Balochistan the untold story

A Baloch student recently summed up Balochistan’s grievances before a civil society fact-finding mission by declaring: “We (the people of Balochistan) have not been neglected by the state alone; our compatriots in other provinces too have all along been indifferent to our plight. They do not care for us. They don’t even wish to understand our problems.”

The causes of the indifference the young Baloch was complaining of lie in the vested interest’s relentless efforts to prevent the people from knowing and understanding Balochistan and its society. The authors of the security-state narrative had their reasons to cast the Baloch in the role of an incorrigible villain, whose ordinary political demands for rights to identity and autonomy had to be denounced as treason. Balochistan’s claim to equality with other federating units could be waved aside by condemning it for its sardari system, its tribal culture, its failure to acquire modern knowledge and skills, and its dependence on “settlers” for practically all services.

This image of Balochistan could not have been sustained without the establishment’s efforts to control and limit people’s access to facts of life in that area. It is an undeniable fact that Balochistan people’s trials and tribulations have been deliberately buried under layers and layers of falsehood, half-truths, and a thoroughly biased portrayal of its people. To a great extent this has been done with the help of the media, which has often been a willing instrument for keeping the people ignorant of Balochistan’s real issues. And this is true not only of the media outside Balochistan but also of its own provincial media.

The slow development of the Balochistan media in terms of content and technology both can be attributed to the small size of the audience and the lack of adequate talent only up to a point. A far greater factor has been the denial of opportunities for an open discourse on whatever problems the people face collectively as well as individually. It must never be forgotten that Balochistan publications were the first to be banned after the creation of Pakistan and the history of journalism in that part of the country has been an endless struggle by a large number of people — from Yusuf Magsi, Jamaldini, Gul Khan Naseer and Abdus Samad Achakzai to Irshad Mastoi — to tell the world the truth about themselves.

Over the past many years, the media persons in Balochistan have been under pressure from several sources to report only what they are told to. They dare not defy the militants and they cannot argue with the security authorities. As a result, not only the people outside Balochistan but also its own population cannot receive authentic and adequate information about who is doing what in that federating unit. For instance, we do not know to what extent the military operation going on in various parts of the Baloch belt is warranted by objective factors and who the victims are.

The whole media has become addicted to reporting disaster stories — gas pipelines blown up, terrorist attacks, targeted killings, attacks on schools, et al — so much so that it finds little time to notice the havoc done by food insecurity, lack of employment opportunities, shortage of medicines, or the risks in travelling or in living in mafia-ruled towns and villages.

However, the enforced shortcomings and failings of the Balochistan media have caused less harm to the people of Pakistan than the inability of the so called national/mainstream media to stop identifying the people of Balochistan by the pre-independence stereotypes or the less old models crafted by the image-makers of the security establishment.

The simple questions are: How much space does Balochistan get in the national/mainstream media, what kind of stories are played up, and what is the tone and tenor of comments on events in the province?

Also read: Balochistan: Freedom, reconciliation, annihilation

The difference between the perceptions, preferences and priorities of the English language newspapers and publications in national languages while dealing with Balochistan is quite marked. The flashes of understanding and sympathy for Balochistan’s aspirations or its sorrows that one sometimes finds in English-language papers are usually missing in national-language publications, especially those in Urdu.

Let’s take a few examples.

The Balochistan government organised development forums in Quetta and Islamabad to explain what it wanted to do and took the bold, and in Pakistan a rare, step to invite the public to assess/criticise its plans and development strategy. For a larger part of the national media, this activity was a non-event.

A national debate is going on about the dangers Pakistan will face if the 18^th Amendment is rolled back, but little attention has been paid to Baochistan’s complaint that it is still denied control over its resources that the 18^th Amendment allowed it.

The entire population of Balochistan thinks its most critical issue is that of enforced disappearances. The media does report complaints of disappearance and discovery of mutilated corpses but there is no sign of outrage against what are really crimes against humanity. Media persons have been prevented from discussing disappearances through both subtle and not so subtle means. The recent ban on a discussion on this theme at LUMS only revealed the extent to which the effort to keep the people ignorant can be taken.

Some of the columns on Balochistan in newspapers betray a high level of animus against its people. While deploring the denial of Mama Qadeer’s right to go abroad, a columnist spent more time and words to remind the readers of the crimes the rights activists like the angry Baloch have been committing by calling for justice.

The killing of 20 workers in Turbat was condemned as it should have been but little attention was paid to the complaint that five of the 12 or so “criminals” killed for being responsible for the carnage were “missing persons”.

It is quite common to recall in columns, ostensibly written out of friendship for the Baloch people, to preface honeyed homilies with a reminder of the evil that sardari system is, tribal conflicts, and the community’s resolve to stay ignorant and backward.

Everybody is talking of Balochistan going the East Bengal way and the perception assiduously being promoted is that the Baloch are in the wrong exactly as the Bengalis were. Little effort is made to understand the causes and the trajectory of the alienation of the Baloch people.

Why is media unable to analyse the conduct of authorities who could not negotiate a compromise with the most amenable politician among the Baloch leaders, Nawab Akbar Bugti, and insisted on seeing him dead?

The Balochistan leaders, who have opted for self-exile, may have ruled out negotiations with Islamabad but has the latter ever tried to open talks with them? The charge of rejecting a peaceful way out of Baolochistan crisis may lie as much at the government’s doorstep as anywhere else.

The media often refers to Balochistan’s strategic location but why does it not ask for a justification of policies that apparently target the Baloch for having their homeland along a coast quite a few powers today covet?

Above all, the media has often pleaded for accommodation with religious extremists who have killed thousands of people but its milk of kindness dries up when it comes to conceding Balochistan its due.

That the media has a vested interest in preventing the Balochistan people from making social progress is no secret. What is often not recognised is the fact that both the Baloch and Pakhtuns of Balochistan have changed a great deal over the past few decades and all those dealing with them on the basis of their stereotyped identities will cause them and Pakistan incalculable disasters.

We will start resolving Balochistan’s problem, or what may be described as Pakistan’s problem in seeing Balochistan in a true perspective, only when we can shed our biases that have been created partly by ignorance and to a greater extent by the state’s colonial mindset and its vainglorious attitude.

Courtesy: http://tns.thenews.com.pk/balochistan-the-untold-story/#.VT52dCvF98E