Publications
Analysis Series
Analysis/0052/July/2026/London-Dialogue. 26 July 2026
Introduction
Whether the current government has lost its grip on Baluchistan is no longer a rhetorical question. Amid coordinated attacks by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) those are active in the south and North of Baluchistan, dozens of security personnel were killed in the first week of the month, prompting Pakistan to launch yet another major military operation, Operation Shaban. This is not just a story of a deteriorating security situation in Pakistan’s geographically largest province. It is, more fundamentally, the story of an illegitimate government, one that has no support of the people it governs and that obtains its position instead through the backing of a military establishment that meets every crisis with ruthlessness and unchecked use of force. This analysis argues that for decades, Pakistan’s top-down, securitised template of its periphery has hit the ceiling and that nothing can be solved without the legitimacy of local leaders and the people that the current form of power lacks.
Balochistan: Escalation and the Limits of Force
On 7 July 2026, 18 police officers were killed in an attack on a police station in Mangi Dam, with 11 soldiers and 4 civilians being killed in separate attacks. It resulted in the launch of Operation Shaban with aerial support by the Pakistan Army, Frontier Corps and Balochistan Police against the networks of the TTP and BLA all over the province. The scale and coordination of TTP’s and BLA’s attacks are unprecedented. It is noteworthy that the TTP has opened an entirely new front in northern Balochistan (a Pashtun belt of Baluchistan which in the past has been relatively peaceful), layering itself onto the BLA’s established insurgency. In contrast, the BLA has developed new tactics of “simultaneous multi-city attacks” and “attacks on maritime and trade targets”, female suicide bombings, and establishing a new female fighters squad as qualitative advances over the use of hit-and-run tactics while also employing night vision, drones, and other new sophisticated weapons for its operations.
The fact that Operation Shaban is the 23rd major military operation since Al-Meezan in 2002, following Rah-e-Rast, Zarb-e-Azb and Radd-ul-Fasaad, which each claimed to be decisive, is evidence that a purely kinetic approach has not brought durable peace. The current resurgence of terrorism and militancy is not just a local issue but a national crisis: Pakistan has been ranked at the top among the countries facing the most impact in terms of terrorism in the world for the first time in the Global Terrorism Index 2026, and in 2025, it saw a six-fold increase in the number of terrorist incidents, while deaths rose to 1139. The TTP alone has conducted 595 attacks resulting in 637 deaths, 56 per cent of the deaths caused by terrorists in the country during the year, while the BLA hijacking of the Jaffar Express near Quetta that claimed the lives of 58 people and took 442 hostages was the biggest terrorist attack in the country last year. The kidnapping for ransom of civilians and those working on construction projects in the northern part of the province is an unprecedented phenomenon and is a method used by the TTP cells to fund operations since they re-established themselves in the region.
Root Causes: Resources, Repression, and Radicalization
There have been five waves of insurgencies in Baluchistan (1948, 1958-89, 1963-69, 1973-77, and the current wave started in the early 2000s). The current wave of insurgency in Baluchistan cannot be separated from the demographics and resources economy of the province. About sixty-five per cent of the province’s population is under age 30, and virtually no formal economic opportunities exist in Pakistan’s poorest province, despite the exploitation of its mineral resources (copper and gold at Reko Diq and Saindak) with little benefit to the local population. The current provincial mining law effectively gives binding authority to federal bodies and takes community consent “out of the equation” to leave the province “passively reviewing” its constitutional rights to own its own minerals. Political repression exacerbates the issue, with the Anti-Terrorism Court in June 2026 handing down life sentences to Dr Mahrang Baloch, the leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), and another member after a closed trial. The sentencing is even described as a “Pyrrhic victory” that may likely drive Baloch youth to militancy, as they see peaceful protest as costly and ineffective. By suppressing legal protests by the state, the grievances are not eliminated, but it merely radicalises the youth who then channel their grievances through joining the ranks of BLA and BLF.
The Afghan Fault Line
The security crisis has intensified on several fronts in Pakistan due to regional dynamics. The Afghan Taliban’s return to power in Kabul emboldened the TTP to escalate their attacks, while Pakistan’s use of cross-border strikes against alleged TTP safe havens in Afghanistan drove Pakistan-Afghanistan relations to a post-2021 all time low. Islamabad’s growing frustration with Kabul has coincided with a Pakistani thaw with India, a loss of options and the impression that the security establishment’s regional strategy is faltering simultaneously on several fronts. This exposure is exacerbated by the possibility of a US-Israel war on Iran in 2026. Pakistan, which shares a relatively long border with the Iranian province Sistan, has witnessed the conflict spill over the border in illegal fuel and trade, expanding the space for the BLA, ISKP, and the TTP to recruit, regroup and move across a frontier neither side can fully police. The current resurgence of terorrism and insurgency in Baluchistan and KPK thus serves to strengthen the impression that the writ of state is weakening over the province of Balochistan, which has been witnessing a separatist insurgency for decades.
Azad Jammu and Kashmir: A Parallel Unraveling
It is not only Baluchistan and KPK that is facing unrest. Protests have been rocking AJK since mid-2026, calling for the implementation of the October 2025 Muzaffarabad Agreement and the elimination of the twelve “refugee” assembly seats which serve as a tool of political control for Islamabad and are not a representation of the population. The grievances are structural: AJK generates close to three thousand megawatts of hydropower for the national grid, yet its own residents endure high tariffs and routine blackouts, while its local leadership tracks federal political shifts rather than local votes. Rather than implementing the agreements it had negotiated, the government responded with repression, suspending internet and telecom services, deploying additional paramilitary forces to Muzaffarabad, and, after the killing of JAAC executive member Shahzaib Habib, banning JAAC outright under anti-terrorism law and arresting several of its leaders. On 30 June 2026, JAAC’s own central leader, Shaukat Nawaz Mir, was arrested in Dhirkot in a joint police-administration operation as he attempted to reach an ongoing sit-in, a move the committee decried as an attempt to decapitate the movement, declaring that “one person can be arrested, but not the movement”. Far from suppressing the unrest, Mir’s detention hardened it, pushing the protests toward a more diffuse, leaderless structure that has proven harder for the state to either negotiate with or contain. The UN Human Rights Office has since confirmed dozens of deaths since June, “mostly protesters”, and on 17 July 2026 the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called for prompt and impartial investigations into all deaths, full restoration of internet access, and “meaningful and inclusive political dialogue” ahead of AJK’s Legislative Assembly elections scheduled for 27 July 2026 while noting that banning a civil-society coalition under anti-terrorism law raises serious concerns for freedom of expression, assembly, and association. Applying a counterterrorism framework to what has largely been a nonviolent civic coalition does not resolve the underlying governance failure; it merely guarantees that the grievance will re-emerge in new forms.
Conclusion
As another military operation is underway to end militancy and terrorism, it will eventually end up resulting in yet another failure, as all previous military operations failed to yield lasting peace in Pakistan. It all comes to one conclusion that a government that does not have the consent of the people it governs does not at all have a right to govern them. Brought to power illegitimately, those now running the state have no real stakes in the country and do not represent its people. A government such as this one is unable to bring peace as long as they make decisions behind closed doors without the consent of those that they affect. as Islamabad has been playing the role of mediator in a war that did not start between Washington and Tehran. It must do the same for its people, whose presence and popularity are declining, and much more urgently. There’s also no peace abroad without peace at home. What Balochistan, KPK and AJK require are stability and a state ready to treat its own citizens as seriously as they treat their enemies, rather than aiming at another military operation.
Dr. Asif Amin
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