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The Mama Qadeer Factor

The Baloch Hal Editorial Mama Qadeer Baloch, the leader of the recent 750-kilometer long march from Quetta to Karachi, is not a prominent politician or a leading cleric. He still managed to draw an impressive crowed in a seminar held at the Karachi Press Club on Tuesday, December 10, which was the International Human Rights Day. Mama Qadeer is the father ...

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The leader of the ages

Daily Times Editorial Nelson Mandela died quietly in his home aged 95 on Friday, leaving behind memories of one of the most unforgettable leaders of the twentieth century. His struggle stood out as much for his resistance to the mindboggling racial segregation policies of the white supremacist National Party in South Africa as for his ability to take his country ...

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The Balochistan ferment

The News Editorial  Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch is trying to be an honest broker at a time when everyone else is moving to the margins of extremism. The nationalist fervour in the province has increasingly curdled into separatism while the military and centre continue to be blind to the problems there. At a press conference in Karachi, ...

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Long March for Missing Persons

Daily Times Editorial  It is difficult not to feel stirrings of sympathy for Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, the Chief Minister (CM) of Balochistan. In his foray the other day to the Karachi Press Club, he was nothing if not candid. First and foremost, he admitted up front that he and his government had failed to resolve the issue of missing persons that ...

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HRCP report on Balochistan

 Daily Times Editorial Balochistan, that ill-fated province, is the epicentre of attention nowadays, and as usual for all the wrong reasons. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has released a fact-finding report assessing the situation in Balochistan. It says violence is continuing unabated. The report addresses terror attacks on minorities and the Ziarat Residency in particular. One of the ...

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Reassessing the affectees’ needs

Editorial Daily Times It cannot be stressed enough just how important it is for the whole nation to come together and do all it can for those affected by the massive earthquake that struck Balochistan and some parts of Sindh last week. The hardest hit by the natural calamity is the district of Awaran in Balochistan, which has seen most ...

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Relief Roadblocks

Editorial Daily Times For the many earthquake-affected residents of Balochistan, the misery has only just begun. In the immediate aftermath of the quake, one would expect tremendous relief efforts to take place with aid flowing in, human rights organisations taking note and NGOs both local and international entering the disaster-struck province at full speed. However, that does not seem to ...

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Gwadar, China And The Unrest

Days after prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, visited China and granted the Chinese operational control of the Gwadar Port in Balochistan, a massive attack on a security checkpoint on July 27 killed ten personnel of the Coast Guards. The Baloch Liberation Front (B.L.F.), an underground armed group fighting for a free Balochistan, accepted responsibility for the attack and claimed that the ...

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Gwadar attack

In a classic guerilla attack, some 24 insurgents of the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) (whose spokesman later took responsibility for the incident) stormed a Coast Guards isolated outpost in the Sundsar area near Gwadar. Of the 14 Coast Guards personnel manning the post, seven were killed, the rest wounded, while the two personnel missing were later claimed by the BLF ...

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Task force on missing persons

Despite the Supreme Court’s (SC’s) intervention in the missing persons’ issue, no real headway seems to have been made. A three-member bench headed by the Chief Justice instructed the federal government to come up with a comprehensive and efficacious policy within 10 days on how it plans to recover the missing persons. In response, the federal government has constituted a ...

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