Why kidnap a VC?

I wonder what exactly was behind the kidnapping of the VC of the University of Gwadar and the Pro VC recently, and their subsequent release a couple of days later. They, along with the VC’s Personal Assistant and driver, had been kidnapped in Mastung while driving from Gwadar to Quetta.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there is a university at Gwadar, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been. I mean, it’s a deep sea port, but it also has an international airport, a modern hospital and a desalination plant. Like the rest of the city, it is solar-powered. I hear there are plans for a Gwadar Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestra, a Gwadar Museum of Modern Art and a Gwadar Opera House.

Dr Abdur Razzaque Sabir, the VC, is basically a comparative linguistics professor, having got a doctorate in the subject from Balochistan University. He also got a certificate in Dravidian Studies from the University of Kerala and a diploma in Arabic from the University of Amman. I wonder if he is indeed one of the very few experts in Dravidian languages in Pakistan? There is a Tamil-speaking community in Karachi, descendants of Tamil-speaking Muslims who migrated in 1987 from the Madras Presidency.

There should be others from Balochistan, though, because Brahui is a Dravidian language, though why an enclave of Dravidic-speakers should have survived so far north is a bit of a mystery. Not to mention the speakers of Balochi, an Indo-Iranian language like Pakhto, also emerging. I suspect that excavations at Mehrgarh might shed some light, though not necessarily on this. Mehrgarh is a pre-Moenjodaro site between Kalat, Bolan and Sibbi, which may help explain the migration of the Dravisians South further than the usual theory about Indo-Aryan conquest.

Apart from the VC, there was also the Pro-VC, Dr Syed Manzoor Ahmed, who is an economist, with a PD from Durham University, and a place on the PM’s Economic Advisory Council. Now that seems an odd combination. I would have understood better if one of the academics kidnapped had been the Controller of Examinations. Now he could have had some real use for the kidnappers, and issued a degree in virtually anything according to the most exacting kidnapper’s demand. Well, not a degree, for that would need signature from the Chancellor, who is ex officio the Governor, these days Jaffar Khan Mandokhail. Now if he had been kidnapped, there would have probably been a greater fuss.

Maybe the kidnappers were looking for a linguistician. Now the only kidnappers who might want one would perhaps be Baloch nationalists wanting clarifications on obscure points of resemblance between Brahui and Kannada. Maybe they wanted to ask the PVC about the economic viability of an independent Balochistan. Or maybe they were only out for ransom. Now what ransom can one expect from college professors?

However, their release unharmed indicates that a ransom was paid. Or perhaps the kidnappers found after the kidnapping that there wasn’t much to be squeezed out of them. In which case why the squeamishness of leaving them alive? Perhaps somebody realized that the province isn’t exactly awash in PhD holders that it could afford to lose two. The staff officer and the driver got lucky, as everybody was released. Or was it one of them that paid the ransom?