TURBAT: Mariam Baloch and her family have lived as internally displaced people for four months. They fled their home in Sharak, a village about 25km outside Turbat city, Kech district, in September. “It was a war zone. We had no choice but to leave,” she said.

Fourteen members of the family, who belong to the Zikri sect, have since been living in two cramped rooms at Ziarat, a complex of zikrkhanas that surrounds Koh-i-Murad, one of the most sacred sites for this offshoot of Sufi Islam.

The ‘war’ that Mariam referred to is the conflict raging between the security forces and Baloch insurgents in the vicinity of Turbat since March, far away from the hubbub of the 24/7 news cycle. It is now concentrated along the route of the under-construction M-8, one of two road links planned between Gwadar and Ratodero in Sindh (and onwards to Kashgar in China) which are crucial to the viability of the port.

Building the highway means direct confrontation with the separatist groups who have their redoubts in the nearby mountains. The insurgents are violently opposed to the construction of roads, which they see as facilitating the security forces’ access to a theatre of war. “Both sides are using mortars against each other in clashes,” said Kareem Baloch, who belongs to the affected area. “The people are caught in the middle.”

Lt Col Naeem at the Frontier Corps (FC) in Turbat explained that the highway from Gwadar is being built in three sections of various distances — 53km, 64km and 76km — up to Hoshab at which point it will meet the N-85 originating from Karachi. About the operations however, he stated, “I have no knowledge of any such thing.”

He also rejected the impression that the security situation in the area is dire. “There are only some isolated incidents...the militants take advantage of the fact it is an isolated, barren area.”

However, according to Turbat residents, many of those living in around a dozen villages east of Turbat city such as Sharak, Shapok, Sami, Kallag, Hirok and Tejaban have fled, selling their livestock and leaving behind crops withering for want of attention. The area of Shapok, for example, has been completely abandoned.

As a result, the seven schools in the area educating nearly 1,000 children are all closed. Among these is Balochistan’s first co-educational school, where the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO), an army-run firm that is building the M-8, has set up its camp.

“Security forces arrive in the night and cordon off the area,” said Zahid Gichki, an erstwhile resident of Shapok. “In the morning, all the males in the village, from boys to old men, are taken out of their homes, roughed up and interrogated. Most of them are released there and then while others they take away to their camp.”

He alleged that four young men from Shapok — Asadullah, Tariq, Badal and Shahbeg — have been ‘missing’ for several months. The security forces have also demolished around 25 homes in Shapok that belonged to those believed to have links with insurgents.

“In August, a fact-finding team of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan from Karachi and Lahore met 35 groups of people here,” said Ghani Parwaz, who heads the HRCP’s Turbat chapter. “They said that although the FC used to conduct night-time raids before as well, this time they are emptying entire villages and picking up many people. They also take with them the personal belongings — such as TVs, money and gold — of the people whose homes they raid. This seldom happened before.”

Even though affected groups have repeatedly approached local officials, the provincial government has not officially declared them as IDPs, which would entitle them to state assistance. According to a journalist, “that’s because then the reason for them being displaced would come out. And the establishment doesn’t want that”.

No official figures are available as to how many people have been internally displaced so far in these operations, but the population of the two union councils most severely affected by the operations — Sharak and Dandar — is 122,000. Many families have moved in with relatives elsewhere in Balochistan. Twenty-five Zikri families, including that of Mariam Baloch mentioned above, sought shelter at Koh-i-Murad.

Some, unable to stay in temporary accommodation any longer, are returning to their villages after the main operation there is over, despite continuing skirmishes between the security forces and the insurgents. “Only those with clearance from the security forces are being allowed back,” said Mariam, whose family has decided to risk going home. “The nearby FC checkpoint will issue us a token after noting our family details.”

BIGGEST CASUALTY: The upheaval is particularly unfortunate in terms of education in the area. Levels of school enrolment in Kech district — especially of girls — are among the highest in the province. (Many people credit this to steps taken by Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik when he was education minister in the early 1990s.) Now schools in the affected area are either completely closed, as in Shapok or, if they have reopened, are barely functioning because many teachers have not returned.

“Teachers feel more vulnerable because they are accused of teaching the ‘wrong’ things,” said Mr Gichki. Meanwhile, the M-8 is not the only road under construction in Kech district. Under a massive upgrade project, the provincial government is re-carpeting and widening a number of roads within Turbat city itself. However, construction always takes place under police guard, illustrating the perilous security situation even in an urban area dotted with FC checkpoints.

FWO personnel working on the M-8 are being provided security by the security forces themselves. Nevertheless, they have repeatedly been attacked.

“When Ghulam Shah Qahtani, secretary to the chief minister, was kidnapped by Baloch separatists last October, they told him the government could do anything pertaining to health and education in the province, but they would not allow roads to be built,” narrated a local journalist.

Besides road improvement works, an expansion of Turbat University is also under way and a new medical college is scheduled to open in March. For many observers though, these projects, while welcome, highlight the limited writ of Chief Minister Dr Malik, himself a native of Turbat.

They say bricks and mortar count for little in the face of the establishment’s ruthless policies that are driving away some of its best and brightest people from the area.

They also cite the continuing cases of enforced disappearances here, particularly a shocking one that took place two months ago. Dr Baquer Ali, a senior dental surgeon at the Turbat District Hospital, was picked up from his home along with his 17-year-old son. Although medical professionals in Turbat have repeatedly held protests, and met the chief minister to press for their release, neither father nor son has since been heard from.

Some names have been changed to protect privacy.

Published in Dawn, February 1st, 2015

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