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The Balochistan issue

PA and GoP can't just stand by and watch while the writ of Govt. is challenged.

Bugti had all the options to surrender but he instead went to the mountains ... Bugti didn't wanted to take his case to any court ...


It has been approx 3 yrs but no case has been launched by Bugti's family ... why not?

Because Bugti is the wrong guy here we can see that can't we?

You can understand where the tribe stands he isn't a hero but by blowing him up we are no heroes either. He should have been isolated his political contacts jailed and we should have smoked him out then we could capture him learn more intelligence from him and caought the guy.
 
Because Bugti is the wrong guy here we can see that can't we?

You can understand where the tribe stands he isn't a hero but by blowing him up we are no heroes either. He should have been isolated his political contacts jailed and we should have smoked him out then we could capture him learn more intelligence from him and caought the guy.

May be this is what the GoP should try with others.
 
Firstly Zob, even though the IRIN article calls people from other provinces outsiders, I'd prefer the term settlers. Some of these people who are now moving out have been residents of Quetta for three generations.
Yes, the Balochs are neglected and hence the insurgency taking place there. But I guess no one is paying attention to them because they don't threaten our ideology or demand the establishment of a theocratic state. The Baloch insurgency, quelled many times since the 1970s, has a low impact factor and doesn't shake the foundations of the existence of the country.
Remember how Akbar Bugti's killing in August 2006 led to violence in Quetta and the rest of Balochistan... just about everyone predicted that the insurgency will increase in its intensity but that hasn't happened. It still does not have the support which is needed to bring an overhaul. Many of its leaders are clandestinely supported by sitting members of the national and provincial assemblies — who play a double game and have the support of the centre/federal government.
Probably the Baloch still do support the nationalists' movement but we can’t be too sure about their point of view (interestingly, no one from the media is allowed to enter Dera Bugti even after two and a half years of Bugti's death). The government has imposed many restriction on the reporting from there though reports of human rights violaions do surface from time to time.
Just in the last week of February, mutilated bodies of eight Baloch were found in different areas close to the Pak-Afghan border (Sarlath area of Naushki district and Khanozai in Pishin district.) Earlier a Baloch nationalist leader claimed that Zarina Marri, a schoolteacher, being detained and sexually molested by an army major (though the army vehemently denied this).


P.S. Need to clarify this: the state of Kalat, which was eventually split into three districts, was the last to join Pakistan in 1950/1951 (don't remember the exact date). The Khan of Kalat was undoubtedly generous. However, your last comment cannot be justified. There is no documented evidence of the Balochs being superior to the Pathans and vice versa in the movement for independence.

And what:cheers: caused the death of Mr. Bugti. here is something i found on internet which explains the possibility, now i think Pakistan Gop would not be foolish to kill him and htis makes sense to me, cause some foreign hand is trying to destabilize Pakistan, shame on them, but read on.

‘Akbar Bugti caused the explosion that led to his death’

LAHORE: A close aide of late Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti has claimed that a rocket fired by Bugti caused the explosion that led to the nationalist leader’s death. “When security forces entered the cave where he (Bugti) was hiding, he attempted to fend them off by firing a shell. This caused a massive explosion, which resulted in the cave-in that led to the death of Bugti, one colonel, two majors and three commandoes,” Wadera Muhammad Murad Bugti told a private TV channel. He said the late Bugti had decided that he would rather die fighting than surrender to the security forces. “When forces besieged his cave on August 26, 2006, he asked his comrades to leave the cave and let him fight them alone,” he added. daily times monitor
 
great post asq....can you please provide a link for my refrence....
 
It is sad to see this. i recommend banning of this man as he is anti Pakistan. after this any fair minded country will ban anyone who would say this against a country. The least Pakistan should do is revoke his citizenship of Pakistan.

 
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Everyone has seen that video I really do wish we stop going round in circles and as for the Bughti fiasco I think it was wrong to go into the cave it would have been better to have smoked him out waiting for him to come out instead of going in and then we could have tried him in court.
 
exactly killing him made him a hero in the eyes of Balcohis who didn't know much about his activities....
 
It has also given the Balochistan Nationalist a rallying cry don't forget that.
 
@ Zob: Came across this, thought you might be interested...


Balochistan’s woes

By I.A. Rehman

Thursday, 07 May, 2009 | 01:55 AM PST |



AS if the militants’ threat to the state’s integrity and its democratic foundations were not enough to tax the establishment’s admittedly limited capacity for governance, alarm bells have again begun to be sounded about the dangerous situation in Balochistan.

The scale and duration of the province-wide protest against the foul killing of three Baloch leaders offered a clear indication of the people’s alienation from the state. Official attempts to defuse the situation by a quibble over the best-known victim’s nationality only made matters worse. This was confirmed by the decision by the provincial PPP chief, Lashkari Raisani, to give up all public and party offices.

A most explicit warning of Balochistan’s drift away from the state has come from the governor. He has asserted that despite being the federation’s representative he has never been consulted about provincial affairs. This adds a new dimension to the Baloch people’s chronic grievance about Islamabad’s inability to hear their voice.

To be fair to the federal authority it has been making more friendly noises than its predecessors. Mr Zardari has promised steps to end Balochistan’s sense of deprivation. A Rs4.7bn development package has been mentioned, perhaps too often. Reference has been made to a parliamentary committee’s proposals to satisfy the disgruntled elements and to plans to settle matters concerning the disappearances, exiles and political prisoners. Mr Gilani has been talking of his intention to convene an all-parties conference on the single issue of provincial autonomy.

Instead of calming passions these declarations of good wishes exacerbate the Baloch people’s anxieties because they have heard all this quite a few times before. Memories of committees set up to address Balochistan’s problems, non-implementation of their recommendations and sometimes even non-publication of their rosy proposals have made no small contribution to its people’s journey from frustration to despair.

Unfortunately, the federal government has harmed its case by choosing to stigmatise the Baloch struggle for political and economic autonomy, as envisaged and duly pledged in the vision of Pakistan, as intrigue by foreign powers. The obviously ill-considered plea had to be quickly retracted partly with a curious statement that a reference to Russia had been taken from old files and not from any current record.

Since the evidence of India’s role in stirring up unrest in Balochistan has not been made public it is not possible to comment on it. Pakistan and India have a long tradition of blaming the other for their indigenous tribulations and neither side enjoys credibility on this score.

What the two neighbours keep on doing to each other, in utter defiance of the canons of sanity, need not be discounted. But a situation created by denial of the Baloch people’s democratic and constitutional rights for six decades cannot be explained away as recent mischief by external agents. This is another instance of the deadly affliction called the state of self-denial that has prevented Islamabad from rationally analysing issues at critical moments. The state is not a fair-weather shop, it must assume the responsibility to mitigate the people’s suffering whatever its causes and howsoever difficult the task may be.

Apart from their political and economic grievances, the Baloch people’s emotional estrangement from the custodians of power needs to be taken into account. There is no doubt that those agitating for the rights of the federating units, loosely branded as nationalists, have been dealt with more harshly than patrons and ideologues of militant insurgents.

No one from amongst the leaders of militant organisations, including those banned as terrorist outfits, has received the treatment reserved, for instance, for eminent Sindhi nationalist Dr Sarki. For a long time he was held without acknowledgment and his conditions of detention were extremely harmful to his health, particularly his eyes, and then a wholly fictitious charge was foisted on him in a Zhob (Balochistan) court, a place he had probably never seen. But for the present government’s act of mercy he might still have been ******* in prison. Some of the Baloch students who were picked up during the first swoop on political dissidents in their province were subjected to such torture as to be permanently disabled.

A recent instance of what is described by Balochistan politicians as atrocities is the harassment of a Baloch family in Lahore where it took refuge over 15 years ago. Ms Samia Mazari, daughter of elder politician Sherbaz Mazari, niece of Nawab Akbar Bugti and mother-in-law of Brahmdag Bugti (eminently qualified for the guillotine, some traditional Baloch baiters might say) has cried out against harassment and threats by intelligence functionaries no responsible authority can permit. Those tormenting her and her daughter have been caught and identified while trying to make their photographs at a school. They have also interrogated the family doctor as if to ascertain whether these defenceless women’s ailments are in violation of security laws.

This policy of paying subsistence allowance to those accused of terrorism and humiliating others that are guilty of nothing more than political dissent has, on the one had, aggravated the Balochistan crisis and, on the other, emboldened the subversive elements in religious robes by convincing them that they are not considered the pest the nationalists in Balochistan (or, in Sindh or the NWFP, for that matter) are.

Thus, even before practical steps are taken to mend ties with the people of Balochistan the language of discourse ought to be given the dressing of civilised idiom. The poor and much-maligned Baloch has been left far too long to subsist on his pride alone, and his sentiments cannot be trifled with.

Whatever good ideas Islamabad has about Balochistan must begin to be implemented. Total reliance on long-gestation projects will not be enough and due attention must be paid to resolving the day-to-day concerns of the people, especially the disadvantaged — such as their need for employment, a decent wage, facilities of safe movement, satisfaction of basic needs and guarantees of security of life and due protection of the law. Whatever step is taken it must be strictly in accordance with the wishes and priorities of the prospective beneficiaries.

It is perhaps time that Balochistan’s leaders too put their act together. They have quite comprehensively documented the wrongs done to them over the decades, but their plans for their people’s liberation from anachronistic bonds, their empowerment and their progress, do not go beyond bare statements about autonomy and rights. They must come up with a practicable blueprint for Balochistan’s uplift, otherwise the federal authority will continue relying on its flawed diagnosis of their province’s problems and its ineffective cures.
DAWN.COM | Columnists | Balochistan?s woes

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