Could there be as reckless political class and media galaxy as are ours, playing so playfully with an otherwise very serious Balochistan conundrum? Their monkeyshines replete with resounding hypocrisy, hyperbole and thoughtlessness are shudderingly dangerous. Yet, unmindful of their insanity’s dire consequences, they are chasing their adventurous pursuit spiritedly. While politicos are so obviously playing worst malodorous politics with the problem, media eminences are artificially exalting some dubious characters to Baloch icons pedestal. The act of both stinks, and intolerably pungently, showing them up for chicaners they innately are.
Mian Nawaz Sharif, his own PML faction’s head honcho, chimes again and again nowadays that he will attend an all-parties conference (APC) on Balochistan if only first Nawab Akbar Bugti’s killers are arrested and missing persons recovered. But wasn’t it he who had originally announced to convene an APC on Balochistan? Had then Nawab Bugti’s murderers been arrested and punished? And had missing persons been recovered? Or does he think it is kosher for him to convene this politicos’ jamboree but not for others?
But can he speak so glibly of the centre’s injustices to Balochistan when he himself was very much part of this step-motherly treatment of Balochistan and its residents? Wasn’t he the country’s prime minister twice? Can he refute the irrefutable factuality that he too did nothing for a fair deal to this long-neglected province of Pakistan and to redress its residents’ nagging grievances? And wasn’t it he who had pulled down Sardar Attaullah Mengal’s elected government in Balochistan, even though he too has throughout been its repressive sardars’ friend, not their repressed Baloch people’s?
If he could rope in the banks to launch a yellow cab scheme for favourite urbanite fortune-makers’ benefit, which in reality was a patent huge rip-off, couldn’t he mount a sincere effort to help Balochistan’s fishermen community to modernise their outdated fishing fleets? But it is not he alone who is just faking and shedding crocodile tears for Balochistan. This fakery runs from end to end of the political class. The imposters are too many, all speaking of the Baloch people’s rights. Yet dissect their devious chant and you are horrified to know they are actually talking of sardars, not of the suppressed and oppressed Baloch commoners tied down with their exploitative stranglehold.
What else could you make out when MNS’s younger sibling Shahbaz Sharif squawks that for Pakistan’s sake he is prepared to even to fall on “estranged” Baloch leaders’ feet, beg their forgiveness and woo them back to the fold? So he too, like the media eminences, is all out to court some sardari scions, not the Baloch commoner who indeed needs to be taken care of, emancipated, and uplifted to become a fuller human being. But who will tell him those princely scions are not their own masters now but proxies and hatchet men of their alien handlers in whose hands is held the plug on them. It is the handlers not the princes who will decide. And what the handlers’ decision would be can easily be imagined. To create more turbulence in the troubled province; what else could it be?
There indeed is too much of chicanery going on in Balochistan’s name. None is taking a pause to read the objective ground realities in Balochistan. For the first thing, no injustices have ever been done to the sardars. Over the time, they have variously savoured all the bounties flowing in from the centre, passing on all the deprivation to their enslaved tribal folks. The collusive hobnobbing of the central power with the nawabs and sardars had only helped tightening up of the sardari stranglehold over the suppressed tribal folks. But that stranglehold is now under assailment of rising tribal folks, who are becoming increasingly assertive, and aggressively. The mollycoddling of sardars and their scions is thus tending to enfeeble the rising tribal people and obstruct their struggle for liberation from the oppressive sardari order, whereas their struggle needs to be bolstered for them to become respectable, dignified and equal citizens of the nation.
Furthermore, tribes are no more the tight-knit units they were erstwhile. Rival power centres have long been in emergence, with the once-overbearing sardars’ overlordship now almost in tatters. Even the sardari clans are themselves deeply divided houses, in cases with their members not even on talking terms with one another. Most tribes are presently enmeshed in internecine rivalries, disputes and fights. In the given conditions, wooing the spurious “estranged Baloch leaders” simply means getting involved in their clannish infightings and their tribal internecine squabbles. Not just that. It also means getting embroiled in their inter-tribal feuds. The whole of this will ultimately work negatively for the Pakistani state. Those standing by its side will possibly get alienated and cross over to the other side.
In greater national interest, the focus has to be on the emancipation and empowerment of the Baloch commoner, especially the Baloch youth. And if the Islamabad hierarchy is any honest and sincere, it must at once unveil and work a massive development programme for the Baloch commoner’s benefit, their youths’ uplift and their province’s advancement, together with a constitutional guarantee to protect their rights in every manner and ensure the flow of all progress’s benefit to them predominantly. No APC or package is really called for. It is the intent to bring up the Baloch commoner that is actually called for and immediately.
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