Daily Times

A leading English daily carried its coverage of the Prime Minister (PM) Yousaf Raza Gilani’s recent tour of Balochistan under the headline, “PM Gilani confident of mainstreaming Baloch.”

In the light of the painfully sorry record of the Pakistan People’s Party and other governments vis-à-vis Balochistan, distancing the Baloch would have been closer to the truth than ‘mainstreaming’ the inmates of Pakistan’s largest territorial chunk. Balochistan and the Baloch have hardly ever stayed as part of the national mainstream.

During the PM’s two-day (June 2-3) stay in Quetta, he was best known to the Quetta locals for yet another ‘unprecedented’ traffic jam than for anything better, and worst of all, for the deadly shoot-outs and deaths occurring during his brief sojourn in the city and continuing to date.

The latest and by far the deadliest blast, killing15 in a madrassa, happened on Thursday, June 7, in a long, deadly trail after the chief executive’s visit. Coincidental or designed, the connection between the gory episode and the PM’s visit cannot be missed. It is bad news for the Baloch all the way through. What message did Mr Gilani have after all for his Baloch voters? Was it to certify their credentials as lawful citizens of Pakistan? Was it to bribe them with the uncertain and the all too often unfulfilled promise of providing even job opportunities?

Speaking at the Staff and Command College, Mr Gilani praised the Baloch for their ‘patriotism’ and status as ‘talented’ people. Do they only need opportunities to come up to their full stature as good and loyal Pakistanis? If patriotism is the quid pro quo for job opportunities, what remains the difference between an honest citizen and a mercenary? Was that an inadvertent admission of the fact that due job opportunities had indeed been denied to them all along? Should that be so, what prevented Mr Gilani’s ‘democratic’ government from righting the wrong without any loss of time? Is patriotism synonymous with job opportunities?

Was it not a rude snub to the Baloch immersed in their tribal code of honour and fealty above all else? Equating patriotism with jobbery was no less than a rude rebuff to not only the Baloch but also Pakistanis across the board.

The PM would miss no opportunity to commend his incumbent government for attaching great importance to Balochistan and considering it the ‘heart’ of the country. This is unadulterated rhetoric meaning nothing. He claimed to implement ‘practical steps’ to have the Baloch get closer to ownership of their resources. Was he, in other words, confessing to the fact that the Baloch had thus far either been denied or distanced from their resources? Should that be so, what on earth has his ‘democratic’ government been doing the last four years? What has his provincial satrap, the chief minister, been doing with his assembly of 60 plus members — all ministers and advisers — with only one representing the opposition? Mr Gilani takes endless pride in the passage of the NFC Award and the 18th amendment adopted under his parliamentary government. Under the NFC Award, Balochistan’s share increased to Rs120 billion from Rs 40 billion — so much of paper currency signifying little in real terms of a family budget under mounting inflationary pressure. It should be good to look at all the paperwork to see what good it has done to the Baloch and the rest of their fellow citizens.

There is little or nothing for Mr Gilani to show for his contribution to the commonweal in terms of daily bread, collective roti, kapra and makaan (bread, clothing and shelter), and above all, individual security and peace for his voters.

Balochistan might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. By granting a larger measure of self-rule under the much-touted provincial autonomy, the federal government has practically left Balochistan on its own — free and foredoomed. When all arguments in support of his government fail, Mr Gilani invokes the mysterious ‘foreign elements’ having their ‘sights’ on Balochistan. Who ceded the Shamsi Airbase to the US for the launch of their Predator drone strikes across the tribal area? The so-called foreign or ‘dead hand’ operates with the knowledge and approval of the federal government. If not so, it would be nothing less than an undeclared foreign invasion of Pakistan. Let it be clearly understood that FATA is as much a part of Pakistan’s sovereign territory as Islamabad. While the curtain has dropped on the Balochistan Shamsi Airbase, the curtain is yet to be raised on the status of the Shahbaz Airbase in Sindh. One mystery after another.

Mr Gilani had been bad news for Balochistan. There is no good news for him either from the rest of the country set on a perilously uncertain course like an abandoned ship at the mercy of choppy waters all around. On June 9, as many as 21 homebound passengers, mostly government servants and their families, were killed in a bomb blast near Charsadda. Thus, the mayhem goes on as Mr Gilani gloats on his democratic rule about to complete its mandated five-year term

The writer is a retired brigadier and can be reached at brigsiddiqi@yahoo.co.uk