STATES will not tolerate secessionist movements. In fact, not tolerating secession is central to how a state is defined, ie, as an entity that claims legitimate monopoly over violence in a defined territorial area. Any attempt to redefine that territory will be contested and is usually done so through violence.

The extent of violence deployed may vary as will any other strategies that may be used to stamp out secessionist movements. Prof Ahsan Butt’s terrific 2017 book Secession and Security put forward a useful way of thinking about how states respond to secessionist movements. He argues that external security implications of a secessionist movement determine a state’s strategy, guiding whether, and how much, it coerces separatists.

In the context of the recent attack in Balochistan, the Pakistani state is likely going to escalate its use of violence. The alleged presence of foreign-funded elements in the Baloch secessionist movement, an important variable that Ahsan’s aforementioned book also talks about, as well as the threat posed to Chinese interests, can be used as further justification for counterinsurgency operations.

At this point, it seems futile to argue about the use of operations by the state. That some level of violence will be used is already a given, considering the brazen nature of recent attacks by BLA. The conversation on Balochistan, instead, would be better served by a frank discussion of what is likely to work and in service of what objective.

The conversation on Balochistan would be better served by a frank discussion of what is likely to work.

For concerned, thinking people, the concept of territorial integrity is secondary to the material and cultural well-being of actual humans living within a particular area. If someone says that ‘national liberation’ is the right path for a population’s well-being, it would not be some unique or unfathomable declaration. It is perhaps the most conventional and mainstream of all ideas that we inherit from the 20th century.

At the same time, the cost of any ‘liberation’ is high. Territory is not ceded easily, and one can plausibly make the argument that the process of seeking it will perpetuate an already lengthy phase of violence that will further diminish the already bleak odds of material uplift.

If one adopts this position, it leaves us with the more difficult act of trying to develop a solution for the grievances that put secession on the table in the first place. It is conversations of this type that the Pakistani state, and those who subscribe to a statist worldview, go at great lengths to avoid.

If the goal of the state is to stamp out secessionism, events from the last two decades would suggest that whatever strategies have been used are proving to be unsuccessful. The logistics of militant activity can be explained by foreign backing, but support for it and alienation from the federation cannot. Those can only be explained by entrenched grievances.

There is a clear material aspect of these grievances. A look at the multidimensional poverty map of Pakistan will show that deprivation is highly correlated with geography. A child born in southern Balochistan has drastically different life chances, on average, compared to a child born in central Punjab, urban Sindh, or the Peshawar Valley. Similarly, the composition of high-status public sector employment (such as the CSS or the officer corps), and a range of other materially rewarding opportunities in the private sector, see reduced representation of individuals born and raised in the province.

But beyond the material base, it is political deprivation that has made the current problem far more complex. A simpler way of understanding this is to look at what’s happened to other movements of the same type in Pakistan.

Ethnonationalist mobilisation has been a key feature of politics in both KP and Sindh. There has also been the added dimension of Islamist fundamentalist movements in one of the two provinces. The state has deployed violence and coercion in various forms — comprehensively against the TTP, and more selectively against ethnonationalist mobilisation. Yet what has allowed some form of federal stability to re-emerge is the political process.

By allowing a range of representative voices to participate in the electoral process, the maximalist segments of these movements have been blunted. In KP, nearly three decades of constant violence exacted a heavy toll on the material well-being of its population. Yet no one can deny that the PTI’s popularity across the province, and its reflection through the process of winning elections and forming governments, has curtailed the development of tendencies that could have posed an even bigger challenge to the federation.

In Sindh today, the canal issue threatens to destabilise federal politics, but the PPP has already reshaped its posture in a bid to contain it. It remains to be seen if its mediating role between the centre and the province helps settle the matter. But even this attempt was made possible only by its presence (and in fact centrality) in national and provincial politics.

Apart from a brief window between 2011 and 2014, the ‘luxury’ of a relatively free political process has not been afforded to the Baloch population. Parties and leaders operating within the framework of federal politics are marginalised in favour of those pliant to the establishment. In many instances, Balochistan’s seats in the Senate and the National Assembly are used not to provide voice to the province’s problems, but to obtain favourable political outcomes at the centre. Getting a Senate chairperson of the right type elected, and having a vote of no-confidence passed, is deemed more important than actual representation.

Widespread apathy towards the federation cannot be beaten or coerced out of a population. If the state’s response to mounting militancy rests only in violence, the cycle of violence will only continue. Suggesting this is neither treason, nor an endorsement of secession. It is simply a recognition of the failure of the status quo that now stretches back two decades.

The writer teaches sociology at Lums.

X: @umairjav

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2025