Why Balochistan’s Mama Qadeer is on Long March

Fazal Muham­mad Khan

Nei­ther the damp cold of Khuz­dar, nor the blaz­ing heat at Uthal; and nei­ther the rough moun­tain­ous topog­ra­phy of Sindh and Balochis­tan, and nor the life threats to their car­a­van could stop them. Here they are in Karachi at Karachi Press Club: the 25 fam­i­lies – inclu­sive of females, elders and chil­dren as young as 7 years old – of miss­ing per­sons hav­ing trav­elled 780 kilo­me­ters on foot from Quet­ta for 26 con­sec­u­tive days.

It was a non­stop action; they had to spend their nights on the road­sides, and days tread­ing towards Karachi. Their each step did noth­ing but made them res­olute in their cause: call­ing on the gov­ern­ment, the UN and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to bring to jus­tice the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus of the coun­try respon­si­ble for forced dis­ap­pear­ances and oth­er atroc­i­ties against the peo­ple of Balochis­tan.

Among the par­tic­i­pants of Long March, there was a sev­en years old son of Jelil Reki who has alleged­ly been tor­tured to death after being dis­ap­peared by the secu­ri­ty offi­cials. Oth­ers include peo­ple like Nas­rul­lah Baloch whose uncle has been miss­ing for eleven years, and a youth activist Farzana Majeed whose broth­er was arrest­ed by FC in 2009, and has been miss­ing since then. The most impor­tant among the pro­test­ers is Mama Qadeer Baloch, the orga­niz­er of this march, whose cousin and son had been dis­ap­peared, the latter’s dead body was found lat­er on. They all have one thing to say: intel­li­gence agen­cies have abduct­ed, tor­tured and killed their loved ones.

Balochis­tan is impor­tant both strate­gi­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly. It bor­ders Iran and Afghanistan, enjoys cul­tur­al diver­si­ty, has the sec­ond largest sup­ply route for NATO forces in Afghanistan, and is also deemed to be a home for the so-called Quet­ta Shu­ra of the Tal­iban in the provin­cial cap­i­tal, Quet­ta. Com­pli­cat­ing the sit­u­a­tion fur­ther is a large num­ber of for­eign nations with an eco­nom­ic or polit­i­cal stake in the min­er­al-rich province, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, Chi­na, Iran, India, and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

Balochistan’s rela­tion­ship with the fed­er­a­tion has large­ly been begrudged due to the issues of lack of provin­cial auton­o­my, con­trol over the province’s resources, and the eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal repres­sion by the suc­ces­sive cen­tral gov­ern­ments.
The sit­u­a­tion aggra­vat­ed fur­ther after the two assas­si­na­tion attempts on for­mer Pres­i­dent Per­vez Mushar­raf dur­ing his 2005 and 2006 vis­its to Balochis­tan which led to crack­down on Baloch nation­al­ists by secu­ri­ty agen­cies. In the back­drop of the assas­si­na­tion of Sar­dar Akbar Bugti, these oper­a­tions fur­ther fueled the fire.

These ruth­less oper­a­tions cou­pled with US led War on Ter­ror since 2001 have result­ed in thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als being ‘dis­ap­peared’. Since 2005, human rights orga­ni­za­tions have record­ed seri­ous human rights vio­la­tions by secu­ri­ty forces, includ­ing extra­ju­di­cial exe­cu­tions, tor­ture, forced dis­ap­pear­ances, forced dis­place­ment, and exces­sive use of force. They count the num­ber of miss­ing per­sons between 800 and 1000. How­ev­er the par­tic­i­pants of the long march claim that the fig­ure of abduc­tion by secu­ri­ty agen­cies amounts to more than 18000 fol­low­ing the death of Akbar Bugti. Of them, 1,500 were killed in tar­get­ed attacks.

Though repeat­ed­ly denied by the secu­ri­ty agen­cies, both Supreme Court of Pak­istan and human rights orga­ni­za­tions are pos­i­tive about the involve­ment of intel­li­gence agen­cies in forced dis­ap­pear­ances. Gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan has also admit­ted in July via attor­ney gen­er­al that there are more than 500 “miss­ing per­sons” in the cus­tody of secu­ri­ty agen­cies. Leav­ing aside the con­tention of exact num­ber of miss­ing per­sons, this cer­tain­ly ver­i­fies the exis­tence of this heinous prac­tice.

Shock­ing it is. What is, how­ev­er, more shock­ing is the fact that the main­stream media remains indif­fer­ent and apa­thet­ic towards this sen­si­tive issue which has the poten­tial to turn volatile. Amid the uproar of debates on drone attacks, sec­tar­i­an ten­sions, and crick­et, the grave issue of Baloch miss­ing per­sons and this out­stand­ing long march have large­ly been ignored by the media. The act of ignor­ing such issues, whether delib­er­ate­ly or mis­tak­en­ly, can be fatal­ly infec­tious to the larg­er socio-polit­i­cal fab­ric of the state.

Human Rights Com­mis­sion of Pak­istan in its Octo­ber report made fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for bring­ing an end to forced dis­ap­pear­ances and human rights vio­la­tions:
— Stan­dard Oper­at­ing Pro­ce­dures should be devel­oped to reg­u­late the engage­ment of secu­ri­ty forces and intel­li­gence agen­cies in the province.

- Polic­ing should be reformed and FC should be removed from the province as FC deploy­ment has always proved coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

- The heads of FC and the intel­li­gence agen­cies should issue warn­ings to their forces to dis­con­tin­ue human rights vio­la­tions and the per­pe­tra­tors should be brought to jus­tice.

- The gov­ern­ment of Balochis­tan should appoint a human rights advis­er to the Chief Min­is­ter with a man­date to improve human rights con­di­tions in Balochis­tan.

- A police acad­e­my should be estab­lished for the train­ing of police force with a view to raise the morale of police force which large­ly remains reluc­tant to tack­le crimes of triv­ial nature, not to talk of crimes of forced dis­ap­pear­ances and abduc­tions, and a foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ry should also be built in Balochis­tan.

- Gov­ern­ment should do away with the cat­e­go­riza­tion, such as ‘A’ and ‘B’ areas, of var­i­ous regions in Balochis­tan.

- The key devel­op­ment projects in Balochis­tan must be com­plet­ed at the ear­li­est keep­ing in mind that the peo­ple of Balochis­tan ful­ly sup­port the restora­tion of peace and polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty in the province.

- The media should pledge its part in high­light­ing and giv­ing suf­fi­cient and unbi­ased cov­er­age to human rights, gov­er­nance and oth­er issues in Balochis­tan.
Such steps and rec­om­men­da­tions, if trans­formed into actions, have the poten­tial to ame­lio­rate the con­di­tion of human rights in Balochis­tan and bring peace in the con­flict rid­den province.

Back in Balochis­tan, the bleak sit­u­a­tion of law and order is a con­stant source of fear for the cit­i­zens. Kid­nap­ping for ran­som remains unchecked and increas­ing expo­nen­tial­ly, and the abduc­tors are almost nev­er traced. Reli­gious minori­ties and var­i­ous sects are con­sis­tent­ly prone to vio­lence and attacks. Civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions have aban­doned their work in the con­flict-hit parts of the province. Women remain voice­less and are con­tin­u­ous­ly intim­i­dat­ed by extrem­ist and sec­tar­i­an ele­ments.
Amid frus­tra­tion and men­tal tor­ture of the fam­i­lies and rel­a­tives of miss­ing per­sons, the likes of Mama Qadeer and Farzana Baloch con­tin­ue to stand against the state pol­i­cy of view­ing Balochis­tan only from the prism of secu­ri­ty.
Before the sit­u­a­tion in Balochis­tan explodes fur­ther, those at the helm of affairs need to act now. For it they do not, it will be too late to act then.

The writer is a grad­u­ate of GC Uni­ver­si­ty Lahore, a hold­er of Roll of Hon­or, and for­mer Edi­tor of “The Sci­en­tif­ic Ravi”. Cur­rent­ly he is Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary at Insti­tute for Devel­op­ment Edu­ca­tion and Advo­ca­cy (IDEA) and can be reached at fazajana@gmail.com.