Rahimullah Yusufzai (Yousafzai) is a Pakistani journalist. He is the Resident/Executive Editor of the Jang group’s The NEWS international” at Peshawar bureau and is a op-ed writer for the monthly Newsline. He is especially noted for holding the last interview with Osama bin Laden. He also served as Time Magazine’s Pakistan correspondent. He is also a correspondent of BBC’s Pushto and Urdu services in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

Yousafzai was born to Haji Adam Khan in Shamozai village of Mardan District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He received early education at his village primary school and then in public schools in Peshawar and Jhelum. He also studied at the D J Sindh Science College and University of Karachi. He was among the first journalists to report on the Taliban and visited Kandahar in 1995. He is one of the few bona fide experts on Afghanistan, having reported on the country since the 1980s.

Yousafzai is considered a commanding authority on Afghan affairs and on the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. Acknowledging his achievements in Journalism, the government of Pakistan awarded him with Tamgha-e-Imtiaz in August 2004 and Sitara-e- Imtiaz in August 2009. He got Sitara-e-Imtiaz for his achievement in the field of journalism for another time on 23rd March 2010.

Rahimullah Yusufzai (Yousafzai) is a Pakistani journalist. He is the Resident/Executive Editor of the Jang group’s The NEWS international” at Peshawar bureau and is a op-ed writer for the monthly Newsline. He is especially noted for holding the last interview with Osama bin Laden. He also served as Time Magazine’s Pakistan correspondent. He is also a correspondent of BBC’s Pushto and Urdu services in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

Yousafzai was born to Haji Adam Khan in Shamozai village of Mardan District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He received early education at his village primary school and then in public schools in Peshawar and Jhelum. He also studied at the D J Sindh Science College and University of Karachi. He was among the first journalists to report on the Taliban and visited Kandahar in 1995. He is one of the few bona fide experts on Afghanistan, having reported on the country since the 1980s.

Yousafzai is considered a commanding authority on Afghan affairs and on the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. Acknowledging his achievements in Journalism, the government of Pakistan awarded him with Tamgha-e-Imtiaz in August 2004 and Sitara-e- Imtiaz in August 2009. He got Sitara-e-Imtiaz for his achievement in the field of journalism for another time on 23rd March 2010.

Rahimullah Yusufzai (Yousafzai) is a Pakistani journalist. He is the Resident/Executive Editor of the Jang group’s The NEWS international” at Peshawar bureau and is a op-ed writer for the monthly Newsline. He is especially noted for holding the last interview with Osama bin Laden. He also served as Time Magazine’s Pakistan correspondent. He is also a correspondent of BBC’s Pushto and Urdu services in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

Yousafzai was born to Haji Adam Khan in Shamozai village of Mardan District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He received early education at his village primary school and then in public schools in Peshawar and Jhelum. He also studied at the D J Sindh Science College and University of Karachi. He was among the first journalists to report on the Taliban and visited Kandahar in 1995. He is one of the few bona fide experts on Afghanistan, having reported on the country since the 1980s.

Yousafzai is considered a commanding authority on Afghan affairs and on the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. Acknowledging his achievements in Journalism, the government of Pakistan awarded him with Tamgha-e-Imtiaz in August 2004 and Sitara-e- Imtiaz in August 2009. He got Sitara-e-Imtiaz for his achievement in the field of journalism for another time on 23rd March 2010.

Nawab Akbar Bugti was killed in military action on August 26, 2006, and Balochistan has yet to recover from the tragedy. Now Habib Jalib Baloch has been assassinated and we should all be concerned how the state of Pakistan ought to cope with tragedies that have become the fate of our badly managed federation.

One particularly worrying aspect of their deaths is that two important Baloch politicians who wanted Balochistan to remain part of the country have been eliminated. Both Bugti and Habib Jalib remained loyal to Pakistan until the end of their lives. It wasn’t easy to do so in an emotional climate that has been prevailing in Balochistan for some years now in view of the growing alienation of Baloch youth from Pakistan and the vocal demands being heard for independence.

Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal, a former chief minister of the province and head of the Balochistan National Party (BNP) to which Habib Jalib belonged, is now confronting the same situation but he must be credited for taking a stand against Baloch youngsters and organisations pushing his party to demand independence after Habib Jalib’s martyrdom. Akhtar Mengal, son of veteran Baloch politician Sardar Attaullah Mengal, too no longer trusts the Pakistan government and military and his BNP has moved from demanding maximum provincial autonomy for Balochistan to the right of self-determination for the Baloch people, but he hasn’t refused talks with the powers-that-be provided there are international guarantees for agreements that may be reached on the question of Baloch rights.

Bugti was 79 when he died in his cave hideout in Kohlu during a military operation. He had been a governor, chief minister and federal minister and had suffered imprisonment, changed political parties and faced accusations of stabbing his contemporary Baloch politicians Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, Attaullah Mengal and Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo in the back for the sake of power. But he wasn’t a traitor and his major crime in the eyes of the ubiquitous Pakistani establishment was demanding Baloch rights. In one of his last interviews, he said while referring to General Pervez Musharraf that those who violated Article 6 of the Constitution by staging military coups against democratically elected governments were the real traitors.

Unlike Nawab Bugti, Habib Jalib was a commoner from the middle class. He was only 57 when he died, but the way he has been eulogised following his assassination in Quetta on July 14 showed that most Baloch people would like to place him in the same category of their heroes as Bugti. Protests, some violent but mostly peaceful, broke out in Balochistan, particularly in the Baloch-populated areas, following his assassination. The three-day protests and shutter-down, wheel-jam strike were testimony to the fact that Habib Jalib enjoyed respect among his people. The BNP declared 40-day mourning for its deceased secretary general. Being a senior lawyer, Habib Jalib’s death also saddened his fellow lawyers. He had been chairman of the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO) and Baloch students too were aggrieved. And so were writers, poets and members of the intelligentsia because Habib Jalib was a literary man, a highly educated author who published a book on Baloch nationalism. He was fond of poetry even as a student and it was his love of revolutionary Urdu poet Habib Jalib that he added Jalib to his name Habib Baloch.

Habib Jalib’s life is a good example of the changing dynamics of Baloch politics. Student politics shaped his views as he graduated from a fiery Baloch nationalist to a pragmatic politician. Stints in jail, studying in the communist Soviet Union and self-exile in Afghanistan were all milestones in the life of the young man with long hair in the style of Che Guevara. He may have been a revolutionary at heart, but he didn’t pick up a gun or encourage others to do so while peacefully campaigning for Baloch rights. Someone wrote an obituary about him and described him as a secessionist at heart, but where is the evidence to show that Habib Jalib had given up on Pakistan? For six long years he served as a member of the Senate of Pakistan and his BNP put its faith in parliamentary democracy.

It was only after Bugti’s death that the BNP asked its lawmakers to resign from their seats because it felt there was no use and purpose to remaining part of the powerless assemblies. How else should Baloch nationalists have reacted when General Musharraf made that unpleasant statement that times had changed since the previous Baloch insurgencies and their leaders would not even know from where they had been hit? Here was a general, known for his impulsiveness, talking in terms of missiles and rockets and pushing for a military solution of an essentially political issue concerning the rights of indigenous people over the vast resources in their ancestral Baloch lands. When someone in authority speaks in such an insensitive manner and not once but five times military operations are carried out in Baloch areas in the 63 years since Pakistan’s independence, it becomes well nigh impossible to trust each other and maintain normal relations.

This is the sorrowful situation in which we find ourselves now and sadly enough neither the development and rights package under the Aghaz-i-Haqooq-i-Balochistan nor a public apology from President Asif Ali Zardari for the excesses committed against the Baloch people seems enough to break the ice and build trust in each other. The largely ceremonial meeting between Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Attaullah Mengal surely made headlines, but it didn’t and cannot end the stalemate and provide the basis for a meaningful dialogue between the two sides. Though the military apparently is on board with regard to the fresh promises being made and rights and incentives offered to the estranged Baloch, the latter are still not convinced that there has been a change of heart by those controlling the security forces and the intelligence agencies. This distrust becomes even more acute when target-killings of leading advocates of Baloch rights such as Bugti, Habib Jalib and another former BSO chairman, Mir Maula Bakhsh Dashti, are assassinated.

The reaction to Habib Jalib’s assassination was familiar in the context of the allegations and counter-allegations regarding his possible killers. The Baloch nationalists blamed the secret agencies for his assassination while separatists based outside Pakistan added the name of an organisation of pro-government Baloch politicians to the list of suspects. The unwieldy and largely directionless PPP-led provincial government of Nawab Aslam Raisani as a matter of routine condemned his killing and made the hollow promise of apprehending and punishing the killers. This government has been watching helplessly as not only Baloch nationalists but also Pashtuns, Hazaras and settlers, mostly Punjabis, have been systematically target-killed. When the separatists indulge in target-killings of non-Baloch people as some of their spokesmen publicly claim after every such incident, there would be reprisals and sometimes those unconcerned would become the target. It is possible that Habib Jalib became a victim of such a reprisal or he was eliminated to trigger unrest and achieve certain nefarious objectives. The true story of his assassination may never become known, but it should spur all those who are concerned about Pakistan’s future to do their bit to save the country.

Though it would be futile to expect the provincial, or for that matter the federal government, to take effective measures to provide protection to the citizens, particularly those most vulnerable, and instil hope among the people in these times of despair, the fact remains that politicians have to take the lead to heal the wounds of the Baloch people, convince them to stop looking to outside powers for winning their rights and enable them to keep faith in Pakistan. And the military must resist the temptation to use force again to resolve the Balochistan problem and assist the politicians and everyone else to keep the Baloch wedded to the idea of Pakistan.