Balochistan conflict

Intrastate conflict in Pakistan: Baluchistan

Baluchistan, located in South West Pakistan, is the largest province in the country, covering over 40 per cent of Pakistan’s land. Yet, it remains the poorest and least developed. The conflict in Baluchistan started soon after the events in 1971, when Zulfikar Bhutto became the president of the country. That year, the province government in Baluchistan was a Baluch nationalist government that promised to address the injustices in the region. This provoked a counteraction in the central government, which decided to dissolve the provincial government in 1974. The reaction to this resolution from the Baloch nationalists was the beginning of an armed conflict in search of autonomy and independence, which lasted until 1977. They organised themselves into militias to fight the government. Although all of the different militias had similar objectives and reason, they can be classified into two groups; those with ethnic or tribal connections to the leaders of the former government that ended up disbanded, and those who more clearly defined themselves as nationalists and were seeking independence.

This conflict can be described as having two different stages. The first stage would be from 1974 until 1977, when President Bhutto was overthrown by the military leader Zia ul-Haq. He visited the Baluchi separatist leader, who was held in prison, to discuss the armed conflict. They reached an agreement, in which the ceasefire was recognised, under the conditions of releasing the captured nationalist leaders and the provision of amnesty for the insurgents. The abandonment of army forces in the interior of the province was also agreed upon.

However, in 2004, there was a raise on violence, and consequently the restart of the conflict again, after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees decided to limit the operations they were carrying on in the region and other non-governmental organisations closed their offices in the area. This second phase of the conflict is said to differ from the first one in terms of how fundamental the natural resources are to the conflict. The change on the view of energy has had a great impact on the insurgents’ goals. Firstly, it brings the Baluchistan conflict into a higher position within the central government priorities. Secondly, it gives strength to the Baloch insurgents in their fight, reaffirming their incentives and their power to claim control of the province with the capacity to run the political and economic costs. (PDF)

The next graph will show, year by year, the different stages of the conflict, number of fatalities, and different events that changed the cycle of the conflict.

Cycle

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The cycle represents the different phases of the conflict. In regards to the number of fatalities, it is easily visible how casualties increased in the so-called second phase of the conflict, after 2004, with two peaks, one in 2007, with a total of 337 deaths, and another one in 2012, with 374 deaths.

After the beginning of the conflict in 2004, the action intensified two years later, in 2006, as the Pakistan government continued with the offensive. The attacks affected militants and civilians. One of the major operations of the government forces was when they killed one of the most influential tribal leaders, Nawab Akbar Bugti, in August that year. This attack aimed to end the armed activity of the insurgent group Baluch Ittehad, had instead a big popular discontent, leading to small-scale bombings targeting civilians.

At the beginning of 2008, violence increased with the appearance of a new group, the Baluchistan Republican Army. Both the BRA and the BLA refused to participate in the negotiations offered by the government, until the first of September when they declared a “unilateral and unconditional” ceasefire.

In 2012, however, the conflict experienced a great spike, reaching a ripe moment, when three different separatist Baluch groups, The Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), and the Baluchistan Republican Army (BRA), appeared to be active all at once, for the first time since the beginning of hostilities in 1975.  This increase on the activity and the number of insurgent groups can be explained by how they started to get more credit for their actions than in previous years.

In 2013 the conflict relatively calmed down, contrasting the previous year, and only the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) remained active. The following year a new actor emerged in the conflict: the Frontier Corps, provincial auxiliary forces of the paramilitary in Baluchistan (UCDP).

Bubble Map

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The role of the bubble map is to identify the main actors and the main issue of the conflict. In this conflict, the major actor is the government of Pakistan, which is also backed by the Frontier Corps. The main issue is with the insurgent groups that seek the independence of Baluchistan. These groups are all in one bubble since they all have very similar interests and final goals.

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