Balochistan: Confusing protest

So stupefying indeed it is that Balochistan's government ministers and lawmakers would be descending on Islamabad to stage protest against mounting kidnappings for ransom in the province. Isn't law and order constitutionally the provincial domain and its maintenance the provincial responsibility? Then, why are the ministers and lawmakers rushing on to Islamabad for something that they themselves should be tackling?

If there is some internecine tiff obstructing them to curb lawlessness and eliminate kidnapping, they should tackle it. If the security apparatus is not delivering, they must plug off the chinks in its armour and make it to perform. And if they think that some law-enforcement agency is not amenable to their control, they can set out to discipline it; and if not under the provincial government's writ, they can just ask for its withdrawal.

Why to run to Islamabad? Why are they itching so flutteringly to follow suit of their predecessors, who accumulated in mountains public disdain, scorn and ridicule for similar funny stunts instead of putting their act together? It was in their stint that kidnapping for ransom turned into the province's most booming industry. Nobody was safe from the grab of kidnappers. Doctors, lawyers, professors, you name it, and all were there on their hit list. Yet that ruling mob sat pretty, moving not even a finger to hobble the wicked criminals.

So much so, Hindu jewellers and businessmen, who together with Parsi merchants made up the kidnappers' choicest quarry, left the province in numbers and migrated mostly to India. Even as that could have possibly brought Pakistan internationally accusations of persecution of minorities, the mob was least pushed. More shockingly, a minister of that mob claimed publicly that his some ministerial colleagues as well as provincial legislators were involved in abductions for ransom. Although he later backtracked, when summoned to the court to testify, probably fearing vengeance and reprisals, the street listened and believed him. The incumbents too would fare similarly in public rage and fury if they take to evasive pursuits instead of confronting the challenges confronting their troubled province headlong. Their work lies in Quetta, not in Islamabad. Their corrupt and incompetent predecessors have left Balochistan in their trail as a sprawling junkyard, with its law and order condition abysmally dismal. This isn't brought out any poignantly by the current popular discourse about Balochistan, which in itself is highly populist and motivated. The province has not just the malaise of missing persons and dumped bodies to afflict it grievously. Scores of innocent Baloch children, women, men and elderly persons have been losing lives or limbs, unmourned and unlamented, in the blasts of improvised explosive devices that militants plant on roads and pathways in the countryside. Hundreds of Punjabi settlers have been slain and many more driven out by Baloch extremists in the Baloch region. Sindhis too are having a rough time at their hands. The Urdu-speaking migrant teachers and professional too have moved out of the province in flocks for fear of their lives after the community was targeted murderously by insurgents. Not even the Pakhtuns have been spared from this deadly chase. The grief of on this score palpably is no little. It is colossal, and heart-rending. And if it is still going unnoticed, it is because the human rights nobility, the media gentry and the political aristocracy find it not populist enough to be part of their favourite discourse. But the state cannot ignore it, nor can push it under the rug. It has to come to the rescue of the distressed, whoever or whatever the pedigree. But, for the present, the provincial government has not the adequate means to face up to this onerous job creditably.

Only a small patch of the province's territory is under the police writ. Not equipped any awesomely is the police even to secure this swathe for its residents' safety of lives and security of their businesses and properties. The rest of the province is wholly under the policing of levies. Say whatever apologists want, this force in official uniform is undeniably just a private militia of sardars, chieftains and their scions, nothing less, nothing more. It practically is mere additional force given to these feudal barons at the state expense to fatten their own private armies and beef up their muscle power to fight out their own feuds and fracas more bloodily.

The situation thus stands gravely aggravated for the incumbents to tackle it any effectively. And their task could become all the more harder, given the low morale which the paramilitary FC must be in believably for the wholesale castigation it has been subjected to on one pretext or the other over these times. The incumbents would hence be only on a very sticky pitch if they do not understand that what they are actually to do. Kidnappings definitely cannot be put paid by paying visit to Islamabad or, for that matter, to Timbuktu. The task necessarily requires the raising of a credible, dependable and trustworthy security apparatus. And that requires deep thinking, meticulous planning and hard decisions. Hence, the incumbents, both ministers and lawmakers, should better stay back and bang their heads together how to do it and start working on it.