Zia Baloch came to Islamabad from his native Kharan in Balochistan in search of better education opportunities. He says when he first came in 2006, there were no more than 40 Baloch students in the city when there are now around 2,000.

The poor quality of education and the chaos in the province made him move to Islamabad, he said.

“There is a huge gap between the quality of education in Balochistan and Islamabad. When I first came, I needed to work twice as hard as my other colleagues as most Baloch students have a very weak educational base,” he said.

Zia is currently pursuing a PhD in Pakistani languages at the Allama Iqbal Open University, where he also teaches the subject. He holds Masters and MPhil degrees from the University of Balochistan.

“We have to put in a lot of effort. There are many Baloch students who have secured top positions at various universities and are gold medalists,” he said.

Had his educational background been stronger, he said, he would not have had to face so many problems. “The Balochistan government should invest in primary schools and create an environment which encourages education and extracurricular activities”.

Like Zia, many students from Balochistan have come to Islamabad to pursue higher education.

According to Baloch councils, which keep records of students from the province, almost 4,000 students from various tribes are studying in Islamabad’s schools, colleges and universities.

While Balochistan was always the more neglected of the four provinces, the situation has worsened after the death of Baloch tribal leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in 2006. His death had grave implications for the politics, economy and social fabric of Balochistan. Many residents of the province have since migrated to other parts of the country. Although Balochistan has always lagged behind other provinces when it came to education, the violence and chaos that followed Bugti’s death has made receiving an education all the more difficult.

Universities have morphed into military checkpoints and are no longer safe for students. Parents who can afford to do so send their children to Punjab or Islamabad to study.

In 2008, the PPP introduced an initiative called the Aghaaz-i-Haqooq Balochistan Package through which a few students from each district in the province would be given a scholarship to pay for part of their studies.

Most of the students who qualified chose to study in Lahore or Islamabad and students from Balochistan already studying in the capital began telling friends and family back home about the opportunities in the city, urging them to move as well.

Baloch councils have since formed in most universities in Islamabad in order to help Baloch students coming in to study in the federal capital.Jameelur Rehman, who is from Turbat, earned his Masters in international relations from the National University of Modern Languages (Numl).

“I could not afford to study out of the province after I graduated from secondary school. I taught for a year and a half at an English language centre in Turbat before coming across an advertisement for a Higher Education Commission (HEC) scholarship in a local newspaper. I got the scholarship and had a chance to study in Islamabad. It was an indescribably happy moment,” he said.

Talking about the difficulties he had to face, Jameel said: “There were times when I could not afford to eat three times a day. I could not go home for Eid because I did not have enough money and there were no direct trains, buses or flights to my home town. The HEC scholarship was not enough to meet my expenses but I worked hard and became a gold medalist at Numl.”

Jameel has since applied to teaching positions in Numl but was not able to get a job. He worked as a visiting lecturer at a local university but was not able to continue with his MPhil from Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) because the job did not pay enough.

However, he recently got accepted for a scholarship for pursing education at a foreign university.

Another Baloch student who came to Islamabad top pursue higher education at the QAU also said his experiences of studying in Islamabad were “very bad”.

Munir Baloch scored the highest in two of four semesters for his Masters in international relations (IR).

“There is no use for IR in Balochistan as there are no think tanks, research institutes and a few media outlets. We dont have IR departments in colleges and only two universities offer IR degrees,” he said. Even after they are done with education, Munir said Baloch students still found it hard to secure jobs.

“There is a huge difference in class, background and status. In Islamabad, opportunities are linked to one’s background. The higher the class, the better the opportunities. One of my friends got a job at a UN agency because her father is influential. Another friend got a job in the Division of Strategic Planning because he has connections in think tanks and senior officials. There are so many more examples I can give you,” he said.Of the 4,000 of Baloch students studying in Islamabad, not more than 30 are women, Looking for female Baloch students to talk about their experiences was very difficult and the two Dawn found were not comfortable with being interviewed.

The disparity serves to highlight the very real issue of gender inequality in education – yet another reason that Balochistan remains in a time warp.

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2016