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| December 15, 2005 | Thursday | Ziqa’ad 12, 1426 |
Rulers blamed for Balochistan’s backwardness
ISLAMABAD, Dec 14: Speakers at a conference here on Wednesday held the establishment and the sardars (tribal chiefs) responsible for the abject poverty and backwardness of Balochistan.
“Sardari system in Balochistan could not be abolished after independence as successive governments, including the political ones, compromised with the agendas of Sardars at the cost of basic civil and economic rights of ordinary people”, said the speakers at a two-day conference on “Balochistan Through History” that started here on Wednesday.
Chair on Quaid-i-Azam and Freedom Movement, National Institute of Pakistan Studies has organized the event in collaboration with Quaid-i-Azam University.
“Having emerged and integrated in the heyday of Khanate of Kalat (1666-1839), the Sardari system deteriorated during the British rule by losing its charismatic and micro level interaction with the tribesmen,” said Dr Mansoor Akbar Kundi, Dean of Faculty of State Sciences, Balochistan University.
The system, he said, still existed without new directions as it was integrated into the new state system for the promotion of civil society and development at the grassroots level after 1947.
Mr Kundi said the Khan of Kalat, Ahmed Yar Khan, had declared independence from British Raj on August 15, 1947, a day after the independence of Pakistan and claimed himself de facto ruler. However, he was forced by the Pakistan army to sign an instrument of accession on April 1948. In the same year, the first insurgency in Balochistan for an independence was led by Khan’s brother, Prince Karim Agha, who was also arrested and imprisoned.
Mr Kundi said after the merger of Kalat and Balochistan states into Pakistan in June 1954, the sardars and their tribesmen remained largely untouched till 1970. He said Baloch people remained illiterate and at the mercy of sardars mainly due to the lack of representative governments until it was raised to the status of province in 1970.
He also termed the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s decision of dissolving Balochistan Assembly within months of the adoption of 1973 Constitution as ‘democratically and politically wrong’ that finally led to a longer period of martial law and volatile non-party representative system in which the sardars and nawabs were further strengthened after huge funds poured into their pockets without any accountability.
Z.A. Bhutto, he said, abolished sardari system in July 1976 but its roots still remained powerful enough to control the affairs of the whole province.
“What happened in Balochistan from 1988 to 2002 were the replica of the past and the repercussion of bad governance,” Mr Kundi said.
Sardar Mohammad Yaqub, deputy speaker of the National Assembly, stressed the need for providing quality education to the people in Balochistan. He appreciated the steps being taken by the government for initiating mega projects in Balochistan like Gawadar port, which, he said, would enable ordinary people to come into mainstream economic development.
Mohammad Shafique and Lubna Kanwal, social researchers, highlighted the conflict between Baloch society and the state. They discussed the mutual conflicts of Baloch tribes and tribal chiefs with each other and with the state.
A number of other speakers highlighted the historic, regional, political and economic importance of Balochistan and stressed the need for channelling more funds to the province. Some speakers said that education and improved infrastructure could eliminate the Sardari system from the province gradually. However, the political system in Pakistan was so much fragile and had always failed to come up to the expectation of the citizens that many people living either in tribal set-up or under Sardari system considered it safe not to mingle with the mainstream Pakistani administrative system.
Poverty, they said, was rampant in Balochistan to the level that the number of people living below poverty line increased with each passing day despite the fact that the population of Balochistan was nothing compared to its natural resources.
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