One of Balochistan's most respected senior leaders and former chief minister, Sardar Ataullah Mengal, said on Sunday Pakistan military has pushed his homeland to a point of no return.
Mengal was talking with newsmen after talks with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif who called on the senior Baloch politician at his home in Karachi, Pakistan news media reported Monday.
Sharif, red-faced, stood silently next to the Baloch leader in the manner of a Punjabi student who has failed in his exams.
Mengal, who is the supreme chair of the Balochistan National Party, said because of the military atrocities the youth have adopted the path of armed resistance and gone into the mountains and are no longer listening to him.
Mengal said he doubted Sharif could do much for Balochistan as he himself was removed from his elected office and sent into exile by the Pakistani soldiers.
He likened the Pakistan military to wild horses on the killing rampage in Balochistan.
International human rights organzations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have deplored the tsunami of human rights violations in Balochistan and have condemned what they call kill-and-dump policy of Pakistan military, Military Intelligence, Inter-Services Intelligence and Frontier Corps.
The security and intelligence forces are all non-Baloch and are accused by Baloch nationalists of carrying out genocidal policies in Balochistan.
Since July last year Pakistan security and intelligence services forcibly disappeared 300 Baloch, including quite a few teenagers, brutally tortured and killed them execution style, and then dumped their bodies in Balochistan’s widlerness.
Mengal eldest son Asadullah Mengal was disappeared by the Pakistani intelligence services way back in February 1974 and his remains were not returned to the victim family.
Sharif, in his remarks, said for peace to return to Balochistan it was necessary to bring to justice those who killed former governor and chief minister of Balochistan Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who had removed Sharif from office in October 1999 and sent him into exile in Saudi Arabia,had also ordered Bugti, 79, killed.
Sharif, who is president of the Pakistan Muslim League, was accompanied by a party team that included Nawabzada Jangyz Marri, who is the eldest son of Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, 92.
Marri tribesmen say Jangyz Marri will most likely succeed his father, though they disagree on politics.
Sharif team also included Lt. Gen. (Retd.) Abdul Qadir Chanal, former governor of Balochistan – the only Baloch ever to become an army general.
©Mustikhan Syndicated News Service
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