Balochistan Missing Person Cases

By Mahvish Akhtar

Over the weekend, a soldier of the Quick Response Force of the Frontier Corpse South
Balochistan was killed, and seven others were injured in the Buleda district. Officials say that
some unknown militants planted an explosive device on the roadside, and they detonated those
explosives when a vehicle carrying the FC personnel passed through the area.

In another attack in the Pishin area, in Balochistan, some unidentified individuals exploded an
improvised explosive device (IED) through remote control in front of the court of the district and
sessions judges of Pishin to target the CTD vehicle, which was carrying the department’s
personnel.

This is just the newest wave in the cycle of violence in Pakistani Province. Weeks before these
bombings, the people of Balochistan had been asking for the release of their family members.
Zaheer Zeb Baloch was one of those many missing persons. The government assured his family
that he was not in the custody of any security agency, nor was he wanted by the police or the
government.

Provincial minister Zia Langove said in a press conference that the state did not have Zaheer
Baloch, suggesting he may be with his brother Basher Zeb, a Baloch Liberation Army (BLA)
commander.

The people of Balochistan come out on the streets in retaliation to their family members being
taken without any notices or reasons given to the families. This has been going on for years, the
families of the individuals recently abducted came out on the streets for a peaceful protest which
turned violent.

The rally turned violent near a police station when officials from seven police stations attacked
the Protesters with stones and tear gas, injuring several, including women. According to Bakht

Kakar, another provincial minister, the five women protesters taken into custody were released
on the chief minister’s orders the same day.
Police have registered a case against 16 individuals, including Dr Mahrang Baloch, for damaging
public property and inciting violence in the Red Zone.

The Balochistan Government is ready to start a dialogue on the missing persons or any other
matter but will not compromise on law and order, Home Minister Mir Ziaullah Langove said last
week.
“All measures are being taken to maintain law and order and restore the writ of the state,” the
provincial minister said after presiding over a meeting on law and order.”

Negotiations between the government and leaders of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC)
failed late Saturday night, which led Dr Mahrang Baloch to declare that the protest would
continue until Zaheer Baloch and others were recovered. “We are ready for meaningful
negotiations if the government desires,” Dr Baloch stated late Saturday night. “However, our
protest will continue.”

Further talks were held on Sunday with a government committee headed by Mohammad Hamza
Shafqat and BYC’s Dr. Mahrang Baloch. These talks were successful, and an agreement was
signed. BYC wrote on X, “Under the leadership of Dr. Mahrang Baloch, the negotiations with
the government ended on a successful note. After 13 days of sit-in protest and a violent episode
of Police brutality on peaceful protestors.”
These are the agreed-upon terms of the agreement:
• FIR was registered against the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) for forcibly abducting
Zaheer Baloch on 27 June.
• 15 out of 21 peaceful protestors were released who were illegally arrested on 11 July, and 6
more would be released on Monday after being presented in court.
• Dismissal of all cases registered against peaceful protestors on 11 July.
• The government would form a committee including members of Zaheer’s family for his release
in 15 days.
• If the government fails to release Zaheer within 15 days, his family will continue to protest.

For now, the sit-in protest by Zaheer’s family has been called off.

The protesters say their loved ones, many of them men, have been picked up, tortured, and killed
with impunity by Pakistani security forces in the name of public safety and operations against the
insurgency. Islamabad has denied these accusations.

Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui says that most of the people who were picked up in recent years are
Baloch who do not have anything to do with the armed resistance,
He said officials instead detain “on mere suspicion and at times on false information provided by rival
pro-Pakistan groups based in Balochistan.”

Balochistan has been a troubled Province since Pakistan’s conception. It is one of the biggest
land areas but the least populated. The province is suffering economically as well. According to
the HRCP, the Pakistani government uses enforced disappearances as a tool to suppress conflict.
The practice of forced disappearances dates back to the 1970s in Balochistan. However, since the
early 2000s, enforced disappearances and alleged extrajudicial killings have become a vital tool
of the government’s counterinsurgency policy. During these decades, the victims’ families have
barely ever received any.
Asian Human Rights Commission says that enforced disappearances have become a routine
occurrence in Pakistan, and the authorities have accepted it as a normal practice of law
enforcement agencies. The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) has registered
thousands of cases of enforced disappearances in Balochistan. The official figures revealed by
different governments fluctuate, so they cannot be trusted.
In his message on X on April 10 th, 2023, the Federal Information Secretary revealed that the
national TV channels, on average, “give coverage to Balochistan for 34 seconds in 24 hours, and
that too when there is bad news”.
What will result from this new agreement is obvious. There have been many others like this one
in the past. The people of Balochistan have one of two options: they keep pressuring the

government by any means necessary. Or they give into the BLA pressures, which want a
separate Balochistan. BLA hopes to separate Balochistan from Iran and Afghanistan and create a
complete and sovereign Balochistan.
If the Pakistani government keeps treating the people of Balochistan the way it has so far and the
economy of the country keeps suffering in the same way as it has for the past decades, then the
chances of a sovereign Balochistan are more and more real.