The Ignorance about Balochistan

Balochis­tan is the most ignored province of Pak­istan in every walk of life. It grabs media atten­tion most­ly on those issues which are impor­tant for the rul­ing elite of Pak­istan. Such issues range from the appoint­ment of Arsalan Iftikhar at an impor­tant posi­tion to the instal­la­tion of coal fired pow­er plants in Balochis­tan that will pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty for Pun­jab. How­ev­er, when it comes to the issues which affect the peo­ple of Balochis­tan, the media con­ve­nient­ly stands hushed. Due to the poli­cies adopt­ed by the state for last 67 years, Balochis­tan has been mar­gin­al­ized while peo­ple from oth­er provinces, espe­cial­ly from Pun­jab, have very lit­tle knowl­edge about this province.

Balochis­tan was spelled as Baluchis­tan till 1989 when, then Chief Min­is­ter of Balochis­tan, Akbar Bugti changed it to Balochis­tan. Even today most of the peo­ple do not know the dif­fer­ence and the name of the province is still spelled incor­rect­ly as Baluchis­tan on a num­ber of offi­cial doc­u­ments. Baloch con­sti­tute the major nation­al­i­ty liv­ing in Balochis­tan and one of the lan­guages that they speak is called Balochi, the oth­er being Brahvi. Most Pak­ista­nis mis­tak­en­ly call Baloch as Balochi, not know­ing that lat­ter is the name of the lan­guage spo­ken by for­mer.

Politi­cians are entrust­ed with mak­ing pol­i­cy deci­sions that can bring pros­per­i­ty to Balochis­tan. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when it comes to know­ing Balochis­tan, politi­cians fail the test as well. In a TV pro­gram Akhtar Men­gal, for­mer Chief Min­is­ter of Balochis­tan, shared an inter­est­ing anec­dote in this regard. Dur­ing the last years of dic­ta­to­r­i­al regime of Mushar­raf, unit­ed oppo­si­tion con­duct­ed a polit­i­cal ral­ly in Quet­ta. At that ral­ly, Babar Awan, a for­mer fed­er­al min­is­ter, asked Akhtar Men­gal whether he belongs to Balochis­tan. It’s shock­ing to know that a nation­al lev­el politi­cian like Babar Awan did not know that he was ask­ing that ques­tion from an ex-Chief Min­is­ter of Balochis­tan who is also the son of the first Chief Min­is­ter of Balochis­tan. This exam­ple reflects the igno­rance about Balochis­tan in rul­ing polit­i­cal class of Pak­istan.

Like­wise, when the gov­ern­ment of Nawab Aslam Raisani assumed pow­er in Balochis­tan, it decid­ed to restore levies force which was merged into police by dic­ta­tor Mushar­raf. Provin­cial gov­ern­ment asked the fed­er­al inte­ri­or min­istry to make this deci­sion offi­cial. Accord­ing­ly, Rehman Malik, then an advi­sor for inte­ri­or affairs, announced in par­lia­ment that the gov­ern­ment has restored Sar­dari sys­tem in Balochis­tan. He didn’t know that restora­tion of levies force is not the restora­tion of Sar­dari sys­tem. Sar­dari sys­tem was nev­er abol­ished in the first place. On the same night, lengthy dis­cus­sions were held in talk shows dis­cussing impli­ca­tions of the restora­tion of Sar­dari sys­tem in the province. This lev­el of stu­pid­i­ty dis­played by anchors is only because of the igno­rance. Even today, many notable colum­nists incor­rect­ly state that Levies force is con­trolled by Sar­dars. The fact is that Levies force in Balochis­tan is a provin­cial law enforce­ment agency that is under con­trol of the deputy com­mis­sion­er of every dis­trict.

With some note­wor­thy excep­tions, most of the high­brows in Pak­istan lack the basic knowl­edge about Balochis­tan. Has­san Nis­ar, who is known for his hard­core stance against con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als, wrote a ridicu­lous col­umn about Balochis­tan a few months back. The claims he made in that col­umn about the ongo­ing insur­gency in Balochis­tan were absurd and far from real­i­ty. In the same col­umn he admit­ted that his only source of infor­ma­tion was the meet­ing with pas­sen­gers on air­port lounges when­ev­er he vis­it­ed Quet­ta. Once can­not expect such irre­spon­si­ble behav­ior from an intel­lec­tu­al of such high cal­iber. Again, when it comes to Balochis­tan, such intel­lec­tu­als do not care to acquire the cor­rect infor­ma­tion before mak­ing any objec­tive analy­sis.

The afore­men­tioned exam­ples are of peo­ple of pow­er and intel­lect, the case of com­mon peo­ple is even worse. A few years back BBC con­duct­ed a study in which they asked ques­tions about Balochis­tan from com­mon peo­ple on the roads and streets of Lahore. The answers of the peo­ple man­i­fest­ed how lit­tle they know about Balochis­tan. Inter­est­ing­ly, the same peo­ple are seen mak­ing crit­i­cal com­ments on social media on any­thing writ­ten about Balochis­tan, as if they know every­thing.

In order to solve a prob­lem, it needs to be under­stood first. This can be done by know­ing the prob­lem from every pos­si­ble angle. Same applies to the Balochis­tan prob­lem; it can only be resolved mean­ing­ful­ly if the prob­lem is explored in detail. The pow­er struc­ture of the fed­er­a­tion of Pak­istan is such that the peo­ple of the province can­not solve the prob­lem on their own. Steps tak­en from Islam­abad can change the fate of Balochis­tan. One can­not expect the peo­ple sit­ting in Islam­abad to make right deci­sions while being igno­rant about Balochis­tan.