Serious unrest

 

PAKISTAN-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan province is facing a fresh wave of unrest as thousands of police personnel, including women constables and officers, are engaged in a severe protest against the authorities for not releasing their allowances in time. This is, of course, not the first time that the Pakistan-occupied territory of Gilgit-Baltistan is facing such a situation. In the past also, the region saw many serious agitations with people rising to ask for their basic rights. As is typical with Pakistan, the authorities are least bothered about fulfilling their governance obligations, no matter how serious the grievances are. In the current case, the nearly complete Police force is up in arms against the Government for not paying the allowances of its personnel.

 

If the Pakistani authorities do not consider this also as a serious matter, then they appear headed for an obvious doom. Thus, Pakistan is in the grip of trouble in three of its major provinces -- illegally-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, illegally-occupied Balochistan, and illegally-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan region. There is no solution in sight and all the Paki authorities appear to be doing is to suppress the voice of dissent and reason. The central allocation of funds to these areas is frugal, to say the least, and the attitude of the people in power is of extreme arrogance. This approach angers the locals all the more. The first point of a serious grudge is that Pakistan has occupied their regions illegally. The second grudge is that the Pakistani authorities care a damn for the illegally-occupied regions (thus leaving those areas in utter neglect of every kind. In most places, therefore, sort of freedom movement has risen above the ground and daring the authorities in every which the way.

 

The intensity of the freedom movement may vary from region to region, all right. Yet, the Pakistan’s central authorities have begun realising that there are only remote chances of a successful repression of those freedom movements. If the Police personnel have risen against the authorities in Gilgit-Baltistan, then the region has already traversed into danger zone. For any Government or its agency, such a situation has all the potential to go to the dirtiest limits. For, when the cops are not motivated enough, then it is clear that even a small unrest among common people can get to dangerous proportions. That is what seems to be happening in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, and the province may face very serious issues of internal security. In Balochistan, the level of unrest has risen to an unimaginable level. Freedom-fighters have begun dominating vast areas of the Balochistan region.

 

Their attacks on Pakistani armed forces have become too frequent and too well-planned and intense for the Pakistani troops to counter successfully. True, Pakistan has managed to get the Balochistan Liberation Army and one of its outfits -- the Majid Brigade -- proscribed by the United States Government. But this assertive approach by the Pakistani authorities also does not seem to have yielded good or desired results. Much to the contrary, the BLA appears not to have been affected by the distant American announcement. Moreover, the Baloch liberation struggle has begun stirring international opinion as well. Baloch ambassadors of goodwill are roaming the world to awaken the people to their cause. Even the United Nations has expressed serious concern over the atrocities and suppression of voice of freedom in Balochistan. All these development have made Pakistan an area under severe civil unrest -- and the Pakistani authorities appear clueless about finding solutions to the issue on hand. Those who have watched Pakistan for long now feel strongly that the country is on the verge of multiple cleavages in the next some years and may disintegrate eventually.