Crackdown: opposition in Senate warns of ‘serious consequences’
By Raja Asghar
ISLAMABAD, Dec 23: The week-old government crackdown in Balochistan came under severe criticism on Friday at the start of an inconclusive Senate debate on the situation in the troubled province after two protest walkouts by opposition parties.
Opposition senators warned the government of ‘serious consequences’ of what they called a deadly military operation against Baloch tribes, some of them foreseeing grave harm to the federation of Pakistan.
But ruling party members, including two ministers, insisted that it was not a military operation but an action taken by law-enforcing agencies against criminal elements opposed to economic development in the province.
It was also stressed from the government side that the action was precipitated by the December 14 rocketing in Kohlu by hostile elements when President Pervez Musharraf was on a visit there and the machine-gun fire on a helicopter the next day that wounded the inspector-general of the paramilitary Frontier Corps force and his deputy.
The debate will continue when the house meets again on Monday at 3.30pm and, under an agreement reached between the ruling and opposition parties at a business advisory committee meeting on Friday, will be followed by another debate on the controversial Kalabagh dam for which the opposition has submitted an adjournment motion.
Opposition leader Raza Rabbani led the first walkout soon after the house met to begin a short winter session to protest against what he called the government’s British-era divide-and-rule policy manifested in plans to build the Kalabagh dam against the wishes of three of the country’s four provinces, the Balochistan operation and reported plans to change school syllabi, including removal of teaching of Namaz from Dinyat books.
The second walkout was provoked by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi who was involved an a virtual shouting match with Mr Rabbani after the minister said both former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had supported the Kalabagh dam project when they were in office and the opposition leader insisted that the Benazir government never sold this idea.
While Senate chairman Mohammedmian Soomro expunged some of the angry exchanges from the record of the proceedings, the opposition returned to the house after leader of house Wasim Sajjad offered apologies for the episode.
Opposition members also shouted in protest after two senators of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, Mrs Gulshan Saeed and Ms Pari Gul Agha, interrupted the speeches of Sanaullah Baloch of the Balochistan National Party (Mengal) and Prof Khurshid Ahmed of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), inviting displeasure of the chair.
Though a formal debate on Kalabagh dam will be held later, Mr Rabbani attacked the project in his remarks before announcing the first walkout, accusing the president of trying to bulldoze the issue despite anti-dam resolution passed by the provincial assemblies of Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan and harming the national unity seen after the devastating October 8 earthquake.
He described the Kalabagh dam an issue of the Punjabi elite rather than of Punjab’s common people and said “black clouds will hover over the federation” of Pakistan if the government pressed for implementing the project.
Mr Wasim Sajjad defended the proposed dam as beneficial to poor people in general rather than the Punjabi elite and said the three provinces could be given “every kind of guarantee” to remove their fears, warning that non-implementation of the project would turn vast tracts of land into desert.
Education Minister Javed Ashraf said there were no plans to remove the teaching of namaz from dinyat books and that the only contemplated change was to leave the methodology of prayers to be taught to schoolchildren by their parents to avoid a situation like recent sectarian clashes over the issue in Gilgit.
The minister, who is also a retired army lieutenant-general and former chief of Inter-Services Intelligence, in a speech later, also defended the crackdown in Balochistan, saying no country could allow “its head of state to be attacked and take no action” (if the attack is made). He also rejected charges of senators from Balochistan of discrimination against their province.
“There is no military operation going on in Balochistan,” Minister of State for Interior Shahzad Waseem said during the debate, but added that the law-enforcing agencies would continue what he called a targeted action against “miscreants... to save the people of Balochistan from Kalashnikovs and rockets”.
