Balochistan’s unrest is no longer just a local grievance or separatist issue; it has evolved into a wider security and geopolitical contest in which genuine development gaps are exploited by terrorist groups and hostile foreign interests. India has a strategic motive to pressure Pakistan and disrupt CPEC, Afghan territory provides space for cross-border facilitation, while India-Israel defence and intelligence cooperation adds a wider regional capability dimension. Pakistan’s challenge, therefore, is to defeat terrorism militarily while simultaneously closing governance gaps, exposing foreign networks and ensuring that the people of Balochistan directly benefit from the province’s resources and development.
Nuzhat Nazar
Balochistan is often discussed as if its troubles exist in isolation — as a distant conflict driven simply by poverty, nationalism or an old dispute with the state. That explanation is no longer enough.
The province today sits at the intersection of terrorism, regional rivalry and great-power competition. It borders Iran and Afghanistan, opens onto the Arabian Sea and hosts Gwadar, a central node in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It is rich in minerals and lies close to some of the world’s most sensitive energy and maritime routes.
This geography gives Balochistan enormous potential. It also makes instability there strategically valuable to Pakistan’s adversaries.
To understand the present violence, however, one has to begin with history.
Before 1947, the territory that now forms Balochistan was not administered as a single political unit. It included British-administered areas and the princely states of Kalat, Kharan, Makran and Las Bela. British Balochistan’s Shahi Jirga and representatives of the Quetta Municipality opted to join Pakistan in June 1947.
Kalat followed a separate process. After negotiations with Pakistan, the Khan of Kalat, Ahmad Yar Khan, signed the Instrument of Accession on March 27, 1948, formally bringing the state into Pakistan. His brother, Prince Abdul Karim, rejected the decision and later led an armed revolt.
That episode became the first separatist challenge in the region, but it was neither a continuous nor a province-wide rebellion against Pakistan. Armed movements subsequently emerged in distinct phases — in 1958-59, 1962-63, 1973-77 and, in their present form, from the early 2000s.
This distinction matters because the history of Balochistan is sometimes presented as 78 years of uninterrupted war between the Baloch people and Pakistan. It is not. Baloch political leaders and parties have repeatedly participated in provincial and federal governments, parliament and the constitutional system. The province’s political history includes disagreements with the centre, but separatist terrorist organisations cannot be treated as representatives of the entire Baloch population.
What has changed is the character of the violence.
Earlier insurgencies were largely built around tribal, political and provincial disputes. Today’s terrorist networks operate in a far more complex environment. They use suicide bombers, sophisticated propaganda, cross-border movement and organised facilitation networks. Their targets are no longer confined to state installations. Police officers, Levies personnel, labourers, passengers, teachers, development workers and Chinese nationals have all been attacked.
The Balochistan Liberation Army and other proscribed groups have increasingly used violence designed not merely to kill but to create a political image: a province permanently at war and a state unable to control it.
This is where the internal and external dimensions of the conflict begin to meet.
Balochistan does have genuine development challenges. Its huge territory, dispersed population, difficult terrain and water scarcity make the delivery of public services exceptionally difficult. Unemployment, weak local governance, limited educational and healthcare facilities and the slow delivery of development have created frustration in parts of the province.
These gaps must be addressed. But recognising them does not mean accepting terrorism as their natural consequence.
In fact, terrorist groups have repeatedly attacked the very infrastructure and economic activity that could reduce deprivation. Roads have been sabotaged. Workers have been killed. Chinese nationals have been targeted. Passenger buses have been stopped and civilians identified through their identity cards before being murdered.
There is a contradiction at the heart of this violence: organisations claiming to fight for Balochistan systematically attack the conditions required for Balochistan to develop.
That contradiction raises a larger question. Who benefits when Balochistan remains unstable?
Certainly not the ordinary Baloch family seeking water, education, employment and security.
The beneficiaries are those for whom a stable Balochistan creates a strategic problem.
For India, the logic is not difficult to examine. Pakistan has repeatedly and formally accused New Delhi of supporting terrorism and separatist networks in Balochistan. Islamabad has presented dossiers to international forums and linked Indian intelligence to financing and facilitation activities inside Pakistan. India denies these allegations.
The case of Kulbhushan Jadhav remains central to Pakistan’s argument. Jadhav, an Indian national and former naval officer, was arrested in Balochistan in 2016. Pakistan identified him as a Research and Analysis Wing operative involved in espionage and subversive activities. India acknowledged his nationality but disputed Pakistan’s account of his activities and the circumstances of his arrest.
Beyond one individual, however, lies a broader strategic calculation.
India does not need a separatist organisation to defeat Pakistan militarily. Instability itself can produce strategic dividends.
A violent Balochistan forces Pakistan to commit security and intelligence resources to a vast western province. Attacks on Chinese nationals raise the cost of CPEC. Violence around Gwadar damages the perception of Pakistan as a secure investment and maritime destination. Each major terrorist attack generates international headlines about instability, while the economic cost is borne by Pakistan.
This is classic proxy logic: impose costs on an adversary without crossing the threshold of conventional war.
CPEC makes this equation even more significant. The Pakistan-China partnership is not merely about roads and power projects. Gwadar gives Pakistan a potentially important position on the Arabian Sea and provides China with a strategic economic presence close to the Gulf and major shipping routes.
Any actor seeking to slow China’s regional expansion has an interest in making CPEC more expensive, more dangerous and politically controversial.
The deliberate targeting of Chinese nationals therefore cannot be examined as random violence. The pattern points towards a strategic objective: damage Pakistan-China cooperation by creating the impression that Pakistan cannot secure Chinese personnel or investments.
Afghanistan adds another layer.
Pakistan’s position is that terrorist organisations targeting the country have found sanctuary and facilitation on Afghan soil. Islamabad has repeatedly raised the issue with the Afghan Taliban authorities and argues that groups operating against Pakistan use Afghan territory for planning, movement and logistical support.
Kabul denies allowing its territory to be used against Pakistan.
But the critical question is not simply whether the Taliban government officially signs an order authorising an attack. Terrorist ecosystems rarely function so neatly.
A network may survive because central authority is weak in remote areas. Local commanders may maintain old relationships with armed groups. Smugglers and facilitators may provide routes for money, weapons and people. Certain actors may tolerate terrorist organisations because they see them as leverage against Pakistan.
In each case, the result for Pakistan is the same: hostile networks acquire operational space beyond its border.
Afghanistan’s geography also creates a potential bridge between regional intelligence interests and groups operating against Pakistan. India maintained a significant diplomatic and strategic presence in Afghanistan for years. The Taliban’s return to power altered that environment but did not erase decades of contacts, networks and intelligence interest overnight.
It would be simplistic to suggest that every terrorist operating from Afghan territory is directly controlled by India. The more serious question is whether anti-Pakistan groups, Afghan facilitators and foreign intelligence interests can operate in overlapping spaces and benefit from one another.
They do not necessarily need to sit in the same command room.
Their interests only need to converge.
The Israel dimension should be viewed through the same strategic lens.
There is no publicly established evidence that Israel directly controls or finances Baloch terrorist groups. To make such a claim without evidence would weaken rather than strengthen Pakistan’s case.
But Israel’s growing strategic and defence partnership with India cannot be ignored when examining the wider regional environment.
India and Israel cooperate extensively in drones, surveillance, sensors, missile systems, cyber capabilities and intelligence. These technologies significantly enhance India’s capacity to monitor and assess its regional adversaries.
Gwadar is also not an ordinary port on an ordinary coastline. It lies near the Gulf, close to Iran and within a maritime region through which a major share of global energy trade moves. China’s presence there is watched closely by several states.
For Israel, Iran is its principal regional security concern. For India, Pakistan remains a strategic rival and China a major competitor. For both, intelligence concerning Chinese activity, Iranian movements and Arabian Sea security has obvious value.
This does not prove an India-Israel operation in Balochistan. But it does create a wider strategic ecosystem worth examining.
The more plausible possibility is indirect convergence: Israeli technology and intelligence cooperation strengthens Indian capabilities; India has its own motive to pressure Pakistan and disrupt CPEC; Afghan territory can provide access and operational depth; and local terrorist organisations provide the violence on the ground.
In modern hybrid warfare, states do not always create a terrorist organisation from nothing. They identify existing fault lines, establish contacts, provide resources, amplify narratives and allow local actors to carry out the visible violence.
The gunman may be local. The grievance may also be local. But the financing, facilitation and strategic beneficiary may exist elsewhere.
This is why the financial architecture of terrorism in Balochistan deserves far greater attention.
A sustained terrorist campaign requires money. Weapons have to be purchased and transported. Safe houses need to be maintained. Operatives require vehicles, communications equipment, forged documents and medical support. Suicide attacks demand reconnaissance, explosives expertise and logistical preparation.
Who pays for this?
The answer cannot end with the phrase “foreign hand.”
Terrorist financing can move through hawala, narcotics, smuggling, extortion, illegal mining, kidnapping, criminal networks, front organisations and overseas contributions. Balochistan’s long borders and established informal economy make tracing such flows difficult.
Pakistan has made serious allegations of foreign sponsorship. Its international case would become even stronger through the systematic public exposure, where operational security permits, of financial trails, handlers, communications, weapons origins and facilitator networks.
Because the war in Balochistan is no longer fought only in the mountains.
It is also fought on screens.
Terrorist organisations now understand the value of social media. Professionally edited videos, carefully selected terminology and coordinated online amplification attempt to transform terrorists into political activists and suicide attacks into “resistance.”
The victims often disappear from this narrative.
The police officer killed at a checkpoint is forgotten. The labourer removed from a bus and murdered is reduced to a statistic. The Baloch Levies official killed protecting his own district rarely becomes part of the international conversation.
Pakistan’s response to this information war must be based on facts, speed and consistency. A strong state narrative does not need to deny Balochistan’s development challenges. It should acknowledge them and then make the distinction that terrorist propaganda deliberately tries to erase.
A citizen demanding water, employment or political representation is exercising a right.
A terrorist killing passengers because of their ethnicity is committing murder.
The two cannot be placed in the same category.
The latest security response, Operation Shaban, demonstrates the scale of the challenge. The operation was launched following a sharp escalation in terrorist violence in July 2026 and brought together the Pakistan Army, Frontier Corps, Balochistan Police and other law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Ground and air actions, intelligence-based operations and clearance missions have targeted terrorist hideouts and networks in difficult terrain. Pakistani security sources reported that scores of terrorists were eliminated as operations expanded across the province. The figures continued to change as the campaign remained active and should therefore be attributed to official security sources.
The sacrifices have also been significant. Soldiers, police and other law-enforcement personnel have been martyred while confronting armed groups and protecting civilians.
This is an important part of the Balochistan story that is frequently overlooked. The Pakistan Army and law-enforcement agencies are not fighting the Baloch people. They are fighting proscribed terrorist organisations that also kill Baloch citizens and Baloch security personnel.
Military and intelligence operations remain essential because heavily armed terrorist networks cannot be dismantled through political dialogue alone. No government can negotiate away suicide bombers, ethnic killings or attacks on civilian passengers.
But the long-term victory will depend on what follows the operation.
Terrorist commanders can be eliminated. Their networks must also be prevented from regenerating. That requires cutting financing, closing cross-border routes, prosecuting facilitators and strengthening provincial law enforcement.
At the same time, governance must move faster than terrorist propaganda.
The people living around major mineral and infrastructure projects must see direct benefits in employment, education, healthcare, water and technical training. Local institutions must be strengthened. Peaceful political voices must have constitutional space, while the line against terrorism remains absolute.
Pakistan is therefore fighting two battles in Balochistan.
One is against terrorists carrying weapons.
The other is against the conditions and external interests that allow terrorism to survive.
The objective of the terrorist campaign is probably not to capture Balochistan. These groups do not possess the conventional military capability to seize and hold Pakistan’s largest province.
Their more achievable objective is to prevent normality.
Make the highways unsafe. Frighten investors. Target Chinese nationals. Force every development project to operate behind layers of security. Create the international image of a province permanently on the edge of collapse.
Seen from this perspective, the pattern becomes clearer.
India has an alleged strategic interest in imposing costs on Pakistan and challenging CPEC. Afghanistan presents the problem of sanctuary and cross-border facilitation. India-Israel defence and intelligence cooperation adds a wider capability dimension in a region where China and Iran are also central strategic concerns. Local terrorist groups provide the visible violence.
Not every actor has to share the same objective. Not every attack needs a common commander.
In geopolitics, converging interests can be enough.
Pakistan’s answer, therefore, cannot be one-dimensional. Terrorists must be defeated. Their financing must be exposed. Cross-border sanctuaries must face sustained diplomatic and security pressure. Foreign interference must be documented with evidence that can withstand international scrutiny.
And Balochistan’s people must increasingly see that the province’s resources, ports and strategic importance translate into a better life for them.
Because the strongest answer to terrorism is not only a successful operation.
It is a Balochistan where the terrorist has no sanctuary, the foreign handler has no network and the propagandist has no grievance left to exploit.
That is the real battle for Balochistan.
Nuzhat Nazar is a journalist and strategic affairs analyst with more than ten years of experience reporting on foreign policy, defence, and economic developments. Based in Islamabad, she focuses on geopolitics, regional security dynamics, and Pakistan’s positioning in a shifting global order.
