Tag Archives: Balochistan
Collateral damage
Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
The news of the death of 12 Bugti tribesmen in a supposed clash with the FC men after a mine blast that killed three of the FC men is alarming and disconcerting. Details filtering out say that they were taken into custody after the blast and executed.
The news is all the more disturbing because this incident is not without precedent. In the Dungan area of Marri agency in the fall of 1975, nine Marri tribesmen of the Shahija and Kalwani clan, including Qaiser Khan, Baazi Khan Shahija and Ganj Ali Kalwani were lined up and shot after the army suffered losses in a clash in the vicinity. That atrocity had gone unpunished and unnoticed and this one too will probably go unpunished, in spite of being reported. Such atrocities have grave implications and consequences for the health of the federation and its credibility as protector of people’s rights.
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Social Meltdown
Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
Dayaks, the head-hunting tribe of Borneo famous for shrinking heads of enemies to display as coveted trophies are considered primitive and uncivilized for their violence, but their violence was never the wanton violence that we witness today in Pakistan where worshipping places, shrines, Ulema, political leaders and innocent people all become victims of violence perpetrated by deranged minds who are exhorted on to it by even more warped minds and ideologies. Dayak head-hunters considered it immoral to kill someone they didn’t know or didn’t have a score to settle with. They were baffled to learn that the supposedly civilized people used bombs and weaponry to kill and maim. The killing of strangers and consequently the innocents with whom they had no feud was something reprehensible and revolting to them. The wilful violence practiced by the civilized had no place in their primitive society. The Dayaks were a lot more civil and refined in their violence than the people residing within the boundaries of this Islamic Republic. Here the violence is as wanton as it is senseless and immoral. We need to learn from the Dayaks.
The blame for this social breakdown and the spiralling rise of violence can be squarely laid at the doors of ruling elite whose short-sightedness and the desire to cling to power at any cost has eroded the accepted norms, values, practices and conventions that had helped keep the social fabric intact. The situation has been worsened and compounded by the connivance and complicity of the political parties, blinded by their urge and desire to be a party to the loot and plunder unleashed upon this blighted country. Politicians of easy virtue are a bane for any country and here we have them in excess.
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The Gulf of Kohlu incident
Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
On August 4th 1964 two US destroyers in the Vietnamese waters in the Gulf of Tonkin claimed that they had been attacked by the North Vietnamese gunboats. This alleged attack had never taken place but a furore was created over this and used as an excuse to begin the bombing of North Vietnam. This was the time when slowly US forces were starting to sink in the morass of their own aggression against the Vietnamese people whom they accused of being Communists. The people of Vietnam only wanted their rightful sovereignty which the US was bent upon denying them. What eventually happened to the aggressor is history.
Incidents like these have been staged and at times State managed all through history to use as excuses for aggression and violation of human rights .In the last analysis the aggressor doesn’t really need this fig leaf for its brazen aggression. The aggressor always uses the logic of the wolf of the famous fable about the lamb and wolf ,in which the wolf alleges misdemeanours but is rebutted every time eventually comes out with the stark intent of eating the lamb come what may.
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