Islamabad rolls out political and economic reforms, the army continues to pick up Baloch activists; the killing and disposing of of bodies of missing persons indicates the unchanged behavior of the Army.
The claim that the army, or Islamabad, aren’t alarmed by what’s going on in Balochistan is rubbish if one considers how they have responded to Balochistan over the years. No unalarmed state, or its army, will use force as indiscriminately as has been used in Balochistan – or be met with five sustained rebellions.
Yes, what we have today is Balochistan’s fifth sustained rebellion against Islamabad since 1948. It’s time now to be alarmed in all the right ways, lest this apathy turn into despair.
The writer is Contributing Editor, The Friday Times, and may be reached at mehreen.tft@gmail.com
Courtesy: The Friday Times, Lahore)
http://thebalochhal.com/2010/08/politics-of-alarm/
No comments:
Post a Comment