Jahangir's World Times First Comprehensive Magazine for students/teachers of competitive exams and general readers as well.
It is high time for the people of the whole Pakistan to raise their concerns about their brethrens and to play their role by bringing Balochistan to mainstream. The leaders who are really competent, visionary and honest should be given way to the throne. Pakistan needs a paradigm shift and shuffle in its social, political and economic models.
Despite the fact that Balochistan is blessed with immense treasures of natural resources like gold, copper, oil, gas, hydrocarbon etc., situated at idiosyncratic geo-strategic and geo-economic location, its inhabitants are passing their lives in abject poverty. The province has been deliberately kept deprived of its basic rights-human as well as legislative. Over 63 percent of its unfortunate population is living below the poverty line. Pathetic situation of health, education, other social sectors and law and order due to utter neglect on the part of political pundits has engraved among the Balochis, a deep sense of deprivation, unraveling desperation, ever-increasing frustration and unending alienation. Short shrift given to Balochistan by self-centered rulers is beyond doubts.
These wretched circumstances of the province have been whimsically exploited by external powers for its strategically and commercially important location. The province has been turned into the battle field of the great game to be played for world politics. Few years back, new maps of the province were published in Washington in which `Great Balochistan,` including the parts of Iran and Afghanistan, was predicted. The sub-nationalist elements are assisted and the province is over-ridden with rebellions and separatist movements. In this whole episode, Pakistan`s subsequent governments have played second fiddle by their reckless and ruthless attitude towards Balochis. More is aggravated by impulsive dictator and the new democratic mess. Although packages are announced for this Pakistan’s largest province and 120 million budget has also been delivered to every member of its assembly yet no tangible development is witnessed in its untamed vastness due to corruption, incompetency and insincerity of the ruling elite. Resultantly, volcano of frustration is on the verge of busting and the youth is joining hands with the nationalist rebels who have been vociferously demanding a separate and independent state of Balochistan right even after the emergence of Pakistan on the globe. This movement is now aided and abetted by the forces for which intact Pakistan is not in their long-term strategic interests.
On February 17, 2012, an extremely derisive step has been taken by Dana Rohrabacher, an American congressman, by tabling a resolution supporting independence of Balochistan, on humanitarian grounds, in US House of Representives. Is US and its cronies really concerned about rights of Balochis or these forces have their own axe to grind in the guise of humanitarianism? As aforementioned that hegemonic designs of great powers have found a great compatibility with separation of Balochistan due to numerous reasons and they are now out to gain it before their partial withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. C. Christine Fair well-known American writer and an assistant professor in the Georgetown University in her recently written article “Rohrabacher`s blood borders in Balochistan” reveals that she refused to attend the US hearing despite being invited there and terms the whole drama the “partisan politics and possibly resource grabbing activity that has nothing to do with ongoing human rights crisis in Balochistan”.
Admittedly, the situation of the province demand solutions on priority basis but who are these powers to poke their noses in Pakistan`s internal affairs? Have they solved all the chronic issues of human rights violation which are far horrifying than that of Balochistan, many of which being acknowledged by UNO as well. Why not such expeditious step on Kashmir issue, struggle of which is endorsed by UNO and its human rights situation is gauged by Amnesty International as gravest in the world? Where the use of brutal violence, extra-judicial killings, abductions, forced detentions and inhuman torture have been legitimized by passing an Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), in July 1990 which utterly violate the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), 8 June 1977. Even recently discovered mass graves of Kashmiris in which “Most of the dead were young men. You could see their shiny teeth; you could tell from the skull, he was very, very young. One day I found a young man…. He had been badly tortured. Both his hands and feet had been chopped off,” says Sidiq one of the witnesses (Foreign Policy magazine of USA: Basharat Peer September 29, 2011), have failed patently to attract the attention of these so-called world`s humanitarian activists. To keep all these atrocities hidden, world largest “democracy” has imposed strict curbs on media to cover the Jammu and Kashmir but no power has worth to ask.
Americans and world powers are unwilling to play any positive role to help poor Palestinians to get rid of the subjugation of Tel Aviv despite the presence of UN resolutions. Knowing the fact that Israeli authorities are not really to halt illegal settlements, Obama Administration never even posed to cripple its economic and military assistance to Israel. And no practical step was taken when Flotilla humanitarian ship going for humanitarian aid of starving Palestinians, was attacked by Israelis Defence Forces. Why always selective love for justice and humanity? Why only where it suits to interests?
Though Baloch leaders like Akhtar Mangle, have endorsed this Rohrabacher`s resolution but here it is also to be decided first that either Balochis are ready to afford any humanitarian adventure if launched by International imperialist forces parallel to those they already launched on humanitarian grounds namely Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively. The adverse human rights situation in both these countries has gone out of proportions as compare to the time before “humanitarian interventions” by the western powers. Taliban regime was severely criticized for its grave violation of women rights but after more than 10 years “rescue” operation of US-lead allied states, condition of women due to “violence, dismal healthcare and brutal poverty make Afghanistan the world’s most dangerous country for women, with Congo a close second due to horrific levels of rape”, Thomson Reuters Foundation expert recent poll has said. The Karzai administration has crossed all limits of corruption and poppy cultivation in the country`s history.
In Iraq where allied forces, on the fake pretext of Human Rights and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), annihilated the whole country and engraved on the annals of history, one of the most horrifying episodes of death and terror. Now situation is that majority of Iraqis are aspiring for Saddam’s era because to them it was far better than this western engineered democratic regime. ‘I am not a political person, but I know that under Saddam Hussein, we had electricity, clean drinking water, a healthcare system that was the envy of the Arab world and free education through college’ Iraqi pharmacist Dr. Entisar Al-Arabi told American peace activist Medea Benjamin in 2010. ‘I owned a pharmacy and I could close up shop as late as I chose because the streets were safe. Today there is no security and Iraqis have terrible shortages of everything’ electricity, food, water, medicines, even gasoline. Most of the educated people have fled the country and those who stay look back longingly to the days of Saddam Hussein.’ (see Common Dreams, August 20, 2010). Then as reported by Washington Post on May 5, 2007, ‘It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.’ It is now an open secret that invasion in Iraq was actually for oil not for freedom of the ‘oppressed’ nor WMD. As Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in his 2007 book, ‘The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World’: ‘I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.’ So it can be hoped that no Balochi would be willing to face the situation as suffered by Iraqis and Afghan people but would peacefully raise their voice through true representatives.
It is high time for the people of the whole Pakistan to raise their concerns about their brethrens and to play their role by bringing Balochistan to mainstream. The leaders who are really competent, visionary and honest should be given way to the throne. Pakistan needs a paradigm shift and shuffle in its social, political and economic models. To counter external intervention Pakistanis have to become a true nation like Turks, Iranians and Chinese.
