I MUST pack up before Shah Sahib walks into the office. Have been trying to avoid him ever since the US Congress had that hearing on Balochistan last week.

Worse, a resolution has since been moved in the Congress and I do not quite know what answers I can muster in response to his expected howls of vindication.

Shah Sahib is a know-all colleague who has his ears close to the popular buzz. He keeps us supplied with the simplest to the most outlandish theories doing the rounds in the bazaars of Lahore.

Usually, these theories die their own death for lack of follow-up action. The problem arises when one of his prophecies beats some others’ attempts at scientific explanations — something that happens more frequently than the objective types would care to admit. This happens often enough to send the man on his next round of the bazaar.

For the last many years, he has been telling everyone within hearing distance that some grand plan was afoot — again — to change Pakistan’s map. He cites some alien organisation that had come up with certain projections Pakistanis should be wary of.

The foreign hand captivates him, and this just about makes all other factors redundant.

Balochistan is a favourite of his and while he does appear to be in pain when he speaks his version of the truth culled from the evidence he is compelled to select, his faith in the power of the foreigners to decide Pakistan’s destiny remains unshaken.

In his book, Pakistanis lack the strength to destabilise themselves sufficiently enough and must always rely on outside help for meeting this target.

In a Lahore that is routinely taken to task for its aloofness, it is not all that rare to come across people pained by what is happening at a physical distance from them. Balochistan does generate quite a lot of sympathy here, even if the reasons vary depending on who you are talking to.

If the newspaper files of four decades ago are a guide, the people today do not appear to be as apathetic to the happenings as they may have been in the run-up to Bangladesh.

The politicians are routinely blamed for failing to come up with a ‘save Balochistan’ plan and there is an occasional remark about the excesses of the security personnel. Yet something vital is still amiss here.

The national interests prevent the advance beyond a certain point and the old formula for pain relief continues to be relied upon. It is not too difficult for the trained eye to locate the enemies aggressively taking on our defenders who are doing their duty by the state.

The Pakistanis who live at a distance from Balochistan are concerned but still not bold enough to speak excess every time they see excess. In desperate moments, they seek solace in a make-believe Balochistan and find refuge in their own frailty, their proven inability to intervene beyond the barrier.

Sadly and conveniently, through its various fights, Balochistan continues to be seen as a rich piece of land that has to be only scratched to reveal the wealth that can make Pakistan as prosperous as the Gulf.

We know Iran is after nature’s treasures that await their takers. And we keep reminding ourselves the West craves these resources just as it badly needs a base to oversee proceedings in the region.

Next to only God’s, we must resign to the West’s script. We are ready to quickly acknowledge a resolution in the US Congress and are ever so keen to locate a few British spies working to secure a ‘Greater Balochistan’; it helps us to tighten our little defence that is based on our resignation to the affair as being a war between unequals.

There may be other more patriotic explanations around but this sense of resignation also stems from the foreign-hand theory that had originally been applied to justify Pakistan’s war against a bunch of rebels in its midst. Consequently, it is easy for everyone to paint everyone else as a victim in an unavoidable situation.

The people generally are victims of a lack of information. The soldier is beholden to his command and the commander is ruled by the concepts of national security he has been brought up on.

Even the rebels are unfortunate in that they have been trapped by the foreign agents and by foreign money. The national politicians are victims of an unfair division of authority that doesn’t allow them an influential enough say in what are, strictly, matters of security.

The arrangement between the politicians and the soldiers creates its own threshold of bravery. When a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa senator says the Baloch are as worthy of negotiations as the Taliban, it is taken as a courageous statement offered at the risk of legitimisation of the rebels.

Mian Nawaz Sharif is hailed as a true national leader for having the grit to stand by an angry Baloch sardar just as the sardar declares that rigid Balochistan may have been allowed to wander deep beyond the point of return.

Mian Sahib next takes a great leap; he goes to Quetta, allows himself to be surrounded by a selection of Baloch politicians and then has to actually ask the government to elaborate who was stopping it from going the whole hog towards a solution to Balochistan. The government responds by expressing its intentions of holding a roundtable conference on Balochistan.

A roundtable just after we have been furnished with the most damning evidence of foreign interest in Balochistan? The resolution in the US neutralises any chances of someone at a Pakistani roundtable showing the guts when and where it really matters.

This should actually make it easier for Pakistani politicians to stick to their old positions, in the national interest, in the face of proven foreign designs to change Pakistan’s map.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.