Volume 7, No. 1, January 2025
Editor: Rashed Rahman
Abdul Qadeer Reki aka Mama Qadeer had been sitting on token hunger strike outside Press Clubs in Quetta and Karachi since July 28, 2009. No one was paying attention although the author Mohammed Hanif had written a book, The Baloch who is not missing and others who are for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). It was launched at the Karachi Literature Festival on February 16, 2013 to highlight the issue. I had moderated the book launch at the request of the author. The participants were Farzana Majeed, whose brother Zakir Majeed was missing since June 8, 2009, I A Rehman and Mohammed Hanif, the author.
As no attention was being paid to the plight of the missing Baloch and the brutal ‘kill and dump’ policy, Mama Qadeer along with Farzana Majeed and other affected relatives, including Sammi Baloch, daughter of Dr Deen Mohammad (missing since June 28, 2009), Ali Haider, son of Ramzan Baloch (missing since July 14, 2010) and family, and others decided to walk from Quetta to Karachi to Islamabad to highlight the issue of Baloch Missing Persons. This was a momentous decision and though this 106-day walk (Quetta to Karachi October 27-November 22, 2013, Karachi to Islamabad December 13, 2013-March 1, 2014), termed the ‘Long March’, did not wake up the dead souls and dead consciences of the Pakistani establishment and the political parties that actively and tacitly connive with it, it marked the beginning of the high profile political and social activism of Baloch women in the Baloch National Struggle. Not that women were not politically active, for Karima Baloch was playing an important role in the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad’s social and political activism (Karima Baloch’s dead body was discovered in a river in Toronto on December 22, 2020. No convincing explanation for her death has been offered by the Canadian authorities – Ed.). The Long March saw Baloch women break the stereotype and come out on to the streets for recovery of their loved ones.
The taboo that Baloch women do not come out on the streets in full glare of publicity was now broken forever. Baloch women had also protested against the atrocities and arrests of Baloch leaders in Quetta in 1974. Nothing better than this could have happened to the Baloch National Struggle for this indeed was the qualitative change that has given impetus to the Baloch struggle for rights and the fight against injustices for when men show dissent, they are soon whisked away. Not that the women are dealt with politely, as proved by the Bolan Medical College protests and the opposition to online education. This struggle has thrown up new faces like Mahrang Baloch, Sadia Baloch, Sabiha Baloch and others who are proving to be a big headache for the state with their activism, eloquence and writings furthering the Baloch struggle.
It would be downright injustice if I do not mention the bravery, courage and dynamism of those Baloch women political activists who literally snatched away the coffin of their leader and mentor Sardar Khair Bakhsh Marri from the elements supporting the state, who wanted to intern his body away from all in Kahan so that it doesn’t become a symbol for the Baloch resistance. Breaking all traditions, they shouldered his coffin and took him to be buried at the Martyrs’ Graveyard on the outskirts of Quetta. The Baloch Nation will always be indebted to these brave souls for this singular act of bravery and defiance of the state.
The Long March was truly long and arduous. In the initial stage the pictures of the missing were carried on a wheelbarrow. For the Karachi to Islamabad trek a push cart was used. This too wasn’t easy, specially where the roads were bad, which they mostly were. It is a credit to those young men who pushed the cart all the way to Islamabad. It wasn’t a march of Prados and Land Cruisers that the elite politicians use for their protests. There was no definite arrangement as to where the night would be spent. It was spent in houses that were voluntarily offered, not without the accommodators being hounded and harassed. The next day it was meticulously ensured that the march began where it had ended the evening before. There usually were very few people when the march would start but then people would trickle in and many political activists would join. There would be people who were inquisitive to know why these women and men were marching with pictures of people in their hands and on the push cart. Once they knew why they would join the march for a distance. This was the way it was nearly all the way. The Sindhi Nationalist parties wholeheartedly supported the march during the time it was in the boundaries of their province.
In Dera Ghazi Khan there was a lot of support but in Punjab proper the support was not the way it was elsewhere. But there is credit for those who supported and provided places for the night for there was immense pressure on them. As the marchers neared Islamabad, the media interest increased and a few more people joined but the bulk of persons who were always with the marchers were the Baloch students studying in Punjab. The marchers would stop after about two hours walk. There would be a stop for tea at some roadside dhaba. At times the dhaba owner refused to take payment. Sometimes some small restaurant owners refused to take money for the lunch too. The political workers were generous but unaffiliated people too did help a lot.
The true impact of the Long March is quite difficult to gauge and would become clear if a survey of the people along the route had been conducted. I am sure millions saw this Long March as it passed through villages, towns and cities. Millions of vehicles with people in them must have seen this determined group trudge along. Many must have wondered who they are and inquired and learnt about them. Apart from this, thousands interacted with the marchers to inquire. Countless people donated water, fruit juices, fruit, biscuits, etc. Just as an aside, some Sindhi nationalists near Hala suggested that we should not accept these offerings as the government may try to lace them with something to hurt the marchers. I told them if the government wants it can do that through various means apart from this so refusing people’s generosity would hurt the people offering these tokens of respect and love and therefore would not reflect well on the March and its aims; they agreed.
The Long March was a target of misinformation and disinformation as the establishment wanted to malign it. So-called political analyst Air Vice Marshal (retired) Shehzad Chaudhry on March 1, 2014 quite blatantly lied on Capital TV when he said that Mama Abdul Qadeer, the leader of the Voice of Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) Long March, has a Thuraya satellite phone and he wouldn’t be surprised if there were there three or four Land Cruisers with them. To put the record straight, Mama had a cheap Nokia phone and the only vehicle accompanying the marchers was an ambulance provided by the Edhi Foundation. TV One ran a ticker that Rs two million were being given to the marchers daily and that food for them came from five star hotels. The fact is that the marchers ate whatever food was available from wayside hotels and quite a few times the owners refused to accept money for the food or tea. The core group of marchers numbering about 20 was housed for the night by different individuals who in turn were friends of supporters and provided whatever dinner and breakfast they could manage. These individuals had to face harassment of the intelligence agencies for playing host to the marchers. Akram Verraich, an artist and political activist of Wazirabad, played host to them at his residence in Wazirabad for six nights. The supposedly informed analysts and some TV channels lied unashamedly to malign the march and its participants because it took the battle to the establishment’s heartland.
The historic 106-day and 3,000 kilometre long march by Mama Qadeer Baloch, Farzana Majeed and family members of the Baloch missing persons was a march of indignation by the Baloch and a very unique political and social event that should have been espoused by millions but was not. A political and social protest of this magnitude would have initiated a political and social movement elsewhere but was conveniently ignored here. Nothing here seems to provoke indignation among the people unless of course it is projected by the media and has the blessings of the army. There is never a day of indignation here unless officially sponsored. At the end of the march at Islamabad’s National Press Club, some journalists tried to be too clever by half and ask provocative questions. It is to the credit of Farzana Majeed that she answered them so powerfully that they were dumb stricken. The pain in her soul for her missing brother and other missing persons plus the travails of the Long March spoke eloquently and logically, to which the bullying journalists had no answer.
I had the honour of marching with these brave souls for 26 days around a quarter of the entire journey. I also hosted them for five nights, three at our own house and two at houses of friends. I joined the march for all the missing and also the disappearance and killing of my former students. I had felt that it was more important to be with them in all the difficulties they had to experience than to just write about their pain. The most amazing thing was the high spirits of the girls when we would be in a van or car to go to the place allotted for the night at the end of the march every evening. It was impossible to not be infected by the contagiousness of their high spirits for the near eight to nine hours walk in which at times more than 25 kilometres were covered. The tiredness and the tensions just didn’t seem to matter to these brave women and they seemed fresh as one who had rested all day. I was the only person who was given the honour of accompanying the march as long as I wanted and from wherever I could rejoin. The marchers, all of them, are my cherished friends and they all say they learnt a lot from me but the traffic wasn’t one way; I too learnt from them.
These VBMP marchers were truly heroic teachers whose blackboard was the road and their pens their blistered and tired feet with which they wrote lessons of the glory of freedom. Their march was for teaching people the value of freedom in a unique way and their dedication and selflessness was in the true Baloch spirit. Each step that these brave and dedicated souls took was a lesson to cherish and emulate. One can only hope and pray that the Baloch and Sindhis did learn well from them and will emulate them in service of their respective nations. They walked not only for Baloch rights and Baloch victims of oppression but for all the oppressed. The determination, iron will and courage that these brave marchers displayed in the face of overwhelming odds is heroic and historic and adds an entirely new chapter to the Baloch struggle.
(To be continued)