Articles for category: Opinion

Naimat Haider

Since our friend is missing

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 ...

News Desk

The future of Omani Baloch, after Qaboos is gone

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 ...

Sameer Mehrab

A Baloch New Year’s resolution: not to get whisked away

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, ...

Maryam Khanzai

Baloch woman, an easy victim of war

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, ...

Lateef Johar

Dear world, does a Baloch life really matter?

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 ...

Sadaf Iqbal Baloch

--Internet photo

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: An introduction

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: ...

Sameer Mehrab

-- Internet photo

The Headless Woman captures ghosts of the missing on camera

The Headless Woman, or La Mujer Sin Cabeza, released in 2008, is the third feature film by the highly-regarded Argentian director Lucrecia Martel. Her prior films Swamp and Holy Girl also deal with similar subjects. The Headless Woman is almost universally praised for its cinematic form, as the director does not suggest anything through the ...

Ahmed Kulmeer

Gwadar, CPEC and the water tanker fart

This is the story of the time in the early 80s when Gwadar was a small, sleepy fishing town of hardly 20,000 people. A time when General Pervez Musharraf, the mastermind of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), was probably a low-ranking officer in the Pakistan Army. A time when the land value in Gwadar was ...