DEVIKA SAHNI
“Nomads crossing the desert with their camels; dark-skinned women dressed in bright colours (rarely under a burqa) and children cleaning the characteristic dark blue Baloch carpets in the Helmand river . . . These are some of the images one associates with the Baloch,” observes Daulat Popal, history professor at Kabul University. But, according to the Pashtun scholar, there is much more to these forgotten people than romantic and colorful clichés.