Siraj, Adil, Jamil and Dastagir are second year students from Balochistan who are studying at a private college in Islamabad. They are young from Balochistan who have moved to Islamabad for better educational opportunities.

Separated from their families and familiar surrounding, life in the capital is not easy for these students. However, dreams of safer environs and a better future brought them to Islamabad.

Partly, the shift was due to their unhappiness with the education system in their home province where the quality of education was poor.

According to the Ministry of Education, about 500,000 children are out of school in Balochistan, while the primary completion rate in the province is 53 per cent.

All of them are ambitious. After spending half their day at college, in the evenings they take an English language class to improve their comprehension and communication skills.

Siraj, a pre-medical student, is quiet and shy. Happy that his family moved him to Islamabad “for quality education,” he explains that he had never studied Pakistan studies before he came to the capital city.

“We have never had a Pakistan studies class in our school.”

The young Baloch is fearful of going back to his hometown in Kohlu district. “If I go back to my area and ask people to get education and raise a voice for their rights, I would either be killed or would be kidnapped” he said.

“This is why I want to settle in Islamabad. I would eventually like to bring my family here as well so we can live peacefully,” he added. The rest of his family is still based in Kohlu.

Adil is the most ambitious of all the students.

It was with great difficulty that he was able to confess that he had to cheat to clear Pakistan Studies paper in the matriculation exam, which he took while still in his home province.

“We had never had a Pakistan studies class so we had no option but to take the help of the invigilators who provided us with material we could cheat with,” he says, genuinely embarrassed at having to confess. Both he and Siraj cheated in the paper.

They explained that their teachers at the government school they studied at were followers of the Baloch separatist cause and hence did not teach the Pakistan studies syllabus.

“For our teachers, the course portrays the Baloch as traitors. They also felt that the injustices done to the Baloch are not mentioned in the course. So they would not teach us,” said one of them.

Adil dreams of improving the education system of his province, helping to change the tribal system that prevails in Barkhan.

“I want to join the police group by taking my Central Superior Services (CSS) examination but my family doesn’t agree. They are scared as a cousin who was an SSP got kidnapped and later killed.”

Adil, unlike Siraj, wants to return home but “my family does not want me to.” He adds that he understands their fears: “I want to bring change in the lives of people there but what if I also become a missing person,” he asks.

Jamil is different from both Adil and Siraj. His only dream in life is to leave Pakistan.

“I don’t want to go back; instead I would prefer to get my further education abroad and settle there,” he said.

He also points out that the government of Pakistan has so far done nothing for the development of Baloch people. “We are being deprived of our basic rights - the right to our natural resources and the right to get education.”

“Our government has failed to merge Balochistan into the Pakistani state; this shows their incompetence or apathy towards our longstanding problems,” adding that he thinks Balochistan should be separated from Pakistan.

Dastagir, another energetic and ambitious individual from Kharan, dreams of changing the fate of the people of his area.

“People are poor in our villages; they don’t have jobs and not enough food.”

This is why he says he would like to go back to his village “after completing my university education and educate the people there so that they should be aware of their rights,” he added.

“I am worried about my other class fellows who do not have the means to move to other, safer parts of the province for quality education,” he says. “The schools remain closed for several months due to the poor security situation and students roam around aimlessly; they have no future.”

“The central and provincial governments should in time change the long held notion that being a Baloch means that you will be deprived of your rights,” he said.