TO his credit, the chief minister of Balochistan, Abdul Malik Baloch, continues to be a leader who speaks relatively candidly on issues few politicians are willing to discuss openly. But when the admission is about total failure on the missing persons’ front, candidness offers cold comfort.

Speaking at a book launch in Karachi, the chief minister claimed that his government is still in talks with the so-called angry Baloch – effectively, the soft and hard separatists – but said that there has been no progress on the issue of the missing persons.

Take a look: Balochistan CM concedes failure in tracing ‘missing’ persons

While the admission will have come as no surprise to political observers, consider the sheer enormity of it.

Two years into a government that was elected on the promise of change, seven years into the transition to democracy and over a decade since the fifth Baloch insurgency began and that soon moved away from the traditional tribal centres to one across a swathe of middle-class, non-tribal Baloch areas, the chief minister of the province is effectively admitting that he has no control over a fundamental issue that has for years fuelled the anger of the Baloch.

Dr Baloch also had other dispiriting words: he essentially appealed to the centre to give more information to the people of Balochistan on its plans for Gwadar and presumably the road network that will be needed to make the port in Gwadar a trading hub.

But the centre is run by the PML-N that is a partner of the chief minister’s National Party in the Balochistan government.

In fact, Dr Baloch became chief minister because Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif preferred that the provincial government be led by the PML-N’s junior partner in terms of seats in the Balochistan Assembly. That Dr Baloch has to turn to the media to try and elicit answers from his coalition partner in Balochistan is perhaps emblematic of how far the NP government has fallen in terms of the promise it held a mere two years ago.

Also read: Seminar on Balochistan missing persons held at KU despite curbs and fears

In Balochistan, a carve-up of sorts can be seen. The big economic decisions have been ceded to the civilian-run federal government; all the security decisions have been retained by the army-led security establishment.

This has rendered Dr Baloch’s task of reaching out to the disaffected Baloch near impossible. If the chief minister cannot even influence the decision to produce to their families, let alone the judiciary, the disappeared people in the province, what can his standing really be in any negotiations with the separatists?

If Chief Minister Baloch does appear to be fast becoming a peripheral figure, a great deal of the blame should fall on the centre.

The PML-N government appears to all but have given up on trying to influence the security policy towards a province blighted by a dirty war between separatists and the military.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2015

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