Fadeout

When I made a reporting trip to Balochistan in 2004, I expected to encounter strong feelings against Islamabad.

When I made a reporting trip to Balochistan in 2004, I expected to encounter strong feelings against Islamabad. Balochistan was in the grip of a low-level insurgency. Just days before my trip, a roadside bomb in the fishing village of Gwadar had killed five Chinese engineers working on a massive new port. I was surprised to see children in Gwadar playing cricket in replicas of the uniforms of Pakistan’s national team. In fact, the only hostility I encountered was from aggressive undercover security agents who questioned me rudely and threatened to seize my camera.

Afterwards, a shop owner, overhearing me complain on the phone about my treatment, invited me to his home for lunch. “The army is disrespectful to us,” he said. “We are Pakistanis, but they treat us like foreigners.” And so, in his opinion, did the central government. “None of the work on the port has gone to people from Gwadar,” he added.

Two years later, the insurgency in Balochistan has grown. And the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti is a sign that the military has failed to understand that its belligerent tactics only make matters worse. Bugti was a rebel leader but he was also a former governor of the province and a respected elder to many Baloch. His death, which has triggered unrest and rioting in Balochistan, is symbolic of our government’s refusal to address the grievances of large numbers of Pakistanis who feel ignored and marginalised by Islamabad’s policies.

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After 9/11 and the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Musharraf seemed to offer a steady and somewhat liberal hand as we witnessed rapid economic growth and a soaring stock market, a liberalisation of private media outlets, and the resumption of a peace process with India. But that sense of hope is now fading. After seven years of Musharraf, Pakistan has become deeply divided.

The fissures are visible at multiple levels. The most obvious example is that of helicopters hunting down rebels in Balochistan and northwest frontier. Equally dangerous is the chronic failure of our provinces to agree on new dams essential to meeting our future needs for water. Or the inability of our society to channel dissent into debate.

What Pakistan needs is compromise: between provinces, between religion and secularism, between the desire for growth and the imperative to check inflation, between us and our neighbours. But a government led by a president in a soldier’s uniform has proven ill-suited to striking compromises. So we must try the alternative: a return to democracy, with its inherent horse trading, messiness, and false starts. Such a transition will not be without risk. But the alternative, the status quo, is even riskier.