First, assuming that poverty was the main driver to have sent the Baloch up the mountains to resist the state, what is the mechanism for them to return given the fact that there is a huge trust deficit between the insurgents and the state? The fact of the matter is that the federal government has failed to honour its own initiatives in the form of the Mushahid Hussain and the Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain missions. In fact, the state went ahead and killed Nawab Akbar Bugti even after pretending to talk. Today, there is no single neutral arbiter that both sides would trust.
Second, how can trust begin to develop as long as Balochistan is being flooded by other kinds of violent agents of the state like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and the Jamaatud Dawa (JuD). The LeJ, in particular, is going around killing the Hazaras and sowing seeds of discontent in a land where different communities did coexist much more peacefully in the past. The formula that one kind of militant may be allowed and not the other is not going to impress anyone.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete