Link to story at Financial Times | May 25, 2012
Left: Abdul (Mama) Qadir Baloch, Voice for Baloch Missing Persons Vice President and father of extra-judicially killed Jalil Reki, R: Nasrullah Baloch, President Voice for Baloch Missing Persons
By Matthew Green
Since his son's broken body was found on a patch of wasteland six months ago, the former bank clerk has emerged as an unlikely hero of the struggle against an epidemic of disappearances sweeping Baluchistan, a province in south-west Pakistan.
At a kerbside encampment in Karachi, the country's commercial hub, he leads a small band of activists nursing a quiet rage at the security forces, and a suspicion that they may be next to be whisked away.
"I received a phone call, they said "˜wind up your camp, it's creating a nuisance for us'," says Mr Baloch, 70, a co-founder of Voice for Baluch Missing Persons, a lobby group. "I'm not worried any more about threats - they've become routine. I'm just waiting for the moment when I'll be killed."
Pakistan's story is often told through the prism of its stormy relations with the US, strained by tensions over Afghanistan and the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, on Pakistani soil.
Not much is heard about the little-known, dirty war simmering in Baluchistan, a parched land of broken hills where militants seeking the unlikely goal of independence are locked in a vicious showdown with the state.
Read full story at Financial Times