From Grief to Guns: Baloch Women in Conflict

Refusing to relent, Baloch women protest the abduction of their family members outside the Lasbela Press Club in Hub Chowki on January 24, 2026. Courtesy: Fozia Shashani

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Feb 18 2026 (IPS)

Fozia Shashani, 26, a member of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, said it was “most painful” to hear reports that two Baloch women – Hawa Baloch, 20, and Asifa Mengal, 24 – had taken part in active combat as suicide bombers. The path, she said, was in complete contrast to her belief in peaceful resistance. Yet, she added, such extreme choices were the result of a state that had “failed its people.”

Her comments come in the aftermath of a series of coordinated gun and bomb attacks on January 31 across mineral-rich Balochistan—including Quetta, Mastung, Nushki, Dalbandin, Kharan, Panjgur, Tump, Gwadar, and Pasni – during which attackers stormed security installations, set government buildings ablaze, and looted banks.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attacks, which killed 31 civilians – including five women – and 17 security personnel. The military’s media wing reported the killing of 145 militants in a 40-hour gun battle.

According to the Pakistan Security Report 2025 by the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, militant violence surged nationwide with 699 attacks — a 34 percent increase from 2024.

This escalation was most pronounced in Balochistan, which recorded 254 attacks,  killing 419 people and injuring 607, up from 322 fatalities in 2024, in the province.

A video of Hawa, who joined the BLA’s Majeed Brigade (the suicide squad), shows her looking straight at the camera and laughingly saying, “Pakistan cannot face us,” “Today is a day of joy,” and “War is fun.” Taken before the attack, it signals a person who is defiant and fearless.

While previously rare, the recruitment of Baloch women by separatist groups is now more common, said security analyst Muhammad Amir Rana, director of PIPS. Already, a dozen women have died carrying out suicide bombings in the last four years.

He links it to the rise in enforced disappearances, a reality that he said “has pushed some women toward armed resistance.”

Despite thousands being disappeared or killed, more young people — women included — are drawn to the resistance.

According to Amnesty International, enforced disappearances in Pakistan began in the 1980s but increased in the aftermath of 2001 followed by the US-led  ‘war on terror’.

Since 2011, the Pakistan Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances has recorded over 10,000 cases, of which 3,485 occurred in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 2,752 in Balochistan. Figures from human rights organisations and the families of the disappeared suggest a much higher number.

However, not everyone has been pushed toward militancy due to personal tragedy.

Shari Baloch, 32, a mother of two and schoolteacher with no known history of repression, became the first Baloch woman to carry out a suicide attack in 2022 near the Confucius Institute at Karachi University, killing three Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver. The BLA hailed her as a fidayee — a “martyr” of the Baloch nation.

The BLA claimed it would encourage other Baloch women to follow in Shari’s footsteps—a claim that has since proved true.

Although Baloch women may have been late entrants to armed struggle, women have long participated in conflicts worldwide —from Sri Lanka’s LTTE to El Salvador’s FMLN and India’s Naxalite-Maoist insurgency. However, Sanaullah Baloch, a politician from Balochistan, noted that it was Kurdish women fighting Daesh who inspired their Baloch counterparts to join men in the struggle.

This emerging visibility of women in militant roles, analysts say, reflects more than symbolic inspiration.

Iftikhar Firdous, founder and executive editor of The Khorasan Diary, said the role of female fighters in the recent attacks in Balochistan signals a “deeper strategic and ideological shift” which may require looking at resistance movements through a new and more gendered lens.

“Deploying women on the front lines signals the group’s attempt to personify the fight as all-inclusive considering the different age groups involved. It also creates an additional challenge, as traditional profiling no longer works and including women in security checks goes against norms of a tribal society,” he said.

It sends different messages to different stakeholders.

“For militant groups, women on the front lines send a strong message of sacrifice and resistance and for the security forces, they [women] pose a unique challenge during checkpoints, searches and intelligence operations, as until now they were considered less threatening,” he told IPS.

However, it is on the social and psychological front that militant organisations hope to make the most long-lasting impact to secure a steady supply of new recruits.

This step, said Sanaullah, a former senator, can be traced back through Baloch resistance history to 1948.

“Political awareness runs deep among the Baloch, including women; from an early age, it is shaped by a culture of discourse, poetry, music, and literature that reflects their historical grievances.”

To grasp the two-decade-old disillusionment, he said, “You must be a local to truly feel the humiliation and intimidation a Baloch faces daily on his own land – frequent roadblocks and security checkpoints where individuals are stopped, questioned, and asked to show identification, even verbally abused – by police and paramilitary forces. This causes an adverse psychological impact.”

Recalling his time as a young senator in 2009, he said he warned the state that if the Baloch continued to feel disenfranchised — shrouded in poverty and depression — the next generation would become a militant generation. “It was the perfect recipe, and this is exactly what has happened,” he said.

This view was echoed by Shashani.

“When you push a nation against the wall, when they live in constant fear, day in and day out, the psychological scars run deep,” she pointed out and added, “It used to be our fathers and brothers, but now mothers, sisters and daughters, sometimes minors, are being picked up without any documentation, and they return traumatised and violated.

“Although some were released, there was no official acknowledgement or a judicial process. Some were told they were picked up ‘by mistake’ without so much as an apology. It just feels we are a disposable nation, to be treated as they please.”

A fact-finding mission conducted between July 9 and 12, 2025, by the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, stated in its report “Balochistan’s Crisis of Trust” that there has been a shift in the pattern of enforced disappearances from “prolonged incommunicado detention” to the “kill-and-dump” approach. Prominent politicians, including former chief minister and National Party leader Dr Abdul Malik Baloch and Balochistan National Party (BNP-M) chief Sardar Akhtar Mengal, told the HRCP that individuals picked up — often without warrants — were held for months before being extrajudicially executed.

After the national gathering in Gwadar, in 2024, a large number of individuals were picked up.

The Annual Report 2025 by BYC on the Human Rights Situation in Balochistan stated 1,223 enforced disappearances, with Sammi Deen Baloch, a senior central committee member, stating in her Foreword: “The BYC Human Rights Department undertook this documentation with care, verification and persistence, despite the risks involved.”

The report noted that while 348 people were released soon, 832 remain missing. Some 43 were killed either in fake encounters or their tortured and mutilated bodies were found dumped on roadsides. The report pointed to the law enforcement agencies as well as the “state-backed” death squads for these atrocities.

Shashani pointed to 18 cases of enforced disappearances of Baloch women between 2025 and January 2026, recounting their stories one by one. “Mahjabeen, who has polio, was abducted from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, and has been missing since May,” she said.

She went on to put a face to each name: Rahima, from Dalbandin; Hazra, taken from Hub Chowki (on the border with Karachi but in Balochistan) — along with her son, despite her husband pleading with the kidnappers to take him instead; Hair Nisa, also from Hub Chowki; and Hani, a mother of two who was eight months pregnant with her third child, picked up in December and released a month later in January 2026.

Others included Nasreen, a minor from Hub Chowki, abducted in November; Farzana from Khuzdar, taken in October; and Fatima from Panjgur, whose husband had already been abducted three times and who herself was taken in January 2026 while caring for a small baby.

She paused, her voice trembling. “If you like, I can go on and tell you the tragic backstory of each of these women,” she said.

The BYC in its report Enforced Disappearances of Baloch Women in 2025 terms these abductions a tool of “collective punishment” against families – with raids, intimidation, and restrictions on movement generating fear and inflicting psychological harm.

Another phenomenon, said Shashani, is that after every militant attack, the dumping of dead Baloch increases. “The world is told militants were killed in the attacks, when we know, from the condition of the corpses, these people had not seen daylight for years.”

While the exact number of women recruited remains unknown, Rana had information and said many Baloch women had signed up, but limited space has meant that some were turned away.

Senior journalist Zahid Hussain described the trend as “public alienation” from the state, arguing that political negotiation — not force — is needed to restore public confidence.

But lasting peace cannot be achieved through dialogue alone, said Rana. It called for looking at the Balochistan conflict through a political economy lens — one that confronts uncomfortable questions about who benefits from the unrest, who controls resources such as land, minerals and jobs, and how state power is connected with economic interests — and answers them honestly.

He also urged the dismantling of the so-called death squads, explaining them to be a colonial-era legacy widely perceived to be linked to law enforcement. Describing the move as difficult, he emphasised it was “an important step in the right direction”.

Against this backdrop, Rana argued that the state must act before alienation deepens further. “It must engage with those who are protesting peacefully so they do not get recruited,” he said.

Yet scepticism persists. “They want the unrest to continue; they want people like us to eventually turn violent as well,” said Shashani.

But Senator Sanaullah said there was still time for change. “If the state shows leadership — by shedding conflict-driven language and honouring its promises — things can improve, even if the past cannot be undone.” For now, his 2023 proposal to set up a truth and reconciliation commission remains unheeded.

IPS UN Bureau Report