Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Balochistan struggle

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Challenges ( Source- The Diplomat / Author- Kiyya Baloch)

Gwadar Port ( Image source- Wikimedia Commons / Author- Paranda) Source- The Diplomat Author- Kiyya Baloch The indigenous people of the coastal town of Gwadar – gateway to the much-discussed China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – very much have their own opinions when it comes to reaping the benefits from this $46 billion project. As such, concern is rising over speculation that the project will benefit only Chinese interests, with little to offer locals. “It is a conspiracy to convert the local population into a minority, rather than empowering them,” said Syed Essa Noori, a Baloch Nationalist Party legislator in Pakistan’s National Assembly. Noori cited Karachi as an obvious example the local populace being marginalized in the name of economic development. “At the time of the creation of the country, Karachi was Baloch-majority. Within a decade, it had turned into a city of migrants, from parts of India as well as from other parts of Pakistan.” The Baloch nat

PAKISTAN: BALOCH’S SILENT WAR – ANALYSIS ( Source- Eurasia review / Author- Vikram Sood)

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons Source- Eurasia Review Author-Vikram Sood The Baloch have more than one problem. They are just too few to matter in the calculus of Pakistan’s national politics, even though their province is 45 per cent of strategically vital territory. Despite being resource-rich, they are the poorest and most deprived in Pakistan. Islamabad and Rawalpindi are interested only in the enormous natural resources that the Baloch possess but are not allowed to reap the benefits of this bounty. Baloch have dreamt and steadily struggled for independence ever since August 1947, and have been suppressed brutally. Successive Pakistani regimes have kept the province subjugated, deprived and isolated, their voices stifled in an echo chamber. Foreigners, especially journalists, are persona non grata in Balochistan. Declan Walsh, then from The Guardian, was expelled for his ‘Pakistan’s Dirty War’ a graphic reminder of how gruesome the situation was in Balochistan.