Killing of Baloch leaders

"Unidentified" gunmen on Wednesday gunned down former senator from Balochistan and a top leader of Balochistan National Party (Mengal)Habib Jalib, near his residence in Quetta. While going to drop off his children at school he was attacked by gunmen, who fled the scene on a motorbike. Angry supporters chanted slogans and protested against the killing in Quetta and in other towns such as Turbat, Mastung, Qalat, Hub, Bela and Khuzdar.
All schools and colleges, including Balochistan University, will remain closed for two days. Jalib was a Moscow-educated lawyer with a reputation as an intellectual and articulate politician. Although, no group has accepted responsibility for carrying out the attack and it remains unclear who might have shot Jalib, reports said that his party had been under pressure from insurgents in Balochistan to abandon using political means to achieve its goals. Jalib was actively involved in efforts aimed at tracing hundreds of missing Baloch nationalists in Balochistan.
It was on Sunday that Maula Bux Dashti, former district nazim of Turbat and a central leader of the National Party was gunned down. He was reported to have been killed by "unidentified gunmen" who as usual "managed to escape." The expression has become a template for reporting the unending killing spree in Balochistan. Maula Bux Dashti was also a popular politician with a difference.
He belonged to the National Party whose leadership comprises middle class politicians, a rarity in a province where both society and the provincial assembly are dominated by tribal chiefs. What is more, unlike other parties from Balochistan the NP, which was formed in 2003 through an amalgamation of two political factions, supports mainstream politics.
Party chief Senator Abdul Malik Baloch was a member of the parliamentary committee for constitutional reforms headed by Senator Raza Rabbani. Despite pressures from Baloch militants to resign from the committee and the Senate, he participated in the proceedings and was a signatory to the 18th Amendment.
The party leadership has resisted great pressure to eschew all Pakistan politics. It was in fact contacting politicians in other provinces to give National Party an all Pakistan character. There was all the more need to provide security to the party leadership which failed to happen.
While circumstantial evidence points finger to the Baloch militant organisations being involved in the attack, the situation in the province is so chaotic and complex that any of the multifarious forces involved in incidents of the sort in Balochistan could be blamed for the killing. Whoever was behind the killing has weakened the voice, already subdued, supporting mainstream politics in the province.
If the PPP-led coalition's major failures were to be recounted its inability to resolve the Balochistan issue would be on top of the list. The province recalls minding Hobbes' observation regarding chaos that prevailed in the State of Nature "where the hand of every man was against every man." Scarcely a day passes without papers reporting killings and acts of sabotage. In Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan targeted killings, road-side bomb blasts, land mine explosions, attacks on police check posts, trains, gas pipelines and electricity lines have become a routine affair now.
Even those who are supposed to rule the province are not safe. Rockets have been fired at the Governor's House while provincial education minister and PPP leader Shafiq Ahmad Khan was gunned down in October last "by unidentified gunmen who managed to escape." Another PPP leader Faizuddin Sasoli was shot dead the same month in a similar way in Khuzdar. Both governor and chief minister have repeatedly expressed helplessness over the killings and forced disappearances. Both have suggested that security agencies are in fact ruling the province. Neither has shown the courage however to resign in protest.
The federal government has blamed several times one or more foreign countries for being behind lawlessness without making it an issue on international level. The Pakistan Army has deployed heavy contingents all over the province but the districts of Quetta, Khuzdar, Nushki, Qalat, Turbat, Dera Bugti, Kohlu, Sui and Hub still suffer from lawlessness. Former IG police Muhammad Yaqub has blamed the inefficiency of "our forces and intelligence agencies that they are unable to control the targeted killing and grenade attacks by the insurgents."
Unless political and administrative measures are taken apace, he has said, the "situation will be out of our control very soon." In view of the situation on ground, statements like "government is committed to resolving Balochistan issue" sound meaningless. There is a need to enforce Balochistan package in its totality including talks with the militant leadership aimed at bringing it to the mainstream. What is more the federal government should ensure that the political government is really in command and law enforcement agencies are subservient to it. Unless this is done, the claims that the government is taking measures to pacify the province would sound hollow.