The Pakistani Army intensifies crackdowns on Baloch nationalists, militarizing the region and committing documented human rights abuses.
On a bright afternoon on March 16, 2025, Liaqat Baloch, a sixth-grade student, was walking home from his school near SBK University in Nushki District, Balochistan. He never arrived. Pakistani security forces had abducted Liaqat, along with ten others—including two classmates—accusing them, without evidence or trial, of supporting insurgent activities.
Stories like Liaqat’s are now commonplace in Balochistan, a region at Pakistan’s southwestern edge marked by mountains, deserts, and a searing conflict. For years, the Pakistani Army has escalated its harsh crackdown against Baloch nationalists demanding autonomy or independence, effectively militarising the province and committing widespread human rights abuses documented extensively by international watchdogs.
According to the Human Rights Council of Balochistan, February 2025 alone witnessed 144 enforced disappearances and 46 extrajudicial killings. Victims range from students and shopkeepers to labourers and prominent activists, often whisked away by plainclothes officers operating alongside regular military forces. Enforced disappearance has emerged as the preferred tactic—people vanish into thin air, leaving families waiting, often forever, for their return or confirmation of their fate.
“The military wants to break us psychologically,” said Aslam [name changed], whose brother disappeared in Kalat in early March. “We’re tired, but we’re not broken yet.”
The scale of military operations in Balochistan is matched only by its opacity. Independent media access is restricted, and local reporters face severe intimidation. Yet the trickle of available reports paints a grim picture. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have repeatedly called attention to abuses such as torture, arbitrary detention, and targeted killings, alleging that Pakistani forces act with impunity. Calls for accountability from the United Nations Human Rights Office and other international institutions go routinely unanswered.
Farther north, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), a province bordering Afghanistan, faces similar patterns of military overreach. Long considered a hotbed of militancy, the region has also become a testing ground for army-led counterinsurgency operations. Yet behind the façade of fighting militants lies a darker truth—much of the repression targets peaceful activists.
Among the most visible victims are members of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a grassroots group advocating peacefully against enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and landmines in tribal areas. Despite its nonviolent approach, PTM members, including prominent figures like Ali Wazir, are repeatedly arrested and charged under Pakistan’s expansive sedition laws.
In January 2018, the extrajudicial killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud, an aspiring Pashtun model falsely accused of terrorism, galvanised Pashtun communities nationwide, leading to massive protests. But far from triggering reform, the incident intensified state repression. Today, arbitrary arrests and disappearances continue in KP, perpetuating cycles of fear, mistrust, and despair.
Southward, in Sindh, Pakistan’s military-led establishment exercises a subtler, yet no less sinister control. Here, enforced disappearances are fewer in number but equally chilling in effect. Political groups challenging the state’s dominant Punjabi-military nexus, such as the Jeay Sindh Freedom Movement (JSFM) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), have experienced brutal crackdowns over decades. Sindhi nationalist leaders and MQM activists face harassment, indefinite detention, or disappearances at the hands of security agencies.
One Sindhi activist, speaking anonymously from exile in Europe, described a widespread climate of surveillance and intimidation. “They follow us, they threaten our families,” he said, recounting how intelligence agents had visited his relatives’ home in Karachi, warning that further activism would have “consequences.”
But perhaps no area highlights the irony of Pakistan’s National Day celebration more starkly than Gilgit-Baltistan, a strategically crucial territory nestled amidst high Himalayan peaks. Despite being effectively annexed in 1947, Gilgit-Baltistan lacks constitutional recognition or political representation, leaving its population trapped in administrative limbo. Military forces dominate every aspect of life—from land allocation to political expression. Peaceful protesters demanding basic rights have faced harsh treatment, arrests, and threats.
“Our land has been exploited, our people silenced, and our identity erased,” lamented a Gilgit-based rights advocate who requested that his name bewithheld due to increasing threats from Pakistani authorities. The advocate described Gilgit-Baltistan as a place where “the military can do whatever it pleases.”
The oppression is not restricted to physical brutality. A parallel war is waged against the media and civil society across Pakistan. Laws passed ostensibly to fight disinformation are weaponised against journalists critical of the military. Reporters like Haider Mastoi and Chaudhry Ikhlaq have endured physical assaults and death threats. Social media users risk imprisonment for posts deemed critical of the army. International organisations have condemned Pakistan for escalating
Across Balochistan, the local population is not passively accepting their fate. Despite the ever-present threat of state violence, communities have mobilised with astonishing resilience. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), a women-led initiative, has organised sustained peaceful protests and sit-ins. On March 20, just days before the National Day festivities, thousands demonstrated outside the University of Balochistan in Quetta, chanting slogans against enforced disappearances and demanding the release of disappeared individuals like Bebarg Baloch and Dr. Hammal Zehri Baloch.
Such acts of courage reveal a profound disconnect between Pakistan’s ruling elites, who celebrate military prowess on March 23 with fanfare in Islamabad, and marginalised communities, whose everyday lives reflect fear, repression, and loss.
Experts contend that the military’s relentless crackdown against its own citizens is eroding Pakistan’s social cohesion and breeding deeper cycles of violence and alienation. “The army believes coercion will yield stability,” observed Dr. Ayesha Jalal, a prominent historian and scholar of South Asia. “But history repeatedly shows us this approach only fuels resistance and resentment.”
As Pakistan commemorates its National Day with tanks, fighter jets, and military displays, the country must confront a fundamental question: Whom is this military protecting?
For Liaqat Baloch’s family—and countless others across Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Gilgit-Baltistan—the answer is tragically clear. Pakistan’s military might is not a shield for the citizenry but a tool of oppression, waging an unending war against its own people.
This March 23, perhaps the true Pakistan National Day would be better commemorated by confronting that painful truth. Only by holding its powerful military accountable can Pakistan begin to move toward genuine national unity—one that embraces rather than silences its diverse and long-suffering peoples.
Ashish Singh is an award-winning senior journalist with over 18 years of experience in defence & strategic affairs.