www.punjabics.com

Home

  Balochistan Burning?

• Balochistan’s woes

• Furore in Balochistan over killing of nationalist leaders

• Who killed Baloch Leaders?

• Balochistan: a broken promise?

• Threat to secular Balochistan?

• Speech disappoints nationalists

• BRA women claim carrying out bomb attack in Quetta

                    ________________

 Balochistan’s woes

                 By I.A. Rehman 

Whatever ideas Islamabad has about Balochistan must be implemented: I.A Rehman.

AS if the militants’ threat to the state’s integrity and its democratic foundations were not enough to tax the establishment’s admittedly limited capacity for governance, alarm bells have again begun to be sounded about the dangerous situation in Balochistan.
The scale and duration of the province-wide protest against the foul killing of three Baloch leaders offered a clear indication of the people’s alienation from the state. Official attempts to defuse the situation by a quibble over the best-known victim’s nationality only made matters worse. This was confirmed by the decision by the provincial PPP chief, Lashkari Raisani, to give up all public and party offices.
A most explicit warning of Balochistan’s drift away from the state has come from the governor. He has asserted that despite being the federation’s representative he has never been consulted about provincial affairs. This adds a new dimension to the Baloch people’s chronic grievance about Islamabad’s inability to hear their voice.
To be fair to the federal authority it has been making more friendly noises than its predecessors. Mr Zardari has promised steps to end Balochistan’s sense of deprivation. A Rs4.7bn development package has been mentioned, perhaps too often. Reference has been made to a parliamentary committee’s proposals to satisfy the disgruntled elements and to plans to settle matters concerning the disappearances, exiles and political prisoners. Mr Gilani has been talking of his intention to convene an all-parties conference on the single issue of provincial autonomy.
Instead of calming passions these declarations of good wishes exacerbate the Baloch people’s anxieties because they have heard all this quite a few times before. Memories of committees set up to address Balochistan’s problems, non-implementation of their recommendations and sometimes even non-publication of their rosy proposals have made no small contribution to its people’s journey from frustration to despair.
Unfortunately, the federal government has harmed its case by choosing to stigmatise the Baloch struggle for political and economic autonomy, as envisaged and duly pledged in the vision of Pakistan, as intrigue by foreign powers. The obviously ill-considered plea had to be quickly retracted partly with a curious statement that a reference to Russia had been taken from old files and not from any current record.
Since the evidence of India’s role in stirring up unrest in Balochistan has not been made public it is not possible to comment on it. Pakistan and India have a long tradition of blaming the other for their indigenous tribulations and neither side enjoys credibility on this score.
What the two neighbours keep on doing to each other, in utter defiance of the canons of sanity, need not be discounted. But a situation created by denial of the Baloch people’s democratic and constitutional rights for six decades cannot be explained away as recent mischief by external agents. This is another instance of the deadly affliction called the state of self-denial that has prevented Islamabad from rationally analysing issues at critical moments. The state is not a fair-weather shop, it must assume the responsibility to mitigate the people’s suffering whatever its causes and howsoever difficult the task may be.
Apart from their political and economic grievances, the Baloch people’s emotional estrangement from the custodians of power needs to be taken into account. There is no doubt that those agitating for the rights of the federating units, loosely branded as nationalists, have been dealt with more harshly than patrons and ideologues of militant insurgents.
No one from amongst the leaders of militant organisations, including those banned as terrorist outfits, has received the treatment reserved, for instance, for eminent Sindhi nationalist Dr Sarki. For a long time he was held without acknowledgment and his conditions of detention were extremely harmful to his health, particularly his eyes, and then a wholly fictitious charge was foisted on him in a Zhob (Balochistan) court, a place he had probably never seen. But for the present government’s act of mercy he might still have been rotting in prison. Some of the Baloch students who were picked up during the first swoop on political dissidents in their province were subjected to such torture as to be permanently disabled.
A recent instance of what is described by Balochistan politicians as atrocities is the harassment of a Baloch family in Lahore where it took refuge over 15 years ago. Ms Samia Mazari, daughter of elder politician Sherbaz Mazari, niece of Nawab Akbar Bugti and mother-in-law of Brahmdag Bugti (eminently qualified for the guillotine, some traditional Baloch baiters might say) has cried out against harassment and threats by intelligence functionaries no responsible authority can permit. Those tormenting her and her daughter have been caught and identified while trying to make their photographs at a school. They have also interrogated the family doctor as if to ascertain whether these defenceless women’s ailments are in violation of security laws.
This policy of paying subsistence allowance to those accused of terrorism and humiliating others that are guilty of nothing more than political dissent has, on the one had, aggravated the Balochistan crisis and, on the other, emboldened the subversive elements in religious robes by convincing them that they are not considered the pest the nationalists in Balochistan (or, in Sindh or the NWFP, for that matter) are.
Thus, even before practical steps are taken to mend ties with the people of Balochistan the language of discourse ought to be given the dressing of civilised idiom. The poor and much-maligned Baloch has been left far too long to subsist on his pride alone, and his sentiments cannot be trifled with.
Whatever good ideas Islamabad has about Balochistan must begin to be implemented. Total reliance on long-gestation projects will not be enough and due attention must be paid to resolving the day-to-day concerns of the people, especially the disadvantaged — such as their need for employment, a decent wage, facilities of safe movement, satisfaction of basic needs and guarantees of security of life and due protection of the law. Whatever step is taken it must be strictly in accordance with the wishes and priorities of the prospective beneficiaries.
It is perhaps time that Balochistan’s leaders too put their act together. They have quite comprehensively documented the wrongs done to them over the decades, but their plans for their people’s liberation from anachronistic bonds, their empowerment and their progress, do not go beyond bare statements about autonomy and rights. They must come up with a practicable blueprint for Balochistan’s uplift, otherwise the federal authority will continue relying on its flawed diagnosis of their province’s problems and its ineffective cures                            Dawn. Thursday, 07 May, 2009

 Furore in Balochistan over killing of nationalist leaders  

Angry protesters took to the streets in Quetta and blocked the Karachi-Quetta highway. —APP/File photo

QUETTA: A police constable was killed and at least 12 other people were injured in firing on Thursday as Balochistan slid into violence after the bodies of three Baloch nationalist leaders were found in Turbat.

The decomposed bodies of Baloch National Movement (BNM) chairman Ghulam Mohammad Baloch, Lala Muneer Baloch and Sher Mohammad Baloch of the Baloch Republican Party (BRP) were found in Pedarak, near Turbat, late on Wednesday night.

Kachkol Ali, an advocate and former leader of the opposition in the Balochistan assembly, had alleged at a press conference four days back that the three leaders had been whisked away by security officials from his chamber on April 3. They had gone to the court to attend the hearing of a case against them.

Baloch political groups and bar associations gave a call for a general strike on Friday and Saturday and a wheel-jam strike on Sunday to condemn the killings. Lawyers will boycott courts till Saturday. Nationalist parties also announced seven-day mourning in Balochistan and other parts of the country. 

Police took the bodies to Turbat after receiving information about them. ‘The bodies appear to be four to five days old,’ a police official said.

Political workers, students and supporters of nationalist parties took to the streets early in the morning in Quetta, Khuzdar, Kharan, Nushki, Turbat, Mand, Panjgur, Gwadar, Kalat, Mastung and Dera Murad Jamali. A complete strike was observed in the towns.

The Balochistan University and all other educational institutions were closed till Sunday.

Protesters blocked the Sariab and Brewery roads in the provincial capital by setting tyres on fire and erecting barricades. They also pelted vehicles with stones and attacked several buildings. 

A pick-up of the United Nations was set on fire on Sariab Road, so was a bus of the Women’s University on Brewery Road and a car in front of the Civil Hospital.

Students of the Balochistan University blocked a road and set afire a bus of a government department.

Protesters also torched a branch of Askari Bank in Hazar Gangi and attacked other banks on Sariab Road. A mob smashed windowpanes of several buildings on Brewery Road.

Police and Balochistan Constabulary personnel used tear gas to disperse the protesters.  An exchange of fire between police and the protesters occurred near Sariab. Police arrested over a dozen people. Armed men attacked a police van with a hand grenade near a bypass in Quetta, injuring three policemen. A group of people broke window panes of an office of the Water and Power Development Authority in Sheikh Manda.A man was inured in a grenade attack on his house in Killi Bangulzai.
In Karachi, tension gripped the Baloch-dominated areas when demonstrators blocked traffic, resorted to firing into the air and burned tyres in protest against the killing.

Condemning the killing, Karachi-based Baloch nationalist leaders called for shutterdown strikes in all Baloch-populated areas on April 10 and 11, and a wheeljam strike on April 12.  Baloch National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) leader Sardar Akhtar Mengal alleged at a press conference that intelligence agencies were responsible for the killing. In Khuzdar, constable Ahmed Khan Zehri was shot dead in Civil Colony while he was going to a police station.  Protesters clashed with police in different parts of the town and two people were reported to have been injured in an exchange of fire.

A blast also rocked the town. The administration called out the Frontier Corps. ‘FC troops have been deployed at important buildings and places,’ said Wahid Shahwani, a resident of Khuzdar.  The demonstrators blocked the highway linking Quetta with Karachi at different points in Khuzdar district, suspending traffic between Sindh and Balochistan. A doctor was shot in Ghazgi area of Mastung.

In Mand, a mob set a police station on fire after ransacking it. Branches of several banks were also set ablaze and vehicles were pelted with stones. FC personnel were deployed in the town.In Panjgur, a mob attacked offices of the Pakistan People’s Party and the Balochistan National Party-A and government buildings. The PPP office was destroyed.  A mob damaged several shops in Gwadar Bazaar. Police foiled an attempt to set the shops on fire.

Law enforcement personnel stopped a mob from entering the port. In Hub, five people were injured in a grenade attack near a mosque. Police arrested over three dozen workers of the Baloch Students’ Organisation (BSO) and political parties during demonstrations.  The BSO leaders said law enforcement agencies’ personnel baton-charged women of the Baloch Penal to stop them from taking out a procession. Shakar Bibi advocate, who was leading the procession, was injured. Police and FC contingents started patrolling Quetta and adjacent areas in the night.

Ghulam Mohammad and Sher Mohammad were buried in their native town Mand and Lala Muneer in Chitkan village, near Panjgur. Thousands of people attended the funerals. The bodies had been handed over to their relatives after legal formalities. According to sources, they bore torture marks and bullet wounds.                            DAWN:Friday, 10 Apr, 2009 By Saleem Shahid

                                                 Who killed the Baloch leaders?  

A man removes burning tyres set alight by protesters in Karachi April 9, 2009. The protesters were demonstrating against the killing of political activists in Balochistan. — Reuters                             

KARACHI: Riots have broken out in Karachi as well as Quetta, Khuzdar and other areas of Balochistan after the bodies of three Baloch political activists were located by the police near Turbat late on Wednesday.  Baloch National Movement (BNM) President Ghulam Mohammad Baloch, Lala Munir, also of the BNM, and Sher Mohammad Baloch of the Baloch Republican Party (BRP) were found dead in a mountainous area 40 kilometres away from Turbat.The three were picked up by unidentified armed men from the chamber of Advocate Kachkol Ali in Turbat on April 3, 2009. ‘I was right there when three cars full of men dressed in civilian clothes showed up outside my chamber.’‘On that day, the Anti-Terrorist Court (ATC) Turbat had dismissed all cases against Ghulam Baloch, Lala Munir and Sher Mohammad Baloch and there were no more cases against the three.’ The activists had been accused of sparking political unrest in Quetta and Karachi in relation to the Baloch nationalist movement and the increasing number of missing persons cases. In the past few months, Baloch politicians and nationalists have alleged that members of nationalist groups have been abducted by government agencies. ‘The unidentified men stormed into my office and began tying the three up,’ says Advocate Ali. ‘A scuffle followed and one of the lawyers there started resisting. They tied him up but he was released once the men ascertained his identity,’ he says. ‘I believe they were killed soon after they were picked up.’ ‘All three of them were shot in the head and the conditions of their bodies indicate they were killed soon after they went missing,’ adds BNM’s acting president Asa Zafar. According to a report, the dead bodies were at least six days old. It is notable that Ghulam Mohammad Baloch was also a member of the 10-member committee constituted by Hyrbyar Marri to ascertain the identities of Balochistan’s missing persons as well as to negotiate the release of UNHCR’s Quetta director John Solecki. Ghulam Baloch was abducted from the advocate’s chamber on April 3 and Solecki was released the very next morning. ‘After the government of Pakistan denied knowledge of the 1,109 missing as demanded by the Balochistan Liberation United Front (BLUF), this committee was constituted to ascertain the numbers and the identities of the missing,’ a cousin of Ghulam Baloch says. ‘Only two days before Ghulam was taken away from Advocate Ali’s chamber, a United Nations committee had met Khairbux Marri. On that same day, Ghulam Baloch spoke to the press and said the committee was making headway in its attempts to secure Solecki’s release.’ Asked as to what prompted Solecki’s abductors, whose demand was justice for Balochistan’s missing, to release the UN official when a committee member aiming to secure that very release had also gone missing, Asa Zafar said: ‘We are a political party. We do not know any of Solecki’s abductors and what happened with Ghulam Baloch is nothing but a conspiracy against our party and against the people of Balochistan.’ ‘When Solecki was abducted, a crackdown had started against Baloch nationalist groups. Ghulam had told me on several occasions that he was being threatened with death,’ Ameen Baloch, BNM’s representative in Karachi, adds. ‘It is possible that Ghulam Baloch was deeply involved in some of the investigations regarding the missing and had uncovered something crucial.… Maybe that is why he and his colleagues were killed,’ Ghulam’s cousin suggests. But BRP’s Riaz Badeni says that ‘Solecki’s is a separate subject altogether.’ His opinion is echoed by BRP Karachi chapter's leader Shahnawaz Baloch, who argues that there is no connection between the abduction and the subsequent killing of the three activists and Solecki’s release. ‘It is only elements from within the government who have orchestrated the attacks,' he says. For his part, Advocate Ali argues that a new tactic is transpiring, which involves the abduction and extra-judicial killing of people. ‘The abduction of Ghulam, Lala Munir and Sher Mohammad was a downright insult of the ATC’s decision,’ he adds. According to the advocate, after the April 3 incident, he tried to register an FIR against the chiefs of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Military Intelligence (MI), Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Frontier Corps (FC), but no case was registered. ‘I was shooed away by the police,’ he says.  Meanwhile, Provincial Minister for Irrigation Aslam Bizenjo expresses outrage at the death of the Baloch activists. ‘[The perpetrators] want to disrupt peace in Balochistan,’ he says. Bizenjo alleges that this is the work of government agencies and claims that he, along with several other members of the provincial assembly, will be registering an official protest.  While protests and rioting continues, a three-member tribunal, comprising Balochistan High Court judges, has been constituted by Balochistan's Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani to investigate the activists’ death.  The Balochistan High Court has also taken a suo motu notice in this regard. It has summoned the provincial home secretary, police chiefs of the Turbat and Panjgur districts and the concerned area's Station House Officer (SHO) on April 16 while taking notice of the incident.Earlier, Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Ali Ahmed Kurd announced a boycott of courts in Balochistan for three days as well as a boycott across Pakistan on April 13 to condemn the killings. He had demanded that the killers be arrested and produced before the courts.                                                                                                                           DAWN: Thursday, 09 Apr, 2009Qurat ul ain Siddiqui
                                          Balochistan: a broken promise?

Paramilitary forces patrol the streets of Quetta following the outbreak of civil unrest. - AP Photo

PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar’s article in these pages, in response to one by former senator Sanaullah Baloch, cleverly skirted the issue of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and missing persons in the country’s largestprovince of Balochistan. 
It is, in fact, these two unresolved issues that have plagued the PPP-led process of reconciliation in the conflict-ridden province. 
The PPP came to power for the first time in the history of Balochistan after the Feb 2008 polls. The ruling party’s pledge to end the insurgency, restore trust amongst the Baloch and ensure a permanent settlement of the Baloch dispute was heavily hinged on drastic constitutional and institutional changes. The party, despite all its promises, never opted for generous constitutional amendments that could restore the confidence of the Baloch people in Islamabad’s commitment to their cause. 
A handful of measures taken to demonstrate that the so-called process of reconciliation was being initiated were, in fact, individual-specific. Besides Sardar Akhtar Mengal and Shahzain Bugti, a grandson of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, no commoner among the hundreds of ‘missing persons’ has been released to date. The government has not even acknowledged the case of the missing persons and this compelled a relatively new organisation, the Baloch Liberation United Front, to abduct John Solecki, head of the UN refugee agency in Quetta on Feb 2. 
The question is, was the PPP government waiting for such an ugly development — the kidnapping of a foreign aid worker — to raise the issue of Balochistan’s missing people? If it is not resolved immediately, can we actually afford another disgraceful incident in the future? Are such incidents what it would take to highlight the plight of the ‘disappeared’? Worse still, Rehman Malik, the advisor on interior affairs, brazenly ridiculed the Baloch list of missing persons by billing it ‘unrealistic’ and ‘exaggerated’. 
Similarly, Baloch nationalist demands include de-militarisation of the province; they have called upon the government to withdraw troops from Dera Bugti and Kohlu districts that stand ravaged by the military operation carried out during the Musharraf regime. A year after the general elections, neither has the army been pulled out from the conflict zones as a confidence-building measure (CBM) nor has the media been allowed access to witness and record the extent of excruciating damage caused to human life, property and livelihoods 
Jamil and Talal Akbar Bugti, sons of the late Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, are not permitted to enter their native soil of Dera Bugti to offer fateha at the grave of their slain father — an undoubtedly inhuman and undemocratic act. How can Bugti’s sons and tribesmen believe that democracy has truly returned to Balochistan when they live under such cruel restrictions? The members of the opponent Bugti clans have been pitted against Akbar Bugti’s heirs who have no access to their land and other property. The personal library of the slain nawab, once believed to be one of the best collections in the region, is reported to have been looted by none other than big guns in the security forces. 
Similarly, the PPP government, which clearly lacks the spunk to bypass the security and intelligence agencies, has failed to intervene in the existing humanitarian crisis in Dera Bugti and Kohlu. The five-year long armed conflict in the area has created over 100,000 internal displaced persons; hailing mainly from the Marri and Bugti tribes, IDPs have been forced to take refuge in neighbouring Naseerabad and Jaffarabad districts of Balochistan and are in desperate need of medical assistance, rehabilitation and economic incentives. 
On the other hand, for over two years, security forces — the actual rulers of the area — have kept governmental and non-governmental organisations from not only conducting surveys in the area, but also from dispatching any form of aid to IDPs. How can the Baloch have faith in the PPP-led process of reconciliation when policies initiated by Pervez Musharraf persist? The process of reconciliation can only begin when IDPs receive medical care, food and a promise of a gradual return to their homes. 
Furthermore, instead of ending the cycle of enforced disappearances, the state secret services have, under the PPP administration, allegedly begun whisking away political opponents all over again. Currently, no one knows the whereabouts of Dr Bashir Azeem, the central secretary general of the Baloch Republican Party (BRP), Jalil Rekhi, the party’s information secretary and another central leader of the opposition, Chakar Qambarani. Even a university student, Qambar Malik Baloch, was recently said to have been abducted by government functionaries. 
Islamabad can no longer afford to oversimplify or underestimate the Baloch issue. It is time the centre treated the province in a dignified manner — empowered it politically, administratively and, most importantly, economically. It is crystal clear that the unrest and sense of deprivation in the province cannot be eliminated until Islamabad concedes to its demand of complete constitutional ownership of indigenous natural resources. 
Therefore, the PPP government should seriously induct drastic constitutional reforms before the Balochistan conundrum spirals out of control. A powerless and deprived province poses a greater risk to the integrity of the federation of Pakistan. Democratic governments are expected to confront daunting challenges. If the PPP can defend its recent truce with Islamic extremists in Swat, then, as was rightly argued by Sanaullah Baloch, why can it not come up with a similar bold initiative that guarantees economic and political sovereignty for Balochistan?
Dawn:Monday, 02 Mar, 2009
                              Threat to secular Balochistan? 

The Taliban have now vociferously asserted their existence in the province, announcing the formation of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Balochistan.—AP/File

Nothing embarrasses and irks Pakistani spymasters more than the issue of Talibanisation in Quetta. Over the years, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly protested against the alleged protection provided by Islamabad to Mullah Omar, the one-eyed spiritual cleric and reclusive leader of the Afghan Taliban.

As Pakistan’s internationally acclaimed journalist, Ahmed Rashid, laments in his book Descent into Chaos, “Today, seven years after 9/11, Mullah Omar and the original Afghan Taliban Shura still live in Balochistan province.” A Baloch nationalist leader, Sanaullah Baloch, also bemoans the presence of Taliban supporters who have captured land worth Rs2bn along the eastern and western bypass of Quetta. These quarters are now virtual no-go areas. Islamabad, nonetheless, has been in a state of constant denial.  The Taliban have now vociferously asserted their existence in Balochistan. Engineer Asad, a self-proclaimed spokesman of the newly formed Tehrik-i-Taliban Balochistan (TTB), was recently quoted in a newspaper as saying that their struggle was “against non-Muslims and western forces that had attacked and occupied Islamic countries … the TTB was committed to fighting the enemies of Islam”. The TTB, as reported, disassociates itself from Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), bills suicide bombing as un-Islamic and rules out any vendetta with the Sherani faction of the JUI. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the ISI-CIA-nexus enthusiastically exported this jihad from Quetta to Afghanistan. During the Taliban regime, Islamabad went overboard in its support for their rule in Kabul by setting up a telephone network, which became a part of the Pakistan telephone grid. Hence one could dial Kandahar from anywhere in Pakistan as a domestic call, with the same code as Quetta. For Islamabad, the post-Taliban era coincided with the rise of the nationalistic insurgency in Balochistan. The Islamists were given protection in Quetta so that they could serve Islamabad’s interest against progressive and secular Baloch forces. The centre is confident that a bribed mullah is certain to serve as a reliable collaborator against the mounting Baloch nationalist movement. In fact, over the past many years Quetta has been used as a training ground by the Taliban as they have been blowing up Internet cafes, music and CD shops in the city for long. There is growing fear that the Taliban can surface with a Swat-like showdown any time in the near future. The Taliban presence is substantiated by the fact that not a single incident of suicide bombing has ever been reported by Baloch insurgents who have confronted the centre five times since the controversial accession of Balochistan to Pakistan in 1948. Suicide bombing is purely a Taliban-related phenomenon in this region and in the recent past, Quetta city has been the hub of continuous suicide bombings. For instance, on Feb 17, 2007, 13 people, including a senior judge, were killed and several others injured in a suicide bomb attack in a district court. On Dec 13, 2007, seven people were killed in another suicide bombing incident. Last year, on Sept 24, two persons, including a teenaged girl, were killed and 22 people were injured in a suicide bomb explosion. An earlier suicide bomb attack on Sept 9 took place at a religious school in the outskirts of Quetta; it left five dead and 12 students were injured. The latest suicide attack on March 2 in Pishin also took six lives. Ironically, Islamabad eliminated Baloch leaders Nawab Bugti and Balaach Marri on the pretext that they had challenged the ‘writ of the state’. But to date, not a single bullet has been fired at Islamists who are training suicide bombers and murdering innocent civilians in the name of religion.The discourse on moderate and extremist Taliban is ridiculous. A Talib will always remain a narrow-minded, conservative barbarian, bent upon killing until people subscribe to his bizarre and irrational interpretation of Islam. Today, the Taliban are operating in Balochistan with a better strategy. No longer are they willing to put all their eggs in one basket. The proponents of the Taliban, often described as ‘moderate religious forces’, are fast penetrating the secular Baloch province by getting elected to the provincial legislature with overwhelming financial assistance from intelligence agencies, according to some reports.In the 2002 general elections, the pro-Taliban JUI-F secured16 seats in the Balochistan Assembly. In the incumbent Balochistan Assembly, the JUI-F has 10 seats — a political front for the clandestine backing provided to the Taliban. Secondly, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, another brainchild of the establishment, is out to crush democratic and secular forces in the conflict-ridden province. On Jan 26, the outlawed group killed the chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) Hussain Ali Yousafi. Such attacks are likely to transform Quetta into an intolerant  place wherel one would eventually have to be a practisng Sunni Muslim to clinch a ‘residential permit’ from the ‘custodians of Islam’.The Talibanisation of Balochistan, a province which shares borders with Iran and Afghanistan, is going to be catastrophic. The policymakers in Islamabad should recognise that if the secular Baloch province falls into the hands of fanatics, it will not only jeopardise the integrity of the federation, but also cause unrest in the entire region. Al Qaeda would surely use this area as a hub for further terrorist attacks on Nato and American forces and pro-US Gulf countries. Undoubtedly, when carrying out political transactions in Balochistan, both Islamabad and the international community must give preference to the democratic and secular Baloch over obscurantist Taliban forces.   DAWN:Monday, 09 Mar, 2009 By Malik Siraj Akbar 

 BRA women claim carrying out bomb attack in Quetta

Bomb disposal officials examine the site of a blast in Quetta, July 4, 2008. — Reuters

QUETTA: Four people were injured when a bomb exploded in a cafe in the busy Liaquat bazaar here on Tuesday, and the women’s wing of the Baloch Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attack.

According to police, the bomb planted in the cafe went off at about 1.30pm, destroying the building and shattering windowpanes of nearby shops.The injured were taken to the civil hospital where the condition of one of them was critical. A woman who identified herself as Gohar Bibi and claimed to be spokesperson for the women’s wing of the Baloch Republican Army, told reporters on phone from an unspecified place that her group had carried out the blast.Meanwhile, two gas pipelines were blown up in the Pir Koh gas field. Large portions of the pipelines supplying gas to the main purification plant in Sui were damaged

  Dawn :Wednesday, 25 Mar, 2009By Saleem Shahid