Islamabad’s Balochistan policy of tackling security and political trouble with political measures and with minimum force appears to be wavering. The security situation has worsened and the main interlocutor, Sardar Akbar Bugti, has discontinued dialogue with the center.
Unless immediate steps are taken by the military-led center political resentment among Baloch can augment. Gwador and a planned military cantonment in Sui will increasingly become rallying points for Baloch anger toward the center.
Adhoc statements and missteps from Islamabad and Rawalpindi are beginning to overshadow what appeared to be the beginning of a systematically thought-through policy. The most ill-advised statement, of course, came from the military spokesman who claimed that Sardar Akbar Bugti, the main interlocutor in the ongoing center-Sui negotiations, had long been “on the take” from the center. A seemingly unending rocket and bomb attacks followed this statement. The criminality of sabotage activities notwithstanding, wiser counsel should have prevailed. Such a provocative statement would have inevitably led to a dialogue breakdown. And the onus of denying the already angry Balochis a provocation that would create conditions for new rounds of offensives rests on the representatives of the state.
There also appears to have been no systematic follow-up to the December-January political initiatives including meetings between the center’s parliamentary representative Chaudary Shujaat Hussain and the presidential representative Tariq Aziz and key Baloch leaders including Sardar Akbar Bugti.
The military spokesman spoke of hitting the Baloch militants in ways different from the seventies, though Gen. Pervez Musharraf personally supervises the center’s response to the Balochistan crisis. Around Jan. 18 he issued instructions for the immediate DNA test of the army captain accused of raping the lady doctor at Sui. In fact he was even planning to address the nation on the Balochistan issue immediately after Eid. Nothing happened. In fact the rape of a lady doctor at the Pakistan Petroleum Limited Hospital at Sui has become a politically volatile issue. First the criminal mishandling of the case and now the procrastination on the inquiry.
Whatever the government’s shortcomings so far, there is a positive environment in which the government will be tackling the Balochistan crisis. In Pakistan the plus is that at the popular level these are potentially less volatile times. The impact of informed discourse in the independent media has been a willingness by the people to sift fact from fiction, reality from myth.
Some facts that would help knock out myths would include speeding up the implementation of development projects in Balochistan alongside the publication of the Parliamentary Committee’s recommendations addressing the Baloch resentments regarding the Gwador and Saindak projects and finally the military leadership’s support to the PML president’s dialogue initiative and subsequently to the recommendations of the Balochistan Committee which addresses the complaints the Baloch have had toward the center.
Significantly the ruling party’s president has also talked of amending the Constitution to implement the recommendations of the committee.
These facts backed by policy moves would help narrow the gap between perception and reality on Balochistan. It would provide a window of opportunity and convince the Baloch that they will always get a fair deal from the center.
Balochistan crisis will prove to be the litmus test for Gen. Musharraf. To prevent a slide into anarchy the president needs to ensure speedy and fair trial of the rape case, immediate publication of the parliamentary committee’s report and an announcement by the president that most of the parliamentary committee’s recommendations will be accepted. Musharraf should also offer a peace dialogue to the nationalists of Balochistan and emphasize that the writ of the state will extend to all corners of the country. Time is of essence; the president needs to move now.
