By MI Kashmiri
Recent series of surrender by Baloch
militant commanders along with their accomplices and relating it to the previous such happenings thus giving the
impression that the current development may not yield desired dividends is
certainly a biased perspective few analysts and critiques are attempting to deliver to their readers. These analysts instead of giving hopelessness about the success of surrender
process should be talking about the positivity
of such initiative taken by the Baloch
political headship in collaboration with the leadership of security forces .The
fact must be kept in mind that the surrender of militants on one hand is the
most useful mean to weaken the militancy and on the other hand it will spread a
ray of hope amongst the general public of the province and the stake holders interested in the prosperity and
economic development of Balochistan.
Although the surrender exercise is not
new but any sane analyst will agree to the fact that with the changing ground
realties and prevailing environments every happening cannot be fully compared
with the past occurring. The current situation in Balochistan is different from
the past due to no of reasons which include the psyche of players involved,
their objectives, response from the state institutions along with their
understanding of the issue with new perspective and the most important of all
is the civil military cohesiveness to pursue the goals in the province with
mutual trust and cooperation. Now when the provincial govt is headed by a
moderate sub nationalist group which is trying to reach out to all annoyed
Baloch elements within and abroad for finding the ways to bring normalcy in the
province and working out the modalities to address the apprehensions of the sub
nationalists, the hope for peace in Balochistan should not be considered a
dream. At this point of time the entire process of reconciliation between the
govt and the insurgent’s leadership has full backing and support of the state
institutions. This is the change which has seldom been witnessed in the past.
It’s because of such encouraging working relationship between the provincial
govt and the security establishment that the initiatives towards bringing the
insurgents to main stream merit unbiased evaluation of the current surrender
strategy of the govt.
Some of the analysts influenced by a
particular mindset referring back to the surrender of Nawab Noroz Khan are
fearing that due to the reason of not keeping up the promises of amnesty to the
said Nawab and his accomplices the insurgent movement continued even after the
surrender of Nawab Noroz and same would be the fate of current surrender
process. It must be remembered that this is just a mere propaganda and if recalled objectively it would reveal
that it was not the betrayal from the
state institutions that the Nawab Noroz and his associates were jailed but it
was according to the law of the land to which both parties agreed and the
surrender took place. Then comes the era of start of current insurgency in
which analysts are mixing up the reconciliation with the Marri elders during
the forming of the govt in Balochistan after 2002 elections. Although Mr Balach
Marri was elected as MPA but he neither appeared for the oath taking nor
attended any assembly session. However, after the amicable solution of long
awaited Chamalang issue with the intimate and passionate efforts of the
military leadership in Balochistan and the provincial govt the Marris got
annoyed as the agreement included in its
beneficiaries the Lonis, the Marris , the locals and other stake holders thus
reducing the share of Marri tribal heads. It was this reason and the murder
case on Marri elders that some of them remained away from the main stream
politics and later resorted to armed struggle against the state. As far as
dialogue with Nawab Akbar Bugti are concerned, its again known fact that full
fledge parliamentary committee was constituted by the federal govt to seek
input from all stake holders in Balochistan for alleviating the concerns and
the sense of deprivation felt by the Baloch leadership and the masses there.
The committee had long meetings as planned and met Nawab Akbar Bugti several
times but due to the undemocratic and unjustified demands of the Nawab, the
reconciliation process kept delaying and ultimately ended up in failure as
Nawab Akbar Bugti decided to go for the armed struggle to pursue his self
envisioned goals for the rights of his
people. Not going into the details of
the development projects and the financial assistance provided to the province
during the period from 2002 to 2008, impartial analysis would reveal that the
tribal heads with the changing regional and local socio political environment
and undertaking of speedy development projects aiming at poverty alleviation ,
taking good care of health and education issues of the common Balochi people,
started fearing to loose their influence in their respective areas and thus
adopted the old strategy of maintaining and regaining their position and status
through militancy.
The analysts are actually trying to
undermine the recent process of surrender by falsely portraying that the
surrendered militants are not the hard core elements but have either been
disowned or thrown out of the main stream cadres of insurgent groups. The only
and reasonable answer to all such elements is the vigorous pursuance of the
surrender policy thus ensuring to bring more and more disgruntled elements to
normal civic life. With the current policy adoption by the provincial govt and
the security establishment the nation can hope to see such surrenders not
occasionally but regularly. It’s further heartening to see the harmony amongst
the ruling coalition of NP, PMLN and PKMAP and the opposition parties on the
issue of reconciliation and the surrender initiatives. Coupled with the ongoing
backchannel and overt dialogue between Khan of Kallat, Brahm Dagh Bugti and
Mehran Marri, this policy of pursuing the militants to surrender is certainly a
leap forward towards the achievement of peace and prosperity in Balochistan.The
is however a need to have a comprehensive and well thought out surrender
strategy having consensus of all stake holders to make it most fruitful and
lasting. A well motivated team of experts from the concerned quarters having
full support and freedom of taking all rightful decisions in the implementation
of the envisaged surrender initiatives will certainly prove to be a catalyst in
fighting the menace of unrest in Balochistan.
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