Along with the war using the materialistic tools, the modern-day world welcomes the war of ideas, narratives and, in the simplest terms, hegemony. Under this, the very parties use various tools (of indirect war) to suppress the narratives and ideas of the adverse group(s) and win the confidence – among their own and opponent fighters, masses and the world at large. For the very purpose, media is a key tool to suppress voices of the opponents and build a narrative of their own. “Victory is a process that begins from monitoring, or better term it controlling, what the opponent thinks, or rather forcing them to think what you (as subjects) want them to think.”
Balochistan has a long history of facing oppressions and resistance. From the wars against Afghanistan, Iran and Britain and to the modern-day Pakistan, Baloch have endured subjugation, but have never succumbed to all these. Instead, they have stood tall against all the injustices inflicted against them as a nation. In the present day, using media has been a key state element to impose their ‘illegal’ and ‘anti-Baloch’ narrative towards the Baloch on the other citizens of the federation is the very state priority. For instance, state’s electronic media will broadcast, and print media publishes, reports (if they ever report on Balochistan) of ‘no-interest of the Baloch’ but will never choose the grave human rights violations against the Baloch. It has eventually created a fabricated picture of Balochistan in the minds of the people from the other parts of the country.
Let’s take, for example, the recent surge in enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings. The media totally avoids the cases of the forced disappearances, while gives full-time airing right to a so-called Balochistan chief minister’s press conference where he contradicts his own statements in the same sitting. The recent PC where Safraz Bugti was found saying that enforced disappearances do not exist in Balochistan, and termed all the cases of missing persons merely as ‘self-disappearances’. Seconds later in the same PC, he went on and said “no country in the world is free from enforced disappearances”, adding that EDs are also practiced in America, United Kingdom, Canada, Europe and other parts of the world. This “also” is what clarifies that enforced disappearances exist at more than a larger context in Balochistan than we can actually think of it. Had there been no illegal arrests, why would he, as the sitting CM, try to justify them by exemplifying other states?
What was even further so pathetic of the state media was that; one, there were only limited journalists allowed to attend the PC with most of them coming from Islamabad and Lahore. Secondly, they did not go with the counter-questions to challenge the CM’s contradictions. One would think: was it deliberately done or the journalists and the media houses are far from the ability to own common prudence to judge the differences? What we, from the Baloch eye, perceive is their collective efforts to draw themselves away from the issues of the indigenous people and only put questions that serve the interests other than that of the Baloch – countering such contradictions that too with regard to Balochistan is yet afar. Though one to two questions seemed to hurt the sentiments of the authorities, but what we are forced to see and think is what the media or narrative warfare is all about – or also the hegemonic control. The same was portrayed there as well. In other words, everything was pre-planned. The PC. The attendees. The questions. And the answers.
What we need to understand is that Balochistan is a ground where narrative-warfare is moving at its peak. The people from other parts of Pakistan will only know what the state media is showing them. But in the practical sense, it is the Baloch who are suffering the most with a growing number of enforced disappearances and the extra-judicial killings – be it in shape of fake encounters, target killings or dumping bodies – at the hands of the law enforcement agencies. But the ‘national media’ will never show the actual Baloch grievances for two main reasons: one, either they are biased and more loyal to the ruling class than the actual news, questioning their own media ethics and professionalism; two, because they are threatened to do so.
In the middle, they, the state authorities, use another tool to monitor the media in a way that the masses should think of it as true and unbiased. For instance, they hire journalists to give coverage to very few (very limited) cases, and even to lash out at the law enforcement agencies, so that they portray such cases as unbiased and within their media responsibilities and clear the image of the media within the country and internationally. And those, among the masses, who fall prey to such media tactics will continue to believe that “few people in the media are unbiased and clear about the Baloch issue”. No doubt, they are very clear but they will always choose to remain at the other end – of their masters, surely.
The state and its beneficiaries in the media will never become a voice for the Baloch. As soon as we realize this very fact, the sooner and quicker we can move forward to organizing our own alternative media to challenge such state narratives and highlight the cases that belong to us. When we have our own media, we cannot only counter the anti-Baloch narratives, but also put forward ours as well. It is as simple as that.
