JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: We may keep arguing who gave the right to the US Congress’s Committee on Foreign Affairs to discuss human rights situation in Balochistan, but that will not serve any purpose really. In the past 60 years, the province has seen almost four insurgencies so clearly something is amiss as far as the centre’s policies regarding it are concerned. The policies should be reviewed because the problem is only being exacerbated by an approach that sees the violence as a law and order issue.
In the past a number of committees and commissions were set up, including two separate ones under General Pervez Musharraf but whatever recommendations they came up with were never really implemented. It should be noted that New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), which did not take any position as such on the issue of an independent Balochistan, has come up with a number of recommendations and those found reasonable should be considered.
This is not an issue that can be pushed under the carpet anymore. When the use of force couldn’t stop the country’s eastern wing from breaking away, how is a similar approach going to help in the case of Balochistan?
Without mincing words, HRW criticised all the parties including the Baloch nationalists and rebels who are involved in the bloodshed. It calls for several things, among them: 1) The Pakistan government shall now allow its forces to get involved in extra-judicial killings, disappearances or illegal/undocumented detentions of Baloch nationalists. 2) The US should use its influence with the Pakistani military to ensure that any of its personnel or those of the ISI or Frontier Constabulary allegedly blamed for killings and disappearance of Baloch nationalists are held accountable for their deeds. 3) American funding/training of those agencies which are found responsible for human rights violation in Balochistan should be cut. 4) Baloch nationalists and rebels should stop attacks on civilians, especially the non-Baloch population in the province. 5) Attacks on teachers, professors (mostly Urdu- and Punjabi-speaking) and educational institutions should be stopped. 6) Baloch nationalist organisations must act against any member found involved in the killing of civilians.
Some of these recommendations are worth pondering over because time is running out for the Pakistani government for political manoeuvring. Though the US government has immediately distanced itself from the committee’s hearing, the fact that this event has happened should be worrying enough for Pakistan. It is always better if a family matter is resolved within the family through the use of dialogue.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, February 11th, 2012.
