ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called on Friday for a “grand dialogue” to address Balochistan’s long-running conflict, saying people involved in the insurgency who were willing to abandon violence should be welcomed back into the national mainstream.
Addressing the National Workshop Balochistan, Sharif made the appeal as the southwestern province faces a sharp escalation in a decades-old separatist insurgency. At least 372 people were killed in militant violence and security operations in Balochistan in July, more than triple the previous month’s toll, according to the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies.
Baloch groups have long accused Islamabad of political marginalization, heavy-handed security policies and exploiting the province’s mineral wealth without giving local people a fair share, charges the government rejects while pointing to development spending and militant attacks on infrastructure and workers.
“Whatever has happened, has happened,” Sharif said. “Even today, we should face these issues, and have a grand dialogue.”
He said that if “our sons and daughters” in Balochistan were ready to “correct their path,” they should be welcomed, adding that the country should sit together for a frank discussion of its differences.
Sharif acknowledged the centrality of the resource dispute, saying there should be “no doubt” that Balochistan’s mineral wealth belonged to its people, but argued that extracting it required capital, expertise and investment.
He said disagreements over resources should be addressed through inter-provincial consultation and fair distribution rather than violence.
Sharif strongly condemned attacks on civilians and laborers from other parts of Pakistan, referring to incidents in which travelers and workers have been singled out because of their ethnicity.
“Whatever area a worker came from, he was there earning a living and building Balochistan,” he said.
The prime minister said security and development could not be separated, pointing to the Rs415 billion ($1.5 billion) Karachi-Chaman N-25 highway project, a route notorious for deadly traffic accidents and increasingly affected by militant violence.
Responding to the opposition leader in the Balochistan Assembly, he said Rs100 billion ($361 million) had been provided for the project and pledged another Rs100 billion if the first allocation was utilized within six months.
Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal told the workshop that Balochistan had been allocated Rs200 billion ($721 million) under the national Public Sector Development Program out of a total Rs1 trillion ($3.61 billion), compared with Rs70 billion ($252 million) for Punjab.
The National Workshop Balochistan, launched in 2017, brings together politicians, journalists, academics, business figures and civil society representatives for discussions on national policy, development and security with a focus on the province.
Sharif said Pakistan also needed to examine its own history, referring to conflicts in Balochistan in previous decades and saying questions remained over whether they could have been handled differently through dialogue.
“It is never too late,” he said. “Even today, we should sit together and have a frank dialogue.”
