Pakistan: Brutality Fuels Insurgency In Balochistan – Analysis

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 22:58:48 +0000
World

By Tushar Ranjan Mohanty

On April 17, 2025, the dead body of ‘forcibly disappeared’ Baloch youth, Sher Khan Nazar, a resident of Pasni, was recovered in the Turbat District of Balochistan. The victim had been forcibly disappeared from the Jusak area of Turbat on April 15.

On April 16, 2025, the tortured body of a Baloch youth, Farooq Ahmed, who was the younger son of Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) leader Noor Ahmed Mengal, recovered from the Nall area of Khuzdar District. Farooq Ahmed had reportedly been forcibly disappeared on April 14. Noor Ahmed Mengal is the BNP-M’s vice president in Khuzdar District. BNP-Mengal stated that Farooq’s father, Noor Ahmed Mengal, had been actively participating in the protest sit-in near Lakpass in recent days, which was held in opposition to the arrest of Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) leaders.

On April 15, 2025, the tortured dead body of a forcibly disappeared’ person, Nizam, son of Mohammad, who had been abducted earlier in the month from Babbar Shor, was discovered in the Pasni area of Gwadar District.

On April 15, 2025, the dead body of a forcibly disappeared Baloch man, Abu Bakar, was recovered in the Buleda area of Kech District.

On April 7, 2025, three bullet-riddled dead bodies of forcibly disappeared persons were recovered from the Mehma Samand Khan area of Barkhan District. The deceased were identified as Haq Nawaz Buzdar, Shero Buzdar, and Gul Zaman Buzdar, all from the Buzdar tribe. Local sources said Haq Nawaz was picked up from his home in Musakhel District on April 5, while Shero had been missing for the past nine months.

On April 7, 2025, the dead body of forcibly disappeared Nadir Baloch was recovered from the Kandhari area of Mashkay in the Awaran District. Nadir Baloch, was allegedly ‘disappeared’ by SFs on April 6, and his bullet-riddled body was found dumped in a remote area a day later.

On April 6, 2025, two Baloch men, Mehrab s/o Rehamdil and Khan Mohammad s/o Haibtan, were tortured to death after their alleged “enforced disappearance” from their homes in the Gardank area of Buleda tehsil (revenue unit) in Kech District.

On April 5, 2025, three bullet-riddled bodies of forcibly disappeared persons were recovered in Mashkay area of Awaran District. The victims were identified as Zahoor s/o Huzoor, Shah Nawaz s/o Jalal, and Habib s/o Eido.

On April 17, 2025, while strongly denouncing the recent resurfacing of dead bodies of forcibly disappeared persons, the Baloch Women Forum (BWF) raised serious concerns about the resurgence of the infamous “Kill and Dump” policy in Balochistan, stating that it casts serious doubt on the State’s commitment to international human rights standards. According to a BWF spokesperson, this development only reinforces the Baloch people’s ongoing feelings of exclusion from the federation.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), based on open media sources, at least 13 bullet-riddled bodies have recovered in Balochistan during the first 18 days of April (data till April 20, 2025). According to a report by Paank, the human rights wing of the Baloch National Movement (BNM), 12 extra-judicial killings were reported across Balochistan in March. Similarly, Paank reported 18 extra-judicial killings in February, and eight in January. With 51 extra-judicial killings, the cumulative figure of extra-judicial killings till April 20 in the current year is already approaching the total number of extra-judicial killing in the entirety of the previous year, at 68 cases. 75 persons were extra-judicially killed in 2023, and 195 in 2022.

Extra-judicial killings are the final stage of the State’s systematic human rights abuses, which start with abduction or arbitrary arrest, followed by torture. According to the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), Balochistan has around 7,000 missing persons. However, the Pakistan Government’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIED) report claimed that there were only 454 active cases in Balochistan, as of October 2023, an assertion that created deep resentment among the Baloch people.

Disappeared persons’ bodies are often dumped by the roadside, with marks of severe physical torture and riddled with bullets. This pattern of systematic abuse has been adopted by Pakistan’s security agencies and State backed ‘death squads’, to suppress the Baloch insurgency. ‘Death squads’ are locally armed militia of criminals in Balochistan who are patronized by the Army, to carry out enforced disappearances and realize the state’s ‘kill-and-dump policy’. These groups often accompany SFs during raids on the homes of political activists, dissidents and ‘pro-independence’ leaders. In exchange for their services, the SFs have given the death squads a free hand to operate throughout Balochistan, to engage in a range of illegal activities, including drug dealing, smuggling of weapons, and to run terrorist training camps and private jails, under the patronage of the intelligence agencies.

Apart from Islamist and sectarian extremism-related fatalities in the province, the ‘death squads’ alnd SFs have been the main executors of unattributed extrajudicial killings in Balochistan. According to the SATP database, of the 5,073 conflict-linked civilian fatalities recorded in Balochistan since 2004 (data till April 20, 2025), at least 1,665 are attributable to one or other terrorist/insurgent outfit. Of these, 654 civilian killings (363 in the South and 291 in the North) have been claimed by Baloch separatist formations, while Islamist and sectarian extremist formations – primarily Islamic State, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (*LeJ*), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (*TTP*) and Ahrar-ul-Hind (Liberators of India) – claimed responsibility for another 1,011 civilian killings, 928 in the North (mostly in and around Quetta) and 83 in the South. The remaining 3,408 civilian fatalities – 1,920 in the South and 1,488 in the North – remain 'unattributed', and are largely believed to have been the handiwork of the SFs and their death squad proxies.

Shafiq-ur-Rehman Mengal formed the first death squad in Balochistan in 2008 – the Musallah Defah Tanzeem (MDT) – with the purported mission of ‘defending’ the public from pro-independence groups. Mengal had the support of the Pakistan Army, and his powerful connections helped him raise his militia. Mengal initiated a reign of terror in Balochistan, killing not only suspected nationalists but also political, non-political and tribal rivals. Mengal is also ‘credited’ with the mass graves discovered in 2014 in Tootak, a rural area 55 kilometres to the north of Khuzdar, where 169 bodies were recovered.

Several other local militia groups in Balochistan were raised as death squads, including the Zakaria M. Hasni-led death squad in Khuzdar; the Deen Muhammad Deenu-led group in Awaran; another led by Samir Sabzal, Rashid Pathan and Sardar Aziz in Kech; the Maqbool Shambezi group in Panjgur and the Siraj Raisani group in Mastung. Siraj Raisani was killed on July 13, 2018, when a suicide bomber targeted a Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) political rally, killing at least 128 people and injuring more than 200 at Dringarh village in Mastung District.

An investigative report by exiled Baloch journalist Taha Siddiqui published in the South Asia Press on 27 April, 2021, claimed that, since 2010, the practice of using ‘death squads’ had been intensified and institutionalized, especially in the south-western parts of Balochistan where a full-fledged insurgency has been going on since the killing of Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti on August 26, 2006.

Cases of disappearance are not new to Balochistan, commencing during the 1973-1977 insurgency, and it continuing thereafter. The first case of disappearance was of Asad Mengal, son of the former Chief Minister of Balochistan Atta Ullah Mengal, and his friend Ahmed Kurd in 1976. After Zulfikar Ali Bhutto dissolved the Provincial Assembly of Balochistan in 1973, which provoked the insurgency, people disappeared without trace and were detained without fair trial.

Protests by civil society groups and family members of the abductees against State-sponsored ‘enforced disappearances’ and extra-judicial killings are not new. In November 2023, a protest march was sparked by the death of Balaach Mola Bakhsh on November 20, 2023, in an allegedly fake encounter by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD). On December 6, 2023, hundreds of Baloch walked from Kech District in Balochistan to Islamabad, to protest the killing. On July 28, 2024, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) organised a Baloch Raaji Muchi (Baloch National Gathering) against the Baloch genocide. A permanent protest camp set up by VBMP in Quetta, has been a sign of resistance for last 15 years. However, on April 17, the Police dismantled the protest camp set up by the families of political prisoners who had been arrested during the March 2025 protests under the leadership of activist Dr. Mahrang Baloch. The BYC issued a strong condemnation of the Police dismantling the peaceful protest camp set up by families of political prisoners — including Dr. Mahrang Baloch, Shahji Sibghatullah, Bebarg Baloch, Gulzadi Baloch, and Beebow Baloch — all of who remain in custody under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) ordinance. A BYC statement called the Police action “a grave display of authoritarianism.”

Earlier, on March 21, 2025, a large protest was organised in front of the Balochistan University in Quetta against enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings under the BYC banner, led by Mahrang Baloch. SFs used force to disperse the crowd. The protest had been triggered by the enforced disappearances of Beebagr Baloch, one of BYC’s central leaders, and his brother Dr. Hammal Baloch, on March 20, 2025. Beebagr Baloch, a wheel-chair bound activist and a key BYC leader, has been an outspoken critic of human rights violations in Balochistan, mobilising youth and organising protests, despite his physical disability. Though media reporting was curtailed, the videos surfacing on the social media depicted the Police pushing and dragging protesters into police vans, firing blank shots and using tear gas and water cannons to disperse the demonstrators. The protests resulted in a violent confrontation between the protesters and the Police, resulting in casualties among protesters and injuries to some Policemen. BYC claimed that three of its members were killed and another 13 were injured. Balochistan Government authorities claimed that 10 Policemen sustained injuries during the clashes.

In response to this clash, Mahrang Baloch, BYC key leader, called for a province-wide shutter-down strike to protest against state brutalities and planned another sit-in protest on Sariab Road in Quetta with the bodies of the dead. Later, on March 22, 2025, a pre-dawn raid led to the arrest of Mahrang Baloch and another 16 activists, while also seizing the bodies of those killed. Despite Mahrang’s arrest, the Province saw a complete shutter-down strike on March 23, with shops closed, tyres burnt, roads and major highways closed for traffic, and the region brought to a standstill, disconnected from the rest of the world.

On March 22, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) issued statements condemning the Police crackdown against protesters and the arrest of BYC leaders. They demanded the immediate release of all the detainees and called on “all political parties, including those with legitimate support in Balochistan” to “take the lead and engage with all stakeholders in the province, including civil society and academia.”

However, the state remained adamant in its authoritarian approach to supressing legitimate Baloch voices. The sister of Mahrang Baloch, Nadia Baloch, during a press conference on March 26, 2015, alleged that the Pakistan Army was subjecting Dr. Mahrang Baloch to extreme torture in jail. Her family was not being allowed to meet her despite court orders and Mahrang's health had deteriorated due to unhealthy food.

The judiciary in Pakistan also remains subservient to the Army. On April 15, 2025, the Balochistan High Court refused to rule on Mahrang Baloch’s detention, a decision her lawyers said would delay her case and keep her behind bars. The Balochistan High Court refused to hear an appeal against her detention, instead referring her case to the Federal Ministry of Interior.

While, state security agencies have been busy orchestrating enforced disappearances under their ‘kill-and-dump policy’, the state itself has been committed to thoroughly supressing the Baloch right to protest. This systematic repression and the complete neglect of Baloch grievances can only fuel the Baloch insurgency further.

· Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management