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Reach out to the Baloch
The FC is targeting suspected Baloch troublemakers and making them "disappear".
Intense media concern over the fate of "missing persons" at the hands of the Frontier Corps in an environment of fear and loathing amidst an insurgency that is taking a toll of civilians and soldiers has finally pressurised the government and military to take a fresh look at the "problem of Balochistan".
The PM has set up a six-pronged framework - administrative, operational, developmental, administrative, legal and political - for finding the right solution. A six member steering committee comprising three members each from the federal and provincial governments will monitor progress and provide weekly updates on opening a political dialogue with the insurgents with a view to including them in the political process, ensuring law and order with minimal human rights violations by security forces and providing the wherewithal for political and financial autonomy to the province. The Chief Of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, has chipped in by saying that there can be no military solutions to political problems. Is this new initiative capable of delivering solutions or is it old wine in new bottles?
We are not sanguine. Four years ago, President Asif Zardari and Rehman Malik, the interior minister, both pledged to solve the problem "inherited from the Musharraf regime" in six months. There was some toing and fro-ing. In due course Zardari delivered a constitutional package of devolution and additional funds for Balochistan.
Malik contacted the leaders of the nationalist movement in exile and tried to pacify them. But then both gentlemen lost sight of the ball as they became embroiled in bitter battles with judges, generals, oppositionists, criminals, sectarianists and terrorists amidst a failing and war-weary economy. Today, with all the protagonists bearing down on the government ever more intensely in the run-up to general elections, it is unrealistic to expect any concrete positivity from such belated initiatives based on opportunist motives.
There are other reasons for disquiet. The meeting chaired by the PM was attended, among others, by the Army Chief, DGISI, CM and Governor of Balochistan. But the DG-Military Intelligence and Inspector General-Frontier Corps were conspicuous by their absence.
This is shocking since the two organisations are veritably in the eye of the media storm. The FC and MI are charged with developing an anti-insurgent policy in Balochistan that has become part of the problem rather than the solution. A statement by the Army Chief after the conference claiming that the Pakistan army has never been involved in any military operation in Balochistan seemed to add insult to injury.
The FC Balochistan is 40,000 strong; it is an amalgam of Border Scouts and Militias along the Durand Line and is led by a serving major general of the army who is only nominally answerable to the Interior Ministry; it has been a front line recipient of billions of dollars in training and equipment from the US for counter-insurgency operations in FATA since 2007 where it remains a core military strike force.
Indeed, the SC has been provided video evidence by the Balochistan police of how the FC is targeting suspected Baloch troublemakers and making them "disappear". Qamar Zaman Kaira, the Information Minister, has said that the FC would henceforth report to the CM and confine itself to maintaining law and order only. This is an admission that the FC was until now not in the control of the provincial government as claimed by the military and that its operational writ included areas outside law and order also (insurgency, smuggling, etc).
Another dimension of the military solution is the role of agencies in creating and propping up several armed non-state actors or Tribal Lashkars of "patriotic" Pakistanis to combat the "treasonable" separatists. These groups are used to identify, target and carry out reprisals against nationalist elements in the remote areas of the southern and coastal parts of the province.
The military has a linear view of the problem: there are misguided Baloch separatists who are aided by Afghanistan and India, maybe even America, to attack Pakistan's security agencies, fuel chaos, thereby creating the preconditions for the dismemberment of Pakistan; the solution is to crush the insurgents without regard for due process of law and human rights, so that they are either physically eliminated or sufficiently softened up for a dialogue.
But this strategy isn't working for precisely the same reasons that the American strategy to fight the Taliban isn't working in Afghanistan: the Pakistanis are abetting the Afghan Taliban and thwarting NATO efforts to degrade them for a compromise; the Afghans and Indians are abetting the Baloch insurgents Pak army, which accuses India and Afghanistan of aiding the Baloch insurgency, must examine its own policy of sponsoring terrorism in the two countries and giving them no incentive to explore politically inclusive solutions within Pakistan. And why are the secret agencies of Afghanistan and India aiding them? Because Pakistan's agencies have fomented jihad in Kashmir for two decades and Talibanism in Afghanistan since 1996. It's tit-for-tat.
In other words, Pakistan's ruling establishment needs a threepronged strategy to solve Balochistan. First, we must stop provoking Afghanistan and India by state- sponsored cross- border terrorism as an element of our national security doctrine. This will help negate any "pull" factor provided to the Baloch insurgents by them. Second, we must create an enabling political environment to negate the "push" factor in Balochistan that led to the exile of the leaders of the insurgency in the first place in 2002 following the installation of Military-Mullah regimes in KPK and Balochistan. Third, we must reach out quickly on both fronts so that the opportunity for truth and reconciliation provided by the forthcoming elections is not missed. It's a tall order.
- The writer is editor of The Friday Times
Reach out to the Baloch : Najam Sethi, News - India Today
