IT should be incomprehensible that any part of a country in peacetime would become a battlefield without the state doing all it can to restore law and order. Yet, what should be incomprehensible becomes plausible in Balochistan — the consequence of spectacularly skewed priorities pursued for decades. In the province’s Wadh tehsil, the collapse of a tenuous ceasefire has seen the resumption of ferocious clashes between two warring factions of the Mengal tribe. Local officials told this paper that two people have been killed and three injured in the exchange of fire using mortar shells and rockets. Daily life has been disrupted, with educational institutions, government offices, markets, and even clinics shuttered.

The conflict between the chief of the Mengal tribe Akhtar Mengal and notorious outlaw Shafiq Mengal should never have come about in the first place. Had there been any rule of law in Balochistan, Shafiq Mengal and his gang would never have been tasked with conducting parallel manhunts against suspected separatists in Khuzdar district where Wadh is located. Emboldened by this, the outfit allegedly committed a slew of serious crimes along the way, including robbery, kidnapping for ransom and murder; their links with violent sectarian outfits who wreaked havoc on the Shia Hazara community are a matter of record. The impunity was only somewhat curtailed when the lawlessness became too extreme to ignore. But there was no accountability. In fact, the ECP found Shafiq Mengal fit to stand for election in 2018 for the National Assembly seat from Khuzdar — his candidature, it is said, a ploy to remind Sardar Akhtar Mengal, the eventual winner of the seat, of the limits to his power. Against this backdrop is the suffering of the people of Khuzdar, one of the most backward areas in an already deprived province, for they must contend not only with a regressive tribal culture but also an entirely uncaring state. The neocolonial divide-and-rule approach must end now.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2023