By Malik Siraj Akbar

In May 2006, at the age of 23, I joined the Daily Times, Pakistan’s most liberal English-language newspaper, as a bureau chief. I was perhaps the youngest bureau chief to cover the country’s largest province, Baluchistan, and its longstanding, deadly insurgency. I covered fierce military operations, daily bomb blasts, rocket attacks, enforced disappearances, torture of political activists, and high-profile political assassinations.

In 2008, I got an exclusive interview with Bramdagh Bugti, Pakistan’s most wanted separatist leader. I also spoke to top civil and military officers. In November 2009, I founded the Baloch Hal, (Hal means “news” in English) the first online newspaper in Baluchistan, the country’s most impoverished region.

When the U.S. Department of State selected me for the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program in 2010, I was one of the youngest among 218 Fellows from 93 different countries. While in Washington, I remained professionally affiliated with the Center for Public Integrity, and interviewed some of the world’s best journalists and veteran diplomats for Dawn.com, one of Pakistan’s most prestigious English-language newspapers. All signs pointed to a successful journalistic career awaiting me back in Pakistan.

Yet, I put aside that career in the interest of personal safety by seeking political asylum in the United States. While I know the life of an asylum-seeker is often marked with extraordinary hardships, the demise of one’s professional career, and complete disconnection with friends and family, I believe no story is worth dying for. This is some of the pressure I was facing:

In the summer of 2007, military intelligence personnel took me from the Quetta Press Club against my will to its office in Quetta’s restricted military cantonment. I met with a major and a colonel, whose table was covered with fresh copies of the anti-government Daily Tawar and Daily Asaap newspapers. Most of the papers’ stories were marked with a green highlighter. The two men said they wanted to give me “friendly advice.” In what was to last for several hours, the meeting began with bizarre questions such as on the sources of funding of different Baloch newspaper editors, but ended with threats of death if I did not stop reporting on enforced disappearances.

The next week I met again inside the same white-painted, old compound, with the same officers. This time the atmosphere was more hostile. Worried by the continued threats and offers of “friendly advice,” I asked for an interview with the governor of Baluchistan, Awais Ahmed Ghani. I wanted to tell him about my situation and the growing threat I felt.

When we met, the governor encouraged me to do “positive journalism.” I had never heard the term before and asked if he could explain it to me. It took him less than fifteen seconds to make clear that positive journalism was journalism that supported government policies.

Without support from the government, I knew I was in trouble. I drastically changed my routine. I stopped going to the Quetta Press Club or having lunch at the nearby Abbasi Restaurant on Jinnah Road, because plainclothes intelligence police regularly monitored journalist’s movements from those centers of activity. But the pressure did not stop.

In 2009, my reporting of the presence of Taliban in Quetta — and the alleged support the Pakistani military agencies offered them in an effort to counter the secular Baloch nationalist movement — led to a number of threatening calls from phones with blocked numbers.

In January 2010, a Pakistani secret agent approached me at a hotel in Lahore, where I was staying a day before leaving for New Delhi to speak at the India-Pakistan Conference: A Roadmap to Peace. The agent, who said he had been told to ‘take care’ of me, spoke perfect Balochi, my native language. And he knew almost everything about me. He warned me of dire consequences if I attended the conference in Delhi. The agent wasn’t a totally bad guy. He offered me a night ride to show me around Lahore. I politely declined the offer. I lied to him about my return plans after the convention.

Nonetheless, when I returned to Lahore’s Allama Iqbal International Airport a week after the conference, where I had spoken about human rights violations in Baluchistan, I was met by the same agent, waiting for me at the immigration counter with a distasteful smile. In what appeared to be an attempt to take me away, he was joined by a couple of other men in plain clothes. I immediately grabbed the German organizer of the conference, who had travelled back with me to Lahore.

A politician and a writer friend reached out to help me too. Both of them are prominent in Pakistan. With my German friend, they told the agents they would go public with my abduction if I was taken away. Within one hour, my friends flew me from Lahore to Islamabad to spend the night at the politician’s house.

I returned to Quetta, but my professional life completely changed. I lived in low-profile; changed my daily routine; self-censored my reporting. The conference in India was followed by another session of scolding debriefings and threats with the other intelligence agents.

Those sessions were bad, but the untraceable phone calls were worse. When an anonymous caller tells you the color of your T-shirt or the jeans you are wearing and comments on your new haircut, the fear grips more deeply.

What happened to me was nothing unusual. Secret agents regularly shadow journalists in Baluchistan. They tape phone calls and regularly jot down diary entries while watching journalists’ activities, contacts and engagements. The hide-and-seek with agents and the unknown callers were chilling, but exciting as well. But it became more than an adventure as Baloch journalists were increasingly killed and dumped in remote areas.

I founded the Baloch Hal to promote online journalism and report on human rights issues, democracy, and media -what would have been seen as an innovative and entrepreneurial move in another country. But the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocked the site, apparently only because it contained the prefix “Baloch” in its Internet address. Around a hundred Baloch news sites, blogs and portals are currently blocked inside Pakistan.

Despite the restrictions, the Baloch Hal has continued to demand justice for all the slain journalists, particularly those killed in Baluchistan. The trend of target killing journalists who criticize the government policies is increasingly alarming. It does not seem likely to fade away in the near future because of absolute lack of accountability for the authorities who are blamed for these killings.

I have lost about a dozen journalist friends in one year in Baluchistan. It is time the international human rights and media freedom watchdogs stood by Baluchistan’s media corps and helped journalists and media organizations in Baluchistan get justice within Pakistan’s courts — which is why we continue to press the government to probe the killings. The tactic has not worked yet, and attacks on journalists continue.

I chose to seek asylum because some of us must live to tell the untold story from Baluchistan.

By Siddiq Baluch

The Department of Planning and Development is sarcastically known as the Department of ‘Cut and Paste’ preparing questionable feasibility studies of projects on paper for official consumption only. For this department, computer vendors sitting outside Quetta Press Club are making money for helping the needy, mostly officials of the Provincial Government, in preparing ‘feasibility studies’ of their projects by stealing facts from Internet or elsewhere to cheat the Government and people of Balochistan.

Hardly, there are a few officials at the senior level making serious efforts to prepare a genuine feasibility study of the major projects, if involved foreign Governments or international development finance institutions with foreign funding. That is why, the official can hardly cite any project worth mentioning built with the local finances or planned by the Provincial Government. Same is the case with development of cities and townships in all parts of Balochistan and Quetta is no exception. At present, Balochistan is a huge slum. There is no concept of town planning and developing cities and townships on modern lines.

In recent years, Mir Ahmed Bakhsh Lehri, the Provincial Chief Secretary, made a serious attempt to develop Gwadar as a planned port city after Islamabad. With the modern concept of planning, it is hoped that Gwadar Port will be the most modern city in Pakistan after Islamabad. It is also hoped that the Government will not patronize encroachment and discourage the political vultures from indiscriminate land grabbing. It is also good news for the people that the Government of Balochistan had established the Department of Urban Planning with an idea to develop modern cities and townships in all corners of Balochistan.

It is an economic fact that slum clearance will cost more resources and money to the Government than to develop a modern city or a township in any region. Barring Quetta, the Government had not issued permission to the people to build or even renovate their houses in a planned manner. There was no system developed to approve building plans in cities other than Quetta. Even Quetta, drug barons and the underworld built huge structure without approving the building plan. In some cases, the hundred percent land was utilized in the main and busy commercial centre of Quetta.

No open space was left for breathing while building huge structures and shopping Mall in this Provincial Capital. Even there was no concept of sparing an area of car park. The Plaza housing clinics of doctors and hospitals are built with a facility of car park causing congestion on the major roads of the Provincial Capital. It confirmed that the local administration had never implemented the building code and ignored the safety and security of the people in this earthquake Zone where a moderate jolt can take hundreds of lives. It is also good news that the Department of Urban Development had decided to build a number of model cities and townships as a part of its pilot project to provide housing facilities with modern living.

It is proposed that such cities and townships should be developed close to Turbat, preferably near Mirani Dam or closer to Dasht Plains, at Uthal close to the Uthal River, Dera Murad Jamali on the bank of Pat Feeder, Nokkundi, Dalbandin, Yak Mach, Near Sibi, Kharan, Mashkhail, Khuzdar, Kalat, Quetta, Mach, Dhaddar and other major population centres. The new townships and model cities should be developed with the partnership of the people in absence of private companies. There should be a good option for low cost housing scheme for the poor people. International assistance should be sought from the UN agencies and friendly countries for building low cost houses and earthquake proof structures in all parts of Balochistan.

Balochistan Government can use the rich experience of building low-cost houses in the areas devastated in the Earthquake in Azad Kashmir and some areas of KPK where international agencies and experts were involved in building low cost houses for the poor people. The Provincial Government should pay for development of basic infrastructure and the people will construct their own houses with a loan facility from the House Building Finance Corporation and other commercial banks. The State Bank will render valuable services to the people of Balochistan by making loan facility with minimum mark up.

However, the basic planning should be done by the Department of Urban Development in all parts of Balochistan. QDA is operating in Quetta and GDA is working in Gwadar and there is no organization to look after other developing cities where influx of people from rural areas to the urban centres is unprecedented. The new Department should not be based in Quetta. There is QDA looking after the Provincial Capital. There is need that the Government should undertake massive planning for major cities and townships creating a balance between rural and urban centres or providing civic services to entire people of Balochistan without any discrimination.

To the surprise of many, the Tehsildar or Local Government Department is looking after this important sector for the past six decades. The style of working of Tehsildar is to pay the bribe and construct your house with or without encroachment on Government land. There is no concept of getting approval of plans for buildings. It is a fact that the Tehsildar will prefer to clear a huge slum or convert the whole province into a huge slum for which hundreds of billions are needed to clear the slums in all parts of Balochistan. Thus the Government should develop new planned cities and townships with all modern facilities near the existing major human settlements. For this, planning and development should be entrusted to the Department of Urban Development.(Courtesy: Daily Balochistan Express)

Siddiq Baluch, based in Quetta, is a veteran Baloch journalist who is the founder and editor of Daily Balochistan Express and Daily Azadi. To read his previous articles, please click here.

By Malik Siraj Akbar

I do no know any young Baloch of my generation who was not keen to meet Professor Saba Dashtiyari during his early school days. As a school student in Panjgur, my hometown, I first heard about Saba, who was brutally shot dead on Wednesday night in Quetta where he was among the very few remaining brave men who would still take a walk on Sariab Road in spite of serious law and order problems confronting the provincial capital. 

As young kids, we had heard charming stories about a Baloch professor who was an atheist but, ironically, taught theology and Islamic studies at the University of Balochistan. Another thing that fascinated us about him was the narrative that he spent most of his salary on the promotion of Balochi language academies and preparation of Balochi text books.

I was in my early teens when I met Professor Saba at Panjgur’s Izat Academy, a local organization that used to publish a Balochi language liberal magazine Chirag under the editorship of Karim Azad. The magazine was eventually shut down because of a chronic financial crunch.

My interactions with Saba increased in Quetta at the University of Balochistan. There were always two things one could not overlook while entering the University: the heavy presence of the Frontier Corps (FC) and Saba Dashtiyari’s table surrounded by students. Saba ran kind of a (liberal) university within the (strictly controlled) university. He was an easily approachable professor who would sit outside the canteen to share ideas with students. While getting into our classrooms, I would often see two to three students sitting with the Professor at around 10:00 am. Within two hours, when I’d walk to the same place, the circle of the students by that time would have expanded to 20 to 30.

If you walked individually, he’d excuse the group of students surrounding him and call at you “Biya day  bacha” (Come over, boy) but if you walked in a group of students, “he’d pluralize it “biye e day bachikan”  (Come over, boys).

The group of students that surrounded the Professor often comprised of progressive and liberals. One would barely make sense of the composition without squinting at the books they carried in their hands. These students held books written by free thinkers like Bertrand Russell and others held some Russian fictions by Leo Tolstoy or Maxim Gorky. There were the ones who’d be holding Syed Sibth-e-Hassan’s work or that of Dr. Mubarak Ali.

After seeing these books, one would sit down to listen to the contents of the discussion taking place on this exceptional circle. Discussions headed by Saba were far more liberal and enlightening than what we could learn from our classrooms.  The participants of the discussions would talk on a variety of topics ranging from politics, religion, revolutions, nationalism to taboos  like sex and homosexuality. Students often wondered why rest of the professors at the university were not as liberal and easily approachable as Saba. 

The great Professor’s humbleness dated back to his family background. He came from a low-income family of Karachi which had actually migrated from Dasthiyar area of Iranian Balochistan. Thus, he alluded to his ancestral town throughout his life with his last name “Dashtiyari” (which meant someone who came from Dashtiyar). 

Saba was born in 1953 in Karachi and attained his basic education in the slums. He obtained a Masters degree in Philosophy and Islamic Studies from the Karachi University. In 1980s, he began to teach at the University of Balochistan. His love for different languages took him to the Iranian cultural center where he spent four years to learn Persian and then learned Arabic from the Egyptian Radio.  

Very few people took the responsibility of promoting Balochi language and culture with such a great personal and professional commitment as Professor Dashtiyari did. 

Although, he silently remained involved in teaching and promoting the language for around two years, he subsequently realized he was not sufficiently contributing to the Baloch movement. Thus, he walked outside the University and joined as an activist. During the last three years, Saba was seen in the forefront of the movement demanding the release of thousands of missing Baloch persons. He used to sit at different hunger strike camps to sympathize with the families of the missing persons and address various seminars. 

In one such seminar, a female journalist interrupted Saba’s speech and said she would not let him speak on Balochistan. The lady’s interruption did not discourage or humiliate the Baloch professor who said in front of an august gathering that he would exercise his right to freedom of expression. Freedom in its all forms meant a life to him. 

Two days before coming to the US, Saba and I spent around five hours together in Quetta. After he transported two boxes of books to a Karachi-based academy, we sat along with some other friends in Quetta’s Pishin Stop at a fast food restaurant to discuss the situation in Balochistan. 

I inquired about the remarkable transformation in his personality and  the causes that forced him to become an activist. In response, he sounded very frustrated with the state of affairs in Balochistan and did not mince words. 

“Pakistan is a colonial state,” he said, “It is trying to eliminate the Baloch people and their culture. As professionals, we have to understand it’s our responsibility to come forward to assure our people that they are not alone.” 

He believed that the Balochs should establish parallel educational institutions to counter the official propaganda and efforts to assimilate the Baloch into an alien culture. He was perturbed over the lack of official encouragement for the Balochi language and emphasized on the need for societal efforts to preserve the Baloch identity. 

A practical man, he had established a prestigious Balochi reference center which was named after Syed Zahoor Shah Hashimi, another respected Balcoh intellectual.

He never married; spent whole his life for the promotion of Balochi language and culture. 

Before I bid farewell to him outside his residence at the University Colony, Saba referred to my upcoming trip to the US and instructed: “Day Bacha mara odha washnaam bekan” (Oh boy, do make us proud there — in the US). 

It is utterly futile to demand an inquiry into Saba’s murder as a probe is not what is going to help. All that we need to mourn is the great loss of an extraordinary educator of Balochistan. This is no longer a secrete how the government is target killing Baloch professors, writers, journalists, lawyers, human rights activists and political leaders. This is a period of unity among the people of Balochistan and the Balochs all over the world. 

Every day, I receive a number of phone calls, emails and Facebook messages advising or ‘ordering’ me to “be careful” over whatever I write. What does it actually mean to be careful? There is no way carefulness can bring an end to this traumatic cycle of systematic elimination of Baloch scholars. It is worse not to speak up against this barbaric cycle of violence. The killing of enlightened writers and professors, such as Saba, is simply a clear message to all the liberals that we should either give up or get prepared to be killed. 

I know getting killed is a heavy price for anyone of us to pay for our work but to live under oppression and injustice is like getting killed every other day. There is no justice without struggle. We all need to stand up for truth and refuse to succumb to this challenge. 

It’s no cliché: Saba was unique and irreplaceable. You will not find a man who’ll spend his salary to impart cultural awareness and secular education at a time when the State of Pakistan is spending billions of rupees with the assistance of its Saudi cronies to radicalize the Baloch society by constructing more and more religious schools to counter the liberal nationalist movement.

Mohammad Akhtar Mengal

According to reputable human rights organisations and media reports, as many as 110 bullet-riddled bodies of moderate missing Baloch political activists have surfaced in the past seven months of 2010 and 2011. This alarming trend of ‘kill and dump’ started in mid-2010 and has been going on unabatedly, with the criminal silence of the international community that upholds the banner of human rights and provides belts and bullets to our rogue security establishment.

In fact, the Baloch-Islamabad conflict is a known reality. The Baloch people want to control their own destiny and Islamabad wants to suppress the political will of the people through western-provided guns and cannons.

The International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC’s) concern regarding the alarming human rights emergency in Balochistan is a wakeup call for the international community to urgently react to the Balochcide, a slow motion systematic genocide of educated and moderate Baloch political youth.

Moderate Baloch political parties have been voicing their demand for the right of self-determination and fundamental changes in Pakistan’s ethnically structured state system, which is based on discriminatory principles and policies. But Islamabad’s reluctant institutions failed to address their genuine grievances, which furthered the Baloch people’s mistrust of the state system and institutions.

The ongoing merciless military operations since 2005 neither improved political conditions nor helped stabilise the security situation. Flawed and ill-conceived socio-political engineering of Baloch society by Islamabad’s vision-less and biased establishment turned peaceful Balochistan into a quagmire. Each and every policy is furthering the divide and hatred between the Baloch and the state.

The mounting anger and distress is not due to external involvement; the Baloch frustration and reaction towards the colonising forces, particularly the non-Baloch paramilitary force (Frontier Corps), is due to their heavy-handed policies and disrespect towards the Baloch people.

Actually, the onus lies on the federal government, especially the establishment that comprises the military, bureaucracy and policymakers, responsible for maintaining a pugnacious approach towards Balochistan. Their policy is not much different from colonial policies. They want to control Balochistan politically, economically and socially.

In order to control society and politics of Balochistan, Islamabad has unleashed a policy of divide and rule under which it is pampering some pro-establishment sardars, nawabs and criminal groups. The prevailing state of poverty, lawlessness, anarchy and disappointment is, in fact, the fallout of the federal government’s deliberate policy of negligence and suppression.

Political conflicts mainly originate from social and economic deprivation. The main cause of unrest in Balochistan since 1947 is political oppression and the people’s deprivation. The province is economically controlled and a special security apparatus rules the province. The official narrative is that they want to develop Balochistan but the Baloch do not accept their model of development. Therefore, they justify the use of brute force against the Baloch.

Thousands of Baloch youth are jobless and living in appalling conditions, but around 150,000 army, navy, Frontier Corps (FC), anti-narcotics force (ANF) and coast guard recruits are appointed from the dominant province [Punjab] to systematically suppress and economically control the province.

Besides acknowledging the role of the FC in the disappearance of people, even the Balochistan government has expressed its helplessness in controlling this force. Balochistan’s Advocate General Salahuddin Mengal submitted to the Supreme Court on March 2, 2011 a report on the killings, murders, abductions and kidnappings for ransom in the province. “We are recovering dead bodies day in and day out as the FC and police are lifting people in broad daylight at will, but we are helpless. Who can check the FC?” Mr Mengal asked. “End the burning issue of missing persons first and then blame the Balochistan government for not controlling the law and order situation,” he said.

The Baloch people have always demanded an end to the presence of a third party, i.e. military and paramilitary forces in Balochistan. While there is no such heavy presence of security forces in the rest of the country, why is lack of trust shown toward the Baloch by deploying so many troops in Balochistan? The heavy deployment has made it impossible for the local people to grow economically, socially and politically. There are around 800-900 checkposts of the FC across Balochistan. There is one checkpost for every 8,000 people. You cannot see such an overwhelming and aggressive presence of the forces in the remaining three provinces.

The FC has been granted powers under the Customs Act, which means it can even monitor the movement of the Baloch people on the roads, which discourages economic activities. If the FC is going to perform every job, then what is the need to have other state institutions?

Moreover, the FC has a very colonial structure. For instance, the Rangers in Punjab, Sindh and FC in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa predominantly comprise locals of those provinces but in Balochistan the FC is entirely manned by ‘outsiders’ who often treat the local population as their slaves. The FC is a major cause of resentment because it has always had a key role in stirring trouble in the province. It is a major bone of contention rather than being part of the solution to the problem.

There are nearly 350 arms manufacturing factories in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The government endorses, encourages and legalises those factories by recognising them as a source of income for the tribal people. In Balochistan, the tribes and their chiefs are disrespected by the forces, an attitude which is intolerable and unacceptable to us. Regardless of our differences with certain political figures, we believe they must not be disrespected and mistreated.

The human rights situation is further exacerbated since the mainstream national media and superior judiciary is playing a partial role and siding with Islamabad’s powerful security establishment. The media is under-reporting the Balochistan truth, and the judiciary is silent over extra-judicial and targeted killings of ethnic Baloch political activists. This policy of blackout is encouraging the security forces to take extra-constitutional and extra-judicial actions to eliminate political dissidents.

Islamabad’s policy of eliminating the political backbone of Baloch society through a ‘kill and dump’ strategy will further the Baloch resolve to look for alternatives rather than sticking with merciless Islamabad. (Courtesy: Daily Times)

The writer, a former Chief Minister of Balochistan,  is the president of Balochistan National Party currently living in self-exile

Baloch press review: Abductions in Balochistan

By Yousaf Ajab Baloch

Abductions of the people has become a common practice and serious issue in Balochistan. Civilians, belonging to different walks of life are being whisked away. Kidnapping of the political workers, Baloch lawyers, intellectuals has always been an outstanding issue. The abduction of traders and members of the minority communities for ransom by professional kidnappers is yet another area that worries the people and urgently requires the attention of the government.  Apart from this, the latest wave of violence includes the kidnapping of judges and lawyers from the restive province.

Lawyers from Balochistan are being kidnapped. Two lawyers, Ali Shir Kurd and Zaman MArri, who had been abducted. Later on, their decomposed and mutilated bodies were found from Khuzdar and Mastung districts respectively. As many as four lawyers, Munir Ahmad Mirwani, Agha Zahir Shah, Saleem Akhtar  and Tahir Ali are still missing. It is alleged that they were whisked away by intelligence agencies who subsequently killed Ali Shir Kurd and Zaman Marri .

Syed Saleem Akhtar and Tahir Ali were reported missing on Thursday, 23rd of February near Dhadar when they were returning to Quetta after hearing of their cases in Sibi Wednesday evening. They went missing and their vehicle was found near Leghari Goth near Dhadar. It is apprehended they had been abducted by unknown persons.

In the first piece of  the Baloch Press Review, we will analyze how the local press in Balochistan is covering these issues.

Daily Intekhab, Quetta

On the 28^th of February, Baluchistan’s leading daily Intekhab reported in a five-columns front page story: “Session Judge Sibi Jan Muhammad Gohar and Senior Civil Judge Muhammad Ali went missing along with their driver and body guard from Usta Muhammad area of Jafarabad district, Balochistan on 27^th of February .who had gone to Usta Muhammad to attend a marriage party and went missing night near the middle area of Police station Derah Allah Yar and capital-form on their way back to Sibi”

News concerning the kidnapping of judges and lawyers continued to dominate the front page stories of most news papers of Balochistan

Daily Azadi, Quetta

On February 28th, Daily Azadi (Quetta) published on front page ,two-column statement of former president of theh National Party and veteran Baloch nationalist leader Dr Abdul Hai Baloch saying that the law of jungle prevailed all over Balochistan. Kidnappings for ransom, “gifts” of mutilated dead bodies, violation of Baloch culture, has become very common, he said. The senior Baloch leader was quoted as condemning the abduction of lawyers and judges and demanded the safe recovery of abducted judges and missing Baloch Persons and stoppage of military operation in Balochistan.

The Balochistan Express, Quetta

The Balochistan Express, a widely respected English language newspaper printed from Quetta,  reported on March 5th about a rally of lawyers demanding the safe recovery of their fellow judges and lawyers. The rally was, the newspaper reported, led by Balochistan Bar Association chief Baz Mohammad Kakar and others. Addressing the protester, Baz Mohammad Kakar said ,“ the government and its functionaries have failed to protect property and life of the citizens. He warned if the judges and lawyer were not released immediately and safely, they would intensify their protest all over the country and we will continue our protest continuously on daily bases. He said that the advocate Saleem Akhter’s mother had died because of severe shock.”

Daily Azadi, Quetta

On February 28^th, Daily Azadi published a four-column statement of former chief Minster of Balochistan and president of Balochistan National Party Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal.

“The abduction of lawyers and judges is a move to paralyze the system of judiciary,” Mengal was quoted by Azadi, “Because the perpetrators try their level best to make judiciary just a watching institution ”

He condemned the abduction of lawyers and judges and said, “There is no existence of government in Balochistan”.

Deliberately, the political culture of Balochistan is being pushed towards deterioration, he observed.

“Previously, extra-judicial abduction and murder of Baloch political workers took place and now the abduction of lawyers and judges is an other attack,” said Mengal. He concluded that the present government had failed to make batter the situation but the political situation is being worsened day by day.

Daily Tawar, Mastung

Daily Tawar, the most quoted Urdu online newspaper of Balochistan, publish a two-columns interview of the chairman of Voice for Baloch missing Persons, Nasruallah Baloch,  on 6^th of March. Nasrullah Baloch and Qadeer Bloch, the nephew of missing Ali Asghar Bungalzai and BRP activist Jalil Reki respectively who have been protesting and have establish a camp for the safe recovery of Baloch missing persons.

Nasrullah Baloch was reported as saying:  “ Advocate Agha Zahir Shah, who had been working on the case of Baloch missing persons voluntarily, was abducted. This move is a slap on the face of the judiciary.  If government and judiciary can not provide us justice, at least lawyer for Baloch missing persons must be recovered”.

The Baloch Hal

Balochistan’s first online English language newspaper,  The Baloch Hal commented editorially on 2^nd March (J for Justice J. For Judges) that “Lawyers and judges in Balochistan are justified in their anguish. They are boycotting the courts and marching on the roads. They feel insecure and helpless as well. They feel almost betrayed because the lawyers’ community in rest of Pakistan is not forthcoming to join them in the movement. Lawyers have been kidnapped, so have the judges.

The Baloch Hal editor concluded:

“While we wish the kidnapped lawyers and judges a safe and immediate recovery,  it is anticipated that the government will get out of its “denial mode” and deal with all outstanding matters with a more professional and pragmatic approach.”

To read more articles by Yousaf Ajab, click here

By Malik Siraj Akbar

Disclaimer: There is one joke (a true one in fact) about us, the Balochs: We call everyone an “agency wala” (agent of the spy agencies) whom we dislike. If you take my parking space, I may call you an agency wala the next day. So watch out!

Waja Pilanai and I do not like each other. He is an intellectual. I am a journalist. He thinks I don’t read enough. I think he does not write fast enough. He thinks we all journalists are not well-read. Therefore, reading our pieces, he insists, is a sheer wastage of time. I boastfully argue that we journalists in fact write the first draft of the history. Intellectuals and scholars, I remind him, ‘steal’ our ideas and prepare their outlines for future books, research papers. He keeps my mouth shut: “What do you journalists think of yourselves? What you call a published newspaper article in the morning is seen going in the trash by the end of the day,” he adds.

The tug of war between journalists and scholars continues forever. It is a war that takes place everywhere in the world. Balochistan is no exception. We journalists try to simplify things but scholar buddies love complicating  simple facts. They mix history, apply jargon, use terminologies so that nobody, including themselves, actually understands the crux of the argument.

Take, for example, the attack on a gas pipeline somewhere in Balochistan. As a reporter, I abruptly start working on my 5Ws and 1H as soon as I get a clue.

“Done,” I scream jubilantly as I complete my investigation and get three “good quotes” on the phone and sit to jot down my story.

Waja Pilani laughs.

He raises his eyebrows too.

A taunter, his condescending face looks like a big cinema screen displaying a scornful film of mockery.

“So you got the news?” he asks sarcastically.

” Yes. Gas pipeline blown up. BRA responsible. Repair underway,” I make a failed effort to please him.

“How do you know it actually was a gas pipeline?,” he asks.

Speechless that I am.

“What makes you think it was blown up?”

“Do you know the actual history of gas pipelines? Do you know when and where pipelines were first used? Do you know philosophy and history of guerrilla warfare?  Have you read about sabotage and theories related to it,” he asks non-stop.

I look at his face wearily allowing him to flaunt more about his deep knowledge.

“Before you file this news story, you should at least read the biography of Che Guevara, learn about the Cuban revolution too. And also know the history of the Great Game,” he offers in his unsolicited advice.

“I can’t,” says me, helplessly. “Deadline approaching, waja,” I beg.

“Go ahead,” he says while actually trying to say go to hell, “that is why I find you journalists are so shallow.”

He turns his face, “you illiterate journalists! You are all a big  problem. You don’t know much and mislead the masses.”

—————–

In Balochistan there are too many (often self-proclaimed) intellectuals, scholars and historians but not many journalists.Journalism has not progressed as fast as intellectualism. In the modern times, I have deeply admired the work of at least and only three journalists in Balochistan who truly laid the foundation of the modern Baloch Press. I have always asked Waja Pilani to write about these people. He thinks it is a hard job. His research on the Baloch Press may take at least ten years. I am not a scholar. I am a highly subjective journalist when it comes to my opinion piece. So, I thought of writing this piece on modern Baloch media on the basis of my observations, interactions as a journalism student, reporter and now an editor.

This write-up is only intended to make people understand how the Baloch media works, who its drivers and readers are. What problems the Baloch media actually faces and why is still not compatible with the so-called national media. In these couple of articles which you will be reading in the next few days, I will focus on the  dynamics of Baloch media.

In the first piece, I will focus on Mohammad Anwar Sajidi, editor of Daily Intekhab, Siddiq Baluch, editor-in-chief of Daily Balochistan Express/Daily Azadi and Jan Mohammad Dashti, founder of Asaap Publications. These three editors do not necessarily have the same level of popularity among all segments of the Baloch society but they surely have an undeniable role in establishing media institutions for the Balochs. As the disclaimer stated, these editors are also frequently billed as ‘agency walas‘ if they do not publish a press release from a certain political group in their newspaper for some avoidable or unavoidable reasons. They are loved. They are hated. Their newspapers sell like hot cakes inside Balochistan. Oftentimes, the bundles of their newspapers also get burned by angry mobs. Often, the newspapers are also boycotted in certain districts.

The government shuts down their advertisements. Readers make threatening phone calls. Abusive e-mails flood mail boxes; angrier letters are faxed until the fax roll finishes and the fax machine starts beeping  forever.

Welcome to the world of Balochistan’s Press.

Stay tuned.

To read the second part of this article, click

In a period of barely ten days, both the governor and chief minister of Balochistan have narrowly escaped two separate assassination attempts. Last week, the  Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) accepted responsibility for attacking the convoy of Governor Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Magsi. The governor was returning from Kalat to Quetta when his convoy came under a remote-control IED attack.

The remote control blast did not kill the twice-elected chief minister but caused enormous panic in the official ranks. The governor sarcastically commented that his name had been registered among the martyrs after he survived the attack. His tribesmen, on the other hand, took the event more seriously and resorted to protests against the assassination plot. The BLA said that the attack on the governor was intended to avenge recent killings of Baloch political workers.

Another assassination attempt was made yesterday on Quetta’s Zarghoon Road on the life of Chief Minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani. The CM came under attack when his convoy was attacked.Raisani had recently disclosed in an interview with BBC’s Ahmed Raza that his son and he were on the ‘hit-list’ of probably Baloch armed groups. While the police termed yesterday’s attack as a case of suicide bombing, the Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF) which accepted responsibility for the attack, said it was a remote control bomb blast.

Initially, there were reports that the Lashkar-e-Jhangavi, a Sunni militant group with a very significant presence in Quetta, had claimed responsibility for the attack by calling it a suicide attack. As dust settled down, a BLUF spokesman strongly contradicted LeJ’s claim and said that the attack was carried out by its activists and  asked other organizations to refrain from taking credit for the operations conducted by BLUF. Daily Tawar quoted through news agencies the ‘real spokesman’ of LeJ who disowned his organization’s involvement in the entire episode. The LeJ spokesman urged media outlets to report carefully, warning “otherwise, we will teach them (the journalists) a very bad lesson.”

That said, the lone dead person was either probably a passerby or a security guard whose identity the government does not want to reveal in order to avoid demoralizing the security guards of the VVIP squads.

Besides holding constitutional offices, both Magsi and Raisani are highly influential chiefs of their respective Baloch tribes. Raisani told the media, soon after the attack on his convey, that he fully knew who the attackers on his convey were but he still supported a peaceful and political solution to the Balochistan crisis. He once again offered a hand of reconciliation with Baloch armed groups and made it clear that he would not negotiate to LeJ because he had never extended any kind of offer to that group in the past.

On his part, Governor Magsi reacted more angrily to the attack on Raisani by saying that both of them were capable of retaliating with tribal force.

The situation in Balochistan has rapidly worsened over the years. It never improved since General Musharraf inducted controversial mega projects, unleashed a military operation, which he would subsequently bill as “500% justified” and killed popular Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti. Ever since, the situation in the province has dramatically deteriorated as more Baloch activists have been whisked away and killed allegedly by the government agencies.

The attacks on two highly influential consitutional officers and tribal lords clearly shows the alarmingly dangerous level of insecurity that prevails in the province. A few months ago,  the provincial education minister Shafiq Ahmed Khan was killed which was followed by a bomb blast at the residence of another finance minister Mir Asim Kurd.

If big guns like Magsi and Raisani are absolutely unsafe, what should the common man in the street expect? The more these officers restrict their movements, the more they remain disconnected from the masses.  People expect their elected representatives to meet and pay attention to their problems in order to solve them. These attacks will hopefully lead to enhanced security of governor, chief minister and the provincial ministers. In that case, the provincial government is likely to further go underground and become inaccessible for the masses due to security reasons.

A sense of fear has already overtaken all members of the Balochistan as only four MPAs out of 65 showed up for a recent meeting session. The MPAs are making every effort to avoid coming in public. However, in its meeting soon after the assault on the official convoy, the Balochistan Assembly strongly condemned the attacks. They said these events were about to trigger a tribal war in the province.

A four member team of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) instantly visited Quetta on the instructions of Interior Minister Rehman Malik to probe the attack on the Chief Minister.

These attacks indicate that space in Balochistan is being narrowed for the friends of Islamabad or parliamentary politics.  The way forward is going to be more difficult for Islamabad because the armed groups have not only repeatedly rejected offers to talk but they have also gained too much power by now which has enabled them to disrupt any tight security to hunt down top government officers.

Former military dictator General Pervez Musharraf has once again defended his decision to carry out a military operation in Balochistan and kill the province’s former governor as well as the chief minister, Nawab Mohammad Akbar Khan Bugti, 79. He said in an interview with senior journalist  Munizae Jahangir that the military operation in the province was “500%” justified. He termed all those people who oppose parliamentary politics in the province as “anti-Pakistan” who, according to him, “will be” , “should be” and “must be” punished before they convert Pakistan into a banana republic.

The sixty-seven year old retired army chief blamed India for the unrest in Balochistan. He alleged the head of Baloch Republican Party (BRP), Nawabzada Bramdagh Bugti, who is a grandson of late Nawab Akbar Bugti, regularly visited India via Afghanistan to destabilize Pakistan.

The interview clearly indicated that General Musharraf was not apologetic at all about his belligerent policies in Balochistan which totally changed the dynamics of politics in the gas-rich province. The interviewer showed the former president the video tape of a young Baloch political activist who previously belonged to the moderate pro-Islamabad National Party but had now decided to join the Azad faction of Baloch Students Organization (BSO). The young activist said he never supported violence in the past but felt that the government was continuously hitting him with the wall. In response, General Musharraf instantly issued a fatwa declaring the lad as “anti-Pakistan” who “must be” stopped at all costs.

Musharraf’s latest remarks were the most hostile and offending since he had publicly scorned the Balochs. “It is not the ’70s,” he had thundered even before the killing of Nawab Bugti in a television interview, ” We will hit you in a way that you won’t know what hit you and from where.”

Musharraf had spoken with the same level of smugness in a U.S private university some time back when a Baloch activist had shouted at him. In return, Musharraf told him before the august audience, “if you were in Balochitan, I’d fix you too.”

That was in fact the official pronouncement of a military operation in Balochistan which led to the killing of top Baloch nationalists, arrest of senior political leaders like Sardar Akhtar Mengal, freezing the bank accounts and enlisting the names of Baloch leaders on the Exit Control List (ECL).

While there has been a steady demand by the people of Balochistan that General Musharraf should be punished for the crimes he committed against humanity and ordering the murder of an aged ex-governor and chief minister of the country’s largest province, adoption of such rhetoric by a man who is planning to start a political stint is very disappointing.

On the one hand, Musharraf should be brought to justice by the ruling Pakistan People’s Party to mitigate the Baloch anguish, Musharraf, on the other hand, should voluntarily extend an unconditional apology to the people of Balochistan for the policy blunders he committed in the enraged province. This may not fully help in normalizing the situation in the province but it will at least give him some kind of moral legitimacy to start a political journey.

Meanwhile, former prime minister and the head of country’s main opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) Mian Nawaz Sharif also called for a political solution to Balochistan’s problems during a recent visit to the province. Sharif, who was ousted from power by Musharraf following a bloodless coup on October 12, 1999, rightly argued that no solution could be hammered out on gun point. He criticized Musharraf for continuing to threaten the people of Balochistan in spite of living outside Pakistan which means that the former military chief  intends to carry out a similar genocide of the Baloch people if he is once again given a chance to rule the country.

General Musharraf should realize that this is not a civilized way of dealing with the people of a country he ruled and intends to rule again by entering into politics. Balochistan was in fact a far different place before 1999 when General Musharraf took over power. There were hardly serious issues of law and order, target killings or abduction of political workers. Likewise, not many young people supported the idea of an independent Balochistan or said that they no longer trusted the parliament. As a matter of fact, the nine years of Musharraf’s misrule left irremovable marks on the Baloch society and politics. He only planted the seeds of hatred, alienation and disillusionment.

President Asif Ali Zardari and PML chief Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif as well as the national media and civil society should come forward to discourage and condemn Musharraf’s bellicose statements on Balochistan. It is true that tens of thousands of Balochs today have lost faith in the parliament. If General Musharraf think he was “500%” justified to kill one Bugti then is he going to kill all those tens of thousands of Balochs who have lost hope from the parliament?  That is not that art of statesmanship, is it?

Balochistan’s first ever elected chief minister and the patron-in-chief of the Balochistan National Party Sardar Attaullah Mengal told BBC in a fresh interview that he opposed the target killings of Punjabis in Balochistan. Disassociating from the current wave of ethnic strife in the province, which has driven thousands of Punajbis out of Balochistan, the veteran Baloch nationalist leader made it clear that he did not endorse the use of violence for achieving political goals. He called upon the government to take action against “these boys” who target at least four Punjabis on daily basis.

This is a rare instance on the part of a Baloch nationalist leader to abjure violence and express support for the Punjabis of Balochistan. Punjabis became the target of the local majority population soon after the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in August 2006. While a lot of Punjabis began to migrate from Balochistan, most Baloch political parties refused to condemn the targeted killings and violent attacks on the ethnic Punjabis.

They justified these acts as a “reaction” to the antagonistic actions of the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani military.

Most voices supportive of the Punjabis have predominantly come from the Punjab province. Mian Mohammad Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of the Punjab, has been trying to improve relations between Balochistan and his province by offering more scholarships to the students from Balochistan. During a recent visits to Balochistan, he requested Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani to take tangible measures to ensure the security of the Punjabis residing in Balochistan.

Sardar Mengal’s statement will certainly be welcomed by the government and those who are trying to contain the cycle of target killing of Punjabis in Balochistan. However, his comments have irked those young political activists in the province who justify these attacks by terming them as a reaction.

Given the past record of changeable statements, it is still premature to conclude that the BNP has officially called off its support for the armed struggle and begun to talk about the rights of the Punjabis living in Balochistan. If BNP decides to pursue Senior Mengal’s statement as the future policy of the party, this is going to mark the inception of an eventful and confrontational politics among the Baloch nationalists.

Unlike the National Party, the BNP has avoided the politics of confrontation with the armed groups. For example, National Party went on to publicly blame Baloch Liberation Front (BLF)  for the murder of its senior leader Maula Baksh Dashti. On the other hand, BNP avoided confrontation when the pro-armed struggle section of Baloch politics when the latter refused to recognize party’s slain secretary genral Habib Jalib Baloch as a “national martyr’. T

If BNP believes that the armed struggle in Balochistan is wrong then it must stick to this policy in spite of reactions from the youth. After all, nationalists should stop behaving like the religious elements in Pakistan who exploited the emotions of thousands of youths to entice them to join so-called Jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan and Kashmir. If BNP is not dreaming for an independent Balochistan then it should speak more publicly about this policy so that no more party activists get arrested, tortured or killed on the name of nationalism.

It seems the aged Mengal Sardar is gradually becoming another Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo. Starting as a  young passioate  supporter of an independent Balochistan, Bizenjo ultmately became a supporter of nonviolent parliamentary politics. In the last part of his age, Bizenjo, who is still called the Baba-e-Balochistan (the Father of Balochistan) was no longer popular among the younger lot. Bizenjo died in 1989 but his supporters have always existed. Today, the National Party claims to be following late Bizenjo’s mission, which is that of nonviolent parliamentary struggle within the federation of Pakistan. Though NP is billed as the “B Team of the Establishment”, it is still not apologetic about its stance.

If BNP still believes in parliamentary politics then it should get back to the field before all the Baloch electoral constituencies are won by pro-establishment parties and the religious elements. With plenty of space available for National Party, Jamori Watan Party and BNP (Awami) for parliamentary politics, BNP will also get its space. What is uncertain, nonetheless, is the reaction it would have to face from the youth once it officially decides to continue its struggle for the Baloch “right of self-determination” while living within the Pakistani federation.

By Malik Siraj Akbar

Finally, I have no option but to delete 03003823908 from my cell phone. This was the phone number I often used to dial or get calls from. “late” Habib Jalib, secretary general of the Balochistan National Party who was killed here on Wednesday by unidentified assailants, used this number and humbly received phone calls after the second ring.

In the last couple of years, I have deleted several phone numbers from my cell phone after the contacts were target killed from time to time. I deleted the phone number of Ghulam Mohammad Baloch, the chairman of Baloch National Movement (BNM), even though he had promised to meet me “soon” in Quetta.

Every time 03003823908 rang, I would hear from the other side:

Han Siraj Kooo jaaa hey tho [Hey Siraj, where are you?]

I loved Jalib’s accent.

“Waja [sir],” I’d say jokingly, “You even speak Balochi in a Russian accent.”

He laughed. Straightened his long hair. Resumed talking.

Tho Harjoka hey, maan wathi gari hey sara kaheen. Tho bas sadak e sara bosth.

[Wherever you are. Stand on the road. I will come in my car (to pick you up).

Jalib had a wonderful sense of humor.

"You know what," he told me one day as we drove from Zarghoon Road to Prince Road, "Pakistanis do not value us. We have so much gas that if Dera Bugti was located in a Gulf country, all these Bugtis would have to add "Shiek" with their names," he said.

I agreed.

I was feeling inconvenient in my conversation due to the loud noise his kids, who were also in the car, made.

" waja thi gwando baaz kokar kanaan," I brazenly complained. [Sir, your kids make a lot of noise].

He laughed again, indicating that he would still not silence them.

” Let’s give them some democratic space. Let them say what please them,” he replied.

Jalib was man who staunchly believed in freedom of expression and democratic space.

Now that Jalib is no more, A Pakistani journalist based in Germany, who had met Jalib in Quetta while preparing a report on Balochistan, Facebooked me:

“OMG! He mentioned his small kid so many times when I went to see him last sept(ember).”

It took me several months to convince Jalib to write his memoirs. Finally, he agreed but insisted that I should write it for him as he did not find sufficient time to do the job. I reminded him that he was an extraordinary figure in the Baloch nationalist movement.

” Becha waja, Raziq Hancho shoth….hech he na liktha. Tho chosh makan. Thi yaad dashth baz alimi inth pa Baloch raja.”

[Sir, see Raziq  (Bugti) died even without penning his memories. You should not do so. Your memoir is very important for the Baloch nation].

Jalib never got time to write his biography and I remained guilty of not visiting him more frequently.

Nargis Baloch, editor Daily Intekhab, is right: ” Balochs barely get time to do anything else except burying their dead bodies, mourning the disappearance of their beloved ones or nursing their wounds from a military operation.” Amid such circumstances, how would one get the peace of mind to sit and jot down one’s autobiography. Jalib’s autobiography would have been a wonderful addition to literature on Baloch nationalism. Perhaps both of us underestimated the enemy and overestimated the perpetuity of life.

Jalib never liked it when journalists added the word “Mengal” with BNP. He said calling his party BNP-Mengal was unfair because it was the real BNP. The rival faction, in his words, had the right to call itself “awami” or whatever but the BNP was simply BNP (not Mengal).

The best time for me to see Jalib very closely was a trip to Islamabad in which we spent several days together. I found him a very very humble, punctual and principled man. Jalib was an avid reader and one of the very few people who truly knew what Baloch nationalism was all about. As long as he was on the stage as a speaker, I remained convinced with my eyes closed that Balochitan’s case was being cogently pleaded. I envied his command over Baloch history, theory of nationalism, statistics on economic affairs and the maneuvering and penetration of the military in coastal areas of Balochistan. He was a marathon orator. He could speak for several hours without being repetitive at all.

Jalib was not a sardar, nor a Nawab’s son. He was a powerful man. A self-made man: Self-made from head to toe. Empowered by education. Like every middle class shining star, he was unacceptable to Balochistan’s tribal elite and the country’s military establishment. Tall trees cannot survive long in Balochistan. People with a tall stature get their heads chopped off. Educated people are a rare species in Balochistan. They come once in centuries. Jalib was one of them. They killed him because he was too brave to be ousted from Balochistan. He did not surrender in spite of being put into jail by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf.

I cried. (Honestly, I had not cried for Nawab Bugti or Balach Marri).

I cried once.

I cried twice.

I cried again and again.

Jalib was among us: The middle class. The poors. The pedestrians. The dreamers.

This friend of mine whined that The Baloch Hal went overboard in covering Jalib’s assassination.

“Jalib wasn’t such a big guy to fill the whole of Baloch Hal with his news,” he grumbled.

I agreed with him. Jalib was not a big guy. He was not a landlord. He was not a feudal. He was not an intelligence tout. How could he then be a big guy?

The Pakistani media did not cover him the way he deserved to be reported.  Except Samma TV and Duniay TV, rest of the TV channels put the news on number six to seven of their headlines’ list.

Was it that Jalib was not a big guy because Nawab Raisani or Nawab Magsi could not spare time to attend his funeral? No. Jalib was the big guy of the voiceless, educated middle class Baloch. Jalib was the hero of our times. He inspired our generation. He left a generation to adore his struggle. He captured the full page of the Baloch Hal and the front pages of several newspapers simply because he was Habib Jalib not the grandson of a great tribal chief who inherited large agricultural lands for collaborating with colonial masters to enslave the people of  this land.

Those of us who knew comrade Jalib would surely testify Jalib’s love for Atta Shad’s couplet that I cite here to pay panagryic to him at the end of this rambling write-up. He never forgot to cite these lines in any speech he made.

Tao Pa Sarani Goddaga Zende Hayalaan Koshe
Pa Sendaga Daasht Kane Pulla`n Che Bo Taalanya

[Can you, by serving the heads

From the bodies,

Kill the living thoughts

And ideas?

Can you, by wrenching

The flowers from branches,

Stop their fragrance

From spreading]

(The writer is the editor of The Baloch Hal: Editor@thebalochhal.com)