Attack on Coast Guards

Saturday morning brought more bad news of violence from the restive Balochistan province. This time seven Pakistan Coast Guards personnel were killed and as many injured in a pre-dawn attack by the Baloch Liberation Front. The insurgents took away weapons of the Coast Guard men, and also claimed to have taken two hostages. According to official sources, however, only 14 personnel manned the isolated checkpost close to the border with Iran; and they are all accounted for. This is the second such attack in the Gwadar area in a year and underscores the disturbing reality that insurgency in the province remains a festering sore.
The tragedy is the outcome of a vicious cycle of violence, started by General Musharraf's military regime and continued by the establishment behind the backs of the elected governments. Rejecting the reconciliation agreement, a Q-League parliamentary delegation had reached with Nawab Akbar Bugti, he had publicly warned Baloch nationalists that times had changed since the last insurgency in the 1970s, saying they won't even know this time what hit them. Bugti was soon killed in 2006 in a controversial missile hit on his mountain hideout, triggering a protracted conflict. Seven years on, the powers-that-be continue to resort to use of force, as the latest incident in Gwadar shows, without being able to achieve desired results. Violence has gone on only to beget violence. The number one issue fuelling the fire of insurgency is enforced disappearances and dumping of mutilated bodies of the disappeared. The Supreme Court's efforts for the recovery of the missing persons so far have achieved little success.
When PML-N government decided to forgo its right - as the single largest party in the new Balochistan Assembly - to form the provincial government in favour of Baloch nationalists, it raised hopes the National Party-headed coalition would find a political solution to the problem. Unfortunately, however, the day Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik delivered his inaugural speech in the provincial assembly, describing the challenges ahead as "more daunting than Mount Everest" as if to mock him, five bodies of the disappeared were found dumped in different parts of the province. There have been several such kill and dump cases since. If this policy is not changed the cycle of violence will not break. It in fact could get worse considering that certain interested outsiders do not like the handing of the deep-sea Gwadar Port control to the Chinese and a recent agreement between the two countries to open a new Gwadar to Kashgar economic corridor through Balochistan. It is plain that the government's reconciliation efforts to bring back the insurgents into the mainstream will not succeed until and unless the shabby human rights issue is addressed. As the long history of Baloch resistance shows, the use of force will not resolve anything. The sooner the security establishment grasps this vital detail the better it would be for the peace and security of the federation.