There is a particular kind of political hypocrisy that is worth naming directly. It belongs to those who stand in national forums to accuse the state of crimes they cannot prove, walk out of those same forums when asked to contribute to solutions, and meanwhile leave their own financial record conveniently unexplained. Akhtar Mengal, former Chief Minister of Balochistan and chairman of the Balochistan National Party, has perfected this posture over decades, and his recent video circulated by anti-state platform SMA Balochistan News represents its most recent and most dishonest expression.
In that video, Mengal compared Balochistan to Palestine, alleged extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances by Pakistan Army, and presented security force operations as irrational brutality against an innocent population. What he did not tell his audience is what actually happened in the sequence of events he was describing.
The incident he referenced began when an IED targeted a security forces convoy, a coordinated terrorist attack on Pakistani soldiers. Simultaneously, direct fire was opened from the village of Sardar Naseer Ahmed Moosiani by armed terrorists using the village as cover. Security forces responded with hot pursuit and a targeted search operation, which is the standard lawful response to an active terrorist attack under Pakistani law and international rules of engagement. During that operation, the son of Sardar Naseer Ahmed Moosiani physically obstructed the security forces and interfered with the pursuit of fleeing terrorists. In the ensuing crossfire, he was killed. Akhtar Mengal took that outcome, stripped every preceding fact from the sequence, and presented the final moment in isolation to an international audience as evidence of state brutality. That is not political commentary. That is deliberate falsification.
The comparison to Palestine, made for maximum emotional impact, deserves particular scrutiny from a man who served as Chief Minister of Balochistan and had both the authority and the constitutional responsibility to address the province’s development failures during his tenure. He did not. Balochistan’s literacy rates, healthcare access, infrastructure deficit, and economic underdevelopment did not measurably improve under his government. The province’s most vulnerable communities remained exactly where they were when he assumed office. His tenure produced no landmark policy, no structural governance reform, and no legacy that ordinary Baloch citizens point to when asked what changed under Mengal. His concern for Baloch suffering, so eloquently expressed from opposition benches and in viral videos, was conspicuously absent when he held the power to address it directly.
Then there is the financial question, one that Mengal has not answered and shows no intention of answering. The asset summary compiled from his own provided documents tells a story that his public persona never addresses. In 2020, Akhtar Mengal declared assets of Rs 5.03 crore. By 2024, his estimated existing assets stood at Rs 36.18 crore, a difference of Rs 31.15 crore in four years. Properties not declared include a hotel in the UK, two trading companies and a hotel in Dubai, an apartment in Diamond Mall Islamabad, properties in Karachi, Quetta, and Khuzdar, 200 shops in Shah Noorani, 787 acres of land in Khuzdar, and business interests including mining lease holdings. Total undeclared property runs beyond Rs 310 million.
Against this background, Mengal recently returned an unsigned cheque of Rs 7.8 million to generate a TikTok moment of performative integrity. Returning a cheque worth a fraction of undeclared foreign assets while those assets remain unaccounted for is not an act of conscience. It is a publicity stunt from someone who understands that in the age of social media, optics are cheaper than transparency.
Akhtar Mengal walked out of the National Assembly rather than stay and engage with the difficult, unglamorous work of legislative solutions to Balochistan’s problems. He chose the microphone over the mandate. He chose the viral video over the verification. He chose to accuse institutions he could not prove guilty while leaving his own financial record in the dark where it has remained throughout a political career built on the province’s grievances without ever seriously addressing them.
Balochistan deserves leaders who build, not performers who blame. The people of this province have been let down by those who claim to speak for them while living lives their constituents could never imagine. Akhtar Mengal’s selective conscience, outraged by security operations and silent about his own accountability, is the oldest and most damaging kind of political betrayal.
