BALOCHISTAN is often portrayed as a province held hostage by terrorism. That is only part of the story. It has also been held captive by decades of poor governance, political neglect and an elite that has too often failed the very people it claims to represent. The result is a province trapped in a cycle of violence from which it has yet to escape. The latest chapter claimed forty-two Pakistani lives in just four days. In Ziarat, militants stormed a police post guarding the Mangi Dam pumping station, killing nine policemen and abducting eighteen others before later executing them. Hours later, another eleven soldiers were killed in an ambush near Bela. In Balochistan, such tragedies have become disturbingly routine.
The insurgency has evolved. It is no longer characterized by sporadic attacks but by increasingly coordinated and ambitious operations. According to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, Balochistan witnessed at least 254 terrorist attacks in 2025, a 26 percent increase over the previous year, resulting in more than 400 deaths. In January 2026, the BLA launched coordinated attacks across multiple districts, briefly seizing government installations, attacking banks and engaging security forces in prolonged firefights. Earlier, the Jaffar Express hijacking and the suicide bombing of a school bus in Khuzdar that killed eight children demonstrated that militant groups are no longer confined to remote mountains. They are capable of striking strategic infrastructure, public transport and civilian targets alike.
Balochistan is not simply another province facing a security challenge. It accounts for nearly 44 percent of Pakistan’s landmass, contains immense mineral resources, hosts Gwadar Port and the flagship projects of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor and borders both Afghanistan and Iran. Failure in Balochistan would undermine regional connectivity, discourage foreign investment and weaken confidence in the state’s ability to secure its own territory. Pakistan has repeatedly presented what it says is substantial evidence, including before the UN Security Council, that India supports the BLA, while the Afghan Taliban provides sanctuary and operational space to both the TTP and the BLA. The recurring pattern of cross-border infiltration, sophisticated weapon recoveries and coordinated attacks suggests an insurgency sustained by external backing rather than indigenous capability alone.
Yet external support alone cannot explain the insurgency’s resilience. A May 2025 analysis by the West Point Combating Terrorism Center concluded that growing political alienation among the Baloch has made the conflict increasingly difficult to contain. Despite possessing some of Pakistan’s largest reserves of natural gas, copper, gold and other minerals, Balochistan remains the country’s poorest and least developed province. It consistently records the lowest literacy rates, the weakest healthcare indicators, the highest multidimensional poverty and the lowest access to clean drinking water and basic public services. Although the province receives substantial fiscal transfers under successive NFC Awards, the benefits have too rarely reached ordinary citizens.
While criticism often focuses on Islamabad, successive provincial governments, tribal elites and politically influential families cannot escape responsibility. For decades, power has remained concentrated among a narrow political class that has repeatedly occupied positions of authority while delivering little improvement in education, healthcare, infrastructure, employment or local governance. This pattern of elite capture has left many communities feeling excluded from both the province’s natural wealth and the political process. Such failures have deepened mistrust between the state and its citizens, creating grievances that militant organisations continue to exploit for recruitment and support.
Pakistan’s security forces continue to fight with remarkable courage under exceptionally difficult conditions. The policemen murdered in Ziarat and the soldiers killed near Bela were not defending abstract policies. They were defending the writ of the state, often at the cost of their own lives. Their professionalism deserves the nation’s highest respect. Yet their sacrifice also raises an uncomfortable question. Can military operations alone resolve a conflict rooted not only in violence but also in political exclusion, economic deprivation and competing external interests? History offers a clear lesson. Successful counterinsurgency campaigns combine effective security operations with political inclusion, economic opportunity and responsive governance. Military pressure can weaken militant organizations, but lasting peace requires reducing the grievances that allow them to recruit and survive. Security without political reconciliation produces only temporary gains, while political outreach without security creates space for militant coercion. Pakistan cannot succeed without both. Nor is the challenge confined to Balochistan. Large parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, particularly the southern districts and the former tribal areas, have endured the same cycle of terrorism, displacement and insecurity for years. Policemen, soldiers, teachers, labourers and ordinary citizens continue to pay the highest price. They deserve more than periodic military successes followed by the return of violence.
Pakistan’s security forces will confront this terrorism with the courage they have always demonstrated and that courage is not in question. What is in question is whether the political class will finally match it. No military can solve through operations what decades of neglect, enforced disappearances and democratic manipulation have constructed. Forty-two deaths in four days demand a security response. They also demand an honest reckoning with why Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province, remains after seventy-nine years its most alienated. Until that reckoning produces genuine accountability, equitable development and political inclusion rather than patronage, the mountains will keep producing what injustice has always produced everywhere it has been allowed to persist.
The writer is Ph.D in Political Science and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad. [email protected] and tweet@zafarkhansafdar.
