The government decision to hold an all parties’ conference (APC) to debate the law and order situation in Balochistan, though belated, is commendable. Certain areas of the province have for a considerably long time been tormented by target killings, disappearances, the discovery of tortured and maimed dead bodies and bomb blasts. Unfortunately, the official response has been marked by a haphazard approach showing a total lack of imagination. Had the President’s apology tendered to the people of the province for suffering a discriminatory treatment at the hands of successive governments been followed up by a positive approach to their problems, things might have improved. However, the much-trumpeted Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan programme, launched to remove their sense of neglect on the score of development of the province, has remained on paper. Hopefully, when the representatives of different political parties meet around the table and the problem is thoroughly discussed, a lasting solution would emerge. Participants of the APC would do well to keep before them the proceedings of the Supreme Court related to disappearances, besides holding hearings of intelligence agencies’ officials and members of the families of kidnapped persons. Though the security forces have been widely blamed for the kidnapping of suspects, COAS General Kayani has emphatically denied any military operation is being carried out in Balochistan or that the army is involved in kidnappings and murders; also that in fact, the Frontier Constabulary is only helping the provincial government in restoring law and order. Highly credible sources in the army have put the blame for the chaos on dissidents enjoying the support – arms, funds and training – of local and foreign elements. The APC would be the right forum to thrash out the conundrum.
That the situation is worrisome is evident from the statement of Senator Hafiz Rasheed, members of the Senate Functional Committee for Human Rights. He claims that he had to pay ransom through the courtesy of a senior bureaucrat to have his father rescued from the kidnappers. If a Senator could not rely on the official machinery for a personal grievance like this, it shows how the troublemakers have made law enforcement agencies ineffective.
Against this disturbing backdrop, newspapers have carried a report to the effect that in addition to the CIA, the Indian intelligence agency RAW has also spread its tentacles in the province, and is funding and arming the movement for separation. The APC would have to take stock of the situation in all its comprehensiveness. Adequate steps to remove the feeling of deprivation and effective measures to eliminate the role of foreign agents have to be taken before sanity could be expected to prevail among those who are disturbing the peace.