Ananta Insights | Pakistan’s Baloch Conundrum by Ambassador Sharat Sabharwal | March 2025

Constituting 44% landmass of Pakistan, Balochistan has only around 6% of its population. It existed in three parts at the time of the partition in 1947: a part governed directly by the British, four princely states and the Gwadar region ruled by Oman. The princely states acceded to Pakistan, the largest one – Khanate of Kalat – doing so in 1948 under coercion.Pakistan acquired Gwadar from Oman in 1958. These territories continued to exist in a single unit West Pakistan till 1970, when they were constituted into the Balochistan province. 

Five insurgencies

Balochistan has all along remained troubled and has seen five insurgencies. The first one broke out in 1948,  when the ruler of Kalat acceded to Pakistan under duress and his brother revolted. The second, third and fourth insurgencies broke out in 1955, 1962 and 1973 respectively as a result of autocratic policies of the Pakistani state. These were all crushed with brutal force.

The fifth and the ongoing insurgency began in 2005 following  a female doctor accusing an army officer of rape in Sui and gained momentum after the killing of the prominent tribal leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti by the Pakistan army in 2006. It has continued with varying degree of intensity since then. Unlike the previous insurgencies led by tribal sardars, as the fifth insurgency has progressed, it has seen the growing participation of middle class educated youth. It is a nationalist movement untainted by Islamic extremism that characterises most other armed groups operating in Pakistan. The graph of killings rose sharply after Bugti’s death. The Pakistanis were unable to fly their national flag on government buildings even in Quetta. Pakistan unleashed a reign of terror under a media blackout.  Thousands of Baloch nationalists were picked up. The bodies of some were found dumped in the wilderness, while others simply vanished. This policy has continued. Attempts by human rights groups, such as the Baloch Yakjehti Committee headed by the doctor and human rights activist Mahrang Baloch, to resolve the cases of missing persons have repeatedly run into state repression. Sporadic half-hearted attempts by the Pakistan Supreme Court to enquire into the matter have come to naught because of non-cooperation of the security establishment. Violence tapered off 2013 onwards.  However, the insurgency continued to simmer and has come back in a more vicious form in recent years. 

Factors underlying the Baloch unrest

Besides the role of tribal sardars, keen to guard their turf, the turmoil in Balochistan has been the result of three major factors. 

The first is abject poverty and lack of development in the province. In spite of being resource rich, Balochistan generates only around 4.5% of Pakistan’s GDP. Its administration has remained plagued by widespread corruption. In a recent article (Development Gap of Balochistan, Business  Recorder, April 3, 2025), the renowned Pakistani economist Dr. Hafiz A Pasha provides an abysmal picture of Balochistan’s development Indicators. As per the UNDP Human Development Report of 2020, Balochistan’s Human Development Index was 0.473 compared to Pakistan’s 0.570. The education component of HDI for the province was 0.332 and 0.500 for Pakistan. The literacy rate in Balochistan was only 42% as against the national figure of 60.7%. Youth unemployment in Balochistan has been reported at over 37%. As per a study by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, the incidence of poverty in Balochistan in 2019-20 was 70.5% as against 39.5% nationally. There has been gross exploitation of Balochistan’s resources by the federal authorities without much advantage to its people. Thus gas deposits near Sui and Pirkoh in Dera Bugti district have supplied gas to some Punjabi cities since 1964, but gas came only to Dera Bugti in Balochistan in the 1990s due to establishment of a military camp there. Low price of gas and percentage of royalty to the province has remained a bone of contention. The 18^th amendment to Pakistan’s constitution in 2010 vested the natural  resources of  a province, which till then vested solely in the federation, equally in the province and the federal government. However, the move does not appear to have translated into any significant advantage for the people of Balochistan so far.

Second, China’s increasing involvement in the province has accentuated people’s resentment. Besides the resources of Balochistan, China is also interested in its geographic location as its exit to the sea through the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), bypassing the maritime chokepoints, notably the Malacca Strait, in the east; and the Makran coast as a potential staging point for its navy into the Arabian Sea and the wider Indian Ocean. China’s interest in the grossly underutilised Gwadar port and the recently completed large, but again grossly underutilised, airport can be explained only in strategic terms and not in terms of  the overblown economic logic of the CPEC offered by China and Pakistan. The Baloch see China as complicit in their exploitation. Thus when China built the first phase of the Gwadar port in the first decade of this century, out of 600 workers , only 30 were local. The Saindak copper-gold mine in the Chagai district of Balochistan has been operated by the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) since 2002. The contract signed in 2002 provided for 50% of revenue going to MCC, 48% to the federal government and only 2% to Balochistan. It was extended repeatedly and currently the royalty of Balochistan is said to stand at 6.5%. It has been alleged that there has been no independent assessment of the ore extracted from the mine to ascertain the ratio of copper and gold in it and the Chinese have had a freehand in exploiting it. Further, even though Balochistan has a key place in the CPEC, there have been complaints about its interests being ignored in channelling the CPEC investments. Consequently, Chinese nationals and interests have increasingly figured on the radar screen of Baloch militants. The resulting security problems have entailed severe restrictions on locals inGwadar and other sites of Chinese projects, further fuelling their anger.  

Third, all attempts by the Baloch to secure their political and economic rights have been met with an iron-handed approach by the Pakistani establishment and there has been no sincere attempt to address their grievances politically. The army has all along foisted governments of its choice on the province. Army chief Asim Munir has said recently that Pakistan needs to convert from a soft to a hard state, as if the Pak establishment has not already inflicted enough violence on its people. 

Some other complicating factors

The volatility resulting from the above factors has been added to by two other factors. 

Balochistan is a strategically located territory abutting the Arabian Sea close to the oil transit choke point of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran and Afghanistan. While Pakistan has been reflexively blaming  India and Afghanistan for violence there, many other countries have an interest in the territory. The Chinese designs in Balochistan alarm some countries. Countries with successful ports in the Persian Gulf may not like to see Gwadar and other Pakistani ports developing into competing commercial hubs.  Volatility in Afghanistan and the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan also spills over to Balochistan. Interestingly, the then Interior Minister of Pakistan Rehman Malik had told the Pak Senate in 2012 that 14 foreign organisations were operating in Balochistan, and both the “foes” and “friends” of Pakistan were equally involved in financing and encouraging them to cause an uprising.  

Ironically, the Taliban victory in Afghanistan in August 2021, aided and abetted by Pakistan, has added to Pakistan’s security nightmare. Pakistan alleges that  the terror attacks in its tribal belt and Balochistan are engineered from the Afghan territory by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch insurgents. Its repeated pleas to the Taliban regime to curb such activities have fallen on deaf ears. The Afghan Taliban describe TTP as Pakistan’s internal problem and counsel dialogue to resolve it.  They have ideological affinity with TTP, whose cadres fought alongside them against the US led NATO forces in Afghanistan. Moreover, they would also be concerned about any strong action against TTP resulting in its cadres gravitating towards their nemesis – the Islamic State Khorasan. Coercive measures by Pakistan such as restrictions on the Afghan transit trade, expulsion of a large number of Afghan nationals and some air raids against purported TTP targets in Afghanistan have failed to change the situation. Pakistan has no easy answers. They  know that their armed forces cannot succeed where the mighty Soviet army and the US-led NATO forces failed to prevail. Therefore, their policy towards Afghanistan has remained a mix of conciliatory moves and coercive measures, with greater emphasis on the latter of late. Devoid of effective options, Pakistan may do what it has repeatedly done in the past – try to destabilise the current regime in Kabul. There are telltale signs of Pakistan trying to build contacts with the Afghan leaders and groups opposed to the Taliban. This, of course, will be a shortsighted approach as greater instability in Afghanistan would inevitably feed into the existing high volatility within Pakistan.  

Baloch insurgency takes an ominous turn

The 5^th Baloch insurgency has taken an ominous turn in recent years with attacks of ever growing ferocity and sophistication, both in terms of the arms and tactics employed and the accompanying propaganda, by pro-independence Baloch militias. In one such attack last month, militants of the Baloch Liberation Army  hijacked a train carrying around 400 passengers, including several army personnel. The crisis lasted two days with multiple killings amongst the passengers and security forces. The Global Terrorism Index 2025 published by the Institute for Economics and Peace ranks Pakistan second after the west African nation of Burkina Faso. Terror attacks in Pakistan doubled in 2024 compared to the previous year and death toll went up by around 50%. It was reported recently that the Baloch Liberation Army, Baloch Liberation Front, Baloch Republican Guards and the Sidhudesh Revolutionary Army have decided to work together to form Baloch Raj Ajoi Singer (BRAS) for intellectual and ideological training of militants, use of modern technology, effective use of media and coordinated “war strategy” against Pakistan. There is breakdown of the state authority in large parts of Balochistan. Even leaders like Akhtar Mengal of Balochistan National Party (Mengal), who have been participating in electoral politics in the past, are alienated.  

Likelihood of Balochistan’s Secession

Each round of intense violence in Balochistan has given rise to predictions of its secession from Pakistan. In this context, a few factors need to be noted. First, resentment against the Pakistani state is the strongest among the Baloch segment of the province’s population. Pakistan census results do not give percentage of population by ethnicity and the ethnic composition of Baluchistan’s population has remained disputed. However, asper  data of  the province’s population by  mother tongue released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics in 2017, the population of Baluchi and Pushto-speaking people was 54.76% and 29.64% respectively, followed by other language groups. The relatively small population of the Baloch in the sparsely populated province has over the years made it easier for the Pakistani state to ride roughshod over their aspirations.

There is no credible assessment of the prevalence of independence sentiment in Balochistan. In 2012, the Pak daily The News International quoted an undisclosed Gallup Survey for the UK Department for International Development to claim that only 37% Baloch and 12% Pukhtuns in Balochistan wanted independence and 67% wanted greater autonomy. Even if true, the independence sentiment  must be much higher today because of what the people have suffered. Sensational as the recent violence in Balochistan has been, it needs to be put in perspective. Pakistan faced a far more serious wave of terror and violence across its length and breadth, including the Punjabi heartland, in the first decade of this century. Targets included top military facilities, including the GHQ in Rawalpindi and several ISI offices. It was widely acknowledged, including by many Pakistani hawks that the country faced an existential threat. But Pakistan survived. While some countries may be interested in seeing turmoil in Balochistan, no major country has so far supported its secession. Pakistan has all along lived on the edge, but the geopolitical circumstances that underpinned its dangerous ways have changed. It cannot tempt fate indefinitely. However, while it is certain that Baluchistan will remain in turmoil, any hasty conclusions regarding its secession ought to be eschewed.

The previous issues of Af-Pak Digest are available here: LINK