Until June 16, 2025, there have been 21 cases of extrajudicial murders in Balochistan – alleging the law enforcement agencies and their hired local militias (locally termed as Death Squads) behind them. A report published by a women-led forum, Baloch Women Forum (BWF), has observed five cases from Kech district, four from Harnai, three each from Mashkay, Mastung and Dera Bugti, two from Khuzdar and one from Mangochar (Kalat). Local and reasonable accounts allege them to be targeted and in-custody murders by the security personnel in one way or the other.
Basically, enforced disappearances are common in Balochistan, where Baloch are detained illegally under the custody of the law enforcing agencies – for days, months and years – without providing any information to their families about them. The abductors are personnel from the security forces, no doubt. But then they do not endorse such arrests on the record, saying that the “missing persons are not missing but have joined terrorist organizations and are on mountains”. Or either, they claim them to be in Iran, Afghanistan or elsewhere in foreign, which is nothing but a propaganda to delude the genuine cases of enforced disappearances.
To some great extent, it has worked out, of course with the help of the Punjabi pseudo intellectuals and the Baloch warlords, to convince – or let me be clear and term it misguide – the common Punjabi civilians about the genuine issue of enforced disappearances in Balochistan. But to a larger context, it has developed a sense of deprivation, alienation and mistrust towards the notorious state institutions among the Baloch.
The recent Turbat incident is a clear account of such murders where two youth, Sifah Baloch and Shah Jan Baloch, were murdered in a fake encounter in Buleda in April and their bodies were neither brought in the hospital nor handed over to the families. In fact, their families were continuously visiting the DC office for their release – not knowing that they were killed in a staged encounter. The DC had endorsed their arrests and told them that their sons would be released soon. But instead, on June 13, the families were informed that their sons were killed in an encounter and buried by the forces, without even disclosing the location of their graves. The families are unsure whether to mourn the death of their sons or wait for a miracle for their recovery alive.
In such situations, when their loved ones were forcibly disappeared by the forces in front of their eyes, how can one convince them that they were not killed by them but were in Baloch militants’ camps and were killed in a clash – which never happened?
It is not that the Turbat incident is the first one – and observing the state’s institutional behavior towards the Baloch, it does not seem to be the last one either – but the continuous policy of fake murders of the already disappeared Baloch. In the former Baloch genocidal policy, people from all walks of life were forcibly disappeared, tortured in secret torture cells, killed and dumped in different locations. There are plenty examples of such murders. And then now, the same policy is revived: people from various fields of life are forcibly disappeared by the law enforcement agencies which they deny – particularly for generating false narratives for the Pakistani nationals and the international community – and then kill them in fake encounters by labelling them ‘terrorists’.
Such acts may be temporarily fruitful to cheat the Punjabi civilians or the international community, but in the longer run, it is shaping an entire Baloch national psyche against the state and its law enforcing institutions. This is turning the people to create a sense of hatred for the state machinery on which their belief is slowly fading.
In contrary, strong voices for Baloch, take for example the leadership of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), are caged under a colonial Public Maintenance Ordinance (MPO) so that the indigenous narratives, along with their voices, are curbed out. Such acts may be useful for the system in the present, but are deeply poisonous for the future. But seems like those in power are so much thirsty for their self-interests and considering everything for a shorter run that the larger interests have slipped down.
In the middle, what is the most annoying thing is that the common Baloch civilians are suffering from continuous and brutal state barbarism. Be them the fake encounters, numbering 21 only in the mid-month of June (2025), or the enforced disappearances, it is the Baloch civilians who are facing the state aggression, which will only end up against them. Timely revival of the policies of extrajudicial murders and enforced disappearances can only put some work on the table, or else, it will all be adverse.
Until now, all we can see and observe, the state and its leading institutions are reluctant to find out a desirable solution to ending the Baloch genocide. Because all those in the power are beneficiaries themselves in the Baloch war. Had it not been resolved timely and peacefully, it may benefit few for a shorter time, but end up in massive destructions for the future as a whole.
