Temporary peace with the Baloch not a solution
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 70th Independence Day speech, highlighting the atrocities on the people of Balochistan by Pakistan, has brought the issue to the fore. The exiled leaders of the Free Balochistan Movement across the world expressed their appreciation of India's stand. It is time now Pakistan, before pointing fingers at India, must realise that it has to recognise the aspirations of the Baloch people. Its leadership must let the international community know that sustained violation of human rights of the people of this State is no less than a genocide, continuing since the birth of Pakistan. When the Chief Minister of Balochistan Nawab Sanaullah Zehri criticised Modi, at the same time, the exiled leader of the Balochistan Republican Party Nawab Brahamdagh Bugti argued that Pakistan had no ground to object to his comment. This underlines the fact that Pakistan's nefarious designs to suppress the rebellions and nationalistic uprisings of the Baloch people can no more be sidelined as a law and order problem and it merits international attention. Pakistan must admit its responsibility for years of neglect and forceful annexation of the earlier Princely State under the British rule. Meanwhile, the Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar's indication that India would take up the issue internationally, equating the 1971 War of liberation for Bangladesh, will help the Baloch people.
They are currently fighting the fifth wave of their movement against the Pakistani state. The war against Pakistan dates back to March 1948, when it sent troops to annex the Princely State. Home to 13 million people, the State had seen a rapid escalation of Army atrocities when General Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999. His attempt to build new cantonments in the Province was viewed by radical nationalists as a bid by the Pakistani Army to tighten control over the restive region and quell the rising nationalist upsurge. Despite being the largest State, having a rich reservoir of mineral resources, Balochistan has been purposefully kept by the Federal Government as the least developed State of the country. However, successive political dispensations, whether Army or civilian, accuse its insurgent leaders for its underdevelopment. The facts on the ground tell an entirely different story — the surge in unlawful killings of suspected insurgents and opposition leaders has taken the brutality of the Federal Government to an unprecedented high in the recent past and it has badly affected the developmental efforts.
Why is Pakistan embarrassed or rather shying away from talking about BalochistanIJ It is its own creation and the demand for a separate Balochistan state is a hard reality for Pakistan. As it is popularly described as the ‘Pakistan's Other War', the battle in the State will gradually bring forth the worst of the military attacks on the innocent people of Balochistan, wherein Pakistan Army had even used its Air Force on several occasions in the past. The worst part of the tragedy in Balochistan is that increasingly its people do not feel represented in any domain of life in the national mainstream and to say, their citizens are nowhere near to have a chance to be included in the top political or defence establishments of the country.