The International Crisis Group - an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization that works through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts all over the world - has on September 14 issued an alarming report on the worsening situation in Balochistan.
In its press release, issued from Islamabad and Brussels simultaneously, the Crisis Group has called the Balochistan "situation deteriorating" and has predicted that "the insurgency will not recede until Islamabad ends its heavy-handed, armed response to legitimate Baloch grievances and negotiates matters of political and economic autonomy" and "the "conflict will escalate further if the government continues to insist on a military solution to what is a political problem".
The press release also blames "the military government" for "perpetuating this conflict by using indiscriminate force" and "by choosing confrontation over negotiation". It says, "the government of Pervez Musharraf bears responsibility for the state of the conflict".
The question here is: would the military junta listen?
The lure of lucre and lordship is so tempting. In six decades of their continuous direct and indirect rule they have crawled and crept into every powerful position, prime land, lucrative job and post-retirement perk. They eat up majority of Pakistan's budget at the expense of people's education and health. They are eating the country up and sapping its foundations from within. They are strangulating the people by depriving them of representative participatory institutions and exploiting their natural resources.
They are drunk with power, aggrandizement, and megalomania. They don't see a nation of deprived, powerless, ignorant, sick, hungry and unrepresented people. They see only a few honorable people still standing in their way to more power and more lucre and who need to be subdued or killed.
The people who have any honor left in their bones, like Balochis, have no choice left but picking up the gun if they know their grievances will remain unaddressed and their demands for constitutionally guaranteed political freedoms and rights will stay unmet. Given a choice between deprivation and death what they will choose?
Imagine if the people were organized or armed enough to wage a war against the military as the Bengalis did in 1971 with India encouragement and empowerment.
I hope I am wrong but if we are willing to see the handwriting on the wall, it is only matter of time, I don't know how long, before rest of the Pakistanis see their deliverance from their daily miseries in destroying the military's overwhelming dominance in body politic.
Ambition and greed have pushed most of the political parties, especially, JUI, MMA, MQM to military pockets and they are helping it stay in power as long as they are thrown a few bones their way and pick up some crumbs. They have dexterously diverted the attention from Balochistan conflagration to Hudood Ordinance to give the military the breathing space it so desperately needed after Bugti murder fiasco.
The Crisis Group has made some recommendations such as ceasing military action; ending the political role of intelligence agencies; ending intimidation, torture, arbitrary arrests, disappearances and extra-judicial killings; refocusing policies towards human development; implementing constitutional provisions for political, economical and administrative autonomy; holding free and fair elections in 2007.
But Musharraf or military would ever listen? They don't have to. They are averse to sharing power. Why would they like to be brothers when they can be masters. Why would they opt for political engagement when they have coercive might to hoist military solutions.
There are some other recommendations for the Pakistan National Assembly, the Supreme Court and the International community. The former two are unable to implement those recommendations and the latter one is unwilling to.
Would the military listen?
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