Luckily, the locals of the district were given priority to conduct the survey and visit areas to look for the basic prerequisites of the people, including their living and food standards. I was one among the selected persons to conduct the survey. Kech district is the most literate district in Balochistan, while Makran division stands at 8th across Pakistan in literacy rate. The district shares borders with Iran. For people outside Kech, it is the most blessed district of the province.

However, the ground realities are opposite. Kech portrays the same story as the other districts. What hits more is the status quo of the neighboring areas of Kech where one issue or another is not only teasing the locals but hitting them hard in their daily lives. From an abundance of out-of-school children to a high number of drug addiction cases.

From severe poverty to no electricity at all. In one village, people have to travel over 20 kilometers solely to fetch drinking water, while in another village, roads become the hardest barriers to communication. In one village, there are no people because of apprehension of floods, while the other is packed because of no water at all. The worst encounter has been the migration of an entire area – Zamuran – mostly due to military operations in Northern Kech.

Additionally, several other villages have settled at the outset of Neheng River due to toughening situations for them in their native village by forces. Every village has faced tight situations. We reached the outset of Tump where enforced disappearances had risen to their peak with three disappearances from one home in a night.

People feared us, saying that we were ‘government agents’ who had come to spy on them. In eastern Kech, people prayed with folded hands to let them live peacefully, while in southern Kech, we were welcomed traditionally because we, too, belonged to the same district and were gracefully requested to skip their village for the survey.

In many other villages where we mentioned the United Nations, people, smiling haplessly, asked us if the UN was authorized to do something for them. We were left speechless. We are still left speechless. War has changed everything. In one village, people had lost trust in the UN, while in the very next village, they were eager if this survey could contribute to changing their fate.

In a village in Dasht, we were asked to take all the data of the people but provide them with the very basic fundamentals of life including food, education, and eradication of drug addiction. “When the parliament is full of drug dealers and anti-Baloch MPAs and MNAs, hoping for anything and asking for any favor is tantamount to hurting one’s own self-esteem,” an elder quoted before we bid farewell to the village.

I forgot. We also went to the grave of Sajid Hussain, the Baloch journalist killed in Sweden. Amidst thousands of graves, the one sole grave had its own charm. On the grave, it was written in bold: “Everyone thinks they are a mountain of truth, but brave are those who know the truth will hurt but still speak it.” Were we brave with our people that we could do something for them apart from this form-filling survey? Upon encountering with Sajid, we felt there were so many people outside the grave who had long died, while Sajid was alive despite being inside the grave.

We went on towards interior Tump. We were told that Banuk Karima’s grave was strictly forbidden to visit. “They feared her before her death: they fear her grave after her death,” one local spoke to me. That was the state of fear a Baloch woman’s grave had instilled in the whole system’s mindset. “Death fears her (Banuk) too.” We came back. We had the same survey form given by the World Food Program. We were moving from one village to another village. We were meeting and observing our people.

We were feeling practically what they were suffering from. Our stories were increasing. Our people were suffering. All we could do was only to listen to them, their grievances and render them hope for a better future we ourselves were unaware of.

The writer is a lawyer and journalist based in Turbat. He tweets on X as @Alijanmaqsood12