Time for solutions in Balochistan

The Balochistan National Party’s (Mengal) president Sardar Akhtar Mengal, is demanding that all Balochistan projects including Gwadar Port and the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline should be scrapped because they were formulated and finalised during the Musharraf regime. He repeated his stance that all resources must be controlled by the people of Balochistan and that the issue of Balochistan’s autonomy could not be achieved through the 1973 Constitution. He said: “The Balochistan issue is not so simple that it can be resolved by seeking forgiveness”. According to him, the Baloch were always ready for a dialogue but the governments had let them down in the past. He also demanded release of all “disappeared” Baloch nationalists. Earlier, on June 6, his lieutenant, Mr Sanaullah Baloch, had resigned as a member of the Senate “in protest against the injustices and the army operation in Balochistan which had led to the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti”. Mr Baloch did this after returning from a 19-month self-exile from the country. We should recall that his leader Mr Mengal was released in September last year after nine months in jail on charges of treason.

This was typical of a regime that doesn’t know which way it is headed. The charge of treason is the most serious charge of all under the Constitution; and letting him off clearly showed that politics was needed rather than coercion in dealing with him.

More discrediting of the government’s performance in Balochistan came in the Senate when the PMLQ senator Mr Mushahid Hussain Syed declared on the floor of the house that “hawks in the military establishment had sabotaged the two parliamentary committees’ reports by the party in power which had made valuable suggestions to the government for a peaceful solution to the crisis in Balochistan”. The sub-committee which included Mr Syed had gone, together with another constitutional sub-committee, to the country’s strategically most important province to investigate the causes of insurgency. But their reports were shelved and flagged with the observation that they were untenable and that military action was the only solution. But the military action that followed immediately fell foul of the political opinion in the country. When the army ended up killing Nawab Akbar Bugti, no one said it was right even as the security establishment insisted that the sardar had it coming. In fact, President Musharraf was condemned on all hands, even by those who normally defended him. And instead of coming to an end, the insurgency increased. In reaction, the government began to make the Baloch nationalists “disappear” without trace. After that the Supreme Court stepped in and the rest is history. President Musharraf is now counting his days and the Baloch demands are more urgent than ever before.

The PMLQ should sit down and think what stance it has to take on how its reports were treated. Mr Mushahid Hussain Syed did not resign from the party after his report was shelved, but he can now revive the reports which the Senate sub-committees had put together in consultation with all the parties in Balochistan in 2005. Accepted that the demands of the BNP and others have escalated — they are bordering on separatism — and go far beyond the ken of the reports. But their contents can help buttress any solutions that the PPP governments in Balochistan and Islamabad may be thinking of. No matter how hostile the Baloch leaders may be, and no matter how separatist their intentions, there has to be a dialogue.

The PPP chief minister of Balochistan, Sardar Aslam Raisani, has promised a dialogue too, and the PPP is bound by its earlier pledge to start it. The chief minister represents a very natural new phase in Balochistan, which is, an escalation and a stiffening of demands after the failure of the policy of application of force in the province. Clearly it is the PPP in Balochistan, in the person Mr Raisani, which is now saying that the matter is beyond the 1973 Constitution. As for President Musharraf’s policy towards Balochistan, it is of a piece with what he did in the Tribal Areas: took a confused line and then failed to deliver.

A new approach to the federation is now in order. This should take into account not only relations with Balochistan but with all the three smaller provinces that demand a better economic deal. The blueprint can be announced now and the final decisions can be put through the parliament at a later date when the country is out of its current economic crisis. But the PPP must begin the dialogue it has been promising. In this case, the coalition must stand together, and since the PMLN is in power in Punjab, its participation will finally be most meaningful. Before opening the dialogue, the government could announce acceptance of the recommendations that the two Senate sub-committees had made in 2005