Mainstreaming the Baloch

PRIME MINISTER Yousuf Raza Gilani’s pledge to set up what he called a truth and reconciliation commission to alleviate the sufferings of the people of Balochistan is some of the first few things the new dispensation should decide to do immediately. Not only that simmering discontent in the largest province tends to soil Pakistan’s image abroad - a case in point is the recent protest in front of the 10 Downing Street against “forcible and illegal annexation of Balochistan” - it is a great human tragedy replete with countless cases of state-sponsored violence, forced disappearances and dispossession of people of their natural wealth that should end. According to Chief Minister-elect Nawab Aslam Raisani’s information, about 900 persons picked up by the agencies over the last four years remain untraced. Many others, including former chief minister and BNP leader Sardar Akhtar Mengal and Dr Safdar Sarki are being held in violation of due process of law. Then there is the long unheeded cry from the people of Balochistan that they are being deprived of their due share in the exploitation of their natural resources. Such has been the severity of state-sponsored oppression let loose on them, particularly since the murder of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, that a feeling of guilty-conscience overtook the civilian part of the Musharraf-led regime who tried to rectify the situation. But that was of no avail, as the President blew off his palm the Senate sub-committee report on Balochistan as inconsequential. However, the opposition of the day had not lost its heart. And it was Asif Zardari’s unconditional apology to the people of Balochistan over the wrongs done to them that has set the stage for action for an extensive review of the entire range of the Centre’s policies towards Balochistan. That Nawab Raisani visited the ailing Mengal in hospital and promised to set free all political detainees and Prime Minister Gilani pledged to set up a truth and reconciliation commission to secure justice for the Baloch is aptly reflective of the growing realisation that a part of our own people have been treated rather mindlessly far too long, and this should not happen anymore.
Of course, the provincial government led by Nawab Raisani would do its part in building bridges with the wronged Baloch leadership, but major revamping has to be undertaken by the federal government in order to rehabilitate the confidence of the people of Balochistan in the viability of federalism. That action needs to be taken at three separate planes. First, the protection of the rights of the province of Balochistan as a unit of the federation has to be re-defined, reasserted and secured. Gilani’s promise to abolish the Concurrent List is a highly welcome move but its timeframe should be shortened from one year that he proposed to a month or so. In fact, a lot of work on this contentious issue has been already done, including reports submitted to the government by the sub-committees of the Senate headed by Wasim Sajjad and Mushahid Hussain Syed. The scope of this exercise may be expanded to prepare a new list of provincial legislative powers, as proposed by Senator Sanaullah Baloch. Secondly, the natural wealth of Balochistan should be spent essentially on ameliorating the lot of the people of the province by increasing their share in its ownership, revising upward the market prices of its products, particularly oil and gas well-head price structure; and by gearing up their exploration and exploitation so that their natural resources are not priced out by new technological products invented in the meanwhile.



Road map to nowhere

THE Middle East Road Map is still leading nowhere. Four months after Annapolis, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators have yet to find any way forward. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has just completed her second visit in less than a month, urging both sides on. The only tangible achievement of her latest visit is an agreement by the Israelis to dismantle 50 roadblocks in the occupied West Bank. But viewed more closely, this amounts to little. There remain some five hundred others, including the main checkpoints, whose cumbersome processing of Palestinians on occasions produces long queues lasting hours. But far worse than this, Rice’s visit coincided with the confirmation by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that his government has given the go ahead for almost a thousand new settlement homes in East Jerusalem. Three thousand further illegal homes are in the pipeline. A key condition the Bush administration extracted from the Israelis at Annapolis last November was that there would be a freeze on further settlement building. Yet no sooner had the Israeli delegation returned home than the expansion program was given the green light to continue. The Israelis argue that new settlements in East Jerusalem are merely filling in existing developments, and in any event they have no intention of giving up East Jerusalem to be the capital of an independent Palestinian state, as the Palestinians wish and Arab states demand. According to a government spokesman said yesterday “Jerusalem is indivisible”.
Jerusalem and the wider issue of illegal settlements constitute one of the many pressure points the Israelis have created to push on hard whenever they wish to goad the Palestinians into angry protest, which the Israelis can then represent to the outside world as unreasonable, even aggressive behavior. If the Palestinian Authority walks out of talks, as they did once already, objecting to the continuing settlement program, the Israelis turn innocently and ask how they can negotiate with someone who isn’t there. Maybe in the twilight of his presidency, George W. Bush is realizing the degree to which the Israelis have played his administration for a sucker. His commitment to driving through a peace deal is no doubt real but his Israeli allies have backed him into a corner. He failed to appreciate the significance of the Hamas electoral victory. As a consequence he bought the Israeli line that Hamas were terrorists who should be isolated from the political process. Thus he propelled the Palestinians into civil conflict and division. Even now as Rice urges on the Palestinian Authority to compromise, she knows that he can currently speak for only part of his country. Supposing a breakthrough deal were cut tomorrow, it would still have to be sold to Hamas. It is the Americans who are being made to look weak and foolish in this process. And this has not been done by the Palestinians, but by America’s still-treasured allies, the Israelis. Will Bush ever wake up?

—Arab News