Hearing the case of the law and order situation and human rights’ abuses in Balochistan at its seat at Quetta on Monday, the Supreme Court showed extreme anxiety over the worsening security climate in the province. The observations of the learned judges, pointing to the gravity of the malaise, should ring alarm bells in the corridors of powers both at Quetta and Islamabad. While the cries of the aggrieved and the media’s projection of the painful events in Balochistan over the years have, unfortunately, failed to make the ruling leadership to give up their listlessness, should one hope that the court’s warning would jolt them into action.
The situation is too alarming to overlook; it is amply reflected in the assessment of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who is heading the three-member bench, that the writ of the government does not extend beyond eight to 10 kilometres. Out of sheer exasperation at the prolonged turmoil hitting the largest and resource-rich province and the authorities’ culpable indifference to setting things right, the court remarked that no delay, whatsoever, in the case of the recovery of missing persons would be tolerated. Justice Chaudhry added that his principal worry was the situation in the province and directed that the police, the Rangers and the Frontier Constabulary should sit together and work out a joint strategy to retrieve the situation at the earliest. There was a pointed reference to the nine persons of the same family who went missing last month and the law enforcement agencies were ordered to produce them before the court during the current week. The Chief Justice also mentioned the case of a Red Cross doctor whose dead body was found after he had been kidnapped. He asked a rhetorical question: what message would we be sending to the international community when his corpse landed in Geneva? Justice Khilji Arif Hussain sounded no less perturbed. He said that while Balochistan was on fire, no one seemed to care; he issued a dire warning that there would be no point in shedding tears as the nation did after the East Pakistan debacle.
The truth is that despite the extensive disaffection in the province, all that is needed is plain commonsense. The people’s grievances are mainly rooted in economic discrimination; they have been short-changed in development and progress, while the funds have gone to the Sardars. We can no longer put aside the projects – schools, health centres, roads, jobs and so on – that would go to lift them out of poverty.
As the hearing was held when there has been a flare-up of violence in Karachi’s PPP stronghold Lyari, Justice Tariq Pervez asked how the miscreants managed to get rockets. Certainly, in the judges’ mind, as in the mind of any other sensitive person in the country, the worsening law and order climate in the country is the most excruciating worry. All eyes are set on the powers that be to act. Would they listen to the woes of the aggrieved and give the nation a sense of relief?