Death of intellect?

For most of our history, they have been at best isolated, and at worst criminalised. Today, we are again confronted with an all-out attack on intellectual life. Junaid Hafeez, a gifted young university teacher, has been in jail, mostly in solitary confinement, for 17 years. No judge is willing to hear his case — filed after he was accused of blasphemy — no matter the actual evidence. No government since 2009 has had the spine to pardon him, despite the falsehoods invoked to frame him. When Mashal Khan, another precocious young talent, was lynched on a university campus in Mardan after being falsely accused of blasphemy nine years ago, we were told something would give. Some argue that the apparent clampdown on the TLP is indicative that things have indeed changed, but that is to miss the point because no matter what the official policy is with respect to any kind of religiously inspired militancy, voices like Junaid and Mashal are still being suppressed. Baloch intellectuals are the biggest targets of all. The outrageous abduction of the two most senior administrators of Gwadar University is the latest example. Writers, poets and journalists are killed in cold blood. To simply attribute all of this wanton violence to separatist militants is neither here nor there; many in Balochistan don’t buy the claim that all targeted killings are the work of insurgents, and in any case, a state that cannot protect the cream of Baloch society from ‘enemies’ is failing to pe