The insurgency in Balochistan

Balochistan is Pakistan's largest province, nearly half its territory, and its poorest and emptiest, with a twentieth of its people. It has natural gas that has heated Pakistan's cities since the 1950s, a deep-water port built by China, and one of the world's large undeveloped copper and gold deposits. Baloch nationalists say the province was forced into Pakistan in 1948 and has been treated as a colony since. The present revolt, the fifth, began in the early 2000s and has grown more lethal each year: in 2026 armed groups have mounted coordinated attacks across the province and killed soldiers by the dozen.

The wider conflict and each side's full account: India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Where it stands · September 2026

On 4 September 2026 the Baloch Liberation Army claimed attacks in Balochistan that killed twenty-five military personnel. On 25 September 2026 the Inter-Services Public Relations stated that security forces had killed thirty-three fighters in Balochistan since 21 September, describing them as India-sponsored terrorists. Both statements concern the same month and the same province. The two sides give different accounts of who was killed and under what description.

What the dispute is about

Whose resources. The gas, the port and the minerals are developed by the federal government, the army and foreign partners, above all China. Baloch parties of every kind say the province sees neither the revenue nor the jobs.

The missing. Thousands of Baloch men have been taken away by security forces over twenty years and never charged; some have been found dead. The state admits to hundreds of cases and says many of the missing joined the fighters. The families' marches are the largest political movement in the province.

Independence or rights. The armed groups fight for a separate state. The protest movement asks for the constitution to be applied. The state increasingly treats the two as one.

How each side explains it

The state's account

A few thousand terrorists, financed and directed by India's intelligence service through Afghanistan and Iran, are trying to wreck the projects that would lift the province out of poverty, because those projects, above all the corridor to China, would strengthen Pakistan. They murder labourers for being Punjabi, blow up trains and schools, and hide behind "rights activists" who never condemn them. An Indian naval officer was caught running the network. The tribal chiefs who complain of neglect took the royalties for decades. The army is there because the people need protecting.

In our coverage

Pakistan's account: India coerces, weaponises water, occupies Kashmir →13 headlines
Covered by:Reuters · Al Jazeera · BBC World · Deutsche Welle · France 24

The account of the armed groups

Balochistan was an independent state that Pakistan's army annexed at gunpoint in 1948. Since then its gas has been piped to Punjab while its villages burn wood, its coast has been handed to China, and its sons disappear into military cells. Four uprisings were crushed and their leaders killed after being promised safe conduct. Peaceful politics was tried and its leaders are in prison. Armed struggle is what is left. Foreign companies working under the army's guard are partners in the occupation.

What each account leaves out

The state's leaves out that its own commission has registered thousands of complaints of enforced disappearance and the United Nations has raised them for years; that the province with the gas remains the poorest in the country by its own statistics; and that it has never shown the evidence of Indian direction that it cites.

The armed groups' leaves out that they have taken passengers off buses and shot them for being Punjabi, killed teachers, barbers and labourers, and hijacked a train full of civilians; and that they offer no account of how a state of their own, between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, would be run or by whom.

The rights movement's leaves out that its leaders have declined to condemn by name the armed groups' killing of civilians, which is the state's main argument against them.

Delhi's leaves out that its prime minister raised Balochistan from the ramparts of the Red Fort in 2016, and that a former Indian naval officer has been in Pakistani custody since then, arrested in the province according to Pakistan and abducted from Iran according to India.

The ledger

The Pakistani state

Wanted: the province quiet and its resources and port developed.
Did: sent the army, built with China, jailed the protest leaders.
Gained: the projects proceed under guard.
Paid: its heaviest losses there in twenty years, and Chinese partners who now doubt it can protect them.

The armed groups

Wanted: independence.
Gained: the ability to strike anywhere in the province.
Paid: hundreds of fighters, and the killing of civilians that costs them support outside it.

The province's people

About fifteen million, not all of them Baloch, divided among those who fight, those who march, those who serve the state, and a majority who want the disappearances to stop and the gas to reach their stoves.

Words in dispute

Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.

terrorists, Fitna al-Hindustan / freedom fighters, sarmachar
missing persons / absconders
accession / annexation
development / plunder
corridor
occupation

Events per week

Per-week distribution of events. Click a bar to see that week's top events.

Click a week bar to select. Light blue = active week.

Week of Sep 28, 2026(1)

Pakistan: Gunman killed in security operation in Balochistan

1 sourcesSep 30, 2026