Their attacks and targeting are aimed at showing the state of Pakistan helpless against their onslaught, denting its image, exposing its vulnerability, and threatening its integrity. It aims to establish Pakistan as an unstable political economy in an environment where Pakistan is on the verge of bringing development and prosperity to the people of Balochistan. CPEC, exploration for natural resources, and mining, thus, remain circumspect, adding to the despair and despondency among the people at large. This is other than the cost we pay in flesh and blood.
There is an exceptionally fine distinction that separates terror, insurgency and conflict. These are gradual degradations of what may have begun as a simple unease or disaffection. When a remedy is not made or doesn’t arrive in time because of neglect, hubris or arrogance, the situation worsens to what we now face in Balochistan. Historically, alienation has been faced with force. This has begotten force as a reaction needing even greater force to face it off, with an equal rise in intensity of reaction till we reached where we are now.
BLA’s audacity over the weekend is the latest in this battle which has only seen increasing ferocity. Not that it can lead to secession or a widespread uprising against the state of Pakistan in Balochistan, but it is enough to embarrass the state and to push back any gains made through the symbolism of stability achieved at great cost.
Most headlines in the Papers the next day called the military and paramilitary forces’ defensive action against the dissidents’ assault a ‘counter-terror’ blitz. I have a problem with this taxonomy. A few derivations from this mindset are in order. Is terror in Balochistan sporadic, or a continuation of a spate which the dissidents impose on the state at will? The initiative to unleash terror on the people and the state, to subdue and demoralise the people and the state apparatus, is with the groups fighting the state.
The defence is reactionary and will always be a step behind in the sequence. The dissident groups are thus able to achieve their objective of violating the sanctity of the spaces which belong to the state. Any action which follows, however successful and laden with the supreme sacrifice that proud Pakistani forces make, cannot restore the inviolability of the sanctity attached to the country’s spaces. Clearly, the matter is beyond the scale and scope of terrorism alone. Also, it infuses that misstated sentiment that a mid-level police officer is enough to counter and eliminate these threats. Events in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, in comparison, however threatening, have yet not been able to create a widespread disaffection to turn into an insurgency. This fine differentiation is essential to carve an appropriate counter-strategy.
Looking at the logistical chain that went into enacting twelve simultaneous terror incidents would only mean an equally widespread support infrastructure, favouring the anti-state groups. This should be a cause for concern. Why the cover wasn’t blown in the preparatory days and weeks before this event should worry the state. Does it mean that the sentiment is as widespread as the fact shows? If so, we are dealing with an insurgency which only uses terror as a tool. In that case, merely fighting the groups arrayed against the state in a kinetic response is only part of the strategy.
The larger solution needs the state to increase its outreach to those citizens who seek protection and cover against these elements, and to not cower before the terror imposed on them by the dissident groups. They would then be bold enough to refuse to become accomplices in an anti-state activity. We need to stop this drift of the people away from being a loyal populace to a sentiment favouring the dissidents.
Dissidents need to show that they are winning and that they carry an ideology which is at odds with how the state is structured and functions, while the state must counter that by honest and resolute action against such a narrative and reinforce it with committed service and pervasive engagement for the well-being of the people. This is only possible through the elected representatives being seen more often than they are among the people in their constituencies, and not delegating it to the token presence of bureaucracy which is as wary of exposing itself to the unease of the people.
This has resulted in neglecting people and their needs for decades. This needs politics of engagement, and keeping the people of Balochistan first, not from the refuge of cosy and plush offices, but by being among them and with them through pervasive presence. We need the country’s politics to be bold but not insensitive.
A counterinsurgency fight needs a separate set of tools. We need to ensure that the full gamut of governance is seen to serve the people of the province. This is a battle for the hearts and minds, not merely a force-on-force kinetic fight, which would be true in a counter-terror effort. A conflicted Balochistan does not need merely conflict management — which is keeping things as they are, not letting them worsen — but a conflict resolution to eliminate all those factors which keep the region vulnerable and prone to strife, unease and disaffection. That alone will permit moving the scale of development and prosperity forward. Without such progress in the scale and scope of development, the sense of alienation will only continue to grow among the common Baloch, making the already fragile situation in Balochistan even more precarious.
When the collective wisdom in the Parliament ordains ‘elimination of dissident groups in Balochistan’, it only addresses part of the problem. Kinetic force is only one plank. The larger solution is including the rest of the tools in fighting a counter-insurgency — richly documented over time. Examples abound. Balochistan has a population of around fifteen million. The dissidents are only a handful. It is about winning the rest over, which will give us the victory in this long-fought battle. The battle is for winning souls, not counting bodies. If we can make that fine distinction and re-tweak the strategy, we would have put to an end what has been Pakistan’s longest bleeding sore.