Turbat killings

Another sad incident in Balochistan has forced us to shift our gaze towards the province. Two days ago, a dam construction site in the Turbat region came under attack late at night from a group of militants. Around 20 labourers working on the construction site were killed. The workers included 16 Punjabis and four Sindhis. Observers have pointed out that the killings appear to follow the infrequent, but continuing, pattern of non-Baloch workers being targeted in Balochistan. The incident needs to be condemned in the strongest terms. It also leaves us with a number of questions: how should the current situation in Balochistan be understood? Is there a need for a new policy framework for Balochistan? The current phase of separatist militancy in Balochistan is about to complete a decade. However, popular discourse on Balochistan has not evolved beyond claiming that everything going on in the province is a foreign conspiracy. Balochistan Home Minister Shahnawaz Bugti repeated the mantra after the attack by pointing to the involvement of ‘external enemies’. The Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Malik also made a similar claim. He also carried the body of one of the labourers to show solidarity with those killed.
The problem is that blaming external agents for separatist militancy is not enough. Also, the allegations of human rights abuses against activists and people in Balochistan are strong and real and cannot be pushed aside because inhumanities like this one occur. What is very strange is that all twelve Levies guards assigned to the labour camp were unhurt. This raises the question of whether they were too afraid to fight or were in cahoots with the attackers. If the latter is true, it is a worrying sign. The Makran commissioner claimed that the security officials had been overpowered, but that seems rather strange. The fact that the attacks occurred in the home town of the Balochistan chief minister means that the legitimacy of the current elected Balochistan government is also at stake. The killings were claimed by the Baloch Liberation Front which said that the workers were working on the Pakistan-China Economic Corridor project. That action needs to be taken against the assailants goes without being said. But the fact also is that there needs to be resolution to the broader problems of the state’s role in Balochistan where most remain unconvinced by the development rhetoric given out by the state.