Pakistan- the Balochistan Conundrum

by Tilak Devasher

  Take the case of Abdul Quddus Bizenjo, who became the chief minister of Balochistan in 2018 after a ‘coup’ was engineered against the PML-N chief minister Sanaullah Zehri. Bizenjo had won his provincial seat from Awaran district by securing just 544 votes out of a total of 57,656 registered votes in the constituency, or just about one per cent. What credibility would his mandate have and could he really be said to represent the aspirations of the people of the constituency, let alone of the province?9

  This situation has generated the general belief among the Baloch nationalists that the governments in Islamabad, especially those dominated by the army, have either confronted the political forces in the province or tried to marginalize them.10 A HRCP mission in 2011 confirmed this state of affairs. It noted the absence of the political government and the civil authorities from critical areas of decision-making. It made the following points: (i) The political government had abdicated its responsibility towards the people and hid behind its own helplessness in the face of domination of the military and intelligence agencies in the decision-making process in the province. (ii) The political government had failed to protect the rights and fundamental freedoms of the people since extra-judicial killings and other lawless actions of the security forces continued unabated. (iii) All authority in the province was vested in the security forces who enjoyed complete immunity and had complete disregard towards the political government and the civil authorities. (iv) The government officials at the higher level did not even attempt to negotiate on behalf of the people. (v) The military authorities did not take the civil government on board; neither did they share information which made administration of law and order by the civil authorities impossible. (vi) The security forces were totally inaccessible to the people and even to the civil authorities. For example, the local Frontier Corps commander in Makran became unavailable for any meeting called by the Divisional Commissioner and attended only when it suited him, regardless of the importance of the matters on the agenda. (vi) Despite this, people continued to approach the civil authorities and the political elements for redressal. (vii) Finally, the use of force rather than political engagement or dialogue remained the preferred approach. Promises made in the Balochistan package about concrete reform, like inquiry into the murder of Baloch leaders and release of missing persons, remained little more than promises.11

  One of the key points in the National Action Plan, formulated in the wake of the killing of schoolchildren in Peshawar on 16 December 2014, was ‘empowering Balochistan government for political reconciliation with complete ownership by all stakeholders’. As a former IG of Balochistan Police noted, this disregarded the fact that there was only one player that had the final say in Balochistan—the military-led security establishment, including the intelligence agencies. They would never let the civilian provincial government formulate a policy of bringing the Baloch sub-nationalists into the mainstream of the strategically important province.12 Thus, the high-sounding action point was a non-starter since the provincial government was not empowered to resolve the issue of the missing persons, could not prevail on the security forces to abandon the kill-and-dump strategy, and neither did it have cards to get the Baloch nationalists on the negotiating table.

  The helplessness of the provincial government can be evaluated from the fact that even on key development issues, like the Gwadar deep-sea port, CPEC, awarding and renewal of mineral licences, it is not even consulted by the federal government. The simple fact is that Balochistan is seen as a resource-rich colony and every civilian, politician or provincial government is helpless against the Pakistan state’s strategy of putting down by force any opposition to the exploitation of the province.

  Lack of Governance

  Even in areas that the provincial government has the authority to act independently, it has failed miserably. Take for example the capital city Quetta. This is how a journalist described its condition: ‘Living in the provincial capital has become a nightmare. Streets routinely remain inundated by sewage water; roads reduced to dusty pathways with gaping manholes. Streetlights do not work and when they do, many people get killed from electrocution because of water around lamp posts. Major road arteries are actually mosaics of potholes. And this is Quetta, a city whose nine MPAs have been given Rs 2.25 billion in the name of development funds (Rs 250 million each), not to mention Rs 1 billion given by the federal government for Quetta’s “beautification”. Ministers are reported to take ten to twenty per cent upfront from contractors as their cut from development funds and issue them completion certificates without even an iota of actual work on ground.’13

  Education

  Education is another area the pitiable condition of which has been noted in an earlier chapter. Over the last six years the Balochistan government had consistently increased the percentage share of education in the provincial budget. From 13 per cent in 2010-11 to 20 per cent in 2015-16, it showed the commitment of successive governments to improve the state of education in the province. However, in 2016-17, after the PML-N headed the provincial government, the percentage share of education was reduced substantially to 17 per cent of the provincial budget. Advisor to Balochistan chief minister on information Sardar Raza Muhammad Bureech said that 17 per cent of the provincial budget outlay for education was insufficient to get rid of the education crisis even in the next fifty years.14 Likewise, in 2015-16, out of the education budget, a sum of Rs 7.5 billion was apportioned for education development purposes. In 2016-17 the development budget was slashed by 42 per cent to Rs 4.4 billion.15

  The major cut in the education budget pertained to primary and secondary schools with the focus being on higher secondary, college and university education. Projects for primary and middle education made up only 22 per cent of the budget. The misplaced priorities can be gauged from the fact that Balochistan had the highest percentage of out-of-school children at 70 per cent; among the under-ten children only 28 per cent were literate; the ratio for girls was even worse at only 16 per cent. In rural areas only 10 per cent girls were educated. Without prioritizing primary education, especially girls’ education, Balochistan would continue to remain far behind in literacy than the other provinces. Moreover, instead of completing ongoing projects, 66 per cent of the funds were allocated to new projects. As a result, education development projects initiated during the last two years would not only take longer to complete but there would be cost

  overruns too.16

  Police

  The provincial police were in as pitiable a condition as the provincial government. A provincial police chief told the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan that cases had surfaced in which police officers who tried to check cars with tinted windows landed up in jail. The owners/occupants of these cars clearly had protection of the intelligence agencies.17 Another officer said that the greatest threat to the police was from within and that the sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi had indoctrinated sections of the force. He cited the case where black paint was thrown on the pictures of Shia policemen killed in action. Such pictures were displayed in the offices of senior police officers where only police personnel had access. Not surprisingly, he lamented, ‘In Quetta we have to keep coffins and flags ready at all times. That is how frequently police officers are killed.’18

  The death toll of Balochistan police in Quetta had risen above twenty in 2017 and there were seventy terrorist attacks in Quetta alone in 2017. This does raise doubts about the improving law and order situation in the area.19

  The Federal Government

  The federal government’s performance in responding to the challenge posed by Balochistan has been as bad as that of the provincial government. The basic argument of the federal government, taking a cue from the army, was that the Baloch leaders were opposed to development projects and wanted to keep the province ‘backward’ for the sake of their vested interests to maintain the traditional sardari system. The violence in Balochistan was dubbed the work of a small band of ‘miscreants’ unrepresentative of t
he larger Baloch population and a ‘law and order’ issue. Musharraf, for example, in a speech in January 2006, stated: ‘The tribal chiefs have held this country hostage for the past thirty to forty years for their interests. These tribal chiefs have no interest whatsoever in the well-being and progress of the common man and subject their own sub-tribesmen to torture because of their pro-development thinking.’20

  Such arguments, as pointed out earlier, have lacked credibility because it does not factor in the reality that a large number of Baloch have taken up arms. The government is at a loss to explain the reason for its message not finding acceptance with the population, while the message of the tribal chiefs is doing so. With the entry of middle-class Baloch the argument about tribal chiefs has become even weaker.

  Issue of Development

  The issue of ‘development’ has become a major bone of contention between the nationalists and the government. According to a Baloch leader, ‘It is totally a wrong concept that we oppose development. The basic question is about the nature and modalities of development. That is why the basic demand of Balochistan’s political parties is that provinces must be given maximum autonomy. Trust them and give them the authority to undertake development projects.’21

  Musharraf and his successors have insisted that the Gwadar project demonstrated the government’s commitment to developing Balochistan.22 However, as noted in an earlier chapter, since the Baloch are not stakeholders or beneficiaries, they strongly oppose it, perceiving the project as yet another Central government scheme to exploit Balochistan’s resources, while also altering the province’s demographic composition to their disadvantage.23 Moreover, in far-flung areas of Balochistan there was hardly any ‘development’. In the words of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Mateen, ‘… the coastal highway does not pass through even a single union council of Makran district; it has been built for the benefit of civil and military bureaucracy.’24 Not surprisingly, for many Baloch the continued emphasis on mega projects contrasts adversely with the failure of previous development announcements to materialize. Hence, the Baloch do not feel confident that their circumstances will improve.

  Rejecting the argument that the government’s development schemes had sparked the insurgency and that the conflict was confined to the tribal territories of a few sardars, an opposition parliamentarian said: ‘If the federal government claims that the troubled areas in Balochistan are only 7 per cent of the province, then why is there no development in the rest of the 93 per cent?’25 The secretary-general of Nawab Bugti’s party stressed: ‘If the (dissenting) sardars are guarding their self-interest, then they would side with the government, not confront it,’ adding, ‘only when you have the support of the masses and are fighting for the people can you can confront the government’.26

  ‘Packages’

  To offer some political sops to the Baloch, Musharraf’s government, under the chairmanship of Chaudhury Shujaat Hussain, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q), formed a parliamentary committee consisting of sixteen senators and twelve members of the National Assembly in September 2004. Its task was to ‘examine the current situation in Balochistan and make recommendations thereon’. The committee was split into two subcommittees. Wasim Sajjad (leader of the house in the Senate) chaired one that was to make recommendations to promote provincial harmony and to protect the rights of the provinces with a view to strengthening the federation. Senator Mushahid Hussain chaired the other that was mandated to examine the current situation in Balochistan and make recommendations. While nothing was heard about the recommendations of the Wasim Sajjad subcommittee, the Hussain subcommittee did make several recommendations, the key among which were:

  review the check posts manned by the Frontier Corps and the Coast Guards in interior Balochistan;

  halt construction of military cantonments until all major issues are resolved;

  increase royalties to the gas-producing districts of Balochistan, with the federal government paying arrears;

  address underdevelopment in Gwadar, Quetta and Sui;

  strictly implement the 5.4 per cent employment quota for Baloch workers in all federal ministries, divisions, corporations and departments; and

  create parity between the Baloch and Pashtuns in Balochistan in all spheres of life.

  However, most of the recommendations were only suggestions, with no specific mechanisms for their execution. Its recommendation about convening a special task force to ensure the implementation was never implemented.27

  In fact, Baloch nationalist leaders were disappointed that the committee did not mention the withdrawal of military forces or the release of political prisoners languishing in Pakistani jails. Instead, the recommendations were seen as providing a cover to the military and paramilitary forces to mobilize and eliminate the political representatives of Balochistan. They were also concerned about its recommendations of ‘parity’ between the Baloch and the Pashtuns in the province, perceiving it as part of Islamabad’s long-standing policy of divide-and-rule.28

  Shaukat Aziz, the then prime minister, doomed the recommendations when he echoed the military’s line that ‘stern measures’ would be taken against Baloch ‘miscreants’ and ‘the writ of the government would be ensured at every cost’. A disappointed Mushahid Hussain said: ‘The sense of engagement, involvement and inclusion is missing. We see it as a far-off territory meant to be controlled. I think there was criminal negligence when it came to its implementation by both civil and military bureaucracy. We have never learnt any lessons from the mistakes we made in the 1973 insurgency.… But nothing changed.’29

  In November 2009 yet another reform package called the Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan (Start of Rights of Balochistan Package) meant to address Baloch grievances was announced with much fanfare by the PPP government. The intention was to correct the wrongs done to Balochistan by successive governments over the years. The army chipped in by giving up the idea of building a military cantonment, deciding instead to establish a military college with reserved seats for the Baloch. On paper, at least, the package seemed to meet several of the Baloch demands including the return of political exiles, the release of jailed Baloch political activists, creation of jobs, etc. However, the major grievances of retrieving missing persons, stopping the kill-and-dump policy, exploitation of resources and denial of control over the resources were not addressed.

  Hence, the package failed to meet the expectations of the nationalists. According to the HRCP mission in 2011, almost everyone they met said that the package was meaningless in the context of the situation in the province and that even the things promised under the package had not been delivered. For example, the 5,000 jobs given under the package were not of much value as these were one-year contracts and offered no permanent solution to the acute unemployment amongst the Baloch youth.30 Likewise, more than 3,000 posts reserved in the federal government for Baloch domicile holders under the package remained vacant since the announcement. This again reflected the lack of political will that ensured paltry implementation of decisions.31

  Even otherwise, by its own admission, the government could implement only fifteen of the sixty-one proposals contained in the package. In February 2013 a ten-member special cabinet committee said that desired results were not achieved despite unprecedented allocation of funds.32

  The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the seventh National Finance Commission (NFC) Award did open a window of opportunity to rectify two of the main grievances of the Baloch. The amendment, on paper, devolved greater power on the provinces, especially making them partners in oil and gas resources. However, if the complaints of the chief ministers of Sindh and KPK are to be believed, clearly the Eighteenth Amendment has not made much of a difference in practice. The reason for the scepticism is that the implementation of the devolution of power to the provinces has not taken full effect. According to Peter Jacob, a human rights activist: ‘Operating in an environment of lack of trust and lack of civil society input, the
constitutional review process has been marred by bottlenecks and the failure of the government to appoint a body to supervise the devolution of ministries from the federal to the provincial level.’33

  The NFC Award, as noted earlier, took into account multiple criteria including backwardness, poverty, etc., and not merely population as before. This has certainly benefited Balochistan. As a result, the province’s share of revenue was increased from 5.11 per cent to 9.09 per cent, making more funds available for development. However, given Balochistan’s accumulated deprivation since 1947, it would take decades before a dent is made, provided the funds are used judiciously. Furthermore, the continuation of the seventh NFC award after its expiration on 30 June 2015, as noted in a previous chapter, has not only been unconstitutional but has put Balochistan in an unfavourable position. This is because the seventh NFC award used obsolete and manipulated figures of poverty that downplayed poverty in Balochistan. As a result, Balochistan is losing up to Rs 28 billion annually.34

  On 6 August 2015 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif approved another package called the Pur-aman (Peaceful) Balochistan programme. Given the past record, however, there was a question mark against the potential success of this programme as well. According to Mohammad Ali Talpur, the Pur-aman Balochistan programme of the two Sharifs isn’t a development programme but is a ‘pacification’ one, based solely on brute force to ensure security for the Chinese working on CPEC. It is in pursuance of this pacification plan that the formation of a special security division became necessary despite the presence of 50,000 plus Frontier Corps personnel there.35 Even if these programmes brought some development to the region, this would be too little too late. Indeed, as Brahamdagh Bugti observed on 26 August 2015, ‘Development in Balochistan is irrelevant, as a democratic government is not present in the Province and the Baloch people were not included in the decision.’36