Pakistan- the Balochistan Conundrum

by Tilak Devasher

  near future.51

  The Guardian quoted Kaiser Bengali, former economic adviser to the Balochistan chief minister, saying that the notion that the two special brigades formed by the army will be enough to protect road traffic was ‘laughable’. ‘If every convoy of trucks has to be accompanied by half a dozen tanks, armoured carriers and helicopters, the cost is going to be exorbitant.’ In an interview, the noted economist made the following points. (i) Instead of a game-changer, CPEC may signify a game over. ‘I see the Corridor creating threats for local businesses and fear that it won’t be a win-win situation for both countries.’ (ii) ‘Gwadar cannot become Dubai. It is a seaport built for the purpose of re-exporting Chinese products brought into Pakistan via a land route. I think it is not possible to establish industrial zones and a mega city in Gwadar because there is no water available to support this development.’52

  Commenting on CPEC, former chief minister Dr Malik said that it would not be a game-changer for the people of Balochistan: ‘There is no hope for changing their destiny.’ He said that it was now known that 91 per cent of CPEC profit would be siphoned off to China and the remaining 9 per cent would be taken away by the federal government, with Balochistan remaining empty-handed.53

  It is obvious that the way CPEC has been planned and implemented, it has not even tried to address the sense of deprivation faced by the people of Balochistan. Since they are neither participants of the CPEC process nor its beneficiaries, a feeling of resentment and frustration among the Baloch is natural. Worse, while articulating their grievances regarding CPEC, the Baloch find that the project has been raised to the level of an ideological issue and anybody who asks for a reconsideration of any of its parts or even asks for a clarification of one point or another is branded as a subversive element.54

  Taking note of the Baloch scepticism over the CPEC, the army chief Gen. Qamar Bajwa proposed in January 2017 that a ‘people-centric approach based on local ownership’ should be adopted as far as securing the ‘ongoing developmental activity and future trade’ in Balochistan under CPEC is concerned. He also acknowledged that the province has been ‘unfortunately’ neglected in the past for a host of reasons but said that was not the case anymore. Given that the army has had a free run of state policies in Balochistan, Bajwa’s statement was clearly a frank acknowledgement of the army’s failures.55

  The Daily Times sounded an ominous warning that ‘CPEC will be a failure if it fails to accommodate all concerned parties, especially Gwadar’s local population. The project cannot be executed successfully if the local populace views it with mistrust.’56

  V

  RELENTLESS PERSECUTION

  13

  Human Rights Violations

  THE MOST DISTRESSING ASPECT OF the situation in Balochistan is the sharp increase in the number of human rights (HR) violations. While both sides have been guilty of it, it is the army that has been guilty of violating human rights systematically as an instrument of policy to crush the insurgency. This is borne out by reports of human rights organizations, think tanks as well as journalists who have had access to the region.

  There are four impediments in discussing the HR violations. First, as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted, ‘The human rights abuses in the province receive only limited attention as certain areas remain virtually inaccessible to the national media and civil society, while many parts of the rest of the province are poorly connected to major cities elsewhere in Pakistan. Human rights violations are, therefore, poorly documented and patchily reported.’1 The media has been denied access even to the internally displaced people in the Bugti area where hundreds are believed to have died due to inadequate medical facilities and poor sanitation.

  Second is the lack of serious international attention. As noted by Declan Walsh, the Baloch insurgency that has gone on intermittently for decades is often called Pakistan’s Dirty War, because of the rising numbers of people who have disappeared or have been killed on both sides. But it has received little attention internationally, in part because most eyes are turned toward the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s north-western tribal areas.2 The government was able to take ‘… advantage of the more permissive attitude towards human rights violations by the international coalition fighting the “war on terror” to subject its political opponents, including Sindhi and Baloch nationalists, to enforced disappearance’.3

  Third, as Walsh notes, the forces of law and order are curiously indifferent to the plight of the dead men. Not a single perpetrator has been arrested or prosecuted; in fact, police investigators openly admit they are not even looking for anyone. As he puts it: ‘The stunning lack of interest in Pakistan’s greatest murder mystery in decades becomes more understandable, however, when it emerges that the prime suspect is not some shady gang of sadistic serial killers, but the country’s powerful military and its unaccountable intelligence men.’4

  Fourth, the statistics relating to human rights violations vary given the enormous difficulties in documenting them. Despite this, the common link in these violations is the crude attempt at suppressing the growing independence movement in Balochistan.

  In spite of these constraints and Pakistan’s efforts to keep its brutality in Balochistan under wraps, it has failed to do so due to the determination of the human rights organizations and of the Baloch to bring to light what the army is doing to the people.

  Casualty Figures

  According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database, the province has recorded at least 6,726 fatalities since 2004 (data till 29 April 2018) which included 4,055 civilians. Of these, at least 1,167 have been attributable to one or the other terrorist/insurgent outfits. Of these, 396 civilian killings (226 in the south and 170 in the north) have been claimed by Baloch separatist formations, while Islamist and sectarian extremist formations—primarily LeJ, TTP and Ahrar-ul-Hind (Liberators of India)—claimed responsibility for another 771 civilian killings, 688 in the north (mostly in and around Quetta) and eighty-three in the south. The remaining 2,888 civilian fatalities—1,696 in the south and 1,192 in the north—remain ‘unattributed’. A large proportion of the ‘unattributed’ fatalities, particularly in the southern region, are believed to be the result of enforced disappearances carried out by state agencies, or by their proxies, prominently including the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Aman, Balochistan (TNAB, Movement for the Restoration of Peace, Balochistan). The large number of unattributed civilian fatalities is a clear indication that strengthens the widespread belief of the security agencies indulging in kill-and-dump operations against local Baloch dissidents.5

  According to the Federal Ministry of Human Rights, at least 936 dead bodies of ‘disappeared’ persons, often mutilated and bearing the signs of torture, were found in Balochistan since 2011. Figures obtained from the Federal Ministry of Human Rights by the BBC Urdu on 30 December 2016 pointed to large-scale extra-judicial killings by state agencies and their proxies. Most of the bodies were dumped in Quetta, Kalat, Khuzdar and Makran—areas where the separatist insurgency has its roots.6

  In 2015 the provincial government revealed that the bodies of 800 people linked to the insurgency were recovered between 2011 and 2014.7 It also estimated 950 people were still missing, although some claims go as high as 14,000 according to a 2013 report by a UN fact-finding team.8

  Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)

  The HRCP report titled ‘Conflict in Balochistan: HRCP fact-finding missions, December 2005–January 2006’ made the following points:

  (i) There were widespread instances of disappearances, of torture inflicted on people held in custody and on those fleeing from their house and hearth in fear:

  (ii) The security forces and decision-makers were completely unaccountable for the gross human rights violations in the province;

  (iii) The present situation in parts of Balochistan, including Dera Bugti and Kahan, ‘can be described as armed conflict’ where non-combatants have been killed and where
the use of force was disproportionate, excessive and employed indiscriminately;

  (iv) There was a sharp rise in disappearances of those suspected of nationalist sympathies or links with the militants. Baloch dissidents have been the main victims of what the HRCP secretary-general described as a ‘barbaric and inhuman practice’;9

  (v) There were alarming accounts of summary executions, some allegedly carried out by paramilitary forces. HRCP received credible evidence that showed such killings had indeed taken place; and

  (vi) Despite constraints in documentation, there was a consistent pattern of abuse of human rights in the province.10

  Amnesty International

  In its 2008 report ‘Denying the Undeniable’ the Amnesty International (AI) put its finger on the problem of documentation of human rights violations.11 According to it, ‘… enforced disappearances were characterized by an official shroud of secrecy’ making it difficult to establish just how many people the government had abducted. Relatives, too, remained silent about the disappearance for fear of reprisals on the ‘disappeared’, or themselves.12 Another difficulty was that some who were declared released were, in fact, not released while others were subjected to renewed enforced disappearance. The report underlined that hundreds of people alleged to be linked to terrorist activities were arbitrarily detained, ‘… denied access to lawyers, families and courts, and held in undeclared places of detention run by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, with the government concealing their fate or whereabouts’.

  The AI report also highlighted, with examples, some of the tactics used by the army to conceal enforced disappearances. These included the failure to obey judicial directions, concealing the identity of detaining authorities, hiding the detained, silencing victims of enforced disappearance by threatening the relatives of the disappeared.

  Reports by Journalists

  In an article in the Guardian, Declan Walsh wrote: ‘The bodies surface quietly, like corks bobbing up in the dark. They come in twos and threes, a few times a week, dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads, bearing the scars of great cruelty. Arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognizable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the head.’ According to him, this was ‘Pakistan’s dirty little war’. The victims, men between twenty and forty years, were nationalist politicians, students, shopkeepers and labourers. In several cases they were kidnapped in broad daylight by a combination of uniformed soldiers and plain-clothes intelligence men.13

  Writes human rights activist Zohra Yusuf, ‘The victims are primarily political activists and students, as well as the intelligentsia and religious minorities. Almost all the dead bodies found are of victims of enforced disappearance, mostly idealistic young political activists fighting for Baloch rights, not necessarily for separatism.14

  Voice of Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP)

  Jalil Reki Baloch was abducted in February 2009 from Quetta and his dead body turned up two years later. This incident compelled Jalil’s seventy-year-old father Abdul Qadeer Reki to rally other families whose sons had gone ‘missing’ to form an organization—the Voice of the Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP). The VBMP comprises the family members of abducted Baloch activists, and its objective is to collect the data of all abducted and extra-judicially killed Baloch persons. They stormed into the limelight when led by Qadeer—also called Mama—fifteen of them started on a long march from Quetta to Karachi and from Karachi to Islamabad in October 2013 to protest against and draw attention to the issue of enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings in Balochistan that had reached alarming proportions.15 The long march certainly caught the imagination of the population in Sindh and south Punjab. The reaction in central and northern Punjab, the Punjabi heartland as it were, was far more restrained if not hostile.16

  Even prior to the long march, the activities of the VBMP had succeeded in attracting international attention. A team of UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) visited Pakistan and Balochistan in September 2012. This was the first ever visit of a high-level UN mission to Balochistan in connections with the issue of missing persons. They did detailed interviews with leaders of VBMP and families of the victims.17

  Interestingly, the VBMP does not ask for the release of the missing persons. Instead, they want the authorities to try them in court and punish them if guilty. Their grouse is that it is precisely this that the authorities do not do, and they have not been able to get justice from any quarter in Pakistan, including the judiciary.

  According to the group, there have been more than 2,825 documented cases of enforced disappearances of Baloch activists since 2005. In January 2016 Nasrullah Baloch, chairman of the VMBP, said that approximately 463 people had forcefully disappeared while 157 mutilated bodies were found from Balochistan in 2015. He, however, added that the number of enforced disappearances in 2015 could be higher as the government had recently admitted to having arrested 9,000 people under National Action Plan from Balochistan last year. In 2014, while the government claimed that 164 mutilated bodies were found, the VBMP held that 435 people were abducted and 455 mutilated bodies were found from Balochistan in 2014.18

  According to VMBP, Pakistani security forces had abducted 480, killed twenty-six persons including women and children, and torched at least 500 properties in more than 100 offensives just in March 2017. Only thirty persons among those abducted had been released. On 8 July 2017, three civilians were killed and 265 were abducted by the army from Dera Bugti and Mastung. The army also reportedly ‘stole’ civilian property and valuables, including 300 camels.19 None of the abducted persons were presented before any court or given the right to defend themselves. Balochistan’s Dasht, Tump, Mand, Dera Bugti, Kohlu, Quetta and Makran regions have been the most affected areas, where Pakistani military carried out attacks and offensives against Baloch civilians. Leaders of the VBMP say more than 18,000 Baloch men have been abducted by security agencies since the killing of prominent Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti in August 2006. After cities in Balochistan, Karachi is fast becoming a dumping ground for bodies of missing Baloch persons.20

  Qadeer was stopped at Karachi airport in March 2015 from leaving Pakistan for a talk in New York organized by expatriate Pakistanis on the situation in Balochistan, saying he was on the Exit Control List (ECL). The ECL is a roster of people barred by the government from leaving the country. Pakistani government officials confirmed that Qadeer Baloch was prevented from boarding the flight saying that he was on the ECL.21

  Enforced Disappearances

  The most harrowing of all the human rights violations in Balochistan are enforced disappearances. It has become an explosive issue given that more people have gone missing in the province than in any other part of Pakistan.

  The HRCP has ample evidence to support the allegations of the families of victims that the perpetrators of enforced disappearances are intelligence agencies and security forces. Senior officials and politicians in authority have also conceded this. A HRCP mission learnt that in several incidents even public figures in power were unable to secure relief or assurances that such incidents will stop. These public figures cited a number of incidents of disappearances in which, on the basis of credible evidence, they approached the intelligence agencies and the security forces only to be met with a bland denial.22 The mission also received information about arbitrary arrests and reports of endemic torture at unauthorized cells whose existence was confirmed by public figures.

  The consequences of such atrocities were well articulated by the veteran Baloch leader, Attaullah Mengal, when he told Nawaz Sharif in December 2011: ‘Baloch youth don’t want such a Pakistan in which they receive mutilated bodies of their compatriots. It is for them to decide [about their future], because they are being systematically eliminated and forced to seek refuge in the mountains.’
An ominous note followed: ‘But if atrocities continue, the Baloch will never accept a united Pakistan.’ Sharif termed Attaullah Mengal’s concerns legitimate, conceding that atrocities were being committed in Balochistan. He said his party would also talk to Baloch youth. About the assassination of Akbar Bugti, Nawaz Sharif said the ‘killers must be called to account’.23

  The HRCP started noticing this issue in 2004 when the number of missing persons from Balochistan rose sharply. By 2006, Balochistan accounted for an overwhelming majority of persons reported missing in a year in Pakistan. In the cases of enforced disappearance brought before it, the mission found that there were credible allegations and material on record to substantiate the involvement of state security forces, particularly the Frontier Corps.24

  While first information reports (FIRs) had been registered with the local police in many cases of enforced disappearance, there had been no efforts by the police to investigate them. Quite likely since the involvement of the state security agencies, particularly the FC, was well known, the police did not take any action. According to the HRCP, ‘This indicated that there was either an unstated policy not to interfere with actions of the FC or the civil law enforcement authorities themselves feared the military and paramilitary forces.’25

  In one particular case a young man named Abid Saleem was picked up from Chitkar Bazaar in Panjgur on 23 January 2011, together with five other men who had no connection with him. Everyone present in that part of the bazaar saw uniformed FC personnel together with plain-clothes men take the boys into custody. An FIR was registered on 26 January 2011 with Panjgur Police Station and FC personnel were listed for the disappearance. Instead of making any efforts to recover the disappeared persons, the police did not even ask any questions of the FC personnel. At least one of the persons picked up along with Abid Saleem was found alive. He had been severely tortured, shot and thrown by the roadside along with the dead body of another person who had disappeared with him on 23 January. His tormentors had apparently thought that he too had died after being shot in the throat. There had been no investigation in this case by the police. No medical records were collected even though the survivor did receive medical treatment.26