Pakistan's Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and the so-called Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) face chronic political unrest driven by federal centralisation, economic inequality, and political marginalisation. Rather than addressing these political grievances democratically, civilian governments have ceded authority to the military, which frames conflicts as security threats and terrorism—silencing legitimate protest and deepening mistrust. In Balochistan, Pashtun and Baloch nationalist movements demand autonomy and resource control, intensified by military repression and forced disappearances. In KP, governmental neglect, armed violence, and economic disparity generate popular apathy and discontent, with the military exploiting TTP insurgency to suppress Pashtun nationalist leaders. AJK in PoK has been passing through multiple convulsions because of lack of genuine democratic institutions, which are denied to the people therein because the entire PoK is regarded as a security zone by the deep state of Pakistan. The military's “securitised” approach has worsened instability in these regions. Pakistan's international credibility and long-term stability depend on resolving these conflicts through genuine political dialogue rather than coercion.
Pakistan’s territorial units, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as also the illegally held Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), are grappling with political unrest, violent confrontations, and deepening alienation among their citizens. While the triggers for protest vary across regions, recurring themes include excessive centralisation by the federal government, entrenched economic inequality, and political marginalisation. In all these cases, the civilian government has abdicated its responsibility to resolve these conflicts politically, and welcomed, the army by default to intervene and take control. The armed forces, quite predictably, frame these conflicts as either outright sedition or law and order problems, dismissing the political legitimacy of the protests and branding protestors as proxies of external powers (read India). This resultant ‘securitised’ approach not only sidelines the hopes of seeking resolution through democratic means, but also entrenches cycles of mistrust and confrontation.
In Balochistan, the sense of marginalisation and economic inequality has deepened over decades, resulting in calls for separation and independence and armed insurgency. Along with violent armed insurgent groups, civil society members of Balochistan have continually demanded greater political autonomy, rights, and control over their natural economic resources. In 2020, some Baloch human rights activists formed the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC)[1] under the leadership of student leader Mahrang Baloch against the extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances of Baloch activists. In 2025, Mahrang demanded the release of forcibly disappeared persons like Bebarg Zehri, Dr. Hammal Baloch, Dr Ilyas Baloch, and other victims, but she was apprehended on false charges of terrorism, sedition and murder. Pakistani military’s targeting of political dissenters with forced disappearances, false criminalisation, and brutal repression has intensified the Balochistan crisis.
Pakistan’s Balochistan policy is highly securitised due to military’s influence on the coalition federal government formed by Pakistan’s People Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N). This has been often termed as ‘hybrid regime’, where the military calls the tune. The conflict in Balochistan is primarily political, with insurgent factions taking advantage of the excesses committed by the Pakistani security forces. The military plays a dominant role in forming government policies on matters relating to security affairs. In 2023, Pakistan’s most crucial ministerial position, interior ministry, responsible for internal security and law and order issues, was handed over to Mohsin Naqvi, a former media person and relative of Chief of Defence Forces, Field Marshal Asim Munir. Munir deals with Pakistan’s internal political dissenters such Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) and BYC protesters and insurgency in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through Naqvi.
Earlier, the civilian governments under Asif Ali Zzardari, Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, had attempted to resolve both the insurgency in Balochistan and the conflict in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through dialogue and had sought political solution to these issues. But the military leadership dealt with these issues with an iron hand and securitised the discourse, making it difficult for the political leadership to work towards any peaceful solution. The result is there for all to see. The sentiments on the Baloch side have hardened. So is the case in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Baloch leadership has shifted from Sardars to the middle class, who appear quite resolute and determined to work for what they call Baloch liberation or independence. The reasonable voices of Baloch human rights activists, many of whom are women who drive the movement, have been suppressed with brute force, removing the possibility of any fruitful dialogue with any section of the Baloch population aimed at peaceful solution to the Baloch problem.
Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa accounted for 93% of insurgent attacks in 2023 and 95% of attacks in 2024 and 2025. According to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) annual security report, the number of attacks carried out by Baloch insurgent groups was 79 in 2022, 110 in 2023, 202 in 2024, and 234 in 2025. Of the 435 attacks in 2025, more than 65% targeted Pakistan’s military and security officials. Suicide bomb attacks and direct gun attacks were carried out by insurgent groups such as the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), Balochistan Republic Guards (BRG), and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The TTP attacks in the KP have reduced by 57% but increased in Balochistan by 87%. In Balochistan, Pakistan’s federal and provincial leadership has a fixed-template strategy, which is to express condemnation and then use all-out force and target Baloch people indiscriminately.
Pakistan’s military head, Chief of Defence Forces, Asim Munir, consolidated his position in the power hierarchy by building his public image as a leader who “stood tall against India” in the so-called ‘war’ imposed on Pakistan in May 2025, which was a limited operation involving precision strikes of terrorist hideouts inside Pakistan. India called it Operation Sindoor, while Pakistan termed it as ‘war’ and called its counter operation as “Bunyan un Marsoos”. Munir has moved from being a saviour to a peace maker in the Middle East, and generated international goodwill for his role in mediation efforts in the US-Iran war that started in February 2026. As things stand today, beset with multiple problems at the internal level, which are proving very difficult for them to resolve, the hybrid regime in Pakistan is betting on international legitimacy and hoping that it would bring them domestic legitimacy. At the internal level, its “hard state” approach, often reflected in a securitised framework for internal political management, has relied on the political oppression of all stakeholders opposing the military’s domestic political interference. Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan and his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) supporters have been at the receiving end of military excesses since 2024.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the government has faced long-term political discontent and mistrust over underdevelopment, armed violence, special immunity to military officials for counterinsurgency measures, and economic inequality. The greatest foe of the Pakistan military in KP is Tehrike-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). TTP’s origin can be traced back to Sufi Mohammad, who formed Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) in 1992 to demand Islamic Sharia in the erstwhile North West Frontier Province. Later, Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Fazlullah formed the core leadership of the TTP. Since 2023, Pakistan has alleged that the Afghan Taliban support and provide a safe harbour to the TTP, while the latter has said that the entire problem was an internal issue of Pakistan and Afghanistan had nothing to do with it. In apparent retaliation, Pakistan has deported 2.5 million Afghan refugees, primarily to coerce the Afghan Taliban into submission. Through such coercion, Pakistan seeks to restore strategic dominance over Afghanistan’s Islamic Emirate now run by the Taliban, still not recognised by the international community. Pakistan feels worried about not being able to influence Taliban’s foreign and security approach towards India.
A comparison of the two provincial problems would reveal that the Pashtun and Baloch nationalisms are a far greater threat to the Pakistani state than the TTP, limited as it is to the border areas in KPK and Balochistan. It is also true that the army has taken the TTP’s operations as an excuse to go after Pashtun nationalist leaders such as Ali Wazir and Manzur Pashtun belonging to the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement(PTM), to securitise its KP policy, and ignore genuine political grievances of Pashtun leaders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which could snowball into a province-wide Pashtun ethnic unrest, unless the situation is dealt with restraint.
In the so-called “Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK)” which is part of the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), the state of Pakistan is facing loud protests over their rights. The recent protests in AJK are primarily over the issue of reservation of 12 assembly seats for refugees from India’s Jammu and Kashmir. The people of the terrain consider it unjust and hence they are demanding their removal. The protests have been steered by the AJK’s Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) which is composed of local activists, who claim that the reserved seats have been a tool for the federal government’s control, political exclusion of local leaders, and the AJK’s political and economic marginalisation. Protesters across the AJK have also been demanding the revenue share for the Mangla dam, part of the 38 demands made by JAAC originally in 2024.
The Joint Awami Actions Committee (JAAC)was formed in 2023. It organised a protest march against bureaucratic failure, expensive electricity, and consumables in 2024. The JAAC was proscribed (banned) by the AJK government on 6 June 2026 under the Anti-Terrorism Act, just days before it had called for a region-wide strike and ahead of the AJK Legislative Assembly elections. The JAAC was quite vocal in its allegations of rigging in PoK’s legislative assembly elections, which caused massive protests and a brutal crackdown by Pakistan’s military. The JAAC has demanded reforms in the assembly seats, crackdown against corruption in government offices, and assurances of no criminal prosecution against the protesters. But Pakistan’s ruling class has applied the same tactical “hard state” approach of handling the political dissenters with brutal crackdown and repression as it has done in Balochistan and KP.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi created shockwaves across political circles for his remarks on 1 August 2026 acknowledging the “collapse of Pakistan’s government system”, and need for combined efforts for its complete overhaul, and restructuring of Pakistan’s administrative provinces, into smaller units. Naqvi, known as Pakistani military’s “golden boy” made these significant remarks and his suggestions on governance reforms and administrative restructuring are indirectly endorsed by Pakistan’s military. Analysts suggest that Naqvi and establishment’s remarks on administrative reforms is aimed at some political reset and regarded as message for the PPP, suggesting separation of Karachi from Sindh and formation of a separate political unit, a major financial source of Sindh province. An outlier in Pakistan’s political circles, Mohsin Naqvi’s appointment was followed with the surge in suicide and hostage attacks in Balochistan and deadly clashes with the TTP insurgents followed by worsening of relations with the Afghan Taliban.
The Pakistani government ’s “hard state” policy has led to a surge in insurgency as well as deep fissures and political chaos in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and now chronic public protests in AJK (PoK), which no international goodwill (read favourable review by the US and European nations) can compensate. Pakistan’s image as a peace broker abroad will ultimately depend on peace at home. With 3.5 percent economic growth in 2025-26, $7 billion IMF relief, and 68.5 % public dept of GDP, Pakistan requires genuine political leadership to resolve its political conflicts to gain long-term political and economic stability.
Navneet Khan is a Ph.D. scholar at the MMAJ Academy of International Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. The views are his own.
[1] The members of BYC include students, lawyers, families of victims of enforced disappearances, civil society activists, and supporters from different parts of Balochistan.
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