On July 5, 2026, Pakistan’s security forces launched Operation Shaban after militants attacked a police post guarding the Mangi Dam construction site in Ziarat. It is the latest in a long line of military campaigns in Balochistan, each one announced with confident tallies of militants killed, each one meant to prove that the state finally has the province under control. But those numbers say little about why the violence keeps returning. At its core, this is not simply a security problem; it is a governance problem, one that Pakistan’s National Action Plan promised to fix a decade ago and has barely touched in Balochistan since.
Sarfraz Bugti was in Ziarat Cross last week, calling on grieving protesters to clear the national highway. Two days earlier, 11 soldiers were killed in Lasbela in another highway ambush. When Pakistan’s new military leadership decided to broadcast its vow to “chase and hurt” those responsible for the attacks on national security, the people of Balochistan were already grappling with another set of numbers – the scale of the response. According to the country’s military command, which announced this latest toll on national television, over 100 militants have already been killed in the last two weeks.
The numbers say little about the circumstances in which the attacks occurred or the response to them. Why was this particular police station in Ziarat completely overrun despite the presence of heavily armed paramilitary police? Why did the provincial government respond to the attacks by suspending the service of one police official and setting up an inquiry committee? What does it mean that it took 15 days for Balochistan’s new chief minister to resume normal traffic flow on the national highways when the security situation showed all the signs of returning to the status quo ante?
This status quo, in which Pakistan’s security institutions routinely declare victory over Balochistan’s separatists while the region remains one of the least developed parts of Pakistan, is what the government should be most concerned about. The underlying causes of violence in Balochistan are not related to militants but to the inability of Pakistan’s central government to provide basic services to the local population. Militants have been emboldened by the absence of the state in Balochistan.
Two prominent insurgent groups, the Balochistan Liberation Front and the Pakistani Taliban, have targeted various security installations in the region. While the former tends to focus its attacks on infrastructure projects and economic resources, especially those linked to China, the latter has been carrying out large-scale attacks on security forces throughout tribal areas. The government of Pakistan blames the Afghan government for supporting the Taliban, while Islamabad is increasingly accused of supporting Baloch militants by Kabul. Meanwhile, militants have been recruiting extensively in the region, filling their ranks with disaffected locals who lack economic opportunities.
While militants do have foreign sponsors, the main reason for their success in Balochistan is the lack of a functioning state. Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province, which has long been underinvested by Islamabad. The local healthcare and judicial systems suffer from severe inadequacy, and many young Baloch have little opportunity to find formal employment outside smuggling, militant groups, or security services. Large-scale infrastructure projects appear sporadically in the region and are heavily guarded, providing few economic benefits to locals. In this context, many Baloch look to non-state actors for protection and jobs, which fuels their continued loyalty and support.
However, the root causes of the unrest extend beyond Balochistan. Pakistan’s National Counter Terrorism Authority, established in 2014, has proven to be an ineffective coordinating mechanism for the country’s multifaceted security services. It has little to no operational capacity, only managing to issue occasional reports on militants’ activities, which have little impact on the ground. The National Action Plan, which was launched in 2017, has helped Pakistan delist itself from the FATF grey list, but its comprehensive reforms targeting Pakistan’s financial system, judiciary, and provincial security forces have stalled due to a lack of political will and public support. The merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018 was also supposed to bring stability to the lawless tribal regions, but Pakistan’s security forces remain ill-equipped to handle large-scale operations, as the underinvestment in public infrastructure and security details across the merged areas testifies.
The situation is not hopeless, but the response has been overwhelmingly focused on the wrong area. While Pakistan’s security forces should certainly be targeting the militants’ leadership and resources, their inability to prevent attacks on security installations demonstrates that the problem is not exclusively one of militant organization. Public disaffection with the government, which fuels support for militants, cannot be resolved through large-scale kinetic operations. Although Pakistan’s military has a strong and well-deserved reputation for such operations, its actions in Balochistan have proven to be mostly cosmetic. Attacks across the region continue to occur at a high frequency, with dozens or even hundreds of soldiers and civilians killed every year in roadside ambushes and similar assaults.
Perhaps most tellingly, the security situation in Balochistan has been worsening precisely when Pakistan’s security forces have been growing increasingly confident in their capability to deal with it. The pattern of military operations followed by press conferences announcing hundreds of militants killed in action has failed to deter the attackers. Even the recent military campaign, which targeted several suspected militant camps, was followed by fresh attacks, including the recent ambush in Lasbela that left 11 soldiers dead. The new government in Islamabad needs to demonstrate that it prioritizes long-term security sector reform in Balochistan, including enhanced funding to the underperforming local police and actual military capabilities to hold off large-scale assaults. Unless Pakistan begins to meaningfully address the militant groups’ appeal to locals, its security sector reforms across the board will continue to be undermined by persistent instability in Balochistan.
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The views and opinions expressed in this article/paper are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Paradigm Shift.
Azhar ud din is an internee at the Center for Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism Studies, Ok Institute of Regional Studies, Islamabad, and a student of International Relations at Government College University Lahore.
