EDITORIAL: Comparing Balochistan with Aceh
President Pervez Musharraf has just concluded a trip to Quetta. While there, he made a significant statement when he said that many “foreign hands” including India were to blame for the unrest in Balochistan: “I am one thousand per cent sure that the elements involved in target killings and subversive activities are being financed and trained by foreign elements who do not want peace in the country”. Pointedly, though, the elected chief minister of the province, Nawab Aslam Raisani, was not present when President Musharraf made this remark. Mr Raisani and some of his cabinet members had absented themselves from the governor’s luncheon in protest against President Musharraf’s policies towards Balochistan.
As if in response, the former Senator from Balochistan, Mr Sanaullah Baloch, who resigned from the Senate in despair of ever getting Islamabad to pay attention to the grievances of his province, referred, in an article on Tuesday in an English daily, to the autonomy granted by Indonesia to Aceh in 2005. In this article, Mr Baloch compared the demand for Aceh’s rights to that of Balochistan. He wrote: “The Indonesian government agreed to cede power to the Aceh authorities in all public sectors, except in the fields of foreign affairs, external defence, national security, and monetary and fiscal matters”. What followed was Jakarta’s agreement to “withdraw its economic control and allow Aceh to raise funds from external donors, and set interest rates, raise taxes to finance internal expenditures and conduct trade and business”.
Apparently, then, this encompasses the sum total of rights which the Baloch nationalists are demanding from the Centre, although there is an extreme fringe demanding independence too. According to Mr Baloch, the PMLQ government had advanced towards an initial agreement with Balochistan as a result of negotiations with a Senate Committee. The Senate Committee concluded its talks with the political parties in Balochistan in 2004 but its recommendations were set aside by President Musharraf. According to Mr Baloch the following was agreed: “(a) governance of Balochistan should include the Baloch people’s right to self-rule, ownership of resources, political participation and control over the economy; and (b) security arrangements should include control over civil and armed forces and the police”. He says the Senate Committee was put off that the president’s “military mind” had shelved its report.
The comparison with Aceh is understandable. The Free Aceh Movement (GAM) was on for decades but the Indonesian state, ruled by military men, had reacted most aggressively against it. Compared to what the government did in East Timor, a region grabbed by Indonesia against the opinion of the United Nations, Aceh was an area of lower insurgency. But what should be critically noted is this: Indonesia, a state comprising hundreds of islands, had to collapse in 1999 for East Timor to get its freedom in 2002 and Aceh to get its autonomy in 2005.
One can say that Pakistan is in disarray today but it has not reached the state of Indonesian collapse in 1999. Eventually, the UN Security Council moved and sent in a team of diplomats — headed by Pakistan’s Jamsheed Marker — to get Jakarta to let go of East Timor. Before that, Indonesia’s big strategic partners, the United States and Australia, had signalled that they were no longer interested in keeping Indonesia intact. Three years after East Timor joined the UN as its 190th member, Aceh too was allowed to become autonomous.
It would be extremely perverse to tell Mr Baloch that he may have to wait till the state of Pakistan collapses as completely as Indonesia did in 1999 before Balochistan becomes another Aceh. One should instead tell Islamabad that it should fairly deal with the question of provincial autonomy while the federation is still able to negotiate with the provinces. When the Acehnese finally staged their successful insurgency the Indonesian state was hardly in a position to negotiate. Today, with democracy freer in its capacity to confer with the provinces, it is time to sit down and decide the matter on which a consensus in principle already exists.
Mr Baloch should surely be the representative of Balochistan when the provinces sit down with the centre to discuss autonomy. Also present should be the Baloch representing maximalist and minimalist positions, so that the “strong on the ground” elements don’t intimidate those in political power. Of course the final quantum of autonomy would be based on what the provinces would agree to take from the Centre. Most Pakistanis are favourably inclined to grant a lot more autonomy to the provinces than is now granted in the Constitution.
But any kind of extremism will hamper a consensus among the provinces. They must first look sympathetically at Balochistan’s demand to redesign the NFC award in such a way that Balochistan and the NWFP get special concessions. Since autonomy will require the reduction of the centralised state, the provinces will also have to decide where to put the limits of this reduction so as not to completely hamstring the federation. The provinces will also have to consider carefully their own multiethnic nature. The rights of one ethnicity should not curtail the rights of another. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008 8 6story_6-8-2008_pg3_1
Second editorial: Peace in Balochistan
President Pervez Musharraf has pointed towards foreign hands, especially India, for fomenting unrest in Balochistan. While speaking at a lunch hosted by Balochistan Governor Nawab Zulfikar Ali Magsi at the Governor House, the president said he was “1,000 percent” sure that there are elements involved in target killings and subversive activities in Balochistan that are financed and trained by other countries to disrupt peace in the country, especially Balochistan. While the president’s blaming the law and order situation in Balochistan on some foreign elements cannot be outrightly rejected, it would be appropriate to look at what the successive governments at the Centre have been doing to bring ‘peace’ and ‘stability’ in the province. Even today, there seems to be some degree of discord between the provincial and the federal government. That is evident from the fact that the Chief Minister of Balochistan, Nawab Aslam Raisani, and a number of Cabinet ministers were not present at the lunch given in the honour of the president.
The previous government does not have much to show with regard to efforts to bring political stability and development in Balochistan. Governments in the past have been neglecting the issue of provincial autonomy. This provided the opportunity to the subversive elements and nationalists to fill the vacuum with separatist tendencies. The volatile situation was made even worse as people were whisked away allegedly by the intelligence agencies on fake charges of spying or for speaking the truth. Despite being the richest province in terms of natural resources, governments in the past have been denying the benefits to the local population of Balochistan. The setting up of military cantonments in the province, for instance, further alienated the local people from the federal government. Naturally, the people of Punjab were perceived to be taking the lion’s share from the economic activity in the province. The Saindak project is one example where the federal governments have not been able to ensure the participation of the local population in the project. More recently, the handling of the Gwadar project has resulted in aggravating tension between the Centre and the Baloch people who view the project as a scheme to settle people from other provinces in the city and deprive the local population of the benefits accrued as a result of utilisation of their land and other resources. The list of the atrocities committed against the Baloch people is shocking. The tragic incidents like the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti in a military operation and the rape of Dr Shazia Khalid in Sui, allegedly committed by a military officer, added to the resentment of the local people. If the federation of Pakistan is to be strengthened, the federal government should ensure that Balochistan gets a just distribution of its share in the federal divisible pool.
With the new government’s conciliatory approach towards the issues facing the country, it is hoped that Balochistan’s genuine problems will be resolved sooner rather than later. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani announced the halting of military operations by the army in Balochistan and withdrawal of cases against former Chief Minister of Balochistan Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal. These two steps, among others, taken by the prime minister will go a long way in addressing the concerns of the people of Balochistan, which they have been raising for the last many decades. The new government’s emphasis on knowing the ‘ground realities’ can lead to a permanent solution of the problems faced by the local people in the country’s biggest province.
http://www.thepost.com.pk/EditorialNews.aspx?dtlid=176206&catid=10
Healing Balochistan
THIS province remains a seething wound on the body politic of the federation. This was more than evident during President Pervez Musharraf’s visit to Quetta. While he was hosted by the governor, who is the federation’s representative in the province, the elected chief minister and most of his huge cabinet stayed away from the ceremonies. This despite the fact that the Balochistan cabinet contains men and women belonging to the PML-Q, the party the president publicly endorsed in the last election as his ally. Was the elected government avoiding incurring the wrath of Baloch nationalists, who boycotted the February polls, and who have declared war against what they see as a continuation of President Musharraf’s regime? For his part, the president did little soothsaying. He reiterated his stance that the insurgents in Balochistan were backed by foreign powers, without as much as naming one. If a foreign hand is involved in the insurgency in Balochistan, we have to admit it is our flawed policies which enable foreign powers hostile to Pakistan to meddle in our affairs.
The Baloch have a long memory. The killing by the security forces of one of the veteran sardars, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, in August 2006 remains fresh in the minds of many. The apology offered to the people of Balochistan by Mr Asif Ali Zardari for the state’s neglect of the province as he set about cobbling together a PPP-led coalition government after the February election also fell on deaf ears as far as Baloch nationalists are concerned. Their grievances are longstanding, ironical as it might seem in view of the fact that all the three leading insurgent tribes, the Bugtis, the Marris and the Mengals, have at one time or the other directly or indirectly worked with the Islamabad establishment to the chagrin of their own kinsmen as it were. Proof, if it is needed, that politics is a business of shifting sands.
The vast majority of the peaceful Baloch people deserve better. They must not be held back from sharing the fruits of development — albeit basic and slow in coming — that has been taking place elsewhere in the country. The blame game must end and a development package in which the Baloch people are the major stakeholders be devised and implemented. The reports of the two parliamentary committees set up by the previous government could perhaps be dusted off and their recommendations reconsidered. They had recommended greater job quotas and enhanced provincial revenues.
The need is for all concerned to give political dialogue a chance on issues that have remained unresolved because of coercion, subversion and military action. If the inspector-general of the Frontier Constabulary is to be believed, there is no military action going on anywhere in Balochistan as we speak. The insurgent groups should take advantage of this lull in hostilities, cease attacks on vital installations and commit themselves to a dialogue on all contentious issues. The representative Balochistan government should lead the initiative aimed at melting the ice between the dissident sardars and Islamabad.
http://www.dawn.com/2008/08/06/ed.htm |
