EVEN though most of Pakistan is a stranger to human rights, Balochistan is particularly dispossessed. With scores of missing persons, bomb attacks, targeted murders, destroyed public property and gas installations, the province has been entombed in poverty for decades, paying the added social, human and fiscal price of military operations. While the Baloch people have endured brutal exploitation at the hands of successive civilian and military regimes, the deeply embedded sardari system in the province, a residue of colonial times, that was formally abolished by the System of Sardari (Abolition) Act, 1976, is still a powerful element that survives on repression and stifled economic growth. Illiteracy and indigence prevent the people from challenging fierce chieftains. Yesterday’s investigative story in this paper cracked the system wide open, exposing the sardars’ private jails. “The phenomenon of private jails,” it says, “is especially entrenched in eastern and central Balochistan where the sardars wield the power of life and death over their tribesmen.”

The rulers and sardars operate on an agenda of continuous domination over a province rich in copper, gold and precious minerals. The report reveals “a few months ago, an ISI officer who wanted to crack down against the sardar’s excesses in Barkhan district was transferred by his superiors. Such institutional support continues to enable the Baloch sardars’ impunity: “…law enforcers are well aware that the sardars maintain private jails in their tribal territories, not to mention other criminal actions committed by these powerful feudals.” Therefore, it is time nationalist parties heaped scorn on sardars, when the latter raise Baloch rights issues, and, instead of keeping silent, these parties should demand greater control of Balochistan’s economy with the annihilation of the cruel sardari system. This controversial tribal structure has had its day; political interests must now make way for reforms. Or the people of the province should know that their rights, resources and development funds will not come to them.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2023