IT is not as if we have not been here before. Balochistan has bled for so long that the mainstream Pakistani consciousness has tuned it into the background. Yet every so often, the Baloch national question is thrust into the spotlight and everyone suddenly becomes an expert on everything Balochistan.

What has transpired after the gruesome killing of civilians in Musakhel — most of them reportedly of Seraiki and Punjabi backgrounds — is a microcosm of everything that is wrong about the way most Pakistanis, particularly in the core regions of our highly fragmented country, conceive of the Baloch question.

First came the frenzied demands for retribution. Expressing outrage at the killings is one thing, but giving the state license to crush ‘terrorism’ is another thing altogether. The current insurgency in Balochistan has raged for almost two decades, and was originally triggered by the dictatorial regime of General Pervez Musharraf, who, some readers will remember, publicly announced ‘they won’t know what hit them’.

Ever since, Baloch youth have been criminalised to no end, thus providing further fuel to the insurgency. Even staunch Pakistani nationalists have, on occasion, acknowledged that insurgencies, past and present, represent a failure of state policy. Militarisation of the Baloch question has not worked before, and will not work now.

Militarisation of the Baloch question has not worked.

Second was the lack of knowledge about Balochistan on display. Among other things, the term ‘Balochi’ was bandied about in reference to the people, whereas the correct term is ‘Baloch’. Then there was almost total neglect of the fact that Pash­tuns, Hazaras, Punjabis, Seraikis and others also call Balochistan their home. They do not all hold the same political opinions just because of their ethnic backgrounds. Indeed, the Baloch people are extremely diverse — the Makran belt in the south, for instance, comprises a distinct social formation to the northeastern parts of the province, including the Bugti, Mengal and Marri heartlands as well as Balochistan’s ‘green belt’ on the Sindh border.

Finally, there was the reduction of the entirely organic Baloch national question to great games and international conspiracies. It is certainly not implausible that there are regional and global players active in Balochistan, but the concerns that many Baloch have vis-a-vis the grand ‘developmental’ claims of projects like CPEC are long-standing and undeniable. Gwadar’s historic fishing communities, for example, have seen their livelihoods destroyed by corporate trawlers, while the wider population has been ravaged by state and private profiteers, who have made a killing through bogus real estate schemes.

Yet all of this seems to matter little in a social media universe where nuance, history and facts count for little. It is certainly true that social media has provided impetus to peaceful movements such as the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, but recent days confirm how the Facebook and Twitter algorithm as well as the statist trolls and bots ensure the de-intellectualisation of political debate.

It is also telling how supposedly broad-based consensuses around matters like enforced disappearances and ethnic profiling dissipate rapidly, and so many people outside the ethnic peripheries start displaying outright racism by calling for a boycott of Quetta cafes and banishing Baloch students from Punjab.

The obvious tensions which do exist between ethnic-nations in Pakistan should, in fact, make clear that the Pakistani state continues to fail spectacularly in addressing the Baloch and other national questions. The weaponisation of reli-

gion continues to be the calling card of choice, which is why the militants of the TLP and TTP thrive while even entirely peaceful Baloch youth who are demanding accountability of the state are called terrorists.

Thirty years ago, Eqbal Ahmad delivered a lecture entitled ‘Terrorism: Theirs & Ours’, which many ‘experts’ should listen to. In it, he meticulously outlined the manner in which the term ‘terrorism’ was instrumentally used by states to pursue their narrow, cynical interests. Of all the forms of political violence that can viably be called ‘terrorism’, it is the modern state, in fact, that has perpetrated the most terror.

There is little evidence that the master strategists who run this country are interested in genuinely resolving the eight-decade-old Baloch question. Those who claim to be on the side of the people, particularly those in the core regions of the country, must not do their bidding, and at the very least use critical analytical lenses to make sense of what is going on in Balochistan.

Working people from Punjab to Balochistan are not perpetrators of hate. They can, however, become conveyor belts for the politics of hate. It is this which must be resisted at all costs.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2024