Chaos Report: Fighting Ghosts
What I’m about to say on Balochistan may not be agreeable to many of my readers, but I will say it anyway: The chaos in Balochistan is entirely of our own making and there is no appetite to course correct.
For at least five decades, the political and military leadership in Pakistan has supposedly been trying to ‘normalize’ the situation in Balochistan, the largest province in the country. Yet, in these five decades, there has not been a single assessment, review, or accountability of these so-called ‘normalizing’ policies. If the intention was to improve the situation in Balochistan, common sense would have required us to undertake policy reviews, learn from our mistakes, and resolve the situation. In the absence of such actions, something much worse is at play.
By keeping Balochistan as a complete information black hole—shielded from media coverage, academic research, and especially any internal policy review that could allow us to course-correct—Balochistan remains internally colonized, with no apparent appetite to reverse this colonization project. It is “ungoverned” so that it can remain a backwater of lawlessness and resultant low-intensity warfare, allowing those in power to maintain their grip on authority indefinitely.
Balochistan is primarily a political problem that has been forced into a security and terrorism framework, paving the way for a hardened military approach to ‘control’ the situation on the ground. This approach has failed countless times over the past 50+ years, yet no course correction has been made to this date.
The only 'counter-terrorism' operation that could possibly work in Balochistan is a demilitarization approach and a well-intentioned ‘political dialogue’ aimed at addressing the genuine grievances on the ground. For this to happen, there needs to be a democratic civilian government in Islamabad capable of bypassing the militarized approach to Balochistan and undertaking the necessary course correction.
In the absence of such measures, we will continue to fight ghosts in Balochistan at a cost that we will eventually be unable to bear.