By Nissar Hoath

RAS AL KHAIMAH Iranian forces have killed eight border traders and injured another in the early hours of Thursday northeast of Chabahar port city on Pakistan border.

According to reports reaching here, six cattle traders from Pakistani side of Balochistan after delivering cows to their customers in Iranian Balochistan province were returning when they were chased and fired upon by the Pasdaran Forces of Iran, killing them all instantly. Four other travelers in two four-wheel drives form Bahu Kalat and Dashtiyari sub-districts north of Chabahar also came under fire, killing two of them instantly while fourth sustaining severe injuries,
Both Iran and Pakistan have a treaty allowing people on both sides of the borders free trade exchange, mainly trading foodstuff and other essential commodities.

The incident happened at Zahran hills stretching between Chabahar District in Iran and Gwadar District in Pakistan. The area is one of the largest border trade routes between the two countries with over 400 cargo vehicles shuttling daily.

“It was midnight when these traders from Gwadar after delivering about a dozen of cows to their customers here in Bahu Kalat area. They were chased by Pasdaran forces when they were returning to Pakistan in the early hours of Thursday. They were crossing the border by foot when they were attacked by the forces and were killed on the spot. Two brothers, Hassan Yousuf and Meeran Yousuf from Dimpak village in Bahu Kalat also came under attack. Hassan sustained severe injuries while his brother escaped unhurt,” a resident from Chabahar told Khaleej Times on Friday.

He said two more border travelers, Raszak from Jummazai village and an unidentified from Garm-e-Beit also came under attack. Both were also killed in the attack.

Sources from both Chabahar and Gwadar also said forces have taken the all the eight dead and the injured in their custody and taken to Chabahar.

Meanwhile, officials in Gwadar and the Government of Balochistan have been trying to get the bodies of the six who are Pakistani citizens, hailing from Gwadar, but Iran has refused to release them.

Gwadar’s Deputy Commissioner Abdul Rahman said he was under pressure from the family members of the dead to retrieve their bodies but Iran was not releasing them.

Associated Press (AP) also quoted Rahman confirming the incident and the Iranian refusal to hand over the bodies of the six Pakistanis. According to AP report, the traders were taking goats into Iran, but sources from Chabahar suggest they were carrying cows.

Rahman also said all the six victims were from Dasht and other villages in Gwadar District.

H. S., an Iranian expatriate living in the UAE, and who is a cousin of dead Razak, said his family back home has been trying to get his body for burial but the authorities are refusing to release it.

“We have my cousin’s body lying in the government hospital mortuary in Chabahar. Our people are begging the authorities for the release of the body but our appeals are ignored by the officials. I appeal to the international community intervene and help us get the bodies of our beloved ones,” he said.

During the last two months this is the third incident where Iranian forces have chased and killed 13 people from Pakistani Balochistan moving between the two countries, including two people killed and arrested at sea between Chabahar and Jiwani small fishing village in Pakistan. In two cases, Iranian forces have crossed into Pakistan and killed and arrested these people and taken them to Iran. The dead and the arrested are still in Iran. (Courtesy: The Khaleej Times, UAE)

Baloch parents must educate their children about two important facts as we mark the first “killed and dumped” anniversary of one of the most charismatic student leaders of our times: Who Qambar Chakar was and why he was killed. Although hundreds of brilliant young Balochs have been engulfed by the government’s ‘kill and dump operations’ in Balochistan, Qambar Chakar merits special tributes for his remarkable role in Baloch reawakening. Many say he was killed by the Pakistani intelligence agencies too young while we think they killed him too late as he had already left a visionary legacy.

For those unfamiliar with the twenty-four year old Baloch activist, let’s summarize his political and educational struggle in these words. Chakar, a member of a middle class Baloch family in Kech district, was a Master’s student at the Department of Economics at the Balochistan University of Information Technology and Management Sciences (BUITMS). He was profoundly perturbed over the colonization of Balochistan’s primer educational institutions, particularly at the BUITMS where a discriminatory admission policy closed doors of education for native Balochs at the cost of outsiders under the pretext of ‘open-merit’.  Chakar, who had himself successfully sought admission at the University on merit, revolted against the admission policy and called for reforms so that more Baloch students from remote and under-privileged areas could  also be admitted there.

With two other student colleagues i.e. Qambar Malik Baloch and Khurshid Baloch, late Qambar Chakar sat on an unto death hunger strike camp in front of the Quetta Press Club in support of his demands. He argued ‘merit’ was a ploy to shut down the doors of higher education for Baloch students. If open merit was the only criterion to admit students at the BUITMS then the beneficiaries would exclusively be the urban rich kids who had attended grammarian schools and colleges. Hence, Baloch children from far-off districts would be outnumbered by the children of non-Baloch and non-Balochistani bureaucrats and army officers who came up with a more sophisticated educational background because of their social and economic strata. Mr. Chakar’s campaign was not opposed to the ‘merit’ per se. What he stood for was actually merit but at district level so that each of Balochistan’s thirty district could get representation at this important educational institution.

The government of Pakistan loathed Baloch student’s this uprising and used various tactics to countervail their movement. One way was to pit Pashtun student organizations against the Baloch by enticing them to issue statements in the newspapers on daily basis in support of the controversial admission policy. The entry policy then served the Pashtun interests because all Pashtun districts, such as Pishin, Lorali, Ziarat and Qila Abdullah are so close to Quetta that children from those districts could easily come to attend school in the morning and return home in the evening.

On the other hand, it took someone like Qambar Chakar three days’ hard journey on broken roads to reach from his native Kech district to Quetta, the capital of Balochistan. These harsh ground realities which enormously contributed to the Baloch backwardness primarily caused Qambar’s anguish. Secondly, the government also repeatedly endeavored to push the Baloch students in a state of inferiority complex by telling them they were not compatible with contemporary educational challenges and were shying away from facing the so-called open merit-based policy. The government, on the other hand, totally failed to ever explain why it had failed to provide the same level of education and facilities in schools in remote parts of Balochistan which were available in Quetta.

Qambar Chakar elegantly read a colonizer’s mindset and did not lose his confidence in the wake of the official propaganda unleashed in the local media. He stood for what he truly believed in for the greater interest of Balochistan’s future. As a part of his revolutionary campaign which was joined by hundreds of Baloch students, Qambar surrounded the Governor’s House until Governor Zulfiqar Ali Magsi was forced to come out to negotiate with the Baloch activist leader. The Governor offered him negotiations ‘inside the Governor’s House’, which Qambar utterly rejected saying that he would not hold secret negotiations with a government official.

“If you have to make a decision,” he told implicitly told Governor Magsi, “you have to make it in front of all the student.”

Understandably, the governor, who is also the chancellor of the BUITMS, did not concede to Qambar’s demands, nor did the latter surrender.

When the government failed to break the resolve of the young Baloch student through threats and ostentatious offers, they brazenly kidnapped Qambar on July 10, 2010 from the same educational institution where he was a student reportedly with the support of the institution’s Pashtun vice chancellor. The young activist was tortured, humiliated and implicated in a false case of possessing a hand grande. Charges against him were never substantiated in a court. He was detained so that he would bunk all his important exams and meet his academic demise. Security forces illegally detained Chakar for at least nine months until he was released on April 22, 2010. By then, he had emerged as a mature and popular student leader who once again stood for the educational rights of the Baloch people.

Extrajudicial confinement did not deter Qambar from his commitment to his people and their basic human rights. He immediately returned to the political battleground which eventually turned out to be a fatal gamble for him. Incensed over his steadfastness and defiance, the security establishment eventually decided to permanently get rid of Qambar. Thus, officials kidnapped him for the second time on November 26, 2010. He never returned. When the young firebrand was found on January 5th, 2010 on Pasni Road in Turbat, he had been tortured to martyrdom.

Like hundreds of  other ‘killed and dumped’ Balochs, Qambar Chakar’s family still awaits justice. No investigation was ever conducted in his murder because those who were blamed for kidnapping and murdering him were all disappointingly the very ‘custodians of the law’.

Qambar Chakar was different from so many of his compatriots. He was frail but still a bold strategist and cogent orator. He very impressively communicated and coordinated with the media. He was too clear in what he stood for as he was simply not a blind-follower.  He thought in issues-based rather than personality-based politics. As a senior leader of the Baloch Students Organization (BSO-Azad) Qambar was a very promising young campaigner. When he lived, we predicted he’d one day become Balochistan’s most charismatic leader rising from the middle class. Now that is no more with us, we believe he has the most inspiring and motivational story of a young man who loved  modern education and fought for his people’s rights, until his death. Only those who truly know the value of modern education for their people would go to the extent of sacrificing their lives.  Qambar was indeed our martyr of the technological era. He lived and fought for Baloch rights in a 21st-centuary style.

Qambar Chakar will be truly missed by all of us who dream of a progressive, enlightened and empowered Balochistan. Rest in peace, young comrade!

(MALIK SIRAJ AKBAR)

Editor-in-Chief

The Baloch Hal

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: At least five people, including three policemen were wounded in a hand grenade attack in Hub, industrial town of Balochistan, on Saturday night.

According to reports reaching here, a police mobile was passing from Sirat chowk of the city when unidentified armed men lobbed a hand grenade on it. Grenade exploded with a huge blast wounding three policemen and two passersby besides, scattering windowpanes of nearby buildings. The assailants escaped from the site after the attack.

Police and other law enforcement agencies rushed to the site soon after the blast and moved the injured to nearby hospital for treatment where injured policemen were identified as Sarwar, Shahid and Hameed.

No group has claimed responsibility for the grenade attack so far.

Police have registered a case against unidentified people and started a search to arrest the accused persons.

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: Government hospitals throughout Balochistan remained closed on second consecutive day Saturday to protest the murder of Dr Syed Baqar Shah, the police surgeon who contradicted the security forces account of the killing of five Russian and Tajik nationals in Kharotabad in May this year.

Dr Syed Baqar Shah was shot dead by unidentified men in Sabzal Road when he was on his way to home from Bolan Medical College Hospital (BMC) on Thursday. The Pakistan Medical Association Balochistan and the Baloch Doctors Forum announced three days of mourning during which state-run hospitals across the province would remain closed. Doctors attended the patients at emergency and operation theaters.

The three major hospitals of Quetta, Bolan Medical College Complex (BMC), Provincial Sandeman Hospital, and Helper’s Eye Hospital remained closed on Saturday. Strike was also observed in Khuzdar, Kalat, Nasirabad, Jaffarabad and all other district headquarter hospitals in Balochistan to condemn the killing of Dr Shah.

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA:  The Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Operations Quetta Nazir Kurd has said police Surgeon Dr. Baqir Shah, who was killed on Thursday, had been offered security but had declined the official gesture saying that he was capable of handling the situation according to local tribal standard.

He said this while addressing a press conference here on Saturday.

He strongly dispelled the impression that Dr. Baqir Shah the forensic investigator of Kharotabad incident was not provided security by police. “A senior police official formally met deceased doctor and offered him to take security but he turn down the offer,” he added.

DIG operations informed that police investigation teams were investigating the murder of Baqir Shah and police had taken several suspects into the custody who were being interrogated.

Referring to bomb blast at the residence of Shafiq Mengal on Friday night, he said that attackers used a similar vehicle in the attack which was being used by Shafiq Mengal to deceive the body guards at the gate.

He said that according to eyewitnesses the accused left the site immediately after parking the car near the gate of resident of Shafiq Mengal and adding that 15 people were killed and 35 others wounded in the explosion.

He said 14 vehicles were also destroyed in the blast and 60-70 kg explosives were used for this purpose. The chassis and engine number of vehicle used in the attack were being checked to ascertain whether it was registered and unregistered, Nazir Kurd added.

He said that two investigation teams comprising DIG Investigation and DIG Operations had been constituted to investigate the blast. “Six hand grenades were also recovered near the residence of Shafiq Mengal. These were defused by the police,” he added.

Responding to a question, he said that police was making all out efforts to ensure the security of people and curb the incidents of kidnapping for ransom.

He said during past six month six gangs of kidnapping for ransom had been busted and 20 kidnapped were recovered.

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: Two people were killed and five other wounded, including three security personnel in separate incidents of firing and landmine blasts in different towns of Balochistan on Saturday while two rockets were fired in the provincial capital.

According to police, unidentified armed men riding a motorbike sprayed a volley of bullet at hotel in Khuzdar town, some 360 KM southeast of Quetta, and fled from the scene after committing the crime. Resultantly, one person identified as Umar Sharif was killed and another Murad sustained critical wounds. The deceased and injured were shifted to nearby state run hospital. “The deceased had received multiple wounds on his upper torso that caused his instant death” said a police officer and adding that investigation into the killing was underway. However, no arrest was made in this connection.

In Sui, a person was killed and three security personnel were wounded in two separate landmine blasts.

Sources said a person namely Shafi was on his way in Janibari area of Sui when he suddenly stepped on a landmine that went off with a huge blast killing him on the spot.

Similarly, three personnel of security personnel were passing from Bhopat area of Sui after their vehicle rolled on landmine. The injured were shifted to hospital for treatment.

In another incident, security personnel foiled an attempt of blowing up railway track in Dera Murad Jamali.

Unidentified armed men had planted 20kg explosives with railway track at Shahi chowki No 9 which were defused by security personnel with the help of Bomb Disposal Squad.

A case has been registered against unidentified and further investigations were underway in this connection.

Meanwhile, two rockets were fired in Quetta on Saturday night that spread a wave of panic among the people.

Police said, the first rocket was fired by unidentified people from unknown location landed in a graveyard near Sabzal Road and the second landed in an isolated area near Spinney Road with huge blasts.

However, no loss of life and damage to property occurred in rocket attack.

Police and other law enforcement agencies rushed to the site and cordoned off the area.

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: Authorities in Balochistan have said they have detained at least 15 people they suspect of having links with Friday’s bomb blast outside the residence of a former federal minister’s son on Arbab Karam Khan Road of the provincial capital which killed at least sixteen people and injured more than thirty.

Police said they had registered a case at Sariab Police Station against unknown people who carried out the blast outside the residence of Shafiq Mengal, the alleged head of an anti-nationalist group called the Baloch Musla Defai Tanzeem. They said at least two investigation teams have been formed to dig out the details of the incident.

They said that fifteen suspects had been arrested from different areas of city and they were being interrogated. However, so far there was no any major breakthrough regarding arrest of real culprits.

The underground Baloch nationalist group, the Baloch Liberation Army, had claimed responsibility for the bombing.

In the meanwhile, police claimed to have recovered nine hand grenades, including six from the compound and three from the roof of the residence and defused them on Saturday.

Police officials said the death toll, which was recorded as high as 15 on the first day, had now reached to 16 because of death of more injured people and recovery of dead bodies from the rubble.

The Home Minister Balochistan Mir Zafarullah Zehri along with DIG Operations Quetta Nazir Kurd visited the residence of Shafiq Mengal and inspected different areas of the blast site.

According to reports reaching from Khuzdar a complete shutter down strike was observed in Khuzdar town against the bomb attack at the residence of son of PML-Q leader.

All shops, markets and business centers remained closed throughout the day.

The National Highway between Quetta and Karachi was also closed for sometime as the angry protestors blocked the road by torching old tyres and placing stones in different areas of highways in Khuzdar district.

Governor Balochistan Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Magsi has condemned the bomb attack on the residence of Shafiq Mengal and directed for immediate arrest of accused persons.

Friday’s suicide bombing outside the residence of Mir Shafiq Mengal, the son of a former interim chief minister, which killed at least fifteen people and injured thirty others, leaves us with absolutely murky prospects of peace in Balochistan in the upcoming year 2012. While for the rest of the country it was a routine bomb blast, historians and experts on Balochistan must bookmark today’s newspaper pages for future references.

For the first time in its history, the secular nationalist outfit Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has carried out a ‘successful’ suicide bombing. Government authorities in Quetta refuse to agree that it was a suicide blast while one sees expression of tremendous jubilation on Twitter and Facebook pages of young supporters of the nationalist movement. Reactions by  young Balochs are similar to what we witnessed in May 1998 when Pakistanis celebrated the successful detonation of  nuclear weapons in Balochistan’s Chagi district. One feels that the elated Baloch activists are marking the day as if they have invented or acquired a new weapon to sustain and advance their separatist resistance movement against Pakistan.

On its part, the government and media outlets supportive of former’s policies have deliberately excluded the ‘suicide’ prefix of the bombing in their news dispatches. The government believes suicide bombings, once they start, do not stop easily and they further collapse the already existing poor security apparatus.Pakistani security forces have been remarkably demoralized in recent years while fruitlessly endeavoring to grapple with the phenomenon of countrywide suicide bombings carried out by Islamic fundamentalist groups.Therefore, confirming the occurrence of a suicide blast planned by nationalists for the police means to officially announce the inception of a new chapter of violence, chaos and lawlessness. The pro-government media has also tried to help the officials in their damage control efforts by not clearly confirming the involvement of Baloch nationalists in a case of suicide bombing.

So, what does it mean to be a Baloch suicide bomber and what does it entail for the future of the province? What is going to happen to the nationalist movement if Islamabad takes a few weeks to investigate the bombing and then comes up with staggering “revelations” that Baloch nationalists are “linked” with Islamic terrorist groups? Will that make it easier and more legitimate for Islamabad to bomb Baloch towns under the pretext of executing the war on terror? While these questions will surely be debated in the coming weeks, we still have to wait for more details from the BLA about its future operations and also from the government about its reaction and response mechanism against the rise of this new phenomenon.

A more important question which merits debate is whether suicide bombing is solely used by Islamic radical groups as a tool to spread terror and pressurize their opponents. A lot of people will respond affirmatively if they have deeply read the post-9/11 counter-terrorism literature. But this does not match the reality as secular nationalist movements in many parts of the world have historically used suicide bombings as a strong weapon against their opponents.

Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who has closely observed every terrorist attack in the world from 1980 to early 2004, says more than half of all suicide attacks were carried out by secular groups and individuals.

“In fact, the world’s leader in suicide terrorism was the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist group that is completely secular and that recruits from Hindus. More than a third of all suicide attacks by Muslims were also carried out by secular groups, such as the Kurdish PKK in Turkey and the Communist Party in Lebanon.”

Dr. Pape, who is also the author of the book on suicide bombings Dying to Win, further says, “what more than 95 per cent of all suicide terrorist attacks around the world have in common is not religion, but a specific political goal to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, the central objective of every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 has been to compel a democratic state with military forces on territory that the terrorists prize to take those forces out.”

BLA’s claim that Friday’s bombing was carried out by a member of its Majeed Brigade takes us back to the history of Baloch nationalist movement when a young Baloch with the same name had made a failed suicide attempt on former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. On August 2, 1974, the young boy from Mastung District [see the editorial picture], Abdul Majeed Baloch, lost his own life while trying to assassinate Mr. Bhutto with a hand grenade. He wanted to avenge the killing of thousands of Balochs in a military operation unleashed by Bhutto after dismissing the first ever elected government of the province. Since then, Majeed has been treated as a national hero and a martyr of the Baloch nationalist movement.

Suicide bombings rise in societies where the supporters of such operations believe injustices against them have reached the peak. When injustice and brutality replaces hope and conflict resolution, suicide bombings find their way as an alternative form of resistance. We knew that Balochs would one day run out of patience after becoming tired of receiving the bullet-riddled dead bodies of their loved ones. What else were we expecting in an unjust society where the country’s army, which is supposed to be the defender of the population, is directly blamed for ‘kill and dump’ operations and the Supreme Court does not show modicum of interest in providing justice to the Baloch?

As far as the BLA is concerned, it should also pause and think for a while before choosing for such a self-destructive option. Similar to its name, “suicide” bombing also leads to the political suicide  of some of the strongest political movements. Such bombings brutally and indiscriminately kill innocent people. They spread terror at public places and claim lives of women, children, elderly and all those unarmed civilians who have no remote connection with the government policies and actions.

Every progressive or conservative movement offers some kind of ‘hope’ to its supporters. It is hope that leads to the success of some flawed and conservative movements. Why did the Taliban succeed in coming to power in Afghanistan? Because they promised peace and ‘justice’ to their people. Although their regime was subsequently marked with unprecedented violations of human rights,  they reflect one dimension of public aspirations and expectations when they decide to support a movement.

Many Balochs look at the BLA and other political stakeholders as forces which will one day bring them justice.  A poor and hungry Baloch would continue to support the nationalist movement as long as it offers him/ her promising economic prospects and equality. But if the very people in the streets of Quetta and elsewhere in Balochistan become victims of Baloch operations, they will understandably unsubscribe their moral support. By the end of the day, they will become weary of nationalistic politics and get back to the government for assistance against the very people whom they once looked as a sign of hope.

Baloch nationalist organizations should learn lessons from the mistakes the  Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) made. With an annual revenue of $300 million, the LTTE was the world’s richest resistance force. It also enjoyed remarkable support from some neighboring and a few European nations. Yet, overconfidence and excessive violations of human rights led to the unpopularity of the movement and its eventual defeat.

After the May 2nd raid which killed Osama bin Laden, Balochs had an extraordinary opportunity to reach out for international support. Islamabad has annoyed many civilized countries of the world, including the United States, because of its not-so-covert support to Islamic terrorist groups. If the Baloch leadership and diaspora engages in peaceful advocacy and political dialogue with the world community, they can achieve remarkable success. On the contrary, suicide attacks can turn out to be so destructive that they will provide Islamabad a chance to divert the attention of international community from its own support to Islamic radical groups and misleadingly force the world to designate Baloch resistance groups as terrorist outfits.

(MALIK  SIRAJ AKBAR)

Editor-in-Chief

The Baloch Hal