I first met Sajid Hussain in my hometown of Tump, a small insignificant place in the middle of nowhere in Balochistan. I can’t remember the year, but it was sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s. His cousin Asif Baloch, who was a student political activist, proudly introduced him: “Meet Sajid. He is a ...
First of all, this is messed up. There’s no other way to put it: Sajid Hussain has suddenly vanished. Where to? Nobody knows. Not even the otherwise proficient Swedish Police say they have a clue. What is going on? Where is Sajid Hussain? For a people who is used to having people go missing and ...
What I’m doing here is not right. How could I be writing about the disappearance of the man who took special interest in how best to portray the Baloch missing persons’ cases? About the man who once said the dead did not haunt him as much as the missing did? That too on his own ...
The people of Balochistan have for decades complained of living in oblivion in Pakistan. President Arif Alvi, during a recent visit to the region, confirmed such complaints to be just true when he found himself struggling to remember the names of Balochistan’s chief minister and governor. In a speech on February 19 to open the ...
If the people of Makran, living both in Iran as well as in Pakistan, have ever truly loved a monarch, it was undeniably Sultan Qaboos of Oman. His framed portraits, especially the ones where he is wearing a military uniform, hang friendly in many mud homes of the arid and under-developed coastal region. At a ...
The parties of God are at it again. This time on a fairly sophisticated topic that stretches far beyond the reach of all the expertise of their religion-backed primitive science. A topic so sophisticated that not only encompasses the distinct scientific disciplines of biology, behavioral science and sociology but, to a larger extent, also flirts ...
Now that the New Year is upon us people around the world are coming up with new resolutions: losing weight, quit smoking or go to a world tour. But these resolutions are for normal people. For us, the people of Balochistan, a New Year’s resolution would sound something like this: how to not get abducted, ...
Background The conflict-stricken Balochistan is not only rich in natural resources but is also home to a deep sea port in Gwadar located at the junction of major oil trade routes. Throughout history, the strategic location of Balochistan has attracted interests of many global power players — from China to Russia. In recent years, China, ...
In October three years ago, I, accompanied by a few fellow refugees from Balochistan, waited outside a Canada Border Services Agency office for another Baloch refugee friend who was being investigated to ascertain he was not a bad guy. As we waited, we received the news that another friend, a Baloch student leader, has been ...
One Belt One Road (OBOR) or the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China’s one trillion dollars transport and trade infrastructure grand vision to connect China to the rest of the world. Announced in 2013, belt refers to the road and railway networks and the road to the sea routes. It features several economic corridors: ...
