Friends await Solecki’s safe return March 30, 2009
Posted by Malik Siraj Akbar in Malik Siraj Akbar.Tags: John Solecki, Malik Siraj Akbar, UNHCR, United Nations High Commissoni
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By Malik Siraj Akbar
QUETTA: Friends, relatives and co-workers in Quetta and many other parts of the world still await the release of John Solecki. The American head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) was kidnapped on February 2nd in Quetta city by an organization called the Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF). Appeals have been issued and gotten rejected. Deadlines have been announced as well as extended. Threats have been hurled but never implemented. Assurances were made but to no accomplishment.
Not much seems to have changed since the kidnapping of Solecki. Yet, the missing aid worker’s friends, relatives and well wishers have been resiliently voicing their concern, anguish and helplessness on the internet through social communities like Facebook or different blogs.
Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Richard Bulliet, a former history professor of Solecki at Columbia University, wonders why anyone would kidnap a man who had spent his entire career serving the needs of people in distress under the auspices of the United Nations.
“He is an American citizen, but he doesn’t work for or represent the United States government. John has been moving from one chaotic region to another, not as a soldier or a military contractor, but rather, as a “field man” for the world’s desperate refugees. The refugee camp is his beat, not the field of battle. He does not travel with a bodyguard or shun populated areas.”
Bulliet recalls an old meeting of his with Solecki some years ago: “When he came back from a year’s assignment in Gaza, he showed me a picture of his car. I think it was a Land Rover. It had inch-in-diameter holes in the windows. He chuckled as he explained that they were made by Israeli rubber bullets. I asked him whether he had been frightened. He shrugged and said that that was what a field man has to expect.”
Norah James [named changed on request], a close friend of the missing American, told this scribe that John had been raised with a very positive and embracing view of the world. “He told me that his mother’s response to hearing that he was to work in Quetta was, “Oh I loved Quetta! “.
She insisted that there is nobody fairer, even-tempered than John. Quetta had been a hard post for Solecki since the kidnapped official had hated the security issues which meant he couldn’t walk and be among the people. He was happiest there when buying rugs and on the day of the kite festival, she said.
“This has been torture for everyone who knows John. John is not a strong man. For a person of peace and goodness to be (violently) taken seems not unique there, but it is morally wrong,” she remarked.
Solecki’s co-workers back in Quetta office of the UNHCR still desperately await the return of their affable boss. Many of them are glued with the news channels on the television. Every time, they are hoping to hear some good news. Many of them are depressed as they recall the murder of ‘Lala [brother] Hashim’, their favorite driver [Syed Hashim], who as gunned down when the former was driving Solecki to his office on February 2nd.
The others at the UN office are simply astonished. Nobody is willing to speak as I approaches them for comments. They are scared that a media statement may endanger the life of their ‘boss’ whose captors have been frequently admitting the worsening health conditions of Mr. Solecki.
A Solecki friend back in London, while requesting anonymity, told Daily Times John’s friends were the people through whom situations like the plight of people in Balochistan could gain attention. “Harm to John not only hurts an innocent person who was there trying to help others but deafens sympathetic ears around the world,” he said.
A professional of Solecki from Afghanistan says it is not always easy to speak about a colleague and/or a friend when nothing is known and every day is only bringing more uncertainty. “John is a colleague of mine for whom I have lot of respect. Difficult to tell you more.”
As authorities in Balochistan fail to hunt Solecki’s kidnappers down, many of John’s friends and relatives, some of whom confess not having much interest in politics, say John’s survival is important for the suffering humanity because he has spent 18 years of his life in serving the languishing humanity.
Around 811 people from across the globe have joined a group on Facebook called ‘Prayers for John Solekci.’ The group lists hundreds of people who have never met, worked with or spoken to John. Yet, they all eagerly share information, articles and links to related media reports from any part of the world that brightens the prospects of Solecki’s release. Those members of the group on Facebook who have know Solecki keep recalling their fond memories and the others pray for his safe return.
“John, we are with you! All over the planet, we are with you, and the whole Solecki family!!,” says one contributor.
Rifts in PPP and the future of Balochistan coalition March 30, 2009
Posted by Malik Siraj Akbar in Malik Siraj Akbar.Tags: Agha Irfan Karim, Babu Amin Umrani, Balochistan Quetta, Differences in PPP Balochistan, Isfandyar Kakar, Jan Ali Changazi, Malik Siraj Akbar, Ministers resign in Balochistan, Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani, new political crisis in Balochistan, Pakistan People's Party, PPPP Balochistan, Sadiq Umrani
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Chief Minister Aslam Raisani
By Malik Siraj Akbar
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Balochistan now pretends to have amicably surmounted all internal differences which exceedingly overshadowed President Asif Ali Zardari’s first visit to the troubled province last week. Five disillusioned PPP ministers –Sadiq Umrani, Babu Mohammad Amin Umrani, Jan Ali Changazi, Agha Irfan Karim and Isfandar Kakar – had made up their mind to embarrass Chief Minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani by tendering resignations with the president so that they could gain an opportunity to meet the President and also vent their frustration against the CM.
On his part, a disgruntled Raisani unceremoniously sacked all of his five ministers hours before Zardari’s arrival in the provincial capital. While the CM had simultaneously directed the concerned official departments to issue the formal notification and press statement announcing the expulsion of the rebel ministers from the 50-minister provincial cabinet, mediation by senior PPP leader and federal minister for ports and shipping Nabil Ahmed Gabol temporarily halted the break-up of the PPP in Balochistan.
Hence, the annoyed ministers agreed to give up their plans to quit the cabinet and Raisani consented to the ministers’ return to their old positions. Nonetheless, differences, mistrust and allegations followed by counter allegations among the PPP leaders refuse to fade away. The angry ministers insist that Nabil Gabol is a ‘nobody’ to interfere in the matters of Balochistan. They maintain that the top PPP leadership should seriously pay heed to their demands and press the chief minister to respond to the charges leveled against him about encouraging nepotism and the drug mafia in the province.
Though the central PPP leaders claim to have resolved their domestic vendettas peacefully, the outbreak of such differences in near future can not be ruled out. Having not developed sort of an in-house mechanism that could discourage or at least internally resolve party members’ grievances, the PPP has in fact provided ample space for future tussles which could either disintegrate the ruling party or oust Chief Minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani, whose commitment to the PPP is now being questioned from inside the party.
Rifts in the PPP in Balochistan are indeed the outcome of a cycle of events taking place in the past one and half years. The PPP leaders in the province have been articulating their anger against the chief minister on the following occasions.
Firstly, senior PPP leader Sadiq Umrani objected to the PPP decision to nominate Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani as party’s chief ministerial in Balochistan. Umrani, a senior PPP leader, insisted that he was the right candidate for the office of the chief minister due to his old commitment to the PPP. During her visit to Balochistan two weeks before her assassination former PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto had publicly said If PPP had existed and thrived till today despite all challenges, it was mainly because of loyal activists like Sadid Umrani who faced the hardships of imprisonment. “If we have ever been cheated, that is because of people like Farooq Laghari,” she had commented in Quetta.
Umrani took Ms. Bhutto’s remarks for granted and assumed that he could be the party’s undisputed candidate for the top provincial office. He was wrong for the reasons that Aslam Raisani was a more powerful tribal chief than Umrani, if the latter agrees to jump on the bandwagon of hundreds of existing small and big sardars in Balochistan.
Taking this as an opportunity, Umrani broached the old statements of Nawab Raisani in which the latter had objected to the appointment of Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Zardari Bhutto as the PPP chairman and co-chairman respectively. Cold war between both the leaders commenced when Sadiq Umrani began to question how a person opposed to Zardari and Bilawal could become the party’s candidate for the top slot. Even then, his objection was outright snubbed by the PPP big wigs.
Secondly, the PPP ministers and senior leaders were irked when Nawab Raisani bypassed them and developed better working relations with the ministers from the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Quaid-e-Azam), a supporter of General Pervez Musharraf. The PPP leaders protested when Raisani deprived PPP minister Ms. Ghazal Gola of her Ministry of Human Rights and gave the same portfolio to Basant Lal Gulshan of the PML-Q.
Thirdly, Sadiq Umrani and his like-minded group accuse Raisani of not having voted for the PPP candidates during the recent Senate elections. The ruling party was expecting to clinch at least five seats in the Upper House of the parliament from Balochistan but ended up with a disappointing three-seat victory, including one seat for the younger brother of CM Raisani –Haji Lashkari Raisani.
Fourthly, Raisani has fallen in the bad books of his party’s senior colleagues due to his refusal to launch a crackdown against the lawyers in the wake of their long march earlier this month. Though section 144 was enforced in all three remaining provinces of the country, Raisani in Balochistan gave a fully free hand to the lawyers and instructed the law enforcement agencies not to hamper the long march. This again is seen by the radical PPP veteran supporters as ‘disloyalty’ to the party.
Fifthly, the PPP chief minister in Balochistan was perhaps the only PPP man in the country who publicly expressed his “absolute displeasure” with the imposition of the governor’s rule in the Punjab by his party. Demanding a swift return to democracy in the Punjab, Raisani played the crucial role of a mediator between the PPP and the PML-Nawaz at a time when many PPP supporters aggressively insisted for an immediate formation of their party’s government in the Punjab. Raisani stunned everyone in Quetta when he told a press conference that he still believed that Shahbaz Sharif, his disqualified counterpart, enjoyed the majority in the Punjab.
“In fact the PPP acted undemocratically in Balochistan in the inception by disrespecting the mandate of the PML-Q and bought every MPA’s loyalties by accommodating him/her in the provincial cabinet,” says one political expert, adding that the recurrence of more such solid differences within the PPP may soon cause the disintegration of the Balochistan coalition government or at least the ouster of a vocal Nawab Raisani.
As soon as PPP’s internal wounds are made public, the coalition parties are likely to consider building new alliances in the province where the PPP, one year after the formation of its government, has failed to bring peace, end the military operation, resurface the missing person, resettle the internally displaced persons of Dera Bugti and stop the cases of enforced disappearances.
Journalism at college level: Now for Balochistan too March 29, 2009
Posted by Malik Siraj Akbar in Malik Siraj Akbar.Tags: admission in journalism in Balochistan, Baloch, Balochistan, Balochistan Assembly, Journalism education in Balochistan, MA Journalism, Mass Communication Department University of Balochistan, Media in Balochistan, Press Club Quetta, Press in Balochistan, University of Balochistan, UOB
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In its previous session, the Balochistan Assembly passed a significant resolution which now introduces journalism/Mass Communication at intermediate level in all colleges of Balochistan. This is good news for all of us working in the media. We have been pressing for along time that Journalism be taught at college level as the subject is already being taught elsewhere in the country at college level.
Need for trained and educated journalists is more desperately felt in Balochistan than anywhere else in Pakistan. Balochistan is the least reported province of Pakistan. It is the most underdeveloped and least educated province of the country.
Most media houses in Pakistan think Quetta is Balochistan and vice versa. The remaining Balochistan almost always goes unreported in the media. Therefore, the whole world does not know much about the plight of the masses of the country’s poorest province.
We need truly educated and trained journalists to report the problems of Balochistan in the national and international media. The need for teaching journalism at the college level is being so desperately felt today is because of the liberalization of the media in Pakistan. We have too many news channels but not enough qualified journalists.
The induction of Journalism at college level would also help many young students to make their minds from an early age to become media professionals. In the past, many of us had to wait to come to the sole university in the province, the Quetta-based University of Balochistan, to get education of Journalism. Formerly, the Department of Mass Communication at the University of Balochistan used to offer a two-year Masters program.
I truly hope that the Education Department in Balochistan would not waste much time in getting the official resolution implemented.
Ironically, most of the people who do their Masters in Mass Communication/Journalism here in Balochistan never become media professionals. They do not want to become journalists for several reasons. For instance, some of them can not afford the physical hard work the profession entails. Honestly, the others grumble about the low wages. I know you can not pamper your girl friend here in Pakistan as long as you’re a journalist.
Thanks to the arrival of private news channels, the salary packages for working journalists have remarkably improved. My advice to all young men who want to come to this profession would be very honest: If you want to make money and become popular then opt for broadcast (TV) journalism. If you have a flair for writing and you love reading books then stick to print journalism. I would still assure you that newspapers are not going to die. They are going to stay here. Nothing can replace good writing. So, if you love to write then keep reading good books so that you write beautifully and provide a justification for the existence of the Print Journalism.
Even in an underdeveloped and largely illiterate country like Pakistan, where broadcast journalism should ideally make a greater difference, print journalism still continues to make a huge difference. Some of the ‘big stories’ in the recent times that shook the foundations of Pakistan, such as Farha Hameed Dogar Case (Reported by Ansar Abbassi) were firstly reported in the newspapers, not TV channels.
Similarly, Pakistani print journalists are still viewed with respect and widely quoted in the intellectual circles as compared to the TV anchor persons, some of whom have already lose respect because of being labeled as aggressive, partisan and uncommonly opinionated. I hope people, however, will also understand the generation gap between Pakistani print and broadcast journalism.
The print journalism has undertaken a long and exhaustive journey to reach this level of maturity, responsibility and magnificent variety of opinion. On the other hand, the broadcast journalism is at its infancy level. It has a long way to go yet. But I am sure it will rise to the occasion one day. The current blunders being committed by the TV journalists are mainly unintentional. It’s just the charm of lights, camera and the imagination of being watched by millions that compels you to behave like many of the TV anchor persons in Pakistan.
Coming back to Balochistan, many of the journalism graduates here say they can do anything but not practice this ‘weird thing that we have been studying in the past two years’. So, I am glad that many of them are now at least going to get jobs as a Journalism lecturer at local colleges.
Shahzeb Baloch goes missing March 27, 2009
Posted by Malik Siraj Akbar in Malik Siraj Akbar.Tags: Baloch, Baloch Students Organization (BSO), Balochistan, BRP, Malik Siraj Akbar, Quetta, Shahzeb Baloch, Shahzeb Baloch missing
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I took these two photo of Shahzeb Baloch a few days ago when he was addressing a protest rally in front of Quetta Press Club in connection to the disappearance of another activist of Baloch Students Organization (BSO-Azad), Qambar Malik Baloch. I am not joking but I really knew that I should have one photo of Shahzeb in my computer because he, like many of his friends who had been whisked away in the past, could be the next Baloch student to be whisked away by ‘invisible soldiers’.
Now we are told that Shahzeb has finally been taken by the government functionaries after being tortured and taken to an unknown location.
For the first time, I met Shahzeb Baloch in Peshawar in 2004 where I had gone to the Peshawar University to undertake a Masters degree in Sociology. The only Baloch students whom I met there were Shahzeb, Sadiq Badani and Aftab Baloch. The first two were enrolled at the Islamia College while Aftab, hailing from Mustung district, was a Pharmacy student. My friend from Panjgur, Waheed Baloch, who got admission in Political Science, and I were very delighted to find some people from Balochistan. While we stayed in Aftab’s room, Shahzeb and Sadiq were very forthcoming and helpful to us.
They used to regularly visit us in the room we were staying. Our discussions clearly indicated that Shahzeb, just like Aftab, was a diehard Baloch nationalist from day one. He supported the cause of an independent Balochistan. On the other hand, I often used to disagree with his vision saying that it was not possible for Balochistan to get independence in the coming days until the Baloch overcame their shortcomings. Shahzeb used to laugh and jokingly tell me: “ Siraj,wait. When Balochistan gets free, we will hang ‘traitors’ like you on the road.” We all used to laugh aloud.
Later on, I left the Peshawar University for the reasons that I was crazy about becoming a journalist and thought I was spoiling myself at the Sociology Department of the Peshawar University. The second reason for my decision to quit PU was lack of accommodation at the university hostel. Since Waheed and I had gotten admission on the seats fixed for Balochistan’s quota, we were told that rooms in the hostel were allotted on the merit basis. I appreciate my friend Waheed Baloch, who is a lecturer of Political Science at Government Degree College Panjgur, for his steadfastness to pursue his goal. On the other hand, I took the next bus of Sadha Bhar Service and returned to Quetta.
Soon after my arrival from Peshawar, I lost contact with Shahzeb until I met him after a long time in Quetta. Here, I saw Shahzeb had emerged as a mature and full-time committed student leader. He played a prominent role in the protests organized by the BSO in connection to different developments ranging from the cases registered against Nawabzada Harbiyar Marri and Faiz Baloch in London to the issue of district-based quota admission policy at the Balochistan University of Information Technology and Management Sciences (BUTIMS).
The Baloch Students Organization (BSO-Azad) said on Thursday that Shahzeb Baloch, the organization’s president for Quetta zone, had been allegedly whisked away by the personnel of the intelligence agencies which led to massive protests by the BSO activists and burning of bus in Quetta city.
According to the details, the activists of the BSO-Azad blocked Quetta’s crowded Manan Chowak to protest the ‘disappearance’ of its senior leader Shahzaib Baloch. They said Mr. Baloch was taken into custody by officials in plainclothes on Fatima Jinnah Road. No one knows about the whereabouts of Shahzeb, a popular BSO leader. When the Baloch student leader resisted his arrest, the officials reportedly tortured and forcefully took him away to an unknown location.
The local police refused to register a case in connection to the disappearance of the Baloch activist saying that cases involving the intelligence agencies were beyond their jurisdiction to deal with.
Baloch nationalists claim that thousands of Baloch have gone missing. The missing persons, they say, are taken into the official torture cells for indefinite period and questioned about the ongoing insurgency in the province. The issue of the missing persons came under limelight recently when a hitherto unknown organization, the Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF), accepted responsibility for the kidnapping of John Solecki, an American who headed the Balochistan office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
The BLUF has been demanding the release of the four thousand Baloch men and 141 women, who are believed to be in the official custody, in return of Solecki’s release, who was kidnapped on February 2 in Quetta after murdering his driver, Syed Hashim.
Angry BSO activists condemned the arrest of Shahzeb Baloch and protested in front of the Balochistan University on Sariab Road. They also blocked the city center by closing Manan Chowak for many hours. They chanted slogans against the government and demanded the immediate release of their leader. The protestors were joined by Baloch female students of the Balochistan University.
A crowed of protestors also burnt a bus on Sariab Road which belonged to the Quetta Electricity Supply Company (QESCO).
The issue of disappearances in Balochistan continues even a year after the induction of the Pakistan People’s Party government in the country. Widely regarded as a phenomenon encouraged by the military regime of former president Pervez Musharraf, the disappearances in the fresh phase include Dr. Bashir Azeem, the central secretary general of the Baloch Republican Party (BRP). Besides, the central information secretary of the BRP, Jalil Reki, a central party leader Chakar Qambarani and the son and brother of Murid Bugti, a prominent leader of the BRP.
A new political crisis in Balochistan March 26, 2009
Posted by Malik Siraj Akbar in Malik Siraj Akbar.Tags: Agha Irfan Karim and Isfandar Kakar, Babu Mohammad Amin Umrani, Baloch, Balochistan, Jan Ali Changazi, Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani, Quetta, Sadiq Umrani
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I spoke tonight in a 30-minute talk show on the Voice of America (VOA), Urdu Service, about the new political crisis that has developed in Balochistan. Five Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) ministers were sacked today by chief minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani. However, the notification for their resignations was withheld at the eleventh hour after Senior PPP leader Nabil Ahmed Gabol intervened.
The disillusioned ministers – Sadiq Umrani, Babu Mohammad Amin Umrani, Jan Ali Changazi, Agha Irfan Karim and Isfandar Kakar –had accused CM Raisani of mismanagement, nepotism, supporting the drug mafia and being incapable of maintaining peace in Balochistan in a press conference on Wednesday evening.
Before they could submit their resignations, all five ministers were fired from the cabinet by the chief minister. They keep reiterating their grievances.
In my interview, I argued that the basic problem was the undemocratic trend of accommodating everyone in the provincial cabinet on the name of reconciliation. Presently, 50 members of the 65-memebr Balochistan Assembly are serving as ministers. Some ministers lack portfolios, offices and houses. Therefore, when the government tries to please everyone then such people would always stand up to blackmail the government.
I said Nawab Raisani was still a very powerful man in the province though he had been remarkably embarrassed by some of his own party men.
