Volume 7, No. 2, February 2025
Editor: Rashed Rahman
The Frontier Corps (FC) and ground reality
The Kharotabad (Quetta) incident of May 17, 2011 reflects the attitudes of the Frontier Corps (FC) and police in Balochistan and signifies the value they put on human lives. On that day, five Chechen tourists, three women and two men, were killed. At first it was claimed that these were terrorists and were about to attack the FC post, that they had explosives and suicide jackets and had died in an explosion of a suicide jacket. These innocent tourists were gunned down not even on a plausible misunderstanding but because the FC and the police are trigger-happy. A total of 56 bullets were found in their bodies apart from those that may have exited or missed. There was video and a photographic image of an injured woman raising her hand pleading for her life and an FC person firing at her. Subsequently the FC and police wanted a way out and alleged that they had fired after an explosion. But Dr Syed Baqir Shah in his post-mortem report clearly said they died of bullet wounds and one of the women was seven months pregnant. This good doctor was beaten up in an attempt to kidnap him to make him recant, but as he did not relent, unknown persons gunned him down on December 29, 2011. Even those who try to tell the truth about the atrocities by FC and police themselves become victims of, you guessed rightly, unknown assailants.
On August 13, 2020, an IED exploded near a vehicle of the FC on patrol. Its personnel went into the adjoining date palm farm and there Muhammad Hayat Mirza, a student of Karachi University, was helping his father and mother. The FC personnel beat him up, accusing him of being responsible for the blast and then trussed him up, took him outside and fired eight bullets into him. All this while his parents were pleading that the boy was with them picking dates but their pleas were disregarded. He was the hope of his parents for a better life once he was done with studying. He had come to his hometown as the University was closed due to Covid-19. They tried to cover up this murder like they did in the Kharotabad incident and claimed that he was killed by the blast, but the social media and BBC exposed their lies and under pressure they remanded one FC soldier to police custody. This murder could not have been committed by one soldier alone; all are equally guilty. As one respected friend said, the entire FC is guilty as are the people of this country who have allowed the FC to keep committing murders by their silence and submissiveness. The politicians and the political parties that keep quiet on murders and enforced disappearances are as guilty as those who pull the trigger.
This behaviour is not an exception: it is the rule with them. The PPP Balochistan President Sadiq Umrani said on the floor of the House on February 7, 2012 that he and two other ministers had witnessed killing of two citizens by FC personnel on the main Quetta-Kalat National Highway. During the debate over the resolution condemning the killing of Baloch women in Karachi, Umrani said that a few months ago, i.e. in November 2011, he, accompanied by information minister Yunis Mullazai and home and tribal affairs minister Zafar Zehri, were returning after condoling the death of PPP leader Agha Irfan Karim’s mother when they saw FC personnel holding two blindfolded and handcuffed men at the roadside near Mangochar on the highway. Umrani said that the FC men gunned down both the men and their bodies were found from the area the next day. The PPP leader accused the FC of being involved in the killing of innocent people and protested against the deployment of FC on the Sibi Highway. He said that FC personnel also killed two innocent people and injured four others near Bakhtiarabad in Sibi and the House should also debate this issue. This, as always, was denied and nothing happened as always.
The FC is given money by the Balochistan government for the security, yes security, it provides; this is officially disclosed fact. During the Balochistan provincial Assembly session on April 28, 2019 in Quetta, the Balochistan Home Minister Mir Ziaullah Langove said the provincial government was paying Rs 91 million per month to the FC for providing security in the province. He added that the FC had been deployed in Quetta, Ziarat, Mastung, Isplingi Road Mastung, Kachhi, Sibi, Nasirabad, Qila Abdullah, Kalat, Khuzdar, Awaran, Loralai, Barkhan, Ziarat, Kech, Gwadar, Pishin, Panjgur and Chaghai districts since 2004 because of the precarious law and order situation there. He also told the members that 71 platoons and one wing of the FC were maintaining law and order in the province.
It is not only the government that is hiring the FC for security. During the session of the Senate in August 2015, Senator Usman Kakar of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) accused the FC of “interfering in provincial autonomy by intruding in the affairs of the Balochistan government.” Initiating a debate on a motion on an agreement signed between the FC and lease owners of coal mines in Harnai and imposition of a ‘tax’ on the latter by the FC, it was revealed that the FC was collecting the ‘tax’ at a rate of Rs 220 per ton of coal. The owners and contractors of the coalmines claimed that the payment of protection money at a price of Rs 220 per ton was a consensual agreement between them and the FC for unhindered mining and marketing of the coal. This was all the more surprising as the FC is paid by the state for protecting security. This extra earning as protection money is in fact a more respectable name for the ugly word ‘extortion’.
This is very lucrative for the FC. According to estimates, there are reserves of 217 million tonnes of high-quality coal in Balochistan, of which 76 are in district Harnai alone. The daily production of coal in Harnai and Zarkoon coalmines can be 4,000-5,000 tonnes. This alone would secure at least a million rupees daily extra income for the FC, meaning a whopping Rs 365 million a year — not a bad thing if you are also being commended for your patriotism and there is a regular display of chest thumping for services rendered. The Shahrig-Khost-Harnai coalfield alone had a production of 188,389 tonnes in 2013-2014, for which the protection money would be Rs 41,445,580. How much money comes from the Chamaling and other coalfields can only be presumed because the protection levy per tonne and the quantity of coal produced there is not known. On April 21, 2016 reports said that COAS General Raheel Sharif had sacked officers including one Lieutenant-General, one Major-General, three Brigadiers and one Colonel. These officers served in the FC in Balochistan. The top names in the list include former Inspector-General Frontier Corps (IG FC) Balochistan Lieutenant-General Obaidullah Khattak and Major-General Ijaz Shahid. Other senior names in the list of sacked officers include Brigadier Asad Shahzada, Brigadier Amir, Brigadier Saifullah and Colonel Haider. They were dismissed for corruption while serving in Balochistan. Imagine then how the people of Balochistan must have been treated by those whose only interest was money-making.
All this would not have come to light had not a report in a newspaper given details as follows. The lid on corruption in the FC was blown in late 2014 following an accident in which two serving army engineers, Lt-Colonel Shakeel and Major Yasir lost their lives while testing a non-custom paid sports car for the son of the then IG FC Major-General Ejaz Shahid, according to multiple sources in the army. Lt-Colonel Shakeel had been tasked to fix the car that had been confiscated from Chaman. Following the death of the two officers, an inquiry conducted by the FC headquarters ironically held them at fault and recommended that their posthumous compensation not be paid to their heirs. This action was resented by the families of the two officers, who complained to the army chief’s secretariat and an inquiry was initiated by Military Intelligence. The probe then led to the unearthing of corruption in the FC, the sources said, adding that Major-General Shahid was posted out after the start of the inquiry.
There had been allegations against the FC as far back as 2006-07 that its officials connived with smugglers of oil, cars, luxury goods and other items earning a huge amount of money. But the allegations were never investigated (till the tragic accident occurred) due to the insurgency in the province. As a result, the FC continued to enjoy a free hand in Balochistan.
The insurgency in Balochistan has always been used as a source of enriching the officers. The dismissed former IG FC had said that the militants were getting funds by kidnapping people for ransom. An army Major Naveed was guilty of extorting money for a person, Hafeezullah from Noshki, who had disappeared. Major Naveed made the family pay a ransom of some Rs five million and that person was not returned either. The army and FC it seems have the authority to do whatever they want as there are only a couple of instances of punishment, which too were accidentally exposed.
Here is a piece of information that will further expose the shady dealings that go on in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In August 2015 Khurram Hussain, in an article titled “Hidden economy” published in Dawn, raised important questions pointing to something sinister that goes on unnoticed. He said: “The State Bank operates 16 clearing houses in cities all over the country. Every month it releases data on how many cheques were presented for clearing in each of these, and what the total amount cleared by the cheques was. If you take this data, which stretches back to 1999, and plot it for each city in Pakistan, you notice something very interesting. Remove the cities of Karachi and Lahore from the sample for the time being because these are global cities in a sense with long distance connections. Compare only the regional cities and here is what you will find. Following 9/11, half the cities in the total sample will show a sharply rising trend in the amount of money going through their clearing houses. For the other half, the line is flat. The cities that show a rising trend are led by Peshawar, with Faisalabad, Multan, Rawalpindi and Quetta in close succession. For Peshawar, the amount of money being cleared via cheques in the year 2011 crosses Rs 1.3 trillion! For Quetta, in the same year, the amount is just under Rs 900 billion, meaning between them these two regional cities are seeing Rs two trillion going through their clearing houses in one year alone. This figure compares with Faisalabad at Rs one trillion, Rawalpindi at Rs 1.4 trillion and Multan at Rs 826 billion. But what are Peshawar and Quetta doing on this list? Faisalabad and Multan are regional hubs, productive centres, large seats of agrarian operations. Faisalabad hosts one of the world’s largest yarn markets, where settlements are made largely using banks and where more than $ five billion of exports are produced. But in Peshawar and Quetta, there is no such trend, not in branchless banking, telegraphic transfers, or bulk consumption of electricity. There is only one lone spike, showing an increase in clearing house transactions that keeps pace with the agricultural and industrial heartland of the country.”
The obvious question is: what is driving this spike in Quetta and Peshawar? Where is the economic activity that is sending such spectacular sums of money through the clearing houses of these two cities? And why does this money leave no trace on any other economic indicator of the city or the province? He nails it with, “These cities are engulfed by a very large hidden economy, from where a massive river of transactions briefly appears on the official record, then disappears from view again.”
There surely is something deeply rotten in the state of Denmark! There has to be a reason that a blind eye is turned towards it. It is this hidden economy that benefits some and in whose interests it thrives because there is incalculable money in the unrest that keeps certain quarters well fed as we saw in Balochistan’s coal mines protection money. The money that changes hands unrecorded in fact is at least five times more than the clearing houses’ transactions. What prompts such large volumes of money in Quetta and Peshawar? One does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand this. It is the drugs flow and arms smuggling from Afghanistan that is responsible for enriching those who have the authority and clout to facilitate transit onwards to other cities in Pakistan and the world. But it is not only Afghanistan that grows poppy and manufactures heroin. In March 2014, the Balochistan Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution demanding the government end poppy cultivation on thousands of acres of irrigated land in Qila Abdullah district, which shares a border with Afghanistan. The provincial minister, Dr Hamid Achakzai of the PkMAP said that poppy was being cultivated with impunity: “Qila Abdullah is notorious for the open sale of hashish. There are around 120 heroin factories in the district.” He added that the police, FC, the anti-narcotics force and even Pakistan army were present in Qila Abdullah but still this illegal business is thriving.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2009 report on Afghanistan’s drug trade estimated that around 40 percent of Afghanistan’s heroin and 30 percent of its opium pass through Pakistan to the rest of the world annually. This cross-border trafficking has a local value between $ 910 million and $ 1.2 billion. Another UNODC report says that around 6.7 million Pakistanis, six percent of the population, between the ages of 15 and 64 use drugs and 4.1 million individuals are dependent. Sindh is badly affected but Punjab had the highest number of drug users at 2.9 million in 2013. How drugs reach Karachi, say, from Helmand does not need a rocket science explanation either. Palms are greased along the route and, therefore, it is of little wonder that drug prices at the destination are exorbitant. Those making money by facilitating transit are as bad as the producers, marketeers and vendors but, sadly, they are highly respected and ‘pious’ in the high-end housing societies they live in. Corruption here is institutionalised because the institutions are behind it.
Balochistan has its Imam Bheel, who is a US-certified drug trafficking kingpin. He has cosy relations with Dr Malik and his party. He wields clout and therefore the deputy commissioner of Gwadar, Abdul Rehman Dashti, was murdered in Karachi in March 2012 but his next of kin still await justice. Kingpin Imam Bheel is the prime suspect. The rot is deep and widespread. An April 2015 news report will give you an idea and mind you that Loralai and Duki are not unpoliced areas. Paramilitary troops of the FC and personnel of the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) launched an operation in Duki area of Loralai district and destroyed poppy crop cultivated on hundreds of acres. The personnel entered the poppy growing land after cordoning off the entire area. Some 400 people took part in the operation, including 150 FC and ANF personnel. The landowners did not offer any resistance. Official sources said that the operation was launched after receiving information about the cultivation of the illegal crop. The FC and ANF had previously destroyed poppy crop in various areas of Loralai district and people now were cultivating it on land surrounded by boundary walls. The poppy crop was on some 240 acres and this large an area cannot be hidden from anyone except when a blind eye is turned towards it because money has the power to make crimes invisible. These growers may not have paid the extortion money demanded of them by the civil and military officials. Those who refuse or cannot pay the extortion money are taken to task while it is business as usual for those who grease palms.
The hidden economy is driven by greed and lust for money, which then translates into power, and these two bottomless pits will never be filled. The hidden economy cannot thrive without institutional support, which may be there legally, constitutionally or illegally by force. Money, power and privilege corrupt everywhere but here it is more severe, and the more of it the possessors have the more evil and sinister they become. Those who get to a position through theft, swindling, bullying, treachery or force, where power, pelf and privilege are theirs for the taking, not only refuse to relinquish it but desire it even more. No one can explain this affliction better than Sheikh Saadi who says:
“Sag ba darya-e-haftgana bashoi — Kay cho tar shud paleed tar bashad”
(A dog bathed in seven seas is not pure — For the wetter it gets the more impure it turns out to be (Muslims believe a wet dog is impure)).
(To be continued)