IT is difficult to say when Quetta was last at peace, but last month, the cursed city was witness to an upsurge in violence of all kinds. On April 28, Jaffar and Muhammad Ali, uncle and nephew, were shot dead in their electric repair workshop. The fourth attack on the minority Shia Hazara community that month, it prompted lawyer and activist Jalila Haider to go on a hunger strike. The day before, a Shahwani Baloch shopkeeper was murdered on Toghi Road. A large number of soldiers of the Frontier Corps and Balochistan Police, as well as members of the minority Christian community, have also been ruthlessly killed. The resurgence of attacks in Quetta on minority civilians and members of law enforcement should trigger an alarm for both state and society.

Healthy tensions between a society and its state are a defining characteristic of democracy. Civil rights groups constantly challenge the state for provision and protection of its citizenry’s fundamental rights. Of Pakistan’s peripheries, Balochistan is a particularly complicated puzzle. Not only has the state retreated, its society — traditionally represented by the ethno-nationalist parties — has also failed to facilitate a civil exchange between communities.

Far from what a multicultural urban city like Quetta requires, ethno-nationalist parties, associations and religious counterparts are based upon strict patriarchal and highly tribal ethnocentrism. The huge vacuum left by both warring state and the traditional society is being filled by non-state actors like Sipah-i-Sahaba, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) and an emerging presence of the militant Islamic State group. The problem is exacerbated by the state, which is so distrustful of Baloch­istan’s societal groups that it perceives any opportunist third party as a potential ally. With no breathing space, critical groups increasingly perceive the current context as engineered by the state and the military in particular. This can explain the reductionist narrative popularised by the slogan: “yeh jo dehshatgardi hai, iss ke peechay wardi hai”.

Growing up in Quetta, I saw that Baloch families were highly visible at the entrance of Marriabad. My father spoke fluent Pashto; unfortunately, I cannot. My concern is that this diminishing multilingualism across generations of Quetta’s residents is not limited to my family but part of a larger trend. The lack of data should be mourned, but surveys aren’t needed to show that a growing number of Quetta’s youth are learning English and Urdu, while disregarding local languages beyond their own.

All the youth demand is an honest conversation with the state.

In the face of obvious threats, all that the state has done to protect the Hazara community is to add more check posts at the entry points of their neighbourhoods. These have successfully deterred mass attacks committed within the neighbourhoods and thus given the residents a sense of security. But they have also resulted in the increasing ‘otherisation’ of Hazaras, who are further segregated from their non-Hazara city fellows. In the long run, the shrinking space for inter-community interactions is a recipe for more sectarian and ethnic violence.

Where there is data, such as that collected in the recent census, one questions the point if it is not used to devise relevant policies. Balochistan has a population growth rate of 3.37 per cent compared to the national average of 2.4pc. Due to an influx of Afghan refugees and internal migration of Baloch families fleeing violence in rural Balochistan, Quetta has grown immensely; from 11.8pc of the provincial population in 1998 to 18.4pc in 2017. All that is needed to address the growing violence in this complex, multicultural city is more understanding from policymakers at the centre.

Young critics from the periphery demand one thing: an honest conversation with the state. To react by failing to acknowledge their voices, or to dismiss such criticisms as illegitimate and/or foreign conspiracies, is to push these groups to perceive, in turn, the existence of extremist militant groups as a military-controlled non-reality.

Meanwhile, the walls of Quetta’s sectarian and ethno-linguistic divides grow taller. The state appears to have forgotten about nation-building, while traditional political groups are far from having the capacity or will to facilitate a civil, multicultural exchange between communities.

In the context of deep ethnic and sectarian schisms, a burgeoning population and complexities brought about by conflicts in rural Balochistan and neighbouring Afghanistan, the surge of violence in Quetta should be seen as an alarming indicator of potential civil violence. Several years ago, some quarters in the media (while condemning the use of terms such as ‘genocide’ to describe violence in Pakistan) expressed concern that violence against Hazaras might have some features of genocide. I pray that such partial apprehensions do not turn into a confirmed reality.

The writer is a Rotary Peace Fellow, and a graduate student at the University of North Carolina.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2018