Daily Times

Offering an olive branch to Baloch insurgents, as Prime Minister Imran Khan is clearly contemplating, seems to assume that all varieties of dissidents are equally interested in shedding the gun in exchange for development packages that will bring more roads and hospitals to their province. But such issues will automatically be taken care of by the spillover of CPEC, a process that has already begun erecting infrastructure like never before up and down the province, yet the temperature of the insurgency seems to be picking up regardless. That is why the government is going to have to think this initiative through very carefully, including who to talk to, about what, and what exactly to offer disgruntled militias, before firing off on all cylinders in an attempt to win PR points ahead of the actual exercise.

This isn’t the first time that Islamabad has tried to negotiate its way to peace in Balochistan, yet not once has it even come close to getting everybody to abandon the maximalist argument – of a breakaway state of their own – in favour of a more equitable distribution of the state’s resources. The reasons are very complex. There can, of course, be no denying that successive administrations in the centre have alienated the Baloch people by depriving them of their rights for far too long. And when the second largest city of the province, Turbat, which hosts the Pakistan navy’s second headquarter and is also the HQ of three big districts, has no sewage system, no clean water, no proper hospital, no internet or municipality service, and only temporary electricity from Iran, it’s no surprise that residents of the area feel that they have been exploited by the state for more than half a century.

Therefore the state needs to have a concrete plan of action before testing the waters. It will do nobody much good, especially the Baloch people, if it starts talking with a select group of insurgents and offers them deals while the rest are still busy planting IEDs and attacking military convoys. The government is right in not wanting to have anything to do with the bunch that is backed, funded and armed by India, of course, because they have very deliberately crossed a national security red line and got to a point from where it is not possible to come back without proper redemption, but the rest are going to need very careful handling. Balochistan has been a needless open wound for about all of Pakistan’s existence. And even if Imran Khan has the willpower to stitch and seal it, he will still need a very able team with clearly defined objectives to engage with the Baloch people. Otherwise this opportunity, too, will go begging and the insurgents might never trust another government in Islamabad again. *