Qazi Rehan

Qazi Dad Mohammad Rehan was active in the local politics of Gwadar from his student days. Through school friendships he joined the circle of the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba and became a rafiq (associate), but he left before becoming a member. In his words, the reason was a change in his religious thinking. As his attachment to the Balochi language grew, he began writing regularly in Balochi alongside Urdu (1999).

While studying in Karachi, he saw advertisements announcing “Gwadar for sale” and feared that his people would be dispossessed of their land. He left his studies unfinished, returned to Gwadar and joined the efforts to raise public awareness. In 2004 he joined the Daily Garaab, where his reporting served the public and gave priority to local language and expression. In 2005 he entered Baloch national politics formally and, alongside Shaheed Ahmed Dad and Shaheed Lala Hameed, helped organise seminars, public meetings and protest demonstrations in Gwadar.

He later joined the united BSO formed by the merger of the BSO factions and was appointed its Deputy Organiser for Gwadar. Before the central session his membership was suspended on the basis of a news report published in the Daily Tawar, for which he was the Gwadar bureau chief. According to him, the decision was taken without hearing his side. The Gwadar Zone did not accept the suspension, after which his supporters, including Lala Hameed, were suspended as well. At the session Bashir Zeb was elected Chairman and the organisation split into three parts. Even after Bashir Zeb announced his reinstatement, he declined to return, saying that he had been a member of the united BSO and would work only on a fresh invitation to join.

In about 2007, during a visit of a BNM delegation to Gwadar, he joined the party and was elected its first Organiser in Gwadar. The party was then in crisis, with its leadership forcibly disappeared or in hiding. Under his leadership the Gwadar Zone emerged as an organised zone.

He gave the slogans of freedom and the political narrative a purely Balochi character, revived words that had fallen out of use and introduced new terms such as “jehdkaar”, although many circles opposed this.

In 2010 he founded an online news website named “Baam Haal”. In 2015 the Zrumbesh Broadcasting Corporation was formally established, and he closed his personal website. In his words, Zrumbesh was not merely a digital radio but a plan to build a complete media in Balochi. In his view, the language of broadcasting should belong to the Baloch of every region. He therefore gave priority to pure Balochi and brought words from different regions into the broadcast language; in his view, this policy was the reason for its success.

Shaheed Dr Mannan used to call him the technical mind of the BNM. He is the creator of the Balochi Nastaliq font, made in the style of the InPage Urdu font.