On January 31, coordinated attacks across nearly a dozen cities in Balochistan killed more than 30 civilians and 18 law enforcement personnel. The Baloch Liberation Army demonstrated sophisticated planning across Pakistan’s largest province. Security forces responded by killing over 150 fighters.
A day later, Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti offered his solution: “The answer lies with the military rather than political dialogue.” Balochistan has been in rebellion, on and off, since 1948, a year after Pakistan’s founding. This is the fifth major insurgency in seventy-seven years, each was met with military force. Each was “suppressed” and each gave way to the next, larger uprising.
The pattern is clear. The lesson, apparently, is not.
The Conflict Pakistan Doesn’t Want to Discuss
Stretching across Pakistan’s southwestern border, Balochistan makes up 44 percent of the country’s landmass but holds just 6 percent of its population. It’s Pakistan’s poorest province and its richest, simultaneously deprived and full of natural gas, copper, gold, and strategic ports.
That contradiction sits at the heart of the conflict. For decades, critics have accused Islamabad of extracting Balochistan’s resources while leaving local communities impoverished. Natural gas flows from Balochistan to the rest of Pakistan, but many Baloch villages lack electricity. The Gwadar port, centerpiece of the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, promises to transform regional trade, yet local fishermen complain of displacement and marginalization.
The relationship between Balochistan and the Pakistani state has been fraught since independence. In 1947, when British India was partitioned, Balochistan was a princely state with its own ruler, the Khan of Kalat. He declared independence on August 15, 1947—the same day as India and Pakistan. Pakistan didn’t recognize this claim and formally annexed Balochistan in 1948.
That original dispute over legitimacy has never been fully resolved. Instead, it’s been buried under decades of military operations, political manipulation, and what many Baloch describe as colonial-style extraction of resources.
Five Rebellions, One Response
The current insurgency is the fifth since 1948. Previous uprisings occurred in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Each cycle follows the same pattern: grievances accumulate, protests emerge, the state responds with force, violence escalates, military operations “restore order,” and underlying issues remain unaddressed.
The current phase intensified after two mid-2000s incidents. In 2005, physician Shazia Khalid was allegedly raped by an army captain. Protests met lethal force. Then in August 2006, the military killed Nawab Akbar Bugti, a former chief minister and popular tribal chief. Bugti’s death transformed him into a resistance symbol and triggered a surge in rebellion.
That was eighteen years ago. The rebellion hasn’t been suppressed, it’s metastasized.
Today’s insurgency is younger, more middle-class, and increasingly led by women. Armed groups now explicitly frame their struggle as “national liberation” against colonial-style exploitation and have become more sophisticated, targeting Chinese nationals and CPEC projects with precision strikes.
The China Factor and Strategic Value
The rebellion’s resurgence coincides with Balochistan becoming a “strategic focal point.” The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor brought massive infrastructure investment, Gwadar port, highways, energy projects. For Islamabad and Beijing, opportunity. For many Baloch, extraction on an unprecedented scale.
Armed groups have repeatedly targeted Chinese interests: the consulate in Karachi, a Gwadar hotel, cultural centers, and CPEC workers. In August 2024, the BLA killed 50 people targeting Chinese engineers. China operates a copper mine in Saindak and is developing Reko Diq, one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper and gold deposits. These promise billions in revenue, but Baloch activists ask who will benefit.
Pakistan’s response: dramatically increased security rather than addressing benefit-sharing or local participation. The province is now heavily militarized, yet major attacks continue.
Why Military Solutions Keep Failing
Abdul Basit at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School points to geography: Balochistan’s rugged landscape covers an area larger than Germany, with sparse population and mountainous sanctuaries for armed groups.
“Can you deploy security in a province this large, with such terrain, to ensure complete eradication of violence?” Basit asks. “Especially when the state refuses to look at local faultlines?” That’s the point: terrain makes suppression difficult, but refusal to address causes makes it impossible.
Saher Baloch, a Berlin-based scholar, explains: “Fighters know terrain better than security forces. They need only strike occasionally to expose vulnerabilities. Where the state rules through fear rather than trust, intelligence dries up. People don’t cooperate, and that’s why even high security zones get breached.”
Enforced disappearances exemplify the problem. Activists accuse forces of abducting thousands. Many turn up dead with torture signs. The government denies responsibility. But the effect—whether or not the state is responsible—is to radicalize communities. Every disappeared person creates grieving families and wider circles who conclude the state is their enemy.
What Political Solution Would Look Like
Rafiullah Kakar, a Cambridge doctoral candidate specializing in Balochistan, argues Pakistan must “fundamentally shift” away from “coercive and militarized” tactics that have failed.
“The starting point must be meaningful confidence-building measures for political reconciliation and dialogue,” Kakar says. Concrete steps: address enforced disappearances, ensure legitimate representation, establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and create mechanisms to address “longstanding political, economic, and governance-related grievances.”
This isn’t radical—it’s the playbook used in other protracted conflicts: acknowledge past abuses, create accountability mechanisms, ensure affected populations have voice, and establish benefit-sharing for resource extraction. But it requires treating Balochistan as a political problem requiring political solutions rather than a security threat requiring military suppression.
What Other Nations Learned: When Military Force Failed and Succeeded
Balochistan isn’t unique. Multiple countries have faced similar protracted internal conflicts over resources, autonomy, and historical grievances. The outcomes varied dramatically based on approach.
Northern Ireland endured decades of violence between unionists and nationalists. The British military presence, while maintaining order, couldn’t resolve underlying political disputes. The breakthrough came with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement—a political settlement that addressed power-sharing, recognized identity claims, created cross-border institutions, and established mechanisms for dealing with past violence. It wasn’t perfect, but violence dropped dramatically because political channels finally existed.
Aceh, Indonesia fought for independence for nearly three decades. The Indonesian military conducted extensive operations, but the conflict persisted. The resolution came after the 2004 tsunami created space for negotiations. The 2005 Helsinki Accord granted Aceh special autonomy, local elections, and a 70% share of natural resource revenues. Former separatist fighters were integrated into the political system. The result: Aceh remains part of Indonesia, but with genuine self-governance.
Sri Lanka offers a cautionary tale. The government pursued military victory against Tamil separatists, achieving it in 2009 after decades of war. But the lack of political settlement addressing Tamil grievances has left deep resentment. No truth commission was established. Disappearances remain unaddressed. Militarization persists in Tamil areas. The war is over, but genuine reconciliation hasn’t occurred, and periodic tensions suggest unresolved issues could resurge.
Colombia’s decades-long conflict with FARC guerrillas finally ended through negotiation, not military victory, despite government forces gaining significant advantage. The 2016 peace accord addressed land reform, political participation for former fighters, transitional justice, and drug policy. Implementation has been uneven, but the framework exists because both sides accepted that military victory wouldn’t resolve underlying issues.
The pattern across these cases is clear: military operations can suppress violence temporarily, but sustainable stability requires political settlements addressing root grievances. Where resource-rich regions feel exploited by central governments, benefit-sharing mechanisms matter. Where communities face state violence, accountability and truth-telling matter. Where populations feel excluded from governance, genuine representation matters.
Balochistan’s situation mirrors aspects of all these conflicts: resource extraction disputes (like Aceh), historical autonomy claims (like Northern Ireland), militarized response to separatism (like Sri Lanka), and decades of unresolved grievances (like Colombia). The question is whether Pakistan will adopt approaches that worked elsewhere or continue down paths that haven’t.
Our Take: When the Pattern Becomes Policy
Seventy-seven years is a long time to repeat the same approach. Five separate rebellions, each met with military force, each “suppressed,” each giving way to the next uprising, this isn’t just historical coincidence. It’s a pattern that reveals something fundamental about how the conflict is understood.
The January 31 attacks demonstrated capabilities that merit serious attention: coordination across a dozen cities, targeting of both civilian and security installations, mobilization of significant numbers despite massive security presence. The response, killing 150 fighters, may have tactical value, but it doesn’t address the strategic question: why does operational capacity to execute such attacks persist after decades of military operations?
The chief minister’s statement that “the solution lies with the military” reflects a particular framing of the problem. If Balochistan is primarily a security threat, then security responses make sense. But if it’s fundamentally a political conflict about resource distribution, governance, representation, and historical grievances, then security responses, however well-executed, can only manage symptoms, not resolve causes.
The economic dimension adds complexity here. Pakistan’s development strategy for Balochistan centers on resource extraction and infrastructure projects like CPEC. These require stability to succeed. Yet the approach to achieving that stability—heavy military presence, operations against armed groups—appears to generate the very instability it aims to prevent.
Consider the dynamic: major projects promise economic benefits, but local communities feel excluded from decision-making and benefit-sharing. This fuels grievances. Armed groups exploit those grievances and target projects, security operations intensify. More people disappear or are killed, grievances deepen, and the cycle continues.
From a purely pragmatic perspective, this creates risks for Pakistan’s strategic interests. Every attack on Chinese nationals damages Pakistan’s most important bilateral relationship. Every disruption to CPEC threatens investment. Every disappeared person potentially creates new recruits for armed movements. The costs—diplomatic, economic, security, keep accumulating.
The proposals from conflict resolution experts aren’t particularly novel. Truth and reconciliation processes, accountability for past abuses, genuine political representation, benefit-sharing frameworks, these are tools used in other protracted internal conflicts. They’re politically difficult to implement, certainly. They require admitting past failures, accepting constraints on state behavior, and genuinely sharing power.
But the alternative—continuing the current pattern—has its own costs. And after seventy-seven years, the evidence suggests those costs are mounting rather than decreasing.
What’s notable about the current phase is how it differs from previous rebellions. The movement is younger, more middle-class, increasingly led by women. Armed groups have evolved tactically and can coordinate complex operations. The framing has shifted from autonomy demands to explicit calls for independence. These changes suggest the conflict is entering a phase where suppression alone becomes even less viable as a long-term strategy.
None of this means security operations have no role. In active conflict, security responses are sometimes necessary. But the question is whether security is the primary tool with politics as supplement, or whether politics is primary with security as support. The current approach suggests the former. Most conflict resolution literature and the practical experience of other protracted conflicts suggests the latter works better for achieving sustainable stability.
The path forward exists. It’s visible in how other countries have addressed similar conflicts. It’s understood by communities in Balochistan who articulate specific grievances and potential solutions. The question isn’t whether alternatives to military-first approaches exist. It’s whether political will exists to pursue them.
After the January 31 attacks, the BLA framed their actions as resistance to colonial exploitation and pursuit of national liberation. Whether that framing is accurate or justified is beside the point. What matters is that significant portions of Balochistan’s population find it compelling enough to either support armed movements or at minimum withhold support from the state.
That’s the fundamental challenge. Legitimacy can’t be imposed through force alone. It has to be earned through governance that people find responsive to their needs and respectful of their voice. Seventy-seven years suggests the current approach isn’t earning that legitimacy.
The question Pakistan faces isn’t whether to abandon security operations entirely—that’s neither realistic nor advisable in active conflict. The question is whether to continue treating Balochistan primarily as a security problem that occasionally requires political management, or to reframe it as primarily a political problem that occasionally requires security management.
The difference seems subtle and the implications are profound. And based on responses to the latest attacks, Pakistan appears to be choosing the path it’s chosen for seventy-seven years. Whether the sixth rebellion will bring different thinking remains to be seen.
