Date
21-07-2026
Balochistan stands at a critical juncture. Decades of militarised governance, economic exploitation, and political marginalisation have pushed Pakistan's largest province to the brink of collapse. The state's security-centric approach — prioritising coercion over development, counter-insurgency over political engagement — has demonstrably failed. The province hosts Pakistan's worst poverty, the highest rates of child deprivation, and a rapidly deteriorating security environment now officially ranked the world's most terrorism-affected country. CPEC, far from delivering promised prosperity, has entrenched resource extraction and demographic displacement. Pakistan faces a stark choice: pursue genuine political dialogue and equitable development, or watch Balochistan become an ungovernable, multi-front conflict zone that destabilises the entire country.
Balochistan has reached a point of no return. The Pakistani state has increasingly relied on a militarised and security-centric approach in Balochistan, viewing the region primarily through the lens of security, terrorism, and counter-insurgency rather than governance, political engagement, and development. This approach is failing and has become increasingly counterproductive, further deepening instability and worsening the overall situation. In recent weeks, there has been a sharp surge in militant attacks, including the attack on a Pakistani military convoy in Mastung, the deadly assault in Ziarat in which police personnel were killed and abducted, attacks around Quetta, and several other coordinated incidents across the province, reflecting the rapidly deteriorating security environment.
This article examines the multiple dimensions of Balochistan crisis, from the declining writ of the state and the rise of armed groups to decades of political alienation, economic exploitation, resource grievances, and institutional marginalisation. It argues that the continued dependence on coercive security measures, rather than governance, political engagement, and inclusive development, has deepened instability and transformed the province into a multi-front conflict zone.
Declining Writ of the State
In a dramatic turn of events, on 13 July 2026, a self-proclaimed Baloch nationalist leader in exile, Mir Yar Baloch issued a viral digital declaration proclaiming the independent “Republic of Balochistan,” claiming control over nearly 85 per cent of Balochistan's territory, unveiling a proposed national flag, an anthem titled “Ma Chukain Balochani”, a sovereign currency called the “Balochi Falus”, and a complete administrative framework, while calling on the United Nations and the international community to formally recognise it.
Although the declaration remains symbolic and has not received international recognition, it carries considerable political and symbolic significance. It is also true that there are large swathes of land in Balochistan, particularly in rugged rural districts like Awaran, Kohlu, Kech (Turbat), and the Zarghoon Ghar mountains where the Pakistani state has lost its control, and the Pakistan Army does not dare to go there. The security situation is so bad that, in most places, security forces do not come out but remain in their barracks. In a major public confirmation of this reality, senior Pakistani politician and JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman stated that the entire Baloch region has slipped completely out of Pakistan’s control, delivering a public speech where he directly rebuked Army Chief General Asim Munir and asserted that “even today, there is no writ of the Pakistani government there.”
Meanwhile, China has demonstrated its desire to withdraw from the conflict-prone Baloch terrain. The state-backed Hangeng Group permanently shuttered its multi-million-dollar CPEC industrial operations in the Gwadar Free Zone citing systemic risks, while the managing director of the massive Saindak Copper-Gold Project officially warned the state that operations are on the brink of complete cessation due to continuous insurgent blockades and economic highway shutdowns cutting off logistical supply lines.
Moreover, in the recent attack in Ziarat district of Balochistan, nine police personnel, including two senior Station House Officers (SHOs), were first killed during the assault on the police checkpost guarding the Kuch Mangi Phase-III construction site of the multi-billion rupee Mangi Dam project. Meanwhile, 18 other local officers were abducted from the facility and later executed, with their bodies recovered deep in the Zarghoon Ghar mountains. While the Pakistan military’s narrative is that the BLA and TTP together killed them, sections of the local population, activists, and families of the victims allege that they were killed by death squads of the state so that Pakistan could launch and justify the huge counter-insurgency “Operation Shaban” there and intensify the security crackdown in Balochistan.
Some local activists and families of the victims also allege that the incident was intended to send a message to the local police not to entertain ideas of ‘operational autonomy’ or believe that they could prevail independently, while simultaneously portraying the BLA as a ruthless enemy by creating the public perception that it would willingly slaughter its own ethnic kin. There are also allegations that, because the region is rich in natural resources, the state is using these proxies to consolidate its control over the area and facilitate the exploitation and division of its resources among elements linked to the military and criminal networks.
According to local accounts, when these policemen were fighting a desperate four-hour battle, they sent repeated emergency radio requests for reinforcements, but no one came to assist them as their ammunition was completely exhausted and there was no backup, despite a heavily armed federal army post reportedly being located very close to the place where the attack took place. These allegations have raised serious questions among sections of the local population and have fuelled speculation about the circumstances surrounding the incident. Following the attack, the families of the slain policemen and local residents held a 10-day sit-in protest at the Koila Phatak intersection in Quetta, carrying the bodies of the victims and demanding accountability, an independent judicial inquiry, and that their 8-point charter of demands be accepted.
Proxy Network Strategy and the Blowback of Extremism
This incident has further intensified the allegations and concerns among sections of the Baloch population regarding the use of proxy networks and informal armed groups in the province. Pakistan has pushed religious extremists and hardened criminals into the region as state-sponsored death squads, deliberately engineering these organisations so that the state can evade accountability for targeted killings. To completely crush local resistance, it has also weaponised re-engineered “surrendered” militants, co-opted tribal renegades—specifically within the Raisani and Mengal sub-tribal networks—and installed non-local administrative cartels to act as trackers, private militias, and extortion mafias.
The attack on Shafiq Mengal on 20 July 2026 near Wadh in Khuzdar district was a high-profile suicide bombing that targeted his convoy. Mengal, a controversial pro-state tribal leader and head of the Balochistan Musallah Difaee Tanzeem (BMDT) militia, survived, but several guards were killed. Mengal is the son of former federal minister Naseer Mengal. His BMDT group has long been accused by Baloch nationalists and human rights organisations of operating as a state-backed “death squad” involved in enforced disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings of suspected separatists. He has survived multiple prior assassination attempts. This incident exemplifies the deepening proxy and factional violence in Balochistan. Pakistan’s strategy of arming local militias to counter insurgency has created self-perpetuating cycles of retaliation, without tackling underlying grievances over resource extraction, political marginalisation and human rights abuses.
Looking at these conditions, one must understand why things have turned out like this. The present crisis is rooted in decades of political alienation, state policies, and attempts to reshape the social and political character of Balochistan through coercive means. There has been constant discrimination against them, and the Pakistani state has used different instruments to control the region rather than addressing its underlying grievances.
Add to this, the desperate attempt by the deep state to introduce Islamist orthodoxy among the Baloch, known for their secular outlook. Beginning under the military dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq in the late 1970s and 1980s, the Islamic project was forced through the state-sanctioned expansion of ultra-conservative Wahhabi and Deobandi madrasas across rural belts like Awaran and Panjgur. This process continued under the military regime of Musharraf and got accelerated during the heightened counter-insurgency operations of the 2000s and 2010s with the explicit goal of altering the secular tribal identity of the Baloch to force their integration into Pakistan—a project that has utterly failed there. Instead, many extremist organisations have further destabilised the social fabric of the province. The brutal, multi-decade sectarian violence targeting Shia Hazaras in Quetta and attacks against local Hindu and Christian minorities represent some of the most devastating consequences of the spread of extremist networks in the region.
The consequences of this approach have not remained confined to Balochistan; rather, they have contributed to a wider national security crisis for Pakistan. Today, Pakistan has officially emerged as the country most impacted by terrorism globally according to the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2026 report, ranking first in the world, ahead of Burkina Faso in West Africa and several other conflict-affected countries. This is a deeply serious development for Pakistan, particularly as Islamabad has repeatedly accused Afghanistan of being the epicentre of terrorism and a source of cross-border militancy, despite Afghanistan ranking lower at 11th in the same index.
This situation reflects the long-term consequences of Pakistan’s strategy of using extremist religious elements as strategic assets, many of whom later turned against the state itself, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and various splinter factions. It is now repeating the same dangerous proxy strategy in Balochistan by empowering sectarian militias and private armed groups, which has already backfired severely as transnational jihadist networks such as the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) have exploited this radicalised environment to establish deeper structural roots in the province.
Balochistan’s Resource Curse
Beyond the security crisis, the anger in Balochistan is also rooted in decades of economic exploitation and resource deprivation. Their resources have been extracted by the state with th benefits accruing to people of other provinces, mainly Punjab, which dominates the bureaucracy, military and political landscape of Pakistan. Despite Balochistan’s immense natural wealth, its people have been kept away from using those resources. It is a highly developed colonial extraction model at work in Pakistan since 1947. The resource paradox is stark: although the province possesses vast reserves of natural gas and other resources, many communities living just metres away from major extraction projects still lack electricity, gas connections, clean drinking water, and other basic facilities, while people in Punjab and other regions continue to benefit from these resources.
For instance, while gas from the Sui fields in Dera Bugti has powered the industrial hubs of Punjab since 1952, and massive copper-gold deposits from the Reko Diq and Saindak mines in Chagai enrich the federal treasury, local Baloch neighbourhoods surrounding these project sites lack access to basic gas pipelines, clean drinking water, and reliable electricity. Even employment is given to Chinese nationals and Punjabis, while the locals receive no benefit. Likewise, the revenue generated by the mega Gwadar Port project, built under CPEC, also goes largely to China, with around 91 per cent of the port’s maritime and terminal revenues reportedly going directly to the Chinese operator. The remaining 9 per cent is claimed by the federal government in Islamabad, leaving the provincial government of Balochistan with no stake in its own maritime trade revenues.
Given the geostrategic location of Balochistan, with 750 kilometres of Arabian Sea coastline, and its immense natural resources like the Reko Diq gold-copper reserves and Sui gas fields, it should have been the most developed province in Pakistan. Instead, it remains the least developed province and faces a grave security situation.
Balochistan also has a large fishing community whose livelihood has been snatched away. When the deep-sea Gwadar Port was built, the entire coastline was taken over by security forces, leaving limited space for them to carry out their traditional fishing activities. Under the pretext of national defence and securing the multi-billion-dollar CPEC project, the local population has increasingly been treated not as citizens whose livelihoods need to be protected, but as a perceived security challenge to foreign capital and strategic interests. The East-Bay Expressway Barrier, a massive 19-kilometre cargo expressway, physically blocked several kilometres of the traditional coastline, cutting off access to old boat-mooring sites like Demi Zirr. Besides this, corporate contracts have been given to deep-sea Chinese trawlers, which engage in large-scale and even illegal bottom-trawling fishing within Balochistan’s territorial waters, resulting in greater exploitation of marine resources. With their fishing rights gone and no source of livelihood left, the fishing community has been pushed into poverty. For generations, fishing was not just boosting local economy, it also provided the social and cultural foundation of Baloch coastal life. CPEC has rapidly pushed this community into acute poverty and structural displacement.
The state of Pakistan has also engineered demographic changes in a brazen manner. Huge colonies have been built in Gwadar where people from Punjab and other areas have been settled. Massive housing societies like the China-Pak Golf Estates and specialised industrial free zones managed by the China Overseas Ports Holding Company (COPHC) have been built to accommodate an estimated influx of over 500,000 non-local professionals, labourers, and Chinese personnel. To protect foreign investments, the military establishment has implemented strict security perimeters, biometric checkpoints, and literal fences around Gwadar. This has restricted the mobility and opportunities of the local population, effectively trapping native Baloch residents behind security walls. Besides, from the beginning, demographic changes have been carried out by settling millions of Afghan refugees across northern districts like Pishin and Killa Abdullah, allowing them to obtain fraudulent Pakistani citizenship documents (CNICs) to systematically dilute the overall ethnic Baloch majority into a minority within their own province.
Human Cost of Marginalisation
Similarly, on various economic and developmental indices, including the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and other developmental benchmarks, Balochistan ranks the lowest in Pakistan, reflecting the structural marginalisation and systemic exploitation it faces. It has the highest poverty level in Pakistan. According to updated tracking from the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Annual Report, Balochistan’s multidimensional poverty rate has spiked exponentially to 70%, the highest in the country, contrasting severely with the national average of 38.3. This means nearly three out of every four residents lack basic food security, adequate shelter, and sanitation. Proportional deprivation among the youth is at an acute crisis level; official figures released in the UNICEF Pakistan Annual Report reveal that nearly 69% of children in the province—amounting to approximately 7.8 million—are completely out of school. Furthermore, the region suffers from the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in South Asia. According to the global UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) data, Balochistan sits at the absolute bottom among Pakistan’s administrative units, with its regional Gross Regional Product (GRP) consistently declining while other provinces progress.
Over 40 percent of children under the age of five are chronically stunted or underweight due to persistent food insecurity, polluted drinking water, and the total lack of maternal healthcare. The extremely high maternal mortality ratio (MMR), reaching an alarming 785 deaths per 100,000 live births in rural pockets, is caused by a severe lack of basic health infrastructure. Most rural districts lack functional ambulances, clean water, and gynaecologists, forcing families to transport pregnant women on open cargo trucks across unpaved roads for hundreds of kilometres to reach Quetta or Karachi. On other development indices, such as the Gender Inequality Index (GII) and infrastructural access tables, it also ranks very low.
When it comes to governance, there is widespread corruption, and the current provincial government operating in Quetta is perceived by local people as an ‘installed regime’ that functions directly under the military.
Deepening Security Crisis and the Failure of a Militarised Approach
In the bureaucracy as well, the Baloch presence is very small. The top posts in the bureaucracy are occupied by the Punjabis, and the domicile system is exploited through fake domiciles to obtain jobs there. Key provincial field positions—such as the Chief Secretary, Finance Secretaries, Divisional Commissioners, and District Deputy Commissioners—are overwhelmingly staffed by PAS officers dispatched directly from Islamabad rather than local civil servants. While Balochistan has around a 6 per cent constitutional job quota in the federal civilian services, in practice, this system is heavily manipulated. Wealthy non-locals, predominantly from Punjab or urban Sindh, routinely manipulate local connections to obtain fake Balochistan domiciles. They use these fraudulent documents to secure high-level federal positions officially reserved for native Baloch youth. Moreover, the top posts in different departments are also occupied by the Punjabis. Although the so-called 18th Amendment was introduced to empower the provinces, in Balochistan, the equation has remained unchanged. Even the Senate Functional Committee on Devolution, in March 2026, formally noted that Balochistan has historically been systematically “deprived of its rightful share” within the core federal secretariat employment tier.
The Baloch representation in the military has been very limited, with ethnic Baloch constituting a minuscule 0.3 to 1.5 per cent historically across the regular Pakistan Army rank and file. They are mainly present in the civilian police and Balochistan Levies, and during counter-insurgency operations, these local policemen are put at the forefront to face the wrath, while heavily armed federal units like the Frontier Corps (FC) remain fortified inside protected garrisons.
Likewise, their representation in the judiciary is also very limited, both in the Supreme Court of Pakistan and in their own courts. The Supreme Court of Pakistan is heavily dominated by judges from Punjab and Sindh. The entire province of Balochistan, regardless of ethnicity, is allocated only two to three seats on the apex bench. Besides this, the judiciary is also used against them as was evident in the recent anti-terrorism court ruling against prominent civil activist Dr. Mahrang Baloch, who led the peaceful Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) protest sit-ins. Thousands of Baloch youth have been forcibly disappeared under the state’s “kill-and-dump” policy, and nobody knows their whereabouts. Recently, there have also been reports from groups like the Baloch Voice for Justice confirming that students, including international scholars like Shahab Baloch, have been taken into custody and arrested immediately upon returning to the province.
These developments are not isolated incidents but reflect the broader governance model that Pakistan has pursued in Balochistan for decades. The Pakistani state has consistently viewed the Baloch population through a deeply entrenched security-centric lens that prioritises territorial control, counter-insurgency, and economic exploitation over political integration and human rights. However, Balochistan's crisis is no longer a security problem that can be managed through military operations, proxy networks, and enforced silence. It is a crisis of legitimacy — of a state that has, for nearly eight decades, treated its largest province as a resource frontier rather than as a community of citizens deserving of rights, dignity, and equitable governance. Nearly seven in ten Baloch children are out of school. Seventy per cent of the population lives in multidimensional poverty. Chinese partners are withdrawing investment. The writ of the state has collapsed across large swathes of territory. Against this backdrop, a symbolic declaration of independence, however unrecognised, has resonated with millions precisely because it reflects a lived reality of abandonment.
The deep state of Pakistan continues to avoid the reality of the situation. It does not realise that no military operation, however excessive and brutal, can resolve what is fundamentally a political failure. The continued deployment of proxy militias, enforced disappearances, bureaucratic exclusion, and resource extraction without local benefit does not suppress the insurgency — it fuels it. Every disappeared student, every family displaced from a coastline to make way for a foreign cargo terminal, and the hapless Baloch living metres from a gas pipeline without a cooking flame adds another recruit to the ranks of those who have concluded that the future of the Baloch people does not lie within Pakistan. In a situation like this, as Baloch desperation mounts, the military establishment’s unsubstantiated claim that TTP and Baloch militants are operating together could become a self-fulling prophecy, making its task even more difficult in future.
Use of excessive force has backfired. However, the deep state of Pakistan continues to use the same method and expects a different result. Having naturalised a coercive line in Balochistan, Pakistan has all but shut down the narrow window which was available to it for charting out an alternate course — one that would have encouraged genuine political dialogue with true representatives of the Baloch people, a transparent and equitable revenue-sharing framework for natural resources, the immediate cessation of enforced disappearances, and meaningful investment in education, healthcare, and local employment. These are not concessions; they are the minimum conditions for the restoration of a social contract that was never adequately offered.
The trajectory of the current approach leads, with mounting speed, towards a conflict that will be far costlier — in terms of loss of lives, economic decline, worsening internal security and regional stability — than the political accommodation that has never been sincerely attempted. Balochistan is at its breaking point. The question is whether Islamabad will act before it is too late.
Idrees Aftab is a freelance commentator on global strategic affairs, particularly focussed on developments in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region. The views expressed here are his own.
