LAHORE:
The recent decision by Prime Minister Imran Khan to initiate the process of healing the wounds of the people of Balochistan is a welcome one. While addressing a ceremony in Gwadar, he said that the insurgency problem would never have exacerbated if attention had been paid to Balochistan’s development. We must accept that the people living in Balochistan and K-P have been wronged. They have and continue to suffer immensely because of the ill-advised and selfish adventurisms of the Zia and Musharraf juntas.
It is evident that our Prime Minister has time and again taken a different route to solve such issues, as compared to his predecessors. He believes in having a dialogue and coming to a common ground. However, it is yet to be seen — in the case of Afghanistan and Balochistan — if everyone has enough patience and capacity to maintain a civil dialogue. Regardless of the outcome, it is only through political dialogue alone that we might be able to achieve a breakthrough. The state must accept that they have made mistakes and restore the trust of those who have felt betrayed. It must perform the role of a mother, willing to soothe a teenager throwing a tantrum. It is time to restore the Quaid’s vision of a modern democratic welfare state.
For over a decade Musharraf pursued risky strategies beyond our borders, which did nothing apart from bringing terrorists and extremists within our geographical boundaries. Earlier, Zia pushed this country to fight the US’s proxy war despite the fact that there is a long history of the US exploiting the greed of a country’s few to achieve their short-term strategic objectives, only to pull out and let the host country face the consequences. Citizens of this country living in areas adjacent to the Afghanistan border have had to bear the brunt of the sufferings.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 12th, 2021.
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