Amid frustrations — thanks to the worsened law and order situation and the bottommost socio-economic mobility in the province — Balochistan’s government has undertaken some laudable initiatives, particularly in education sector. These include cabinet’s recent decisions to induct native mother languages in educational curriculum of the province as optional subjects, introducing chapters on such veteran Baloch and Pashtun nationalist leaders as Ghaus Bakhsh Buzenjo (1917–1989) and Shaheed Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai (1907–1973), regularizing more than 5000 teachers from eighteen different districts recruited under Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan Package, and suspending some corrupt officials in the department.

By the same token, Balochistan government also took the lead when it succeeded in holding local bodies’ elections on December 7 in a peaceful manner despite its volatile security situation while the other provinces still employ foot-dragging devices, citing one or other reason, in devolving power to the lower tiers.

These initiatives coupled with the promises in health sector, which include devolving power from the provincial health secretariat at Quetta to the divisional and district level offices in respective cities, do not at all certify the provincial ministers’ mantra that the situation in Balochistan has improved in the last 8 months. That being said, certain issues which needed immediate attentions of both federal and provincial governments since they came into power in June last year still remain unaddressed.

First, sectarian strife continues to perpetuate. Hazara Shiite ethnical minority of the province still faces existential threat to its survival causing massive legal and illegal immigration of Hazara youth and families to European countries, particularly to Australia. Many of these illegal migrants are becoming prey to human trafficking via land and sea routes, suffer from miserable travel conditions and some of them even die on the way. Thanks to government’s continued inaction on providing protection to Hazaras and the absence of effective legislation on human trafficking, it has become a profitable business in the province.

Second, there appears no end to forced disappearances. 70 years old Mama Qadeer Baloch is on Long March again this time en route to Islamabad from Karachi, calling for the recovery of missing persons and an end to forced disappearances.

Not a single of those already missing has been recovered since this government (both federal and provincial) has sworn in. Dumped mutilated dead bodies of these missing persons, however, continue to be found frequently in rural areas of Balochistan.

In the backdrop of this grave issue, the staggering statement of Dr. Abdul Malik Baloch on October 27 last year, wherein he admitted his failure in recovering missing persons, raised the eyebrows of political observers and both Baloch and Pashtun nationalists. Such statements do nothing but reinforce the popular notion that a parallel government run by those at Quetta Cantonment still operates in Balochistan.

Third, kidnapping for ransom has become a thriving business these days in Balochistan with kidnappers demanding ransom amount in millions from the families of those kidnapped. As an example, an amount of rupees one billion has been demanded from the family of Awami National Party’s central leader and its former provincial president Arbab Abdul Zahir Kasi who was abducted in October last year and is still missing. In yet another shocking instance, the renowned cardiologist Dr. Manaf Tareen’s family had to pay rupees 50 million for his safe arrival to home in Quetta on December 2 last year after 78 days of his abduction in September. Disgracefully, the government has failed in its recovery operation in both these abduction cases.
While hearing the case of kidnapping of Arbab Abdul Zahir in November, Balochistan high Court remarked that the people were abducted in daytime from the busy roads of the city and the police could do nothing. Court further said, “There are only four roads in Quetta and it is ironic that law enforcers are still unable to maintain peace and protect the citizens’ life and property”. These remarks explicitly reflect the severity of this issue.

Fourth, unemployment in Balochistan is at 20% despite the fact that it makes only 5 % of country’s population. This certainly makes youth in the province prone to recruitment in secessionist, extremist and sectarian militant outfits.

Fifth, research in the universities located in Balochistan is down to zero. Technical expertise required for the operations of scientific instruments in laboratories in universities is close to nonexistence. Additionally, the number of PhDs produced each year by Punjab University alone exceeds the total number of PhDs produced by all the five public-sector universities of Balochistan. Worse still, graduates produced by these universities very rarely have the capacity to compete in labor market and services sector with the graduates of universities located in other provinces.

Sixth, and the most important to me, Pashtuns’ resentment over the parity principle (that Balochs and Pashtuns must be treated equally in all sectors) has so far not been addressed even though the Pashtuns’ party Pashtunkhwa Mili Awami Party has also been in power since May 11 general elections.
Merit continues to be slayed by the district-wise quota system, depriving competent Pashtun youths of their fundamental right to compete both in admissions to educational institutes and in recruitment to various posts. In an advertisement on January 21, 2014 by Balochistan Public Service Commission, for example, not even a single of total 344 posts of male lecturers has been reserved for the Pashtuns. Additionally, out of total 330 posts of female lecturers, only 81 seats have been reserved for female aspirants from Pashtun-populated districts of Killa Abdullah, Killa Saifullah and Loralai. Put together, out of the total 674 seats, 593 seats are reserved for Baloch aspirants from fifteen Baloch populated districts, and only 81 seats are reserved for Pashtun aspirants from only three Pashtun populated districts. Moreover, albeit qualifying the criteria, Pashtun bureaucrats still find themselves deprived of the administrative posts of higher grades in provincial secretariat.

By the same token, NADRA continues to play the deplorable role of blocking or resisting in issuing computerized NICs to many Pashtuns, rendering them the status of Muhajirs in their own very land.
Corruption, smuggling, poverty, and religious madrasas’ pouring in graduates with extremist and militant mindsets in social fabric of the province are yet some other straws which have continuously been breaking the camel’s back.

So far it has only been a zero-sum game with those at the helm of affairs at the receiving end.
Legislation has to be oriented in the direction of a prosperous Balochistan. Although we often come to hear the stories of ministers holding the hands of bureaucrats in provincial secretariat, showing them the whole morass, making them emerge from their inaction clout and work for welfare of people, yet they have to do more than that.

All they (legislators) need to do is to unite, work as one political unit and come up with uniform policy — acceptable to all — to pacify the situation in Balochistan. They are bound to do it now, for if they do not, Balochistan’s conundrum is bound to surface like a demon for the whole nation.

Fazal Muhammad Khan is a youth activist, politician and General Secretary of Institute for Development Education and Advocacy (IDEA). He can be reached at fazajana@gmail.com

The post Balochistan’s Diary appeared first on Laaltain.

In the follow up of my articles “Why Balochistan’s Mama Qadeer is on Long March” published in The Laaltain on November 27, 2013 and “My Name is Khan and I am Not a Talib” published in Pashtun Women Viewpoint on December 15, I received several disparate responses in social media wherein the nationalists’ narrative was reprimanded and dubbed to be secular and anti-Islamic. I wish to continue the conversation about the quandaries of Baloch and Pashtun people by replying to the feedback I received in the social media.

My approach would primarily be to appeal to the rationality of the readers. By rationality I mean a fundamental faculty of utilizing reason and logic to resolve any issue. The people who were too quick to discredit my opinions by calling it anti-Islamic should know that Islam rouses in man the faculty of reason and encourages him/her to ponder deeply in matters that he/she comes across. It instructs man to realize issues in the light of reality. In the Holy Quran, God Almighty denounces the act of not using one’s faculty of reasons in Surah Al‑A’raf in the following words:
“They have hearts wherewith they understand not, they have eyes wherewith they see not, and they have ears wherewith they hear not (the truth). They are like cattle, nay even more astray; those! They are the heedless ones.”(Verse 179)
Viewed from a broader perspective, Islam underscores more on Ijtehad which denotes the exercise and application of one’s reason or logic (rationality) to matters concerning one’s own self or social sphere and less on Taqlid, the (blind) following of the tradition.
Ill-starred, however, turned out to be the Muslim Ummah when by the 10th Century AD, the rationality was almost barred in the public matters because authorities of the day believed that ijtehad was the privilege of only a few great scholars who had died by then. As a result, all that was left for the Muslims to rely on was Taqlid or the following of the judgments and principles set by the likes of Imam Abu Hanifa and his contemporaries in the 8th century AD. The application of one’s own reason and logic on the issues which sprouted from continuously evolving culture, ever-increasing knowledge and advancements was rejected.
This was beginning of the death of rationality among Muslims. The Golden Age of Islam which lasted from the mid-8th century till the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258 AD has continued to collapse since then. During the golden period, however, Muslim world was an intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine and education. The House of Wisdom (Baitul Hikmah) was established in Baghdad where scientific knowledge was assimilated from ancient Chinese, Roman, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Phoenician, Byzantine, and Indian civilizations. However, with the consequent death of rationality which jammed the knowledge, Muslims could no longer produce geniuses like Bu-Ali Sina, Khwarizmi, Jabir Bin Hayyan, Ibn al Haisam and others. Here began the era where Muslim Ummah went into perpetual reliance on the West for knowledge.
Coming back to Pakistan, factors like unnecessarily extensive and powerful role of religious clergy in state affairs, Zia’s Islamization and his extensive revamping of the educational syllabi with the prime purpose of Islamizing education have bottled up rationality and deeply instilled the concept of Taqlid in the sociopolitical fabric of the nation. The attitude of Taqlid has developed an uncritical support, no matter rational or irrational, to whatever is uttered from the mouth of or written from the pen of some self-proclaimed religious scholars and preachers.

Because of this attitude of Taqlid, we as a nation have ignored the great achievements of people such as Prof. Dr. Abdus Salam – the only Nobel Laureate of Pakistan who is highly revered throughout the world but not in Pakistan. So star-crossed was he that we condemned him only for his belonging to the minority Ahmadiyya community and so ill-fated are we that we failed to benefit from what he achieved. One wonders that Har Gobind Khorana (1922 – 2011) who was born in pre-partition Pakistan and won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1968 might have anticipated our discriminatory attitude and decided to leave Pakistan and acquire a naturalized citizenship of America.
Similarly our attitude towards Malala Yousafzai is another reflection of our irrational mindset. Devoid of any concrete reasons and proofs, we are too quick to chastise the poor child. Too many of us blindly follow the opinions and writings of ideologically driven Malala haters. And when questioned on rational grounds, we tend to end the conversation by blaming liberals and seculars for all the ills in Pakistan. Let me recall what she has done. She is a girl of sixteen, shot in head by the Taliban, the one who talks of peace and education for all. She is the one who has shown to the world that Pakistan does have the talent, courage and the people who think progressively and speak against all the odds and oppressions in the society. If this is in fact the case, what is then wrong with her? Has she done anything distasteful either to Islam or to Pakistan? Of course not! But the death of rationality makes us think otherwise.
Such mentality has also by and large implicitly hampered research in both social and basic sciences. As an example, Tablighi Jamaat, a staunch propagator of Taqlid, discredits science by equating it just with technology and does not consider it an important knowledge. Likewise, the incumbent course content taught in our educational institutes requires students to read scientific literature with jaundiced eyes resulting in social stagnation and hampering the development of social values. The attitude of Taqlid proves out to be a monstrous blockade to the exchange of ideas in research in social sciences, in particular. It is probably the same mentality of Taqlid that has blocked the inclusion of scientists, both social and basic, in important public policy decisions. A case in point is the irrationality of the Council of Islamic Ideology in saying that DNA evidence cannot be taken a conclusive proof in rape cases.
On the basis of these premises about Taqlid and rationality, let us go back to the discussion of nationalists being termed as seculars and ant-Islamic. Nationalism is defined as a belief or creed or political ideology that involves an individual identifying with one’s nation. This definition is very much in sync with the words of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) in his famous last sermon:
“O’ ye people! Allah says, O’ people We created you from one male and one female and made you into tribes and nations, so as to be known to one another.”
Nationalism, however, should not be confused with ethnocentrism which is defined as the judging of another’s culture by the norms, mores, standards and values of one’s own culture. And the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) has denounced ethnocentrism, and not nationalism, when he said in the same sermon:
“Verily in the sight of Allah, the most honored amongst you is the one who is most God-fearing. There is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab and for a non-Arab over an Arab or for the white over the black or for the black over the white except in God-consciousness.”
In the words of Mahmood Khan Achakzai, ‘where in the Holy Quran, Hadith or Sunnah of the Prophet (PBUH) has it been mentioned that one should not raise one’s voice on the control of natural resources which exist in one’s area of residence?’ Albeit being only a question, these words explicitly define nationalism.
To conclude, let me put here the question: Does decrying the killing of 70 innocent people by a brutal army operation in North Waziristan a few weeks back make any Pashtuns an ethnocentric (Read nationalist)? So let us be rational in our critique of the ‘nationalists’.

Fazal Muhammad Khan is a graduate of GC University Lahore- He is General Secretary of Institute for Development Education and Advocacy (IDEA) — He can be reached at fazajana@gmail.com.

The post Death of Rationality appeared first on Laaltain.