EDITORIAL: The surrender of BNA (Baloch National Army) ‘commander’ Sarfraz Bungulzai, along with 70 ‘associates’, can mark a major turning point in Baloch history if it is handled right.
There’s no doubt that “India is behind all these conspiracies”, as he admitted, but that much was known even before Pakistani intelligence neutralised the Kulbhushan Yadav network in 2017 and exposed an undeniable link between India’s premier intelligence service, RAW (Research and Analysis Wing), and subversive activities in Balochistan.
It is now for Pakistan’s security agencies to work with the precious information provided by Bungulzai and his comrades in ways that they know best to keep the country and its interests safe.
But the other part of his message, that parents “should give your children education, not guns”, is equally important. For no foreign power is responsible for the sense of social and political disenfranchisement that the Baloch people have suffered from for decades.
And all governments, especially those that deal with insurgencies, know only too well that such deprivation often pushes embittered locals to fall prey to all sorts of indoctrination and take up arms against the state itself.
Yet this aspect of the Baloch problem has never been given the attention it deserves. And as a result the mineral and resource rich province, which should have been a magnet for foreign and local investment, has remained mired in revolt and terrorism all this time.
The state must also be mindful that this surrender will lose its value if it is treated in isolation. While it will have some impact, no doubt, you still cannot expect locals who have made it their mission to fight the state to lay down their arms just because these fellows did.
Yet such a course will become far more likely if there are visible efforts on the part of the federal and provincial governments to provide better opportunities for all Baloch citizens.
Welcoming Bungulzai back into the mainstream, provincial Caretaker Information Minister Jan Achakzai said, among other very appropriate and politically correct things, that Balochistan was “the key to Pakistan’s progress”. Yet while this is true in theory, no government so far has even taken the first baby steps on the road to making this a reality.
And the entire province, especially its capital, remains a hotbed of terror despite the presence of all sorts of security agencies from all departments. Therefore, welcome as the repatriation of BNA terrorists back into society is, it also carries a valuable lesson for the government of Pakistan.
How long must it deal with the kind of “enemies of the state” that turned “accidental insurgents” – a term coined in the war-on-terror days to define helpless locals with no hope for a normal life that opted for the Kalashnikov for no other reason than the absence of an olive branch?
The momentum created by the BNA commander’s voluntary surrender to the state must not be wasted. The government must immediately go many steps further to prove to the people why this is indeed the right step.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023