Baloch insurgency intensifies; Pakistan’s crackdown fuels separatist resistance, human rights violations, and geopolitical instability in South Asia.
NEW DELHI: In Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province, home to nearly 12.5 million
Over decades, Islamabad’s endemic neglect and heavy-handed military operations have stoked the entrenched resentment into an insurgency that, together with the separatist movement in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa (KPK) Province, has the potential to deeply fracture Pakistan’s national cohesion.
LEGACY OF REPRESSION AND NEGLECT
Balochistan’s separatist struggle commenced in 1948 as a sub-nationalist resistance against forced integration, barely a year after Pakistan’s creation. Balochistan became a province only in 1970. Repeated brutal attempts by Pakistan’s Military to crush the waves of Balochistan’s insurgent movements, including the brutal crackdown (1973-77) after Pakistan’s defeat in the 1971 War, have failed. The separatist flames resurfaced in the early 2000s and have grown stronger in recent times, despite several surrenders in 2016-17. While Pakistan’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED) has recorded 2752 cases of Baloch people between 2011-January 2024, figures cited by Voice of Baloch Missing Persons cite a figure of over 7,000 since 2000. The current insurgency has been incited by the deep scars of grief, frustration and anger of the bereaved Baloch people.
The genesis of this struggle is Islamabad’s exploitation of Balochistan’s immense natural resources. The marginalisation of the Baloch people has been accentuated by CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) in recent times, exacerbating the stark inequalities in education, healthcare, and employment opportunities. Despite its natural resources, including oil, gas and minerals, Balochistan’s contribution to Pakistan’s GDP is a dismal 3%.
THE CPEC FACTOR
CPEC, Beijing’s much-vaunted, multi-billion-dollar, game-changing infrastructure project, has compounded the grievances and resentment of the Baloch people. Far from benefiting the indigenous Baloch people, predatory and exploitative projects have resulted in land dispossession, displacement and demographic shifts, justifying perceptions of economic colonialism by China, which threatens the Baloch cultural identity and economic autonomy.
Baloch insurgent groups have responded to CPEC with escalating attacks targeting Pakistani security personnel, Chinese nationals and “outsiders” (mostly Punjabis) siding with Security Forces (SF) and denying jobs to the Baloch people, especially after the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006. Of the 14 attacks on Chinese/CPEC assets between July 2007 to Dec 2023, 12 took place in Balochistan, resulting in the deaths of 10 Chinese persons.
STRATEGIC CONSOLIDATION OF THE BALOCH RESISTANCE
Baloch insurgent groups have reportedly carried out 938 attacks in 2024, leading to over 1000 deaths across 25 districts, reflecting a 53% increase in attacks and an 80% rise in fatalities over 2023. What distinguishes the current wave of Baloch insurgency from the past separatist movements is the unprecedented evolution in leadership and operational strategy. Originally led primarily by tribal elites, the present Baloch resistance organisations are increasingly being led by educated, middle-class professionals- doctors, lawyers and academics- infusing unforeseen strategic clarity, operational efficiency, narrative development and public outreach.
The recent (2 March 2025) high-level meeting between the BalochRajiAajoiSangar (BRAS), or the Baloch National Freedom Front, an umbrella coalition of BLA, BLF, Baloch Republican Guards (formed in 2018), and the Sindhudesh Revolutionary Army, which resulted in the formation of the Baloch National Army (BNA) under a unified military structure, is a significant strategic shift towards a unified resistance, capable of challenging the Pakistan’s military.
BRAS has explicitly stated its strategy to intensify guerrilla operations against Pakistani forces and Chinese interests, using innovative military tactics and technology. Their communiqué has described detailed plans for disrupting logistical and military movements, clearly indicating a decisive escalation in their resistance strategy.
The audacious BLA attack on the Sibi train on 11 March is a clear manifestation of newfound confidence in guerrilla tactics, leveraging hostage-taking and strategic sabotage to gain psychological and strategic leverage over Pakistani security forces, besides establishing the credibility of BRAS and gaining sympathetic media and global attention.
BRAS proposes to unleash guerrilla operations designed to achieve maximum psychological and strategic impact, employing technological enhancements in intelligence-gathering, surveillance, and precision strikes. Such tactics represent an ominous new phase, challenging Pakistan’s military superiority in ways previously unseen.
BROADENING THE OUTREACH AND APPEAL
Notably, the separatist movement is becoming increasingly inclusive and widespread, with women-led protests, advocacy and even violent militant actions- a profound transformation for conservative Baloch society, clearly signalling that the discontent has penetrated very deep into the Baloch consciousness and society. The Islamists have also thrived by joining hands with Baloch insurgents. Of the 4700 conflict-linked civilian casualties in Balochistan since 2004 to Dec 2023, 494 are attributed to Baloch insurgent groups, while 975 are attributed to ISIS, LeT, TTP and Ahrar-Ul-Hind, and the rest to the Pakistani SF.
BRAS has committed itself explicitly to enhancing the media outreach, international diplomacy, and ideological training of its cadres. It has pledged to expose Pakistan’s Human Rights (HR) abuses, including forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, by deepening connections with international advocacy groups and leveraging social media to counter the Pakistani government’s narratives.
China has been seeking measures to protect its citizens and, in November 2024, unveiled a plan for joint counter-terrorism exercises in Pakistan. There are reports of Private Military Companies (PMCs) or sponsored local militia groups being deployed by China to protect CPEC and Chinese nationals, with the Pakistan’s Government clarifying that private security can be “hired”, subject to compliance with Pakistan’s laws. Legitimate “concerns” for “threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty”, “external” influence and potential HR abuses are ripe for being stoked and exploited by BRAS.
AN IDEOLOGICAL AND DIPLOMATIC OUTREACH
The BRAS March 2025 communiqué underscores the intensification of the Baloch peoples’ ideological battle, framing the conflict explicitly as resistance against “occupation” by China and Pakistan. BRAS is committed to internationalising the struggle, seeking greater scrutiny of atrocities of the Pakistani State through a diplomatic offensive in the global fora, justifying the Baloch cause as not merely separatism but liberation.
COLLABORATION WITH TEHRIK-E-TALIBAN PAKISTAN (TTP)
TTP has found a common cause with Baloch insurgents and has absorbed Baloch groups from Quetta and Kalat since 2022. TTP is reportedly providing training and modern weapons to the Baloch groups. Some reports suggest that the Taliban Government (since 2021) has provided tacit support, including camps, training, weapons and intelligence to Baloch insurgents, ostensibly to gain leverage over Islamabad and to enhance its own regional influence.
SUPPORT BASE IN SISTAN-BALOCHISTAN (IRAN)
Sistan-Balochistan in Iran is home mostly to Balochi (Sunni) and fewer Sistani Persian (Shia) people. Jaish-Ul-Adl, an Iranian Baloch Sunni separatist group, reportedly has bases in Balochistan (Pakistan). Recently, in Jan 2024, Pakistan used air and drone strikes to target Baloch bases in Sistan-Balochistan (Iran), drawing retaliatory missile strikes by Iranian SF. However, the downturn in relations was resolved dramatically the very next month. Proposals for a Joint Border Response Force and Joint Counter-Terror Liaison Officers between Iranian and Pakistani forces, on the anvil since 2019, will test the diplomatic adroitness of BRAS for continued tactical and operational collaboration from Sistan-Balochistan.
PAK’S CONTINUED FLAWED AND REPRESSIVE RESPONSE
Pakistan’s response to the Baloch resistance continues to be led by its military, characterised by relentless and remorseless crackdowns, airstrikes and mass arrests. Besides traditional forces like the Frontier Corps, Rangers and Balochistan Police, the 34th Light Infantry Division, raised in Sep 2016, has been deployed to protect the CPEC and conduct counter-terror operations. It has nine infantry battalions and six Para-Military Wings. The Pakistani military has launched operation Azm-i-Istehkam in June 2024, the 12th such operation since 2007.
After an attack in Nov 2024 on a Kalat military camp that reportedly killed 29 soldiers, followed by a BLA suicide attack in Quetta that killed 31 soldiers, the Pakistani Prime Minister chaired the Federal Apex Committee of the National Action Plan on 19 Nov 2024, and announced a “comprehensive military operation” against Majeed Brigade, BRAS and other separatist groups in Balochistan. Such actions are inciting greater resentment, with an ever-widening support base challenging the writ of the Government.
The futility of Islamabad’s facile strategy of routinely blaming external actors, primarily India, for its internal woes and failings fools nobody. More importantly, it neglects the roots of the Baloch Nationalism, which include historical neglect, cultural suppression, economic deprivation, exploitation of local resources and brutal suppression. Military force is the wrong instrument to address grievances rooted in identity, autonomy and gross historical injustice.
IMPLICATIONS AND REGIONAL CONCERNS
The Baloch insurgency, now highly structured, strategically unified, ideologically coherent and with potential global outreach, presents unprecedented challenges to Pakistan’s national security. Islamabad’s reliance on military force has not only abysmally failed to quell the Baloch separatist sentiment but has fueled its intensity and broadened its appeal.
With the recent strategic consolidation of the Baloch resistance under BRAS, the risk of conflict escalation is clear and present. The newfound strategic unity of BRAS, collaboration with other groups and the sophistication and audacity of the recent attacks on SF clearly present an unprecedented challenge for Pakistan’s military, made worse by the concurrent TTP-led violent strikes in KPK and the politico-economic turmoil faced by Islamabad.
The protracted Baloch nationalist insurrections have reached a critical phase, and Pakistan stands at a critical crossroads. Faced with not just a provincial rebellion but potentially an existential threat, is Islamabad likely to address the festering Baloch grievances through genuine political dialogue, economic inclusion and regional autonomy, or continue with its draconian crackdown, stoking the Balochire and fire?
Besides unprecedented political capital, Pakistan and China have invested enormous financial and capital resources in CPEC, whose jugular runs through the beleaguered and over-exploited, and presently inflamed, Balochistan. To bring the prestigious CPEC to fruition at the earliest, given Islamabad’s historical obduracy, indifference to the socio-economic grievances of the Baloch people, and the Pakistan Military’s stranglehold over the polity, the regressive repression is unlikely to abate.
This repressive strategy of Pakistan to douse the enduring flame of Baloch nationalist resistance will lead to untold HR violations, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, displacements, and loss of civilian life, possibly worse than the dark phase witnessed by Balochistan between 1973-77. These ominous clouds threaten not only peace and human life in Pakistan. Still, they are also fraught with disastrous consequences for regional and international peace, stability and economy, given the dynamic interplay of overlapping interests of major powers and regional actors in South Asia.
A bill submitted supporting the “right of self-determination” of the Baloch people to the US House of Representatives in 2012 was indeed a resolute attempt to shine a spotlight on Baloch nationalism. The historical wrongs to the unique ethnolinguistic identity of the Baloch people and the present State-driven repression in Balochistan warrant a deeper and immediate scrutiny by the regional and international community, insisting on greater transparency and accountability of the actions and policies of Pakistani State and military.
* Lt Gen Sunil Srivastava is the former Director of Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, New Delhi