Daily Times

Balochistan is on the boil again while the paeans to the glory of a new dawn continue to be sung with metronomic regularity by official quarters. The recrudescence of the violence and sectarian killings is a harbinger of a new phase of militancy that somehow refuses to die down despite best efforts of state.

Balochistan remains a restive province testing the limits of federal and provincial governance in an environment vitiated by internal paradoxes and the external meddling. It has become a veritable wicked problem.

According to Rittel and Webber, a wicked problem lacks a clear problem definition and is compounded by a lack of clear perspective by differing stakeholders. Such problems do not have clear solutions and are generally dealt through ‘one shot solutions’ that throw up other problems seeking further solutions. Professor Nancy Roberts of US Naval Post Graduate School mentions three approaches to resolving a wicked problem.

The first approach is the ‘authoritative’ one where a central authority deals with the problem by trying to reduce the complexity of the issue through minimising the interaction to as few stakeholders as possible and imposing a solution through military muscle or bureaucratic fiat. The second approach is ‘competitive’ where differing perspectives are pitted against each other to find the best solution. The third approach is ‘collaborative’ wherein perspectives of all stakeholders are considered and reconciled. This approach by far has proven to be the most puissant one for resolution of a wicked problem provided all stakeholders agree to resolve the problem. Balochistan presents the dilemma of a typical wicked problem where the perspectives of all shareholders keep changing like shifting sands.

The state has to be mindful of the slow rise of the rival sectarian militias supported by their external sponsors in the province. Balochistan is a victim of poor governance with the worst human security indices due to the federal government’s indifference to its development needs

Balochistan is a veritable ‘witches brew’ that is not amenable to simple solutions or authoritative approaches of problem solving. There are internal and external factors that complicate the situation and upon which especially the external ones there is no control by the state. Despite the sincere efforts of the present and the previous Army commander minding the restive pot in Balochistan, terrorism stalks the land externally inspired and internally abetted. There are multiple cleavages and conflicts that wrack the disturbed province.

The first cleavage is between haves and have nots cleverly high jacked by the particularism of the Baloch Sardars who continue to mislead the populace about their rights and obligations. The tribal chieftains in a sparsely populated province especially in rural areas continue to extract heavy rents from the state in return for a carteblanche to rule over the disenfranchised and impoverished Baloch whom they fob off with few crumbs in return for their loyalty in the name of tribal traditions. Second cleavage is between a non delivering state and the people where the jobs, civic amenities and fruits of development are not distributed fairly and justly.

Third cleavage is the constitutional paradox wherein the Prime Minister does not secure as much electoral votes in National Assembly from Balochistan as from other provinces, thereby diluting his stakes in investing financial and political capital in the neglected province.

Fifth cleavage is the growing sectarian chasm that threatens to cleave apart the centuries old pluralistic and secular fabric of Baloch society woven around Baloch identity. The rise of sectarian warfare mainly externally inspired and partially internally abetted has added a new dimension to hitherto ‘secular’ militancy based on sub nationalist struggle for rights. The forays of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) in areas around Quetta and Mastung are a consequence of a state absence in the ungoverned spaces in 90 percent of the provincial area termed B area giving rise to rival sectarian warfare.

State has to be mindful of the slow rise of the rival sectarian militias supported by their external sponsors in the province. Balochistan is a victim of poor governance with the worst human security indices due to federal government’s indifference to development needs of the province.

Can a province function with such a large swathe of ungoverned space? Would provincial ‘Levies Force’ on the payroll of avaricious Sardars deliver in the absence of proper policing of the province? If the answer is a resounding no then the question that begs an answer is why is the government persisting with its B area folly? After a tour d’ horizon of the internal problems bedeviling peace in the province, we turn our gaze to external scene. There are external factors exacerbating the wicked problem of Balochistan. The CPEC initiative and the Gwadar port also rankle with the forces inimical to Pak-China cooperation. As a result, the sectarian militias and ethnic sub nationalists are being actively supported from across the Afghan border. The interests of Iran, India, USA, UAE, and Afghanistan have coalesced in this anti-CPEC game and that is the chief reason all sincere efforts by the civil and army leadership are being stonewalled. Like the water buckets flowing in a Persian Wheel, the flow of militancy across the porous Pak-Afghan border continues with munificent funding from RAW, NDS, and other stakeholders in this ‘Get CPEC’ game.

Pakistan needs to jettison expediency and reclaim all B areas as normal areas followed by strong administrative and law enforcement measures in hitherto ungoverned territories. Raising of human security index through investments in education, health, energy grid, and communication infrastructure should go hand in hand with necessary constitutional reforms to enhance the federal stakes in the provincial polity and development.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST; rwjanj@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, August 10^th 2017.