KARACHI: Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal, Chief Minister of Baluchistan, said … that the Centre “cannot possibly hope to escape the consequences that are bound to result from creating anarchical conditions in the provinces.”

Addressing a Press conference, he made it clear that the Centre-provinces animosity, if not checked, would engulf the whole country. To him, the most regrettable part of the political situation was that trouble was being fomented in the provinces by the Central Ministers directly or at the instigation of the Central Government.

Anyone who thought that were the provinces to be aflame, the Centre would remain stable and at peace, would be living in a fool’s paradise, Sardar Mengal said. Unrest and chaos in one part would most certainly affect the whole country. Sardar Mengal … said that Baluchistan without Pakistan had simply no future. Even if Baluchistan’s own problems were to be viewed strictly from the narrow range of provincialism, the destiny of Baluchistan was irrevocably linked with united Pakistan, he added.

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2023