NEW DELHI: The terse message from one of our minders came shortly after we’d checked into the hotel in Quetta: We were, under no circumstances, to step out on our own.
I was surprised when I received a communication from Pakistan’s information ministry on whether I’d like to join a media team to visit Quetta. Balochistan had been off-limits to foreign journalists for long, described as a ‘black hole’.
The three days we spent in Balochistan in May 2013 reminded of Jammu and Kashmir at the peak of the militancy in the 1990s. There was an armed escort every time our entourage left the hotel. Armed personnel were deployed on the roads and all important buildings were barricaded.
Our minders ensured we never had a chance to sneak off anywhere. Meetings were arranged with political leaders who were perceived as part of the “mainstream”, and our requests to interact with students or dissident leaders were shot down by officials.
We were hosted for lunches and dinners by top officials, who were polite and deferential, but gave away little in terms of information. It was only when we spent a few hours with some local journalists at a dinner on our last night in Quetta that we were able to get a fix on how bad the situation was.
{{/usCountry}}We were hosted for lunches and dinners by top officials, who were polite and deferential, but gave away little in terms of information. It was only when we spent a few hours with some local journalists at a dinner on our last night in Quetta that we were able to get a fix on how bad the situation was.
{{/usCountry}}Speaking in hushed tones in a corner of the dinner venue, they told us about how vast areas were not under effective control of the security forces. They told us how Baloch nationalists and suspected insurgents were detained without charge and their mutilated bodies were later dumped by the side of roads, often with a note that mentioned their name.
Our drive through the part of Quetta inhabited by the Hazara Shia minority was heart-rending. Just months before our visit, nearly 100 Hazaras were killed in bomb attacks.
One Hazara man spoke of finding body parts on the roof of a building several days after the suicide bombing of a snooker club. As we drove away from the area, a man came with a poster featuring a photo of his relative who was killed in . He had one request: to take a photo of his poster and document the attacks on the Hazara Shias.
I couldn’t fulfil his request at the time. Maybe this piece will help.
(The author is one of the last two Indian journalists to have been allowed in Balochistan)