The Necropolitics in Balochistan: Memoirs, Emotions, Identity – III
Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

There are mass graves like in Tutak and the graveyards of the anonymous in Dasht that Mahrang Baloch visited at the start of the year 2025. They are a consequence of the state and its proxies’ brutality and the people’s will and determination to defend their rights and land. The state doesn’t allow forensic examination to determine who these bodies belong to for they want to cover up their crimes. A day will come when the dead will tell who they are and what they suffered at the hands of their tormentors.
The Tutak mass graves deserve to be dealt with in some detail. They were discovered by a shepherd on January 17, 2014. Officially only 13 bodies were reported but people say there were many more. Only two were identified because there were chits on them with their names. It should be mentioned that the judicial inquiry blamed Shafique Mengal and it was well known that he ran a death squad with the support of the government.
More importantly, 30 members of the Qalandrani tribe, including three sons of its leader Sardar Ali Muhammad, were kidnapped on February 18, 2011. Their bodies or their whereabouts are to date unknown and the family blames Shafique Mengal for he is related to that tribe via his mother. The Qalandrani family was opposed to Shafique Mengal’s activities. People of that area say that there are more mass graves but no one is allowed to search for these and uncover them.
The complicity between the death squads and the state becomes apparent from the fact that in July 2011 the Commander of the Army’s Southern Command, Lt-General Javed Zia, talking to newsmen said, “Some Baloch youths had burnt the national flag just for the sake of money or carried out subversive activities. As a result, they were hit by patriotic elements.” Terming the death squad that does the dirty work of killing those that they think are anti-state as ‘patriotic elements’ doesn’t leave an iota of doubt about the state being complicit.
The state brutality and the consequent mass graves and graveyards of the unknown are aimed as a deterrent to the resistance of the people by sowing terror and fear but paradoxically the effect is the opposite for these engender anger, resentment and defiance. The people understand the consequences before they embark on the road of resistance and the state brutality invariably fails to deter people from their chosen course.
The graves of the unknown are not only in Balochistan as probably the biggest such graveyard is in Karachi’s Edhi Foundation’s Mowachh Goth graveyard where more than 250,000 unknown bodies are buried. How many were victims of state brutality that includes the police is hard to determine for in this 30-acre large graveyard there has never has been an attempt to forensically determine the identification of the dead. In 2015 a programme was launched for identifying the new bodies and was successful to some extent, but the past ones remain unknown. Such graveyards are a disgrace for humanity for these help cover up the crimes that are committed and these crimes are buried forever. Getting a decent burial cannot be the end-result of a life for if it is a crime that has led to that death, that crime needs to be exposed and the culprits punished.
There is also the question of what importance can an individual’s body and funeral hold for the people and the fear and insecurity it creates for the state and its rulers. We talked about Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri and his funeral. However, there is another important example and that is of Banuk Karima Baloch who had been killed in Canada on December 20, 2020, which was termed as suicide, and her body was brought to Karachi on January 24, 2021 for burial in Tump, her ancestral home.
I was at the airport that day along with Dr Mahrang Baloch, Dr Sabiha Baloch, Shakeela Naveed with her children, then an MPA of the Balochistan Assembly, Yousaf Mastikhan, Zohra Jehangir wife of Raza Jehangir Shaheed, and Dur Bibi. Dr Sabiha and myself entered the airport with Shakeela Naveed while Mahrang and others entered on their own. Outside too there were many people including Mama Qadeer and others but entry was being restricted because Banuk Karima was one of the most important personages of the Baloch resistance and the struggle for Baloch rights and they wanted to keep people away.
When the body did arrive, Karima’s sister and other relatives who had come to receive her were told that the body would be sent to Turbat by airplane. The family refused for they knew that multitudes were waiting for her on the roads and a funeral prayer had been arranged in Lyari. The state knew that Karima was a symbol that inspired defiance of the state and love of Motherland and they had to stop people from even seeing the dead body of their beloved Banuk Karima.
They kept stalling and on the quiet blocked different roads outside the airport. They then put her body and the relatives in an ambulance and gave it an escort of many vehicles of Rangers and set off for Tump. I was in touch with her sister Mahganj but could not do anything for they ensured that the roads leaving the airport remained blocked so that no one could follow the ambulance.
Left with no option we proceeded to Lyari where a funeral prayer was to be held at a stadium. The gates of the stadium were locked and police posted to stop people. People went ahead with the funeral prayer in absentia on the street and after speeches people dispersed. However, Mahrang Baloch, Sabiha Baloch and others proceeded towards Tump. There were restrictions on the road to Tump and people were not being allowed to travel. Tump itself was under curfew virtually and only the relatives of Banuk were allowed to attend the burial. The fear of Karima who was no longer alive even surpassed the fear the state felt when she was alive. How a dead person becomes a threat to those who hounded her when she was alive just shows that some deaths have the potential of galvanising people to a cause and prompting them to more sacrifices. Karima’s death was one such. She is loved and revered by all who knew her and even by those who never had a chance to meet her but were inspired by what she stood for. As a Baloch woman she represented all the Baloch women who have love for their people and their motherland.
Karima was very dear to me and it was her hand that I kissed first to show my respect for my daughters. We became much the poorer in losing her so early but were fortunate to get Dr Mahrang Baloch as an inspiration and leader.
I should also mention Raza Jehangir who was with Banuk Karima when they visited me at my ancestral home in Hyderabad, Sindh in February 2013. Raza was the secretary general of Baloch Students Organisation-Azad (BSO-Azad) then. On March 15, 2025, BSO-Azad was banned, forcing its members to go underground. Raza was a dedicated activist and he continued to work for his organisation. On August 14, 2013 he was killed along with Imdad Bojair. His funeral was led by his brave mother. Leading the people she sang a lullaby for her martyred son. It goes thus:
Raza Jan is little (child) and he is naive, joyfully asleep, in his decorated cradle. Calm and fast asleep in his decorated cradle,
Sapient (learned men) are his forefathers.
This is how Baloch mothers look at the sacrifices of their sons who die for Balochistan.
The words below are the expression of a Baloch girl who feels and understands the pain that mothers undergo and what a Zahīrok (Lullaby for Elegy) denotes and stands for. The words are not only profound in meaning but also convey the determination to never give up even after the greatest loss we may suffer when we seek a life of freedom and dignity.
She wrote: “My immediate feeling I wrote down after watching that video:
In a grainy video, I watch Raza Jehangir’s mother, as she leads her son’s funeral procession. Her voice cracks and trembles, surrounded by other women echoing her grief. Elderly and leaning on a stick, she walks with deliberate steps, each movement a testimony of defiance. At its core, the zahīrok is more than discursive; it enacts grief in a shared register, drawing private pain into the space of the political. As she beats her chest softly, her personal mourning transforms into an affective and collective act of resistance. In this gesture, grief becomes defiance. It is not simply an expression of loss, but an affective, embodied mode of dissent against the state’s violence.”
These words not only describe the scene but portray how Baloch mothers deal with their losses. It is not only true for sons but extends to all male relations be it father, brother, uncle, cousin, and even a family friend.
The politics of killing and death have not been limited to disappearances or extra-judicial killings alone for there have been premeditated assassinations as well aimed at eliminating personages with large circles of influence who were considered detrimental to the state policy of erasure and loot. These assassinations do not seem to be random. There have been many but I will mention just two, that of Professor Saba Dashtyari and Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.
Professor Saba Dashtyari was a literary person who not only cared for Baloch literature and its history, he had set up the Zahoor Shah Hashmi Library in Malir, Karachi, which is now under threat of demolition because of an expressway meant to benefit elite housing societies. The expressway is also destroying the Malir River and Malir’s environment.
Dashtyari advocated the right of self-determination for the Baloch. Both his literary endeavours and radical political stand were irksome for the state as they stood in the way of the cultural, economic and political erasure policy that was being practiced since March 27, 1948. Professor Saba wielded a lot of influence among the Baloch youth and the state understood that the continued political and cultural radicalisation of the Baloch youth would prove detrimental to its aims and policies in force. On June 1, 2011, when he was on a walk in Quetta, he was targeted by a gunman and assassinated.
Professor Saba’s cultural, political and social activism was considered a threat and though he did not carry a gun he was considered as dangerous and even more so than those fighting with arms. He was instilling self-respect, consciousness of rights and the spirit to uphold one’s rights and that made him a target of those who fear these things in a people they want to be docile and pliable so that their machinations of erasing indigenous culture, disempowering, disenfranchising them and looting resources are not challenged. All educated Baloch are viewed with suspicion and there has been an increasing trend of disappearing students, teachers, publishers, poets and writers. This is culturicide and scholasticide aimed at erasing a nation. The killing of Professor Saba was a part of this institutionalised policy of erasure of the Baloch.
Nawab Akbar Shahbaz Khan Bugti was the Tumandar of the Bugti tribe, which along with the Marri tribe are the biggest in Balochistan. His nationalistic leanings and espousing of Baloch causes were always a reason for friction between him and the Pakistani state. Except for a brief interlude of a nine-month association with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto at the start of the 1973-1977 insurgency, he always stood with the Baloch cause.
At the start of the year 2005 Dr Shazia Khalid, who was posted in Sui, was raped by an army officer named Hammad but Musharraf, then the President, absolved him of the crime. The people, outraged at the rape, attacked a few installations in Sui. There were clashes between the tribesmen and those guarding the installations. This disrupted the supply of gas and there was more use of force to stop the disturbances. Troops were sent to Sui. The then interior minister Aftab Sherpao, talking to newsmen on January 12, 2005, said the Bugtis are firing from the house next to Nawab Sahib’s residence. He also said that attacks had started from January 7 and continued till January 11 in which three personnel of the Defence Security Guards, two guards of the Frontier Corps and four civilians died. He said about 14,000 rounds of small arms, 436 mortar fire and 60 rockets were used by the miscreants during the attack. There was outrage in Sindh too as Dr Shazia Khalid was from Sindh and this outrage angered the people. The confrontations continued and the temperatures kept on increasing.
Moreover, in 2005 Nawab Akbar Bugti had presented demands and had also demanded a moratorium on cantonments in Balochistan. This irked the Musharraf government and they started putting pressure on the Nawab by increasing their forces in the area and confronting people unnecessarily. Nawab Akbar Khan and his tribe were not being cowed by the confrontations and hostility, which was systematic and had ulterior aims.
On March 17, 2005, the army shelled Nawab Akbar Bugti’s residence indiscriminately. People in the residence were injured but fortunately Nawab Sahib remained unhurt. According to Nawab Sahib, several hundred rockets, mortar shells and missiles were fired on Dera Bugti, killing innocent Hindus and Bugtis, including women and children. “My residence was the main target during the operation and around 100 shells and rockets landed and exploded at different places in my house.” However, the worst hit in the incident was the Hindu Mohallah where 32 people were killed and 16 were wounded. This Mohallah is located within Bugti fort. A local trader, Sarvand Jumar, said that 11 members of a family died in the Frontier Corps attack. This attack ensured that the point of no return had been reached.
Though human rights activists and politicians came to try to mend and defuse the situation, the distrust of the state’s intentions by Nawab Sahib due to continued provocations and an infamous past of betrayal after promises were the main obstacles. Moreover, Nawab Sahib had decided to not let himself fall into the hands of the authorities whatever the consequences.
Nawab Sahib keeping up the Baloch tradition of resistance took to the mountains, though at his age and health it was torturous and difficult but his unflagging spirit kept him going. Though he was hounded and provoked he refused to give up and as the Bugti and Marri area are adjoining, he crossed over to the Marri area where Mir Balach Marri, son of Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, was already resisting the state.
It was on August 26, 2006 that Pakistan decided to end Nawab sahib’s life in the hope that eliminating this powerful symbol of resistance they could bring the people under their everlasting control. It was a step that backfired gravely and the fighting that was already going on spread like wildfire. According to the news reports, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was killed along with 37 armed tribals in a military operation in the Kalgari area of the Bhambore hills in Marri area. Also, according to reports, around 21 security personnel, including some officers, were also killed in fierce clashes. Over two dozen tribesmen were injured in the area and taken into custody. Mystery surrounds this event for Nawab Sahib’s body was never shown and it was secretly buried in Dera Bugti. The place remains off-limits even to his surviving son Jamil Akbar Bugti, who even questions the presence of his father’s body there.
A conflagration resulted from the martyrdom of Nawab Akbar Bugti. There were protests and disturbances in not only Balochistan but Sindh as well. People resented the tyranny that was rife in Balochistan. Pakistan thought that it would douse the fire of resistance by martyring Nawab Sahib but instead lit a fire that will eventually consume it.
(To be continued)