The human cost of conflict is often measured in numbers: thousands disappeared, hundreds killed, countless families shattered. But behind every statistic lies a personal story of loss that transcends borders.
As I reflect on the current crisis unfolding in Balochistan, where Baloch civilians are being found dead on roadsides after alleged military custody, I am reminded of the Kashmir of the 1990s. The patterns are hauntingly familiar, yet the scale and context reveal that Balochistan today represents a catastrophe of far greater magnitude.
The Echoes of Memory
In the Kashmir of the early 1990s, the Indian army viewed every able-bodied young Kashmiri as a potential threat. Thousands were picked up from their homes, from markets, and from mosque courtyards.
I remember one neighbour — a government lecturer — who was caught after his evening prayers. The distance between his home and the mosque was around 200 feet. He simply vanished after he was picked up. His wife, whom we lovingly called Amma Ji, spent decades visiting army camps, police stations, and government offices. She never found him.
A few years back while I was still allowed to visit Kashmir, on one occasion, during the Maghrib prayers, I found her loudly beckoning Allah for some sign. Upon hearing the pleadings, I felt devastated and left without saying goodbye.
Today, that same anguish plays out across Balochistan, but with a cruelty that defies the scale of my Kashmiri experience. The recent discovery of Ayaz Baloch and Zareef Ahmed in Awaran district — both missing for months after detention by security forces, their bodies dumped in remote areas—mirrors Kashmir's darkest days.
Ayaz was a schoolteacher, taken on October 16. His only crime was being Baloch, and an educated one.
The Numbers Tell the Story
Pakistan's own Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances has registered 10,078 cases since 2011, with 2,752 in Balochistan—figures rights groups say dramatically undercount reality. Independent monitors documented 830 enforced disappearances and 480 extrajudicial killings in Balochistan during 2024 alone.
Consider the case of Hamdan Baloch, a 24-year-old student from Karachi's Golimar area. Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) personnel detained him on December 29 without a warrant. His family pursued legal channels, attended court hearings, hoped for his transfer to jail custody. Instead, CTD announced he was killed in an "armed exchange"—a staged encounter narrative that Kashmiris know all too well.
His father now joins the ranks of Amma Ji and countless others who have heard the lie that their loved ones were "militants" killed in action.
The Pain of Mothers
Amma Houri is one of the examples of pain and struggle of Baloch mothers. Her son was abducted by the military forces in 2013, and never found. Like thousands of Baloch mothers, sisters and spouses who march with photographs of missing loved ones, she travelled across thousands of kilometres to many such solidarity events demanding answers.
In response, she received the state apathy and brutal violence. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee's women-led protests against "kill-and-dump" practices have always been met with state violence. Amma Houri’s presence at countless public events, visits to scores of army camps, pleadings with all sorts of power brokers, came to a naught. After more than a decade fighting to know about the whereabouts of her son or what befell him, she passed away a few days ago.
This mirrors Kashmir, where mothers gathered outside army camps, where families formed associations of the disappeared. But in Kashmir, a political process—however flawed—eventually emerged. Elections were held. Turnout in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls reached 46 percent, the highest in 35 years. The assembly elections saw approximately 64 percent participation.
This does not erase the pain of the disappeared, but it kindles a hope, albeit feeble, that some political resolution is possible. This is missing from Balochistan as the conflict is a necessity for the Pakistani Army to continue to benefit from the huge networks of corruption that it has erected in the past three decades.
Why Balochistan is a Hellhole
Balochistan's tragedy is compounded by what drives the conflict: not just autonomy demands, but outright plunder. The Pakistani military's interest in Balochistan is fundamentally economic. General Asim Munir's plans to add to the vast network of loot by mining copper in the province. Such brazen plunder directly fuels militancy, as locals see their resources extracted without consent or benefit.
There is no doubt that the smuggling of Iranian oil fuels an illicit economy that is larger than anything else compared in the region. Some estimates suggest a trade between USD 500 million to over a billion USD. The Baloch insurgents, however, lay claim that it is a much bigger economy albeit without any credible or verifiable references.
Regardless, it is commonly believed that resource extraction in Balochistan and in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa is fuelling billions of dollars of corruption within the military ranks. Many politicians from these areas have questioned why the terrorists attack common people and have never attacked the trucks carrying the Iranian fuel or precious stones and marbles from KPK?
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif admitted that smugglers buy Iranian oil at Rs 40 per litre and sell for Rs 200, earning around Rs 4 billion daily. He claimed that a nexus had developed between smugglers and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), the main insurgent group that recently killed dozens of Pakistani military personnel in a daring and simultaneous attack in 12 different cities in the province.
Rather than accepting its limitations and inability to fight effectively, the military's response is more troops, more operations, and more disappearances. There are suggestions that any Baloch who is educated is a target because he or she can raise questions about the outright plunder. Also, as the military falters to fight the insurgents, it has become easy to paint every Baloch youth as a ‘terrorist’ enabling the military to kill without any questioning or legal restrictions.
The US State Department's 2024 human rights report found that Pakistan "rarely took credible steps" to punish security forces implicated in abuses. In Kashmir, the report noted that while accountability was minimal, some officials faced disciplinary action.
The Political Vacuum
In Kashmir, despite the abrogation of Article 370 and legitimate concerns about autonomy, a political framework exists. The central Indian government passes laws, holds elections, builds infrastructure — 1,781 km of new rural roads were sanctioned in June 2025. However inadequate, the process continues to inform and impact local lives.
In Balochistan, there is nothing to germinate any hope. No meaningful political dialogue. No elections that matter. Just military operations and extraction economies. As one analyst noted, the military-centric response to dissent has alienated local populations, and the army remains hesitant toward political engagement with Baloch groups.
The Verdict
Both Kashmir and Balochistan have witnessed the agony of enforced disappearances. Both have seen mothers search endlessly for sons who vanished into state custody. Both have experienced the horror of staged encounters and custodial killings.
But Balochistan is qualitatively worse. The numbers suggest a systematic machinery of death operating at an industrial scale without much sympathy for the struggling populations from the larger society. Even the mainstream pro-military political groups like PPP and PMLN and religious groups like Jama'at-e-Islami who have used the tragedy of Kashmir thousands of times to gain attention, state largesse, or for political sloganeering, are exercising a silence that is wrapped in many contradictions.
Maulana Hidayatur Rehman Baloch, who is the current Provincial Emir of Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) in Balochistan, has received lukewarm support from his own party for his fight for Balochistan's rights. On paper, JI supports him, but those in the know suggest a lot of political wrestling within the party to sabotage his movement "Haq Do Tehreek" (Give Rights Movement) and advocating for the rights of the province's people.
The economic exploitation is naked and brutal—generating billions for military elites while locals live in 71.2 percent multidimensional poverty. The political process is almost entirely absent, and the Pakistani military is bent upon crushing any voice that even calls for accountability in financial matters.
General Asim Munir, who elevated himself to Field Marshal in 2025 for "exemplary leadership," has presided over a 74 percent increase in combat-related deaths. His forces cannot protect citizens from escalating militancy or from the erratic behaviour of his own personnel. His economic ambitions in Balochistan intensify the very insurgency he claims to fight.
The only path to peace is Munir’s removal and the initiation of genuine political dialogue. Otherwise, Balochistan will continue to bleed, and the bodies will keep appearing on roadsides—each one a son, a brother, a father, a future stolen by a system that values minerals more than human life.
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