Balochistan conflict

Prior to 2005 the 'conflict' in Balochistan was probably confined to seven percent of its area including, in the main, parts of Kohlu and Dera Bugti districts whereas now it has engulfed about half the Province including many urban areas. The disaffected include large numbers of youth. This raises a question mark over the 'claimed' success, as also the future, of the so-called three-pronged strategy viz political dialogue, socio-economic development and selective use of force.
The military operation has eliminated several farrari camps, recovered substantial arsenals of weapons and killed or driven into exile hundreds of militants. On the other side of the balance-sheet is the fact that acts of sabotage and subversion such as blowing up of gas pipelines, actual or attempted derailment of trains, kidnapping of government functionaries and rocket attacks on government installations, continue unabated and it is debatable whether the number of such incidents is increasing, decreasing or remains steady. In the process the security forces viz the Army and the FC have suffered casualties numbering in the hundreds.
On the development front much has been and is being done including the building of the Sabakzai and Miani dams, the on-going construction of the Kachhi Canal and the Gwadar Port, the Chamalang Coal Mines Project, the cadet schools at Mastung and a number of other locations and various other educational and technical training projects but the expected favourable impact has been negated by the lack of a meaningful political dialogue with dis-affected elements especially after the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti.
A most worrisome aspect of this conflict is the growing number of attacks on Settlers (seven percent of Balochistan's population) which could by themselves prove to be a grave threat to the cohesion of the Federation.
One of the proposed solutions for meeting Baloch demands is to increase the quantum of provincial autonomy by deleting most if not all items in the Concurrent Legislative List. Whilst this is desirable, not only for Balochistan but for the other provinces also, it may not yield the desired results for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the real problem in federal-provincial relations is that the Federation does not respect provincial autonomy even in matters that fall within the powers of the Provinces. Take, for example, the matter of local government. This is a provincial subject but the district government system has been imposed on all the Provinces including Balochistan, by the Federation on the basis of proposals formulated by the National Reconstruction Bureau. Secondly, real and meaningful provincial autonomy will not come till each Province, including Balochistan, has direct control of substantially more sources of revenue.
A World Bank funded study, as also studies made for the 6th National Finance Commission, show that 93 percent of the combined revenues of the federal, provincial and district governments are collected by the federal government whose own expenditure accounts for 72 percent of the whole. The provincial and district governments spend 28 percent of the total expenditures but raise only 7 percent of the combined revenues.