Unrest: the cost of bad governance

In his op-ed for Arab News, Dr Syed Kaleem Imam, a former federal secretary and inspector general of police, makes three critical observations on Balochistan's simmering crisis.

"In my years of service, I saw again and again that the officials answerable for outcomes in Balochistan were seldom the ones who had made the decisions, and those who made the decisions were rarely held accountable for the consequences.

"Over the years, I saw capable civil servants and police officers hesitate to offer honest professional advice because agreement was rewarded while candor was treated as disloyalty.

"I recall a senior police officer proudly saying that his primary duty was to represent the state. I respectfully disagree. The police represent the state best when they protect people's rights, dignity, and security. At the same time, they require capable administration."

These observations testify to Balochistan's crisis of political imagination, not merely a policy failure. It is a failure to: a) comprehend the relationship between the public servant and state institutions, which primarily demands loyalty to the state and not to individuals; and b) critically assess the socio-political relationship between the state and the citizen, which derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, public participation and equality before the law.

It is a crisis of legitimacy and the abuse of authority that has become a wall between the rulers and the ruled. Internal and external hostile actors capitalise on this widening disconnect and the pervasive sense of political and economic alienation among the Baloch population.

The unprecedented levels of violence in Balochistan since July 6 should be deeply worrying. This violence is certainly not occurring in isolation from internal factors and external drivers. The string of coordinated attacks across the province - including the massacre of police officials in Ziarat, Bela-Winder, Chaghi, Khuzdar, Mastung, and elsewhere - points to a near full-fledged insurgency, reinforced by the TTP's appearance in some Pashtun areas.

This also reminds us of two unavoidable phenomena: an acute crisis of governance presided over by people with extremely suspect legitimacy; and the exploitation of internal fault lines by external actors.

Before making grandiose statements and pledging to fight until the elimination of the last terrorist, the rulers need to acknowledge that the current security crisis is not the root cause but the consequence of decades of dismal governance devoid of public legitimacy. I call it the "mother of all ills": a non-representative, unaccountable governance regime that commands little popular respect (as I argued in this space on April 25: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2604614/mother-of-all-sins).

The legal and administrative overreach against dissenting voices has cumulatively created a minefield that cannot be cleared through a feel-good, self-serving narrative. The problems are real. So are the forces exploiting them. But merely deploying a kinetic approach without addressing the "mother of all ills" will not provide any lasting remedy. On the contrary, the force option will add more fuel to the fire. Dubbing every pro-rights activist and politician as anti-state hardly generates any meaningful traction among the people. One cannot label the majority as anti-state and then expect a free run in their territory.

These circumstances also complicate the loyalty-to-state debate. Many young Baloch view the present rulers with skepticism - more as enablers and beneficiaries of corruption and exclusion than as genuine representatives. Many members of parliament cannot, or do not, even visit the constituencies that ostensibly voted them into power. The reason is simple: many scarcely contested elections in any meaningful sense yet emerged victorious in the electoral race.

The convergence of views among former police chiefs, including Dr Shoaib Suddle, Zulfiqar Cheema and Tariq Pervez, is both concerning and welcome. Concerning because these assessments appear to be finding little traction among decision-makers - literally falling on deaf ears. Welcome because more voices are now endorsing what has long been a common sentiment among the Baloch in particular. Increasingly, while proxy terrorism is acknowledged as a reality, former officials, civil society actors and political activists find themselves on the same page because they recognise the suffering of poorly governed, cash-strapped, ill-treated and jobless Baloch citizens.

And therefore I find it difficult to resist concluding with Dr Imam's probing question - one that many of us have been asking for years: "Pakistan must ask itself an uncomfortable question: if a security-centric strategy has not delivered lasting peace, why do we continue to rely on it instead of pursuing a politically inclusive strategy built on the rule of law, legitimate local leadership, and public conviction?"