Balochistan: Imran’s trite discourse

EDITORIAL:The Frontier Post

One thought that PTI chief Imran Khan would speak at his Quetta rally an idiom strewn with freshness, imagination and hope. But sadly he fell for the insipid, stale and trite. He just spoke the fashionable line that mixes the ignorance of hideous objective realities obtaining in Balochistan with motivated talk. The Balochistan problem is not the issue of the Baloch people's rights. They have them, constitutionally and legally. But those stand usurped by the tribal chieftains and sardars, with the tacit acquiescence of the centre, if not with its full collusion. The real Balochistan problem is in fact to liberate the enslaved Baloch commoners from this thralldom to come into their own to live as fuller human beings, the masters of their own wills and destinies. Had indeed objective reality informed his discourse, Khan would have demonstrated an acute sensitivity to that huge lot of the Baloch youths, many times bigger than the ones who thronged his rally, living haplessly in these very contemporary times in the darkness of serfdom and bondage. And he would have given them hope. But instead who too spoke of humouring up the sardars and chieftains, labelling them as leaders, which by no definition they could be. They are the tyrants and exploiters of their enslaved people; they are their suppressors and oppressors; they grow ever richer and mightier on the toils of their serfs to rank amongst the country's wealthiest people, while reducing their enslaved humanity into ever-abject penury and poverty.The Khan would have added a feather to his hat and set himself poles apart from the common rung of the politicos, had he shown an animated recognition of this pulsating reality and spoken out on behalf of the disempowered emasculated Baloch common citizenry. He did not. He showed himself all for the sardars. Had the "nationalists" not been duped by Nawaz Sharif into boycotting the 2008 poll, he says the matter would have been different from what they are now. But what he seems oblivious of is the reality that the Balochs crowding the incumbent provincial government and legislature are no commoners but the sardari scions donning the cloak of nationalists. And yet the things are real bad in the province, indeed could never be worse.If he means a change, he too needs a change in his very insight and outlook, which at present seem too simplistic and too childish. The Balochistan issue is not as simple as he appears to deem it to be. It is a complex issue, arduously involving as it does the emancipation of the enslaved Baloch commoners from the sardari shackles, empowering them, and helping them to benefit maximally from the rich natural wealth of their provincial abode for their own advancement. As it happens presently, the chieftains and sardars conveniently wear the mask of Baloch nationalism to coerce extract the maxim benefits from the state for their own wellbeing and opulence. They wrench out bigger gas royalties to enrich their coffers and beef up their arsenals. They wangle hefty payments for the lands they sell to the state for development projects or other purposes and the bonanza they spend on building up their cash stacks, arming their private militias and expanding their private jails. Their tribes they leave high and dry. They build no schools to their tribal people. They give them no health centres or clinics for healthcare. They construct them no roads for travelling convenience. They give them not even small irrigation works to farm their virgin fertile lands. Indeed, they obstruct and even resist development in their respective fiefdoms lest their enslaved tribal people get introduced to modernity and advancement and get ideas in their heads inimical to their entrenched suzerainty. For this fear of the sardari elites, the whole of the tremendous natural wealth of the province is in fact lying largely untapped and unutilised. Had indeed the khan been briefed correctly by his aides, he would not have even spoken of mollycoddling of the so-called "estranged Baloch leaders", perched in alien laps outside the country. Firstly, because they are not even the unquestioned chiefs of their own tribes, let alone the others. Over the time, the tribes have ceased to be monoliths they erstwhile were, with most having fractured into factions because of the sardari scions' internecine fighting. Secondly, each tribe, even after factional fragmentation, inhabits a particular area that still serves as the exclusive preserve of the respective sardari dynasty, not open to other dynasties' encroachment. Thirdly, various dynasties are perpetually at loggerheads and in adversarial mould. No Bugti, no Marri, no Mengal et al is an acknowledged leader of all Baloch. The tragic death of Nawab Akbar Bugti may have come handy to political operators, nationalists or otherwise, to ply their trades. But ask the Kalpars and the Masuris. The truth may be bitter; but you will know. So when next time, Khan goes to Quetta he must speak for the Baloch commoner, not for the Baloch sardar. It is the commoner who needs a helping hand, not the sardar who reaps moolah, whether it is summer or winter, whether it is rain or sunshine. In that alone lies the key to the Balochistan problem. Everything else is just jiggery-pokery.