Balochistan: When Military Rule Turns A Province Into An Exit – OpEd

Balochistan is not simply sinking into violence; it is being methodically pushed outside Pakistan’s political body. In recent years, Islamabad has replaced governance with military management, recasting a profound political crisis as a technical problem of security. The systematic downplaying of military casualties, persistent allegations of enforced disappearances, and the collective criminalisation of the Baloch population are not collateral damage but elements of a deliberate strategy of control. As long as the Pakistani state refuses to acknowledge the political and social roots of the insurgency, it deepens alienation and legitimises rupture in the eyes of local communities. If this trajectory continues, Balochistan risks following a familiar historical path: from an “internal security issue” to a violent separation — a new Bangladesh, this time produced by Islamabad’s own choices.

A 2 February 2026 Al Jazeera investigation titled How Balochistan attacks threaten Pakistan’s promises to China, Trump underscores how Pakistan’s military-led governance under Army Chief Asim Munir has not contained violence in Balochistan but has become a catalyst for escalating tensions. Coordinated attacks carried out by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), killing dozens of civilians, security personnel, and fighters, have once again exposed the province’s fragility. This instability persists despite Balochistan’s immense mineral wealth and its strategic importance to both Chinese and American investment ambitions. Rather than engaging in meaningful political dialogue with local communities, Islamabad has doubled down on repression and external blame, framing unrest as foreign-sponsored sabotage. The result is a province that is simultaneously marketed as an investment frontier and governed as an internal enemy zone — a contradiction that undermines Pakistan’s credibility.

The insurgency in Balochistan is neither sudden nor primarily the product of external interference. It represents the latest phase of a conflict that stretches back to the province’s incorporation into Pakistan in 1948. Since then, Baloch communities have consistently argued that they are denied political autonomy, economic participation, and control over their own natural resources. Their grievances have been met with a predominantly military response. Heavy-handed security operations, extensive troop deployments, and widespread accusations of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings have entrenched a cycle of violence. Each operation presented as “restoring order” reinforces perceptions of occupation and feeds recruitment into armed separatist groups such as the BLA.

This long-standing conflict has now acquired a critical economic and geopolitical dimension. Balochistan lies at the heart of China’s investments in Pakistan through the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and is also central to Islamabad’s recent attempts to attract US capital into the mining sector. The province’s vast reserves of copper, gold, coal, and gas have become central to Pakistan’s economic recovery narrative. Yet the state struggles to guarantee even basic security for heavily guarded infrastructure projects. Persistent attacks signal that militarisation has failed to create sustainable stability.

The contradiction is stark and increasingly dangerous. Pakistan promotes Balochistan abroad as a “land of opportunity” while treating it domestically as a permanent security threat. This contradiction is amplified by the province’s unique geography. Balochistan is not merely a peripheral region; it controls Pakistan’s access to the Arabian Sea, borders Iran and Afghanistan, and serves as the indispensable land corridor linking China to the Indian Ocean. For Beijing, Balochistan is the geostrategic core of CPEC. Gwadar Port, transport routes, and energy corridors are not just investments but components of a broader strategy to reduce China’s dependence on vulnerable maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Malacca. This geopolitical value pushes Islamabad to promise stability and development internationally, while responding internally with repression, casualty minimisation, and collective suspicion toward the local population. As analysts note, no serious investment — Chinese or Western — can thrive where geography is treated as a strategic asset but the people who inhabit it are treated as an obstacle.

At the centre of this dynamic stands Pakistan’s military and its current leadership. Army Chief Asim Munir occupies an exceptionally strong institutional position. With the rank of field marshal and recent constitutional changes that have further entrenched the military’s role in governance, Munir enjoys political security unmatched by many of his predecessors. Yet this security has produced strategic paralysis rather than resolution.

According to human rights reports and independent assessments, the Pakistani military has systematically downplayed its casualties in Balochistan, particularly since 2019, when the intensity of security operations increased markedly. This practice is not limited to preserving morale or avoiding public backlash. It is part of a broader effort to control the narrative — one that mirrors the state’s long-standing denial of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and mass arrests of Baloch activists. Acknowledging high losses would generate immense pressure on Munir to “do something”: either escalate operations dramatically or concede that the military-first approach has failed.

Both options carry serious risks. Escalation, in a province already marked by collective punishment, area lockdowns, and operations lacking judicial oversight, could trigger greater bloodshed and international condemnation. A genuine strategic shift — involving political dialogue, reduced military presence, or accountability for human rights abuses — would challenge the foundational logic of military dominance in Pakistan’s political system. As a result, casualty minimisation functions as a mechanism of delay. As long as the crisis is portrayed as “under control,” the leadership can continue a low-intensity but high-cost strategy without assuming political risk.

The cost of this approach is borne entirely by Balochistan. Over the past five years, violence has not diminished; it has become more diffuse and more routine. Entire communities live under constant surveillance, families search for missing relatives for years, and trust in the state has collapsed. Local populations find themselves trapped between armed separatist groups and a state apparatus that often treats civilians collectively as suspects. Meanwhile, the internationalisation of the conflict — through the involvement of China, the United States, and Pakistan’s rivalry with India — increases the region’s strategic value without translating into political rights or economic improvement for its residents.

Islamabad’s insistence on framing Balochistan solely as a security problem is proving increasingly short-sighted. Peaceful forms of dissent — from marches by families of the disappeared to student protests — have been met with arrests, media blackouts, and intimidation. As long as the state refuses to acknowledge that the insurgency is driven by genuine political and social demands — control over resources, political autonomy, respect for identity, and accountability for human rights violations — it strengthens the argument that armed struggle is the only remaining option. In doing so, Pakistan risks transforming a political conflict into a permanent state of exception.

Ultimately, Balochistan is not merely a regional crisis. It is a mirror reflecting the structural weaknesses of the Pakistani state and a warning about the consequences of militarising politics. For Europe, the stakes are not remote. Instability in Balochistan affects global trade and energy routes linking the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, shapes migration pressures, and feeds into broader security dynamics spanning South Asia, the Middle East, and beyond. As long as Pakistan’s military leadership prioritises image management over confronting reality, Balochistan will remain an open wound — not only for its people or for Pakistan’s future, but for an international system that can no longer afford to treat such crises as distant, localised affairs without global consequences.