Tuesday’s incident in the Machh area of Bolan, 80 kilometres from Quetta, in which two security personnel and 11 Punjabi civilians were killed in cold blood has unsettling ramifications. It is being reported that about 200 guerrillas first attacked and destroyed a PAF oil tanker in the area, then intercepted a Frontier Corps (FC) patrol, trussed up the five FC personnel, snatched their weapons and walkie-talkies and put up a check post on the road that started stopping buses plying on the route. Normally, according to the local administration, buses going from Quetta to other provinces along this route are accompanied by security forces but the attack on the tanker and FC “kept the security forces busy”. That still does not explain why, after the preliminary incidents, the authorities and the bus operators were not alerted to the risks ahead. Be that as it may, the singling out of Punjabi travellers on the basis of their ethnicity and then shooting them dead signals a new and frightening escalation of the hatreds in troubled Balochistan province. Although Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) spokesman Meerak Baloch telephoned media later to claim responsibility for the incident, he argued that the 13 people killed all belonged to the military or security forces and the others kidnapped were set free. Even if that argument is conceded, does it justify the murder in cold blood of people on the basis of their ethnicity? Two or three years ago, there was a rash of attacks on Punjabi ordinary citizens all over Balochistan, which even the well wishers of the Baloch people found abhorrent and criticized. The practice seemed to have mercifully died out, but its ‘revival’ now poses fraught ethical, moral, political and philosophic questions. The narrower Baloch nationalism that inspires the insurgents in the current phase of their struggle for their rights and against genuine grievances lumps the whole of Punjab as responsible for its oppression. But the fact is that ordinary Punjabi citizens have nothing to do with the policy of suppression in Balochistan. The head to be crowned for that policy, with its ‘kill and dump’ aspect being the most extreme and inhuman face, belongs exclusively to the military establishment and its ‘implementing’ tool, the FC. Hatred against the oppressors is understandable, but to conflate the blame to include uninvolved citizens from Punjab who are in the province in search of livelihood is not just, efficacious, or wise.
The loss of innocent lives anywhere and in any circumstances is tragic. How much satisfaction flows from the mourning of the families of these victims in Punjab on this occasion of Eid for those thousands of Baloch families who have lost, and continue to lose, their near and dear ones every day for years is debatable. Such are the wages, though, of the policies pursued by the military establishment in Balochistan. These policies are beyond the purview and out of the control of the province’s civilian rulers, including the recently elected government in Quetta. Until and unless the military establishment surrenders, or is forced to surrender running things in Balochistan in parallel manner into the hands of the civilian elected government, such tragedies cannot be ruled out.
It may be instructive to compare the struggle in Balochistan in the 1970s to the current one. Then, not a single settler was harmed. Security forces personnel captured by the guerrillas were looked after, re-educated as to the causes why the Baloch were fighting for their rights, and freed. Even just causes must be fought for with just means. The end has never justified any and all means, and arguably the wrong means end up eroding the righteousness of the most just of causes. Unfortunately, because of the monopoly of the military establishment over Balochistan’s affairs, scepticism after the elections that the new civilian dispensation would be able to bring about a rapprochement will now only be reinforced. The military establishment’s present course runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy by stoking separatist sentiment to the point of hardened conviction, thereby shrinking the space for a political solution and threatening a debacle for the country in the future. Do the governments in Islamabad and Quetta have the will and courage to challenge this disastrous course and turn things around in Balochistan for the sake of the country? A healthy dose of scepticism notwithstanding, unless the politicians in Islamabad and Quetta take things in their own hands, the province and the country could be entering a dark and forbidding cul de sac.
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