Ιslamic Republic of Pakistan has unleashed its death squads on people of Balochistan. They kill innocent Baloch people irrespective of their gender. A reporter shot the gruesome killing and a man can be heard saying "Don't record it, it is shame on Pakistan.
Earlier, on June 4, 2020, the Baloch National Movement (BNM) had urged the international community, especially neighbouring countries including India, to protect the Baloch people from the Army’s death squads.
While, the world has turned a deaf ear to the enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings of Baloch nationalists, the Pakistan Army has outsourced the targeting and killing of Baloch activists, pro-independence leaders and workers to private ‘death squads’ – militia of local goons and convicted criminals who allegedly operate at the behest of the Army, to counter the ongoing Baloch insurgency. These groups often accompany the Army in raids on the houses of political activists, dissidents and pro-independence leaders.
An investigative report by exiled Baloch journalist Taha Siddiqui published in South Asia Press on April 27, 2021, claimed that, since 2010, the practice of using ‘death squads’ had been intensified and institutionalized, especially in the south-western parts of Balochistan where a full-fledged insurgency has been going on since the killing of Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti on August 26, 2006.
Shafiq-ur-Rehman Mengal formed the first ‘death squad’ in Balochistan in 2008 – the Musallah Defah Tanzeem (MDT) – with the mission of ‘defending’ the public from pro-independence groups. Mengal had the support of the Pakistan Army, and his powerful connections helped him raise his militia. Mengal initiated a reign of terror in Balochistan, killing not only suspected nationalists but also political, non-political and tribal rivals. Mengal is also ‘credited’ with the mass graves discovered in 2014 in Tootak, a rural area 55 kilometres to the north of Khuzdar, where 169 dead bodies were recovered.
At a young age, Mengal became associated with the extortion mafias of Karachi in the Sindh Province. Hyderabad was his centre of activities. When General (Retd.) Pervez Musharaf came to power in October 1999, state security agencies selected Shafiq Mengal and his brother Atta-ur-Rehman as state ‘agents of death’ in Balochistan.
Several other local militia groups in Balochistan were raised as death squads. Shafiq Mengal and the Zakaria M. Hasni-led ‘death squad’ in Khuzdar; Deen Muhammad Deenu’s group in Awaran; squads led by Samir Sabzal, Rashid Pathan and Sardar Aziz in Kech; and units led by Maqbool Shambezi in Panjgur and Siraj Raisani in Mastung. Siraj Raisani was killed on July 13, 2018, when a suicide bomber targeted a political rally of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), killing at least 128 people and injuring more than 200 others at Dringarh village in Mastung District.
Not surprisingly, Baloch groups have also targeted death squad members as well. At least seven of these have been killed in 2021, thus far (data till May 2, 2021). Most recently, on March 10, 2021, BLF militants shot dead a prominent death squad member, Haider Siah-Pad, near the Levies Police Station in Kharan town (Kharan District). BLF ‘spokesman’ Gwahram Baloch subsequently stated that Haider was a key figure in a death squad and was at the forefront of targeted killings.
While the Military Establishment has always sought to distance itself from enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings and of Baloch activists, there is not an iota of doubt that the deep state is using death squads to supress the Baloch nationalist movement. The Pakistan Supreme Court has sought, but has failed comprehensively, to impose some measure of accountability. The rampage of death squads in Balochistan, consequently, shows no signs of waning.
