Articles for category: Profiles

Shah Meer Baloch

We will not allow death squads in Balochistan: Zubaida Jalal

Balochistan Times’ Shah Meer Baloch lately talked to Zubaida Jalal, Pakistan’s Federal Miniser for Defense Production, about her past and future politics. Some of the edited excerpts of this conversation are as follows:   Shah Meer Baloch: We have had two Zubaida Jalals. One who called herself a revolutionary wanting to change the fate of ...

Sajid Hussain

Photo by the author

Carina Jahani: The Swedish linguist on a quest to save Balochi

In November last year, a Swedish woman stood in front of a dominantly Swedish audience in Stockholm urging them to vote in favour of a presentation about a ‘dying language’ they had probably never heard of. She is Carina Jahani, a professor of Iranian languages at the Uppsala University. She was taking part in a ...

Sajid Hussain

Wali Khan (left), Sherbaz Mazari (middle), Akbar Khan Bugti (right)

Sherbaz Mazari and his journey to disillusionment

Sherbaz Mazari had been refusing offers for interviews from television channels and top journalists. But when I and my friend, Hakeem Baloch, left him a message that we were two young Baloch and wanted to understand our recent political history, he agreed. As we sat in his two-storied library, the octogenarian Baloch politician from Dera ...

Sajid Hussain

Akbar Bugti: A man who lived and died as he wished

It’s the first-ever comprehensive profile of prominent Baloch leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, written by Sajid Hussain. We appreciate if his family members and supporters point out factual mistakes or provide us with additional information.   Despite his scandalous politics, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti is the most talked-about person in Baloch society. With his twirling moustache, ...

Fazal Baloch

Gul Khan Naseer: Revolutionary Baloch poet

Born in 1914, at Nushki, Balochistan, Gul Khan made his first appearance in the realm of literature in the early 1940s during the heyday of the Progressive Movement. He was among the few progressive Balochi writers who stayed committed with the ideology of the movement till their last breath. Initially, he used Urdu as the ...

News Desk

Sayad Zahoor Shah Hashmi: A one-man institution

Author: Abbas Jalbani Balochi literature is very rich in oral tradition but comparatively poor in the printed text. It was only in the early twentieth century that Balochi began to be transcribed in books. Under such trying conditions, it wasn’t easy for anyone to devote his entire life to the promotion of Balochi literature. Sayad ...

Sajid Hussain

Atta Shad: the architect of modern Balochi poetry

Atta Shad is considered the architect of modern symbolic Balochi poetry. Born in 1939 in Singanisar, a small village in Balochistan’s border district of Turbat, he was named by his parents as Mohammed Ishaq. However, there was another student of the same in his class, and his teacher changed his name to Atta Mohammed in ...