Baloch rebel Allah Nazar is dead or injured, says IGFC

ISLAMABAD: Dr Allah Nazar, one of the most important leaders of the armed rebellion against the state of Pakistan and security forces, is not traceable since the morning of June 18 (Eid day), The News has learnt.
IGFC, Balochistan, Major General Sher Afgan, talking to the media in Quetta on Monday stated that there were reports that Dr Allah Nazar had either been killed or injured but there was no confirmation yet.
Blamed for most of the troubles in the Awaran and Panjgur areas, Allah Nazar communicated with his associates on 18th July (Eid day) at 8:14am. At the same time, his location was attacked. Within 10 to 12 minutes of the attack, security forces reached the area and searched the vicinity in a radius of 10 kilometres but couldn’t trace Allah Nazar injured or dead.
After that day, his communication with his colleagues inside Pakistan has ended. Their wireless conversations with each other show their worry over their failure to contact Allah Nazar. Similarly, his supporters outside Pakistan are also worried about him, as he can’t be approached. A call from Nepal was traced last week, showing anxiety of his friends. The callers from Nepal speaking in the Hindi language expressed their resentment in these words, ‘Hazarat je ki chinta hey (worried about respectable man) wo rabaatay mein kion nahi hein”.
Similarly, there was no communication with the Ferraries (his associates in armed rebellion) after the Eid day. A major impact of Allah Nazar’s absence is that the number of terrorist activities throughout the country have reduced significantly.
Dr Allah Nazar is Balochistan’s middle-class nationalist leader. Belonging to a modest family in Balochistan’s town of Mashkay, he started his political career from the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO). He founded his own faction of BSO in February 2002 that openly advocated an armed struggle against the state. In 2003, he went underground to organise his own militant group. His banned outfit made headlines when it claimed responsibility for killing three Chinese engineers in Gwadar on May 2, 2004.
He was picked up by the intelligence agencies on March 25, 2005 from an apartment in Karachi where he had secretly come to meet his old BSO comrades. He remained missing for a year. Meanwhile, the BSO initiated mass protests throughout Balochistan and Karachi for his release. On August 12, 2006, Pakistani agencies shifted him to the jail ward of the Bolan Medical Complex in Quetta.
After his release on bail, he went into hiding again and now leads the banned outfit.
Nazar is also against the tribal system. “The current tribal system is not the one our ancestors practised,” he has declared many times. According to him, the Baloch cultural tribal system was distorted by Robert Sandeman during the British rule when sardars were given absolute powers in order to control the Baloch masses.
According to him, most Baloch tribal chiefs, except for Khair Bux Marri, were the stooges of the establishment. So people have lost faith in this system and tribalism is dying a natural death, Allah Nazar has preached among his associates. In many areas of Balochistan, it has vanished for good, Allah Nazar thinks.
He has differences with self-exiled Baloch leader Harbiyar Marri but never admitted it publicly. But his supporters on the social media are openly speaking against Harbiyar Marri. Before his disappearance, he gave the impression that he was trying to mend fences with Harbiyar Marri.
Dr Allah Nazar, son of Nabi Bukhsh Baloch, was born on 2nd October 1968 in a remote area of Awaran, called Mehi, Mashkay. After graduation from high school in 1986, he went to Kech Turbat. For higher education in 1987, he took admission in medical department of Atta Shad Degree College. He passed FSc (pre-medical) in 1989. In 1992, he secured a medical seat in the Bolan Medical College, Quetta, and got a gold medal in gynecology in 1999. He had joined the BSO in 1989 when he was in Atta Shad College, Kech.
INP adds: Inspector General Frontier Corps, Balochistan, Major General Sher Afgan, on Monday said that the Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies were involved in the present unrest in the restive province.
He said that spy agencies of the two countries were behind the subversive activities to disrupt peace in the province. “However, our forces with the support of masses have foiled the designs of enemies,” Major General Sher Afgan told reporters at the FC headquarters.
More than 50,000 FC personnel have been guarding the border along Afghanistan and to provide security to 416-km of gas pipelines, 300 kms of railway lines and other vital national installations in Balochistan, said Maj Gen Afgan. “Terrorism is the biggest problem in the province,” he said. The FC chief said despite receiving support from abroad, only a handful of miscreants were present in Balochistan, adding that “their number is on a constant decline.”
In response to a question, Sher Afgan said that the government had already announced a Rs5 billion compensation package for the militants laying down their weapons before security forces, adding that amounts ranging from Rs0.5 million to Rs1.5 million were being paid to militants who became part of the peace process.
He reiterated that efforts to make Quetta violence-free and to ensure the rule of law were under way, adding that no compromises would be made in this regard. The FC chief said that combined efforts of law enforcement agencies and the administration had helped in improving the law and order situation in the province. Earlier, media personnel were given a detailed briefing on the overall law and order situation of the insurgency-hit province.
Reporters were informed that a 500-km trench had been dug along the porous Pak-Afghan border to stop the flow of weapons and narcotics into Pakistan. The width and depth of the trench is 10 feet by 10 feet, said Major General Sher Afgan, adding that it had helped security forces in stemming the flow of narcotics and weapons from Afghanistan into Pakistan.