When I drove recently from Karachi to Khuzdar and Quetta, it was like a highway of death.
KARACHI: What the Mongols, Iranians or the British could not do was done by a naive usurper in a day. Balochistan was transformed with the murder of Nawab Akbar Bugti. The fond memories of this scribe’s childhood and those of many others were destroyed by General (retd) Pervez Musharraf.
Quetta, which was a uniquely beautiful city, was transformed into a city of zombies. Nawab Akbar Bugti’s physical elimination was the most direct attack on the Baloch psyche. He might have been a tyrant of sorts but the manner in which he was killed created an irretrievable narrative; any Baloch who opposed a thoughtless usurper could be removed. There were loopholes and questionable chinks in the Bugti affair. A rushed-up funeral, lack of DNA proof, and conflicting claims. The net loser in the affair was Pakistan more than Balochistan.
When I drove recently from Karachi to Khuzdar and Quetta, it was like a highway of death. You find cars till Bela but thereafter, it is a road to nowhere. Few cars are seen, apart from Corolla taxis. Checkpoints increase in size and number as you proceed to Khuzdar and multiply fourfold between Kalat and Lak Pass.
The road between Kalat and Lak Pass is witness to many unnatural deaths. The victim can be a Baloch, a Punjabi labourer, a Pashtun road worker, a Hazara Shia, or an FC soldier. As you enter Quetta, FC soldiers repeatedly stop you to find out if you are travelling in a non-custom duty paid vehicle. The order to check non-custom duty paid vehicles has only hurt the poor and the downtrodden. The children of the underprivileged have to travel many miles on foot to go to school as the cheap wagons can no longer ply the road.
Most restaurants and hotels were deserted and those who wanted to go out only had the option of the safety of the Serena Hotel where they were charged through their nose for a cup of tea. The Farah Hotel where we used to see immaculately-dressed Nawab Akbar Bugti was long gone. When you walked on Jinnah Road you could no longer see the smartly dressed, cheerful Quetta-wallahs. What I saw were morose, turbaned , dirtily-clad walking zombies .
I visited Malik Muneer, one of Quettas most respectable businessmen from the Tajik community. He was upset at the recent murder of some Tajik youngsters who had been shot and wounded without any reason while on a picnic at Hanna Lake outside the city. He told me that perhaps they were mistaken for Hazaras. What a state where a man is shot for being from a particular ethnicity or sect?
My Baloch guards feared for their life if they were not allowed to leave for their Sariab Road homes before sunset. Thus the myth that only settlers were in danger being firmly laid to rest. I met my friend Yusuf Marri, son of legendary Baloch guerrilla commander General Sher Mohammad Marri. Yusuf was victimised in the Musharraf era and was still at a loss why security forces took all his family photograph albums and never returned them. The picture that emerges is that no one was safe regardless of ethnicity or sect.
A H Amin
Published in The Express Tribune, October 15th, 2012.
