Repression as Governance: Pakistan’s Violent Grip Over Balochistan

When Pakistan experienced the hijacking of the Jaffar Express by Baloch insurgents last month, it triggered a renewed wave of public concern regarding the likely methods of state retaliation. These fears were neither new nor unjustified; instead, they were firmly grounded in decades of securitised repression in the region, where the Pakistani state has historically operated as a regime of punitive authoritarianism, characterised by systemic violence, extrajudicial reprisals, and the delegitimisation of ethno-nationalist opposition.

What proved particularly troubling, however, was the state’s broadening punitive reach beyond alleged insurgent actors, extending into civil society and non-combatant political opposition. The arrest of Dr. Mahrang Baloch, along with several members of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), marked a decisive shift towards the criminalisation of rights advocacy and calls for institutional accountability. These actions have refocused attention on the ongoing decline of human rights protections in Balochistan, highlighting the persistent impunity with which the Pakistan Army operates, subjecting the region’s marginalised communities to systemic dispossession and militarised governance.

 

In the aftermath of the Jaffar Express incident, which highlighted a significant intelligence failure within the Pakistan Army-led security apparatus, the state, adhering to its entrenched model of militarised governance in Balochistan, launched a series of ostensibly “counter-insurgency operations” across the province. In keeping with its historical approach to coercive statecraft, these operations were accompanied by widespread reports of staged “encounters,” a term now widely understood as a euphemism for extrajudicial executions, during which dozens of Baloch men were summarily killed.

The region has long been a site of thousands of cases of enforced disappearances, where Baloch men have been abducted by security forces, many of whom have either been extrajudicially executed or remain missing to this day. For example, the Voice for Missing Baloch Persons (VMBP) has documented over 7,000 cases of enforced disappearances in the province since 2004. Even reports from the Pakistani government, such as the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED), have recorded over 2,700 such cases in the region. Pakistani forces have been accused of executing many of these individuals, with the recovery of mutilated bodies across the province being a recurring phenomenon. For instance, local news reports indicate that between April 5th and 6th alone—within a span of just 48 hours—twelve bodies of recently disappeared Baloch individuals were recovered from various areas of the province, including Barkhan, Khuzdar, Mashkay, and Buleda. These findings have been unequivocally condemned as extrajudicial killings, further solidifying long-standing allegations about the secretive and violent methods employed by Pakistan’s security establishment in its control of Balochistan.

Alongside these lethal operations, the state intensified its crackdown on civil society actors, particularly human rights organisations, which it has controversially sought to equate with insurgent networks. This strategic obfuscation and conflation serve a dual purpose: they delegitimise grassroots human rights efforts while simultaneously justifying state-sanctioned violence as a necessary counter-insurgency measure to the wider Pakistani public, especially in other provinces. Organisations such as the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), led by Dr. Mahrang Baloch, have consistently challenged the state’s fabricated narratives, exposed the performative nature of alleged “encounters,” and highlighted the ongoing continuity of repression that has characterised Pakistan’s approach to the region for decades. It is within this broader context of securitised silencing and pervasive violence that the recent arrests of rights defenders must be critically understood—not as isolated instances of executive overreach, but as integral components of a deeply entrenched regime of disciplinary statecraft aimed at eradicating dissent and reinforcing an exclusionary national identity.

It is important to note that Dr. Mahrang Baloch was arrested by the Pakistani state on March 22 while she was leading a peaceful sit-in protest against the extrajudicial killing of three Baloch men by state police forces the day before. The alleged crime of these three young men was their mere participation in anti-government protests condemning the unlawful detention of several Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) members, including prominent activists Bebarg Zehri and Saeeda Baloch, who had been arrested by Pakistani forces on March 20 and March 21, respectively.

Nonetheless, the broader implications of these punitive actions seem to be not only significant but also structurally unsettling. They expose the Pakistani state’s entrenched tendency to use coercive violence as part of its colonial approach to Balochistan, where any demands for justice and democratic participation are not simply suppressed but actively framed as existential threats to state sovereignty. This is accomplished by labelling political dissent as “sedition” and systematically eroding any counter-narrative that challenges the state’s militarised orthodoxy.

Consequently, the current situation in Balochistan can no longer be simplified as a case of developmental neglect or peripheral instability. It must instead be understood as a manifestation of a deliberate and ongoing dismantling of civic space, the judicial denial of ethnic rights, and the institutionalisation of structural violence under the ideological guise of counterterrorism. What is unfolding in Balochistan seems to be a clear example of necropolitical governance, where the very existence of Baloch bodies—whether mobilised, defiant, or passively situated—becomes a source of intense anxiety for the state and, consequently, a target for its systemic violence.

Thus, these actions represent a deliberate attempt to delegitimise, criminalise, and ultimately eliminate dissenting discourse, particularly those expressions that challenge the entrenched impunity of military operations or call for the institutionalisation of structural accountability within the federal framework. By employing such repressive measures, the Pakistani state appears determined to systematically close off what remains of civil and political space that could otherwise enable critique, deliberation, or resistance to its militarised governance in Balochistan.

This strategic repression goes beyond mere authoritarian excess; it embodies a malicious form of statecraft aimed at provoking the radicalisation of the last remaining peaceful political dissent, thereby making armed insurgency the only viable form of opposition. This trajectory is neither incidental nor accidental but is instead intentionally cultivated to squeeze non-violent political channels, thereby creating a self-fulfilling narrative of insurgency that could serve to legitimise the state’s repressive apparatus.

In effect, this strategy is perceived as a means to absolve the state from the need to justify its actions within constitutional or democratic frameworks, if such frameworks exist at all, thereby enabling the entrenchment of its colonial control over Balochistan through the normalisation of extreme violence. As repression in Balochistan becomes increasingly institutionalised, the international community must recognise the epistemic violence being carried out under the guise of state security and advocate for accountability within the country, including an immediate halt to this unchecked violence.