Operation Shaban

The nationalist insurgency in Balochistan is assuming a heightened character that fits in with classic guerrilla war strategy and tactics. The tipping point between scattered small attacks by the guerrillas and the current spate of widespread, even simultaneous attacks, appears to have been reached when the Jaffer Express was waylaid. In that incident, dozens of hostages were taken by the militants.

When they retreated in the face of heavy reinforcements, the recovered constituted dead bodies, according to the authorities. This was disputed by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), arguing the dead bodies purportedly belonging to the hostages were of people already in the custody of the authorities. There was an attempt, successful in three or four cases, of seizing the bodies from the hospital they were being kept in by the dead persons’ families. This seems to have hardened the government’s arguably already intolerant stance towards BYC, leading eventually to the arrest and sentencing to life imprisonment of the BYC leader Dr Mahrang Baloch.

Of the recent attacks in Balochistan, the one in which some 27 policemen were killed in the Mangi Dam area speaks of the ground situation more clearly than others. According to press reports, the policemen defended themselves but were eventually taken hostage when they ran out of ammunition, and in the absence of expected reinforcements. The latter arrived in force (including air power) when it was too late to save the beleaguered policemen. Some families of the slain policemen are holding a protest sit-in against the fate meted out to their loved ones.

This dilemma underscores the nature of guerrilla warfare and on the other side the classic counter-insurgency efforts. The guerrillas strike and retreat swiftly, circumventing thereby the arrival of reinforcements sent to help their targets. The government therefore presents the consistent picture of pursuing a reactive strategy, leaving the battlefield initiative in the hands of the highly mobile, and increasingly deadly in effect, insurgents.

A perusal of the recent statistics of casualties on either side will confirm the picture, particularly if one sustains a healthy dose of scepticism regarding the security forces’ claims of guerrillas killed in retaliation. It is difficult to judge the truth of the claim by the security forces’ ongoing Operation Shaban against the insurgents that they have killed 109 militants in one week. The question arises, if they were aware of the presence and identity of so many insurgents, why were they not pre-emptively eliminated? Why only after the insurgents had struck?

The indigestible fact is that the security forces are fighting a reactive strategy while the insurgents increasingly hold the battlefield initiative.

The history of insurgencies suggests that without a political side to their efforts, reliance by the security forces on force alone to quell insurgencies has seldom worked. Unfortunately, the weakest part of the counterinsurgency campaign in Balochistan is precisely its politics. The Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP’s) anointed Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti is arguably an illegitimate appointee, given that he was a caretaker federal minister during the last elections and therefore could not be appointed Chief Minister after the elections according to constitutional and legal constraints. It does not take much to understand who chose Sarfraz Bugti for this controversial appointment, and why the PPP resurrected its past inglorious role in Balochistan by hurrying to appoint him. The fact is that Sarfraz Bugti does not even enjoy the support of his own tribe (at best this support may be confined to the Massouri clan of the Bugtis), let alone the wider polity of Balochistan. The other worthy the PPP has picked in Balochistan is Shafiq Mengal, notorious for running a ‘death squad’ in the province. That clearly is why his house was recently attacked, leaving 17 of his supporters dead although Shafiq Mengal himself was unharmed.

The PPP’s political profile in Balochistan reminds the Baloch people of the role of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto during the 1970s, when he launched a major army offensive to crush the opposition in Balochistan. It seems the PPP has chosen to return to those roots once again. They should be cautioned that the 1970s policy did not do Zulfikar Ali Bhutto much good (arguably quite the contrary) and is unlikely to do today’s PPP leadership much good either.

Meanwhile, the moderate nationalist parties have been sidelined and marginalised, leaving no one to conduct a political dialogue with. Force alone does not work, will not work. In the process of reliance on force alone, and in the absence of a credible provincial government able to engage the moderate nationalists, Pakistan is rapidly losing the hearts and minds of the people of Balochistan.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026