بلوچستان میں بدامنی اور ریاست کا غیر متزلزل عزم

 

 SCRIPTED SILENCE: THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MISSING TAG

 

Context
In Balochistan, myths about the state travel faster than facts, and among the most frequently recycled is the claim of widespread, enforced disappearances.

Every manufactured outrage begins the same way.

A name appears. A face circulates. A caption claims abduction. Within hours, hashtags erupt, accusations harden, and verdicts are delivered - long before facts are even invited into the room.

This ritual is presented as silence.

In reality, it is noise, loud, coordinated, and carefully rehearsed

The so‑called “missing person” narrative in Balochistan has evolved into a costume, worn repeatedly to conceal a far less dramatic truth: many of these disappearances are not enforced at all. They are voluntary exits - entries into militant recruitment pipelines disguised as victimhood.

The Opening Scene: A Well‑Rehearsed Tragedy

The script rarely changes.

First, a social media post announces that someone has been “abducted.” Then a victim profile is curated: childhood photos, emotional captions, selective testimonies. Hashtags follow, outrage builds, and the state is convicted in the court of timelines.

The irony is impossible to miss.

This alleged “silence” is not quiet. It roars. It trends. It mobilizes instantly - before a police report, before a legal inquiry, before a single verified fact.

Silence does not behave this way.

What we are witnessing is not suppression; it is pre‑packaged indignation. And the missing tag has become its most useful prop.

The Commission: The Unwanted Fact‑Checker

Away from the drama, a far less glamorous process unfolds.

“The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances” does not deal in slogans. It deals in files, hearings, records, and verification. Its work is slow, procedural, and most importantly documented.

This is precisely why it is inconvenient.

Over the years, the Commission has disposed of thousands of cases, consistently resolving a significant majority through investigation.

According to the Commission’s January 2025 report, out of 10,467 cases received since 2011, nearly 77 percent(8,216 Cases) have been resolved. Of these, 6,599 individuals had either returned home or located in internment and detention centers. Only 2,251 cases remain under active investigation, a figure that directly contradicts the repeated claim of “tens of thousands” of unresolved disappearances. Many cases end not with torture chambers or secret graves, but with discoveries that dismantle the narrative entirely.

Individuals labeled “forcibly disappeared” are found living with families, working in other provinces, hiding from legal charges, or attempting illegal border crossings. Others surface after years of self‑imposed absence.

These findings do not trend.

They do not fit the script.

Yet they remain on record, quietly puncturing the widespread mythology state‑engineered disappearance.

The Plot Twist: When ‘Victims’ Hold Guns

Then comes the moment the script never accounts for.

Act One: A young man is declared abducted by the state.

Act Two: Campaigns mourn him. Posters demand his return.

Act Three: He reappears - not in a courtroom, but in a propaganda video, armed, masked, pledging allegiance to BLA or BLF.

At this point, silence becomes selective.

There are concrete names behind this pattern. Individuals such as *Asif Baloch* and *Nabeel Ahmed* were repeatedly highlighted online as “missing persons,” with campaigns alleging enforced disappearance. Both later surfaced in militant contexts, identified as active members of banned outfits, shattering the original claims. Their trajectories followed the same arc: publicized absence, activist amplification, and eventual reappearance as armed operatives rather than detainees.

For many recruits, “going missing” is not disappearance; it is induction. Camps replace classrooms. Training replaces employment. The absence is voluntary, tactical, and essential for operational secrecy.

The state did not silence them.

They chose to vanish.

The contradiction becomes unavoidable when such individuals are later killed during attacks on security installations. Overnight, the missing‑person narrative collapses into militant reality, leaving activists scrambling to explain how a “victim” died while firing on a checkpost.

This is the martyrdom paradox the script cannot resolve.

The Directors Behind the Curtain

Scripts require funding.

The persistence of the missing‑person narrative is not accidental; it is sustained. External actors benefit from keeping Pakistan permanently accused, particularly in regions tied to strategic development.

Genuine human rights concerns are hijacked and weaponized. Real cases, few, unresolved, deserving scrutiny are drowned beneath the waves of manufactured ones.

This flood of false positives does not strengthen accountability.

It sabotages it.

By turning every absence into an accusation, the narrative cheapens actual suffering and protects recruiters who persuade young men to disappear willingly, only to reemerge with rifles.

Dropping the Curtain

The final irony is this:

The state is accused of making people vanish, yet it is state institutions that keep finding them.

The true tragedy is not silence imposed by force, but deception sold as resistance. Families are not abandoned by the state rather they are misled by those who promise purpose, demand secrecy, and deliver only graves or propaganda clips.

We must ask ourselves an uncomfortable question:

Are we searching for missing persons, or are we simply searching for a reason to blame the state?

The truth is not missing.

It is merely refusing to follow the script.