The British divided resource-rich Balochistan to secure access to Afghanistan, where the colonialists fought wars to maintain a buffer zone against Russia, frustrating the ethnolinguistic nationalism of the Baloch people scattered across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran
In January 2024, Pakistan conducted air strikes targeting Baloch separatists in Iran, two days after Tehran attacked the bases within Pakistani territory of another group accused of attacks on Iranians on their side of the divided Balochistan. The reportage of the exchange focused on the Middle East, the possible expansion of conflict against the backdrop of the relentless Israeli bombing of Gaza, and the irrelevant Shia-Sunni binary without probing into the complex history of the divided region.
Both Pakistan and Iran have faced Baloch insurgency for decades, first for a greater share of resources and now for independence. The insurgency is linked to the region’s complexities, which include a fragmented Baloch population and tribal rivalries. The complexities undermined Baloch nationalism over two centuries after Nasir Khan created an administrative system in Balochistan for the first time.
In the middle of the 18th century, Khan brought together Baloch tribes, overcoming rivalries to form a loose tribal alliance and an army of 25,000. Before the weak and volatile system could have been consolidated, the British exploited the situation by deploying their infamous divide, rule, and partition policy. Balochs, a unique ethno-linguistic group, are now spread across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.
The British divided greater Balochistan to control the region and secure access to Afghanistan, where the colonialists fought wars to maintain a buffer zone against an expansionist Russia. The division exacerbated tribal rivalries even as Balochistan was annexed to British India in 1884.
The fragmentation hurt the region’s development under the British and later when it became part of Pakistan. A section of Baloch leaders called for an independent Balochistan ahead of the British withdrawal in the mid-1940s. But Pakistan made the most of the lack of cohesion for the cause of Baloch nationalism to annex Balochistan. The tribal rivalries have since prevented a united movement for separation.
Baloch Ethno-nationalism
Pakistan’s poorest but resource-rich Balochistan province was a major source of coal for the British before natural gas was first discovered there in 1952. The struggle for a greater share of these resources partly fuelled the insurgency. A significant Pashtun presence in Balochistan has also diluted Baloch nationalism. The presence increased after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which triggered a fresh Pashtun influx into Balochistan and fuelled Baloch ethno-nationalism.
Pashtuns, who are one of the mainstays of the Pakistan army, are in the majority in the region’s northern parts, with Balochs accounting for 55.6% of Balochistan’s overall population as per the 2017 census. Pakistan’s last caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, is a Pashtun from Balochistan. There is a significant presence of Balochs in Pakistan’s Punjab and Sindh provinces. Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari, Pakistan’s President from 1993 to 1997, was a Baloch from Punjab. Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party and the country’s president, is a Baloch from Sindh.
Baloch-Pashtun Divide
Britain fanned the Baloch-Pashtun divide in Balochistan to advance its strategic goals in Afghanistan. The roads and railway lines they developed have benefited the Pashtun north of Balochistan, which has made more economic progress with better infrastructure and connectivity. The British also favored the Punjabi-led administration, excluding Balochs. The legacy would endure after Pakistan’s formation.
The formation of the centralizing One Unit system in 1955 in West Pakistan, including Balochistan, as a single administrative entity to counter a homogenous and more populous East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) sparked the first Baloch uprising. The unit decreased the Baloch representation in the federal parliament and stalled the formation of a provincial assembly.
Tribal chieftains mobilised against the unit that limited provincial autonomy and mounted a revolt until 1958. Balochistan’s provincial status was restored in 1970 with the unit’s dissolution. The elections two years later brought the ethnonational National Awami Party (NAP) to power. The Zulfikar Ali Bhutto-led federal government removed the NAP from power in 1973 and triggered the Baloch insurgency.
Military ruler Zia-ul-Haq held out an olive branch by releasing Baloch prisoners as part of concessions for a truce after the collapse of socialist Mohammed Daoud’s government in Afghanistan deprived the insurgents of state support. He allowed Baloch nationalists to contest elections, ushering in peace in Balochistan in the 1980s and 1990s.
The insurgency was refueled in 2004 with the construction of the Chinese-funded project to transform the fishing village of Gwadar into a regional transportation hub, the expansion of gas exploration, and the war in Afghanistan playing a part, apart from historical grievances.
Passageway For Markets
The Gwadar deep-water project announced in 2001 is of great strategic importance to Pakistan as a passageway for the markets of China and beyond. The federal government has overseen Gwadar’s development, fuelling anger in Pakistan’s largest but least populated province.
Insurgent violence escalated after the killing of the Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006, but Pakistan has managed to tackle it due to the fractured nature of Baloch separatist leadership with competing motivations. Bugti is one of the three largest tribal groups apart from the Marri and Mengal, whose leaders are known to be suspicious of each other.
The Bugti tribe was seen as the main force behind the insurgency, while other tribes sought better deals from the state. Baloch leaders Mir Zafar Ullah Khan Jamali (2002-2004) and Mir Hazar Khan Khoso (2013) served as Pakistan’s prime ministers.
In a 2013 paper, Frédéric Grare, a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote a close evaluation of so-called ‘Baloch nationalism’ that shows that although real separatist tendencies persisted in the province in the early 2000s, the political groups that actively promoted separatism were a minority. He added that most (not all) activists had reconciled themselves to the idea that Balochistan’s future was within the Pakistani federation:
They were struggling for more autonomy within the federal constitutional framework and for the government to respect the socioeconomic rights of the Baloch. It was the state’s repressive response that radicalized most elements of the ‘nationalist’ movement.
Frédéric Grare, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Baloch insurgency expanded into Iran in 2005. Iran and Pakistan have cooperated in quelling it but it has also triggered tensions between the two countries over what they see as interference in their internal affairs. Iran has cracked down across the Sistan-Balochistan province to preserve a national identity rooted in Iran’s ancient heritage.
Iran is a country of diverse ethnic, sectarian, and linguistic communities, with the Persian-speaking population representing a slim majority. Azeris account for at least a quarter of Iran’s population. Balochs are among other linguistic minorities. The perceived Persian domination has been attributed to the separatist sentiment among Iran’s ethnic Baloch minority, which has a separate cultural and historical identity.
Cross-border Kinship
The historic grievance of having been divided among Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan binds Balochs together. Balochs in Iran number between one and four million. Like in Pakistan, they inhabit one of Iran’s underdeveloped regions, where Tehran has triggered resentment over the use of repression to ensure order.
In a July 2009 CTC Sentinel piece, Chris Zambelis wrote that it is likely that ethnic Baloch in Iran look to their kin across the border in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province, which is home to the world’s largest Baloch population. He added that a decades-long insurgency against Islamabad is a source of inspiration and possibly material support for groups such as Jundallah, which has maintained it is an independence movement with no sectarian agenda.
Jundallah was in February 2007 renamed the People’s Resistance Movement of Iran in what was seen as an attempt to disassociate itself from a sectarian label that Iran gave to discredit it. Iran has accused the United States and its allies of supporting Jundallah and ethnosectarian movements.
Zambelis wrote Iran is convinced that anypotential American or Israeli invasion of its territory would begin by supporting active insurgencies on its soil. He added Iran has also accused Pakistan of supporting Jundallah, even though the two countries have a shared interest in quelling Baloch nationalist aspirations and have a history of cooperating to crush Baloch uprisings.
