Balochistan beyond the “foreign hand”: Pakistan’s enduring internal crisis

-Arun Anand

On 31 January 2026, the recent coordinated attacks claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) marked a significant escalation in the long-running insurgency in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. For the first time, coordinated operations were carried out simultaneously across twelve cities, including Quetta, Gwadar, Mastung, Noshki, Dalbandin, Kalat, Kharan, Panjgur, Pasni, Turbat, Buleda, and Kech. Both men and women actively participated—not merely as suicide bombers, but as combatants—reflecting the depth of desperation and grievances among Baloch communities. The BLA announced the launch of “Operation Herof Phase II” at the outset of the attacks, framing the coordinated assaults as part of a planned campaign targeting Pakistani security posts and Chinese infrastructure. In its statement, the group said:

“We carried out coordinated attacks across multiple cities in Balochistan, striking military, police, intelligence, and administrative installations. We neutralised over 80 enemy personnel, took 18 hostages, and destroyed more than 30 government properties. Our fighters, including members of the Majeed Brigade, advanced across various areas with mutual coordination, temporarily restricting the movement of Pakistani forces.”

Independent reports suggest total fatalities, including militants, security personnel, and civilians, may exceed 125, highlighting the intensity of the operations. The attacks caused disruptions to roads, transport, and internet and mobile services in affected areas.

Balochistan’s long struggle and Pakistan’s narrative

Almost immediately after the attacks, Pakistan once again blamed India, claiming that the violence was orchestrated and supported by foreign actors. Officials, including the military and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, alleged that the attackers were guided, funded, and strategically directed from outside Pakistan, framing the operations as part of a broader plan by India to destabilise Balochistan. Pakistan strategically even refers to the militants as “Fitna‑al‑Hindustan” in state narratives, presenting the attacks as externally driven.

India, however, categorically rejected Pakistan’s claims, calling them “baseless” and “frivolous.” A spokesperson from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, Randhir Jaiswal, stated:

“Instead of parroting frivolous claims, Pakistan should focus on its own internal failings and address the longstanding local issues in Balochistan. Allegations against India are baseless and lack any credible evidence. The insurgency in Balochistan is rooted in Pakistan’s internal governance and human rights issues, not external involvement.”

This response underlines that Pakistan’s habitual blame-shifting does not address the real grievances at the heart of the insurgency, and merely masks the structural and historical issues within the province. Balochistan derives its name from the Baloch tribe—the largest ethnic group in the region. The Baloch insurgency has a long history, dating back to the very creation of Pakistan in 1948, and has seen successive cycles of resistance over decades. Resistance against the Pakistani state began soon after the incorporation of the princely state of Kalat, and successive cycles of insurgency have occurred in 1948, 1958–59, 1962–63, 1973–77, and from the early 2000s to the present.

To attribute a struggle with such continuity solely to external actors is to overlook the deeply local and historically entrenched grievances. The conflict has been sustained by systemic issues: political marginalisation, economic exploitation, demographic anxieties, and widespread human rights violations. Reports document enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and military operations by security forces.

Numerous human rights organisations have documented these abuses over decades, highlighting the systemic nature of oppression in Balochistan. Local and regional bodies such as the Human Rights Council of Balochistan (HRCB), Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), and activists like Gulzar Dost have recorded enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and violations of basic civil liberties. National bodies like the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and international organisations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) have also reported widespread violations, drawing attention to patterns of abuse, militarisation, and lack of accountability. Additionally, UN human rights mechanisms have expressed concern over disappearances, repression, and human rights infringements, calling on Pakistan to address these longstanding issues. These abuses, combined with limited access to education, healthcare, and basic infrastructure, have fueled resentment and radicalisation.

The growing involvement of women in the insurgency is particularly telling. Traditionally, women in conflict zones rarely take up arms unless social collapse and state oppression reach extreme levels. Many Baloch women have joined militant movements not out of ideology, but in response to personal loss, including the disappearance or killing of family members. This underscores the severity of state brutality and the absence of peaceful avenues for redress.

Economic exclusion and unrest

Balochistan occupies nearly 44 per cent of Pakistan’s territory and is rich in minerals, natural gas, coal, copper, gold, and strategic ports such as Gwadar. Despite this wealth, the province remains Pakistan’s poorest, with insufficient roads, hospitals, schools, electricity, and employment opportunities. Most benefits from the region’s resources flow to Punjab and the federal centre, leaving Balochistan politically and economically marginalised. This structural imbalance lies at the heart of the insurgency. The BLA’s focus on Chinese infrastructure, particularly Gwadar port under the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), highlights local resentment against projects seen as extractive and non-inclusive.

For many Baloch communities, CPEC and Gwadar are symbols of dispossession rather than development. While these projects bring heavy investment and modern infrastructure, locals report that basic needs like clean water, healthcare, education, and jobs remain largely unmet, and skilled roles are frequently given to outsiders. Coastal communities, particularly fishermen in Gwadar, feel their livelihoods have been disrupted by large-scale projects, Chinese trawlers, and strict regulations, deepening the sense of exclusion. The region has also seen increased militarisation, with checkpoints, surveillance, and restrictions on movement, creating an atmosphere of control rather than empowerment. In the eyes of many Baloch, CPEC benefits outsiders and central authorities while ignoring the real needs of the local population, fueling political grievances and, in some cases, militant resistance.

Pakistan’s habitual blaming of India for every major incident is counterproductive. Even if external actors were hypothetically involved, no foreign power could sustain an insurgency for over seven decades without internal grievances. The term “Fitna-ul-Hindustan” may serve short-term political narratives, but it obscures structural and historical realities, allowing problems to fester rather than be resolved.

Balochistan does not require more troops or scapegoating. What it urgently needs is political accommodation, through meaningful autonomy and inclusive dialogue, along with economic inclusion that ensures local communities benefit from their resources. Human rights accountability, particularly regarding enforced disappearances, is critical, as is development carried out with consent rather than imposed megaprojects. Genuine dialogue and regional diplomacy prioritising stability over blame-shifting are essential. Addressing these grievances honestly is not only crucial for Pakistan’s internal cohesion, but also for regional stability. Women fighting in the insurgency, decades-long unrest, and persistent deprivation are signals of a structural crisis, not foreign subversion. Pakistan must set its house in order, because justice, inclusion, and reform are the only sustainable solutions.

How Pakistan’s military rule fuels Balochistan’s freedom struggle

– Arun Anand

Balochistan is a land which is under the operation of Pakistan and its army, a place where militarization has shaped daily life for generations and where human rights violations have become a defining feature of the state’s presence. Communities across the province describe a reality marked by enforced disappearances, collective punishments, military checkpoints, and surveillance that affects everything from movement to livelihoods. For many Baloch, the feeling is not simply that they are governed by a distant center, but that they live under an occupying force. This sense of suffocation and exclusion has fueled a long-standing freedom struggle, one rooted in the demand for dignity, political rights, and control over the resources that come from their own land. Against this backdrop, pro-independence armed groups continue to carry out attacks that they claim are responses to decades of repression.

On Tuesday, one such group announced responsibility for several operations across the province. These incidents included an improvised explosive device blast in Mastung, the execution of an individual they accused of spying for the Pakistani military in Panjgur, and a grenade attack on a military post in Kech. While armed actions inevitably extend the cycle of violence, supporters of the Baloch cause often view them as part of a resistance movement forced into militancy by the absence of political space and the ever-present threat of military retaliation. The attacks were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern that has escalated throughout 2025.

This year has seen a rising number of armed confrontations, ambushes on military convoys, and assaults on security checkpoints. In several districts, insurgent fighters have demonstrated increased coordination, conducting operations that momentarily challenge the army’s claims of tight control. In many cases, the military responds with sweeping crackdowns, cordoning off villages, detaining males en masse, and sometimes displacing entire communities under the guise of clearing operations.

One of the most significant incidents of 2025 occurred during the hijacking of the Jaffar Express earlier in the year, an episode that shook the country and drew international attention. Dozens of passengers were killed, and the chaotic rescue operation highlighted the state’s unpreparedness despite years of counterinsurgency efforts.

In other months, attacks in Gwadar, Panjgur, Kech, and Kohlu targeted military installations, patrol units, and infrastructure associated with state-backed development projects. Each attack was followed by the familiar pattern of intensified military operations, which in turn deepened local fears and resentments. For many Baloch, the roots of the conflict lie not in the attacks themselves but in the long history of exclusion and exploitation. Balochistan is the largest province by land area and among the richest in natural resources, yet it remains the poorest in development indicators. Gas extracted from Sui fueled Pakistan’s industrialization for decades, but Baloch communities received neither adequate royalties nor basic services. The same dynamic persists today: copper, gold, and other minerals are extracted through deals viewed locally as exploitative, and the massive projects linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor have heightened perceptions that outsiders profit while Baloch residents live under military patrols.

The Pakistani Army presents its presence as a stabilizing force, claiming that it is protecting development and bringing security to a volatile region. But for many families, the uniform represents fear rather than order. Activists and human rights groups have long documented reports of disappearances, where students, teachers, farmers, and political workers vanish without explanation. In some cases, bodies are later found dumped in remote areas; in others, detainees remain unaccounted for, leaving families in endless uncertainty. Villagers speak of night raids, targeted harassment, and arbitrary detentions that make ordinary life unpredictable and fragile.

The events of 2025 have intensified these concerns. After each insurgent attack, the military has expanded its operations deep into residential areas, often sealing entire towns for hours or days. Markets have been shut down, communication networks suspended, and families forced to leave their homes as security forces search door to door. Local leaders warn that the army’s heavy-handed tactics are counterproductive, pushing frustrated youth toward militancy by eliminating peaceful avenues for expressing political grievances.

The attacks on Tuesday again underscored this cycle. In Mastung, the IED blast reportedly targeted a patrol, prompting hours of cordoned streets and aggressive searches. In Panjgur, the execution of the alleged informant sparked fears of reprisals. In Kech, the grenade attack on a military post was followed by drone surveillance and increased military movement through surrounding villages. People in these areas spoke of disrupted routines, closed schools, and the tense silence that typically accompanies large-scale army deployments.

Criticism of the Pakistani Army’s role in Balochistan does not imply support for violence, but it does demand an honest acknowledgment of how long-standing injustices have produced the current volatility. The Baloch freedom movement, in its political and militant forms, arises from a lived experience of repression—an experience of being denied the right to self-govern, the right to speak freely, and the right to benefit from one’s own homeland. The state’s insistence on treating the conflict solely as a security problem ignores the political roots of the struggle and exacerbates the very tensions it seeks to eliminate.

Those advocating for Baloch rights argue that the solution lies not in more soldiers or more checkpoints, but in recognizing the political aspirations of the people. They call for accountability for human rights abuses, an end to enforced disappearances, and genuine autonomy that allows Balochistan to govern itself and control its resources. Without these steps, the province remains trapped in a long and painful cycle in which violence breeds further militarization, and militarization fuels the grievances that sustain the insurgency. Balochistan today stands at a crossroads shaped by the tragedies and resistance of 2025. The Tuesday attacks are only one chapter in a broader narrative: a story of a people who feel occupied, marginalized, and robbed of their future. The Pakistani state continues to rely on force, believing that sheer military power can quell a movement born from historical injustices. But the more it tightens its grip, the more alienated the Baloch become, and the further the region moves from any meaningful resolution.

Until the state acknowledges that peace cannot be imposed at gunpoint and that the people of Balochistan must have the right to determine their own political destiny, the conflict will persist. The freedom struggle, whether expressed through political activism or armed resistance, will continue to draw strength from the lived realities of oppression. And each new incident—like the attacks carried out this Tuesday—will serve as a reminder that a province rich in culture, history, and resources remains locked in a conflict sustained not just by militants, but by the heavy hand of the army that claims to be restoring order while deepening the wounds of its people.

The Massive Rise In Enforced Disappearances Deepens Balochistan’s Crisis

– Arun Anand

A pall of gloom has descended over Balochistan with a massive rise in ‘enforced disappearances’ in recent days. There is a stunned silence in the region that emanates not from peace, but fear. A silence that carries the weight of missing names, of mothers who stand outside district offices clutching faded photographs, of fathers who scan every passing face hoping for a glimpse of their sons.

In the last week alone, around fifteen more people have vanished in separate incidents across multiple districts in this restless province. Fifteen lives erased from the map without explanation, without record, without justice. The number may sound small to those far away, but to the families it is an unbearable universe of pain.This is not new. Enforced disappearances have long haunted Balochistan like a shadow that refuses to fade. It is a pattern that repeats itself with grim precision—someone is picked up in daylight or snatched at night, witnesses are warned into silence, and official statements claim ignorance. There are no arrests to challenge in court, no charges to defend, no bodies to bury. Only waiting. Endless waiting.

Every disappearance leaves a crater in the fabric of a family. Mothers turn into campaigners, fathers into mourners, children into strangers in their own homes. In the narrow streets of Turbat, Gwadar, Panjgur, and Quetta, walls bear posters of the disappeared, printed in black and white, their eyes forever open, staring into a justice system that never looks back. Each poster is an accusation and a prayer at once.

The people of Balochistan have learnt that memory itself can be an act of resistance. And yet the numbers keep growing. Data from the province paints a horrifying picture. In the first half of 2024 alone, 306 cases of enforced disappearances were documented. Of these, 104 individuals were released, four found dead, and at least 198 remained missing by mid-year. The majority of perpetrators were reported to be the paramilitary front of the state, the Frontier Corps, followed by the CTD and intelligence agencies.

By the end of the year, the Human Rights Council of Balochistan (HRCB) found that 830 cases had been recorded for the full year 2024 — 829 of the disappeared were male and only one female. Out of them, 257 were released, 27 were later found dead, 793 were first-time victims, 30 had previously disappeared and been re-abducted, and seven people had disappeared three times. The profession or occupation of 565 victims remained unknown; among the identified cases were 132 students, 28 labourers, 23 drivers, 10 shopkeepers, and others including teachers, doctors, farmers, journalists, and activists.

And the horrors have continued into 2025. In January, 107 enforced disappearances were documented across 14 districts; Kech alone accounted for 30 of the missing, followed by other districts like Awaran and Panjgur. Eight extrajudicial killings were also recorded that month. In March 2025, the HRCB documented 151 enforced disappearances and 80 killings; only 56 of the disappeared have resurfaced, one was transferred to jail, and 94 remained unaccounted for. The district of Kalat led with 38 disappearances, Quetta and Gwadar followed. In February 2025, 144 disappearances and 46 killings were reported; of the abducted, 41 were released, 102 remained missing, and one was killed. These monthly figures are not anomalies — they speak to a systemic campaign of fear and control.

Pakistan trembles before the courage of Baloch women activists

– By Arun Anand

Across the rugged mountains of Balochistan, a quiet revolution has taken shape — not through the barrel of a gun, but through the voices of women who refuse to be silenced. For decades, the Pakistani state has sought to crush the Baloch struggle for rights, identity, and dignity through brute force, censorship, and fear. Yet, amidst the silence imposed by the establishment, Baloch women have risen as the conscience of their people, demanding answers about the disappeared, the tortured, and the dead. Their courage has unsettled Pakistan’s power structure more deeply than any insurgency ever could.

And so, the state has turned its full machinery against them — branding them as traitors, blacklisting them, and attempting to erase them from the nation’s conscience. Pakistan’s fear of Baloch women activists is not born out of security concerns, as its propaganda machinery would have the world believe. It stems from a far more fragile truth: the fear of moral defeat. The establishment that has long ruled through the manipulation of narratives — portraying itself as a victim of terrorism and an upholder of law — cannot bear the voices that strip away this façade. Women like Dr. Sahiba Baloch, Dr. Shalini Baloch, and Samine Deen Baloch have become living examples of the state’s hypocrisy. Their activism exposes what Islamabad has spent decades denying — that the real terror in Balochistan does not come from the mountains but from the cantonments, checkpoints, and intelligence safe houses where young men vanish without a trace.

These women have turned grief into resistance. They march with photographs of missing fathers, brothers, and sons — faces faded by time but made immortal by memory. Their placards demand not privilege but the most basic human right: to know where their loved ones are. For a state built on denial, this demand is dangerous. The Pakistani establishment thrives on invisibility — the invisibility of its crimes, of its political prisoners, of its secret wars. When Baloch women pierce that invisibility, they threaten the very foundation of control that the military has built over Balochistan. The government can bomb villages, censor media, and flood social platforms with propaganda, but it cannot suppress the raw moral clarity of a mother’s cry for her missing child. To silence them, Pakistan’s establishment resorts to the language it knows best — intimidation, smear campaigns, and the weaponization of counterterrorism laws. The inclusion of prominent Baloch women on so-called “watchlists” or “anti-terror registries” is not an act of national security; it is an act of fear. When unarmed women holding peaceful demonstrations are accused of terrorism, it reveals who truly feels threatened. The state that claims to protect its citizens is terrified of citizens who speak the truth. The irony is tragic and telling — that in a country overrun by extremist groups, the military sees danger not in those who kill in the name of ideology, but in those who demand justice in the name of humanity.

The United Nations has expressed alarm over this systematic targeting of Baloch women human-rights defenders. Yet Pakistan continues its repression with impunity, shielded by the same institutions that it manipulates domestically — a judiciary that cowers before the establishment and a media landscape sterilized by fear. The disappearance of Baloch men is not a hidden secret anymore; it is an open wound. Thousands have been abducted by shadowy agencies, tortured in secret cells, and often found dumped in deserts and riverbeds. But when women take to the streets to seek accountability, they too are branded as enemies of the state. The military, unable to confront their truth, paints them as foreign agents, Western puppets, or anti-national propagandists — a tired script repeated whenever Pakistan’s moral bankruptcy is exposed. Behind this fear lies an even deeper insecurity within Pakistan’s power structure. The state was built on a fragile foundation of identity — an identity forged not through inclusion but through suppression. It cannot tolerate voices that challenge its narrative of unity, especially from those it considers peripheral and expendable. Baloch women embody a defiance that is both political and symbolic. They refuse to be confined to the role the state assigns to women — passive, silent, obedient. Their activism is not only a challenge to the military’s control but also a challenge to the patriarchal order that underpins it. When a Baloch woman speaks, she defies both the gun and the gendered silence imposed upon her.

The Pakistan Army, bloated with privilege and arrogance, cannot comprehend this form of power. It is accustomed to silencing dissent with force, not reason. Its generals are comfortable dealing with insurgents, for insurgency justifies military budgets, operations, and the mythology of national security. But women armed only with truth unsettle them in ways bullets never could. They strip away the illusions of heroism and expose the moral rot of a state that kidnaps its own citizens and calls it patriotism. The establishment’s fear of Baloch women is, therefore, the fear of losing control over the narrative — the fear that the world might finally see Pakistan not as a victim of terrorism, but as a perpetrator of systemic violence against its own people. What makes this fear even more profound is the growing international attention to the plight of Baloch activists. For years, Pakistan managed to bury these stories under the rubble of geopolitics — using its strategic importance to silence criticism. But in recent times, the testimonies of Baloch women have begun to pierce through that global indifference. Their statements before human-rights organizations and media outlets have become the cracks through which truth leaks out. Each speech, each vigil, each name they utter chips away at the edifice of impunity the establishment has built. This is why the state is desperate to label them as extremists — because it cannot bear the possibility of being judged by the world through the lens of those it has long oppressed. The persecution of women like Dr. Sahiba Baloch, Dr. Shalini Baloch, and Samine Deen Baloch is part of a broader pattern of state paranoia. These are educated women, professionals, and humanitarians — the very citizens a functioning democracy would celebrate. Yet Pakistan treats them as enemies, because in their words lies the most dangerous weapon of all: legitimacy.

The military’s war in Balochistan depends on dehumanizing the Baloch people. It thrives on portraying them as separatists, terrorists, and outlaws. When articulate, courageous women dismantle that narrative, they expose the establishment’s crimes to both domestic and international scrutiny. This is not just about silencing individuals; it is about suppressing a truth that threatens to delegitimize the entire security state. In a sense, Pakistan’s fear of Baloch women activists is the fear of its own reflection. It is a state that cannot look into the mirror of its history without seeing blood on its hands — from Dhaka to Quetta, from Sindh to the tribal belt.

Every disappeared person, every silenced journalist, every censored voice tells a story of a nation at war with its own people. The Baloch women’s movement forces Pakistan to confront that reality, and that is what terrifies it most. The establishment would rather be feared than exposed, because exposure demands accountability — something the generals have never known. But despite the repression, the movement endures. Baloch women continue to march, to document, to speak. They carry the memory of the disappeared like sacred relics, turning mourning into resistance. Each time the state targets them, it confirms their truth. Each blacklist, each abduction, each threat only amplifies their message: that no amount of violence can erase the demand for justice.

Pakistan’s fear, then, is not of women — it is of the truth they carry. It is the fear that one day the world will listen and see beyond the propaganda, beyond the manufactured narratives of security and nationalism. It is the fear of a reckoning long overdue. The establishment may control the guns, the media, and the courts, but it cannot command the conscience of a people awakening to their own oppression. Baloch women have made sure of that. Their courage has already broken the silence. And for Pakistan’s military establishment — built on secrecy, lies, and fear — that is the beginning of its greatest defeat.

Legalizing Repression: How Balochistan’s Anti-Terror Law Risks Fuelling the Fire

The Balochistan province of Pakistan represents a long-standing festering wound- one that the state, instead of healing, is bent on continually aggravating. The largest, resource-abundant, yet poorest province of the country, Balochistan has been reeling in the crossfire of a chronic armed insurgency and a disproportionate state response, in addition to systemic political and economic marginalization. Even as Pakistan was recently engaged in military confrontations with India- the most severe since the Kargil conflict of 1999, the Baloch insurgents kept intensifying their operations. Now, in the name of more effective counter-terrorism, the government has passed another legislation that threatens to worsen the situation by legitimizing state excesses in the province.

Amid vehement opposition by legal experts, human rights groups, and civil society, the Balochistan Assembly passed the Counter-terrorism (Balochistan Amendment) Act 2025 on June 4. The legislation, which makes new inclusions into the 1997 Anti-terrorism Act, authorizes armed forces, civil armed forces, and intelligence agencies to preventively detain a person for up to three months without any charges or trial. Eliminating judicial oversight, joint investigation teams can now issue detention orders, seize property or other possessions, and conduct ideological or psychological profiling of the detainees, all on their own accord. The Act has been put in place for 6 years, after which it can be extended for a period of 2 years if the provincial government thus notifies.

Collective suppression under the garb of combating insurgency and terrorism is far from new in Balochistan. Particularly since the mid-2000s, the Pakistani state has notoriously enacted a ‘kill and dump’ policy and forged an atmosphere where the threat as well as execution of enforced disappearances, custodial torture and killings, fake encounters, and arbitrary detention is part of daily life. This month itself, Pakistan based human rights organisation, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), in its bi-annual human rights report, revealed that 752 people were forcibly disappeared from January to June 2025, out of which 181 were later released and 25 died in custody. The report also registered 117 extrajudicial killings in the same period, with most of the victims reportedly being students and young political activists.

Even when the Act was a proposed bill in the provincial assembly, human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), had staunchly opposed its passage over concerns that it would legalize state instrumentalization of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention. After it was adopted, the HRCP condemned the “sweeping powers of preventive detention” outlined by the Act, which undermine civilian law enforcement domain by involving military personnel in the oversight boards, and contravene the country’s constitutional obligations under Article 10 (legal safeguards for those arrested or detained) as well as its commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The BYC, too, released a strongly-worded statement, decrying the Act’s “grave violation of fundamental rights, including personal liberty, due process, and protection from arbitrary detention.”

Meanwhile, Pakistani government is projecting the Act as a decisive framework against terrorist forces and something that will help end the issue of missing persons. Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti described it as a milestone which, according to him, will counter the “organised conspiracy” and “false allegations against state institutions” regarding enforced disappearances. Bugti also claimed that the insurgency in the province is a “foreign intelligence agency driven war” against Pakistan, a narrative that has been parroted for a long time by the Pakistani establishment. This absolute denial and deflection by the authorities point to their utter unwillingness to acknowledge, address, and resolve the plight of the Baloch people, further alienating them and fueling the militancy.

The Baloch people are already subjected to an extremely stifled environment, wherein demands of accountability from the state are constantly misconstrued as separatism, justifying excessive crackdown and harassment. The BYC-led peaceful Baloch civil resistance movement, which has emerged as a resilient force in the past couple of years, has had to face constant vilification, disruptions, harassment, and violent crackdown by the state, with its leaders, including Mahrang Baloch, incarcerated. Rather than taking advantage of a peaceful civilian platform that works towards state accountability and political reconciliation within the federal framework, the heavy-handed response of the Pakistani state creates conditions where peaceful political activism loses relevance and the people, particularly the youth, increasingly view armed insurgency as the only alternative.

Within the context of an ever-ascending insurgency, progressively alienated people, rising attacks on CPEC workers and projects as well as Punjabi migrants, the newly passed amendment act will certainly estrange the Baloch people further. The ensuing state excesses, which will now take on a robe of legal legitimacy, will exacerbate the security crisis in the province. At a point when the Pakistani state must proactively prioritize meaningful political engagement with Baloch grievances, demonstrate accountability and willingness towards politico-economic inclusion and justice for Balochistan, it is almost a suicide run to introduce a blatantly exploitative and tyrannical legislation. By legalizing repression in a province which already represents an existential landmine, Pakistan has truly set in motion its own unravelling.