Tragedy, violence and intrigue are never far from Pakistan’s most volatile province: Balochistan. Twenty labourers were gunned down by assailants whilst they lay sleeping in their encampment in the Gogdan area of Turbat on Saturday. It was a ghastly attack with the gunmen opening indiscriminate fire on men who did not know they would never awake from their slumber. The victims were from Punjab and Sindh provinces, employed for construction work in Balochistan. This is another face of Balochistan, our nation’s poorest province. In a place where the residents of Balochistan need all the work and support they can get, development work is outsourced to people from other provinces, snatching from the Baloch any sliver of an opportunity they may have to better their lives. These labourers were brought to Balochistan under the promise of protection, which they were told would be afforded them via the Levies. Apparently, the Levies personnel guarding them offered no resistance to the attack.Whilst the shocking loss of life is tragic, one must see the larger context of the situation in the province. Balochistan is facing an insurgency but it is not the kind of terrorism we are seeing in FATA. It cannot be eliminated through heavy-handed tactics like forced disappearances and depriving the Baloch people of their livelihoods; resolution is only possible through political dialogue and inclusion. The harsh thrust of counterinsurgency and going to such extremes as to hire people from outside the province to take part in development work has taken its toll. There is only so much anger and frustration the Baloch people will take. What seems to have escaped the policymaking decision makers is the fact that to win the hearts and minds of the people, the local needs of the people cannot be ignored. There will have to be some sort of reconciliation with the insurgent nationalists; if our government had the gall to try and etch out a political dialogue with the likes of the Taliban, who have mercilessly killed more than 80,000 of our people, why is it so reluctant to resolve the Balochistan issue politically?It is also extremely disturbing to see the media and certain quarters label the trouble in Balochistan as being pushed by India. The same kind of conspiracies are being hatched about the LUMS debacle in which security agencies had a talk with the students cancelled. These agendas and false stories are not about to resolve the fire that is raging in Balochistan, which is a part of Pakistan but is treated like a malignant tumour. It is time to sit at the table and reconcile, not fan the flames. *