Daily Times

After a lapse of five years, the federal government has decided to constitute a judicial commission to probe the assassination of Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006. The government has also constituted a committee to talk to the disgruntled Baloch nationalists, announced Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani while addressing a news conference after the federal cabinet’s meeting at the Chief Minister’s Secretariat in Quetta. However well intentioned these statements are, they hold no meaning for the estranged Baloch, because they have never been backed by action. For instance, the government failed to investigate the murder of Nawab Akbar Bugti immediately after it came to power in 2008 and waited for the situation to spin out of control before looking for means to placate the angry Baloch people. Akbar Bugti’s son Jamil Bugti has already rejected the idea of this commission, posing a question mark on its credibility.

In the meeting it was stated that 60 percent work on Aghaz-e-Huqooq-e-Balochistan Package has been completed. Ironically, on the one hand the government has offered the Baloch nationalists this package, which is flawed in its basic concept of providing jobs to youth in the hope of weaning them away from the insurgency, on the other security forces continue their policy of brutal oppression in Balochistan. The spate of abductions and killings of nationalist leaders, activists and outspoken academics at the hands of the security forces has worsened the situation on the ground. In its latest report, Human Rights Watch has warned the Pakistan government that by failing to hold the security forces accountable for abuses in Balochistan, it will feed into a cycle of violence that may haunt Pakistan for years to come.

The government’s failure to open a credible investigation of all those responsible for committing forced disappearances and extra-judicial murders has convinced the youth of Balochistan of the government’s insincerity and hypocrisy. The current insurgency is the fifth such uprising in the province since it was forcibly acceded to Pakistan in 1948. Its population, which has been deprived of its legitimate rights, cannot be fooled by false promises any more. Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s statements about Baloch separatist camps in Afghanistan and Indian involvement are merely an effort to deflect attention from the real issue. No reconciliation process can be initiated in the presence of an interior minister who belittles the grievances of the aggrieved Baloch.

It is time the government stops double-dealing and acknowledges the Baloch due share in national resources and their right to self-administer these. Concrete political steps need to be taken to resolve this essentially political issue; otherwise the situation will go completely out of control. Prominent Baloch leaders, who have gone into exile, should be approached to hold a dialogue with the government. *