OF all the government’s failures, its inability to prevent kidnappings by militants has drawn some of the strongest criticism. Yet this condemnation has yielded few results. The country’s map is dotted with gory points where kidnappers have killed hostages and dumped their bodies in order to deliver a horrifying message in the cruellest of manners. Abdul Ghafoor is the latest addition to the sad series. He was among the six Balochistan Rural Support Programme workers kidnapped in Pishin last December. His body was found in North Waziristan. He was the second from among the six BRSP men to have been killed by the captors. The kidnappers are said to have demanded Rs230m in ransom for the release of the six workers. The friends and families of the captives made a futile attempt at raising the money from donations after appeals for paying the ransom from the government’s accounts failed to attract a positive response from the Raisani set-up in Quetta and efforts for a reduction in the ransom amount were unsuccessful.

The killings, the kidnappings, indeed the fact that the kidnappers are asking for such a huge ransom, are facts that reflect just how much is at stake here. They add to piles of evidence that speak volumes for the kind of danger that NGO workers in Balochistan and elsewhere in Pakistan face. Already, many NGOs, both international and domestic, have scaled back their operations. A large number are thinking about doing so and we are confronted with a winding up that would be hailed by the militants as their victory. Far from acting merely as a support for the government, the NGOs have crucially been present in areas where government officials are not found. Their forced exit through murder and kidnapping and other acts of intimidation would be a huge blow to the development effort. That a large number of these kidnappings are traced to North Waziristan adds greater purpose to the calls for a security operation in the agency. Whatever exists in the name of protection is obviously not working. A revision is urgently required.