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Pakistan’s restive borders result from its crackdowns: Territories or violent counter-insurgency
As disenchanted parties support each other against and the State cracks down on dissent, Pakistan's peripheries are facing erosion
‘It is not over till it’s over,’ goes a popular aphorism. In Pakistan, this applies not just to the insurgency in Balochistan — intermittent since 1948 — or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) since 2001, but also to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The last episode in PoK, which gathered momentum in early June, somewhat quietened after security forces killed nine people on July 14. However, the chief minister’s car was greeted by a hostile crowd very recently. This makes PoK the third unstable border province in Pakistan.
International relations theory holds that a State’s borders frame its sovereignty and legal existence. Against this backdrop, as each disenchanted party supports the other, Pakistan’s peripheries are facing erosion.
The protests in “Azad Kashmir” were centred in and around Rawlakot, the same area where rebellion broke out between 1950 and 1956, when Sardar Ibrahim’s government was dismissed. Belonging to an elite Sudhan family, Ibrahim took on the Pakistani State by forming a separate government from Rawlakot and Pallandri. Local forces were helpless against the fierce Sudhanis, who took some 150 policemen hostage. Eventually, the Pakistani forces launched a brutal crackdown and ended Ibrahim’s revolt. Protests, however, went on and off over the years till 2024, before they broke out this June.
The recent protests were also led by a Sudhan, Sardar Aman Khan, from Pallandri. Meanwhile, the intervals between such protests are getting shorter.
For now, calm has been restored, with local officials reaching out and Islamabad bringing in British-Pakistani Qamar Raza, head of the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation, to lower tensions. But the chaos is sure to rise again — the 80,000-plus who hit the streets are not going to give up easily. Protestors, now and earlier, have long demanded the opening of trade routes to India, which the Pakistani State sees as a political threat to the “border”.
In Gilgit-Baltistan, unrest had been rising since April, with protests for constitutional rights just before “general elections”. The Awami Action Committee, a grassroots organisation in the region, demanded replacing the Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly with a constituent assembly, free electricity from the Diamer-Bhasha Dam in addition to 80% royalty, banning mining leases for non-locals (read Chinese) and reopening of “historic trade routes” (including the road to Kargil). Eventually, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won the elections, but all it did was pass a resolution asking that Gilgit-Baltistan be given all the privileges of mainland Pakistan, including federal funding like other provinces, constitutional rights and, most importantly, representation in the Federal Parliament — all of this “without prejudice” to Pakistan’s “legal position” in the Kashmir dispute.
Simply put, it can’t be done, and the PPP knows it. Granting this would imply full inclusion as a “fifth province”, which, in turn, would require the Pakistani Constitution itself to be changed. So, what the PPP did was offer a sop, nothing more.
Meanwhile, ethnic groups such as the Ladakhis in Baltistan and the Balwaristan National Front are demanding a slew of rights.
The Uyghur issue also simmers, with China far from happy with Pakistan, which means clouds over another sensitive periphery.
From Islamabad’s perspective, the Balochistan case remains the most tense. All districts, particularly Quetta and its peripheries, have seen repeated attacks. The fact that reinforcements could not be sent to policemen in the attack on a police post at Ziarat on July 6 indicated a loss of control. Nine police personnel were killed immediately, while 18 others were killed after being kidnapped by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Commentators note that policemen begging for ammunition received nothing and that the bodies of those killed were brought back by relatives rather than agencies. Protests by their families were called off after the local administration announced token measures, such as renaming roads after the “martyrs”. Local units never step out of the “safe” cantonment areas and camps. The border is rife with smuggling of petrol, with hundreds of trucks entering from Iran. Locals have long asked for control of the border but to no avail. Graft and embezzlement are rampant among army generals heading the Frontier Corps here: One instance of this was lieutenant-general Obaidullah Khattak, who was dismissed in 2016, accused of having amassed 15 billion Pakistani rupees (PKR) through corruption. A secure “border”, in terms of a well-manned and thoroughly policed line, doesn’t exist.
A similar situation exists in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK); Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, recently warned that security personnel involved in cross-border smuggling will be arrested and court-martialled; the border is marked by illegal dollar trade and smuggling of sugar and wheat into Afghanistan.
Munir didn’t mention narcotics trafficking, but the TTP did, issuing a warning recently against trafficking and lack of basic governance, indicating its strong local identity. TTP cadres are recruited from the tribal areas, with training camps alleged to be in Afghanistan, challenging the writ of the Pakistani State. Here as well, the border has eroded to an extent where it is difficult to ascertain the area over which the State still exercises “control” — underlined by the brutal assault on a chief minister by his own police.
The most dangerous trend now is that all these dissonances are coalescing. A delegation from KPK tried to join the PoK protestors; Baloch activists also came out in support. Continuing reports indicate cooperation between Baloch and Pashtun groups, though their ideologies differ vastly. In short, the entire border of more than 4,500 km is in danger; oddly, only the settled border with India is stable. Warring neighbours such as Iran and Afghanistan have worsened the situation for Pakistan. Meanwhile, Rawlakot remains a prime army recruitment area, with several senior generals from the Sudhan tribe. As Pakistan’s peripheries erode, the one thing holding the country together, by force, is its army. In sum, the entire situation is one of cause-and-effect — the Pakistani State can either choose to keep its territories intact or it can continue with its violent counter-insurgency approach. Cutting the cord between the two is the challenge.
Tara Kartha is a former director, National Security Council Secretariat. The views expressed are personal
