The Baloch Hal
By Saifullah
The recent earthquake has brought backward areas of Balochistan an irrevocable havoc, affecting almost twenty-five thousands families. Balochistan Chief Minister, Dr. Malik Baloch, confirmed this after his brief visit to London. However, the worst has yet to come. In the backdrop of the post-earthquake relief operations, Jihadist organizations are setting up an unprecedented and somehow a successful network of recruitment in the Baloch areas under the disguise of rescuing the long lamented Baloch brothers.
In fact, the army, after the failure of its earlier strategies to keep aloof the Baloch youth from joining ranks of the separatists, has deployed Jihaid-humanitarians such as the Jamat-u Dawah, as a new strategy to achieve the desired results. And to our surprise, this strategy has turned out to be a successful one.
Balochistan has a long history of natural catastrophes; earthquake, a particular one, is because of the fault lines this region has which in turn is an effect of unstable plate tectonic movements. In 1935, Quetta witnessed a horrible earthquake with all its buildings collapsed to ground. Only the then cantonment separated from the city by deep canal, where the whole city sewerage gets it outlet, survived.
However, the recent earthquakes, tracking from the one that happened a couple of years ago in Ziarat – a picnic and historical spot – and following years, a dreadful one that stuck Mashkhel, adjacent to Pak-Iran boarder, has been accompanied by a number of Jihadi-militant organizations establishing their network in the region.
The Jamat-ud Dawah was one of the organizations which surpassed other organizations even the then government in helping out the earthquakes affectees.
Even today, by travelling through those areas, tents, disposable shelter homes and the likes, over which the Dawa name is conspicuously written, vindicates the organization’s active participation in working for rehabilitation of the affectees.
Moreover, it was Dawah that took precedence over other NGOs and the Pak Army to record their name as the first organization that went to Mashkhel and helped the quake victims.
This development is of great significance – because of its ‘bizarreness’ – that an organization like Dawah, accused of sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir, has established its network both in Pashtun and Baloch populated areas; Ziarat and Mashkhel, respectively. For, Dawah which primarily aims at waging Jihad against India in Kashmir with the help of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, had never been ‘headache’ of neither of Pashtuns nor Balcohs.
On contrary, it is the province wherein distribution of power and economic resources’ belongingness are more contested – which are ‘boarder confined concerns’ – instead, as is the case in Punjab and the Khyber Pakhtunkhawa, in particular, where Jihadis’ ‘trans-boarders expansionary’ vision finds conducive environment.
The Baloch youth intermeshing with the Dawah network testifies that the network has just gained its monument. With a massive destruction inflicted by the nature, Dawah is trying its best to turns the devastation unleashed by the nature into an opportunity for its two pronged strategy: to rescues and rehabilitate the affectees invoking empathy for their ‘strayed’ brothers – the Balochs – and to translate the ‘deceitful’ humanitarian image into a resort by establishing network of the Dawah.
Sequences of the developments implicates that Dawah is increasing its activities and deepening its presence in the previously ‘unconquered’ region under the tacit affirmativeness of the military.
Establishment of Dawah in Balochistan, if am not speculating into a remote and far less possibility, will serve two functions: first, it will prove, as it is, a successful strategy deployed under the patronage of the military to prevent the Baloch youth form joining separatists’ ranks.
Second, the military can use, in future, the Dawah in par with other militant Jihaidi organizations, now working in Balochistan. The later development is a very unique but not unusual: with the severing loyalties of other Jihades, based in Balochistan and operating across the border in Afghanistan, Dawah – a most reliable organization which our military can trust – can be deployed anytime against the ‘other’ Jihades to undo their ‘pernicious’ intentions against Pakistan.
Adding into the misery of Balochistan, lamenting not only a massive fund raising campaign for the affectees by leading news channels, however there are exceptions, focusing too much on the two premiers’ meeting but also the news channel missed the opportunity to criticize our military for pampering organizations like Dawah – this time in Balochistan – that has sabotaging impact on the peace talks between India and Pakistan.
Lastly, besides paying attention to schism between the province and center, the public must also pay attention how our military is covertly breeding afresh generation for militancy.
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