Jan Balochby Jan Muhammad Baloch
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Photo Credit: VOA/Public Domain
A COMPARATIVE EXAMINATION of judicial records, anti-terrorism filings, court proceedings, and state responses across Pakistan reveals a striking disparity in how different forms of civil dissent are handled. Mainstream political parties, right-wing factions, and far-right religious organizations have repeatedly been brought into negotiations or permitted to return to political life after major confrontations with the state. Grassroots movements on the political periphery have faced a markedly different trajectory, including restrictions, criminal cases, and national-security prosecutions.
Public disruption, economic damage, or street violence alone do not appear to determine the state’s response. Several contemporary movements have brought major cities to a standstill, caused significant economic losses, and been associated with deaths among civilians and security personnel. Yet their leaders have, at various points, entered negotiations with the state, reached political settlements, and continued to participate in electoral politics.
For peripheral movements, the trajectory can be different.
The evidence examined in this investigation points to a deeper institutional question:
Who decides when political dissent is treated as a matter for negotiation and when it is reframed as a national-security threat?
When a movement directly challenges the authority or conducts of security institutions, political demands can be recast as security concerns, while organizers face surveillance, criminal proceedings, anti-terrorism charges, and prolonged imprisonment.
This investigation does not dispute the state’s authority to respond to violence. It examines a different question:
Why are some political movements treated as political actors entitled to negotiate, while others are denied comparable political space and recast as security threats?
At the center of this inquiry is the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), a grassroots movement in Balochistan led by Dr. Mahrang Baloch. The movement has been driven by Baloch women, students, and families of missing persons seeking accountability for enforced disappearances and answers over alleged extrajudicial killings.
The cases that follow document these contrasting responses and examine what happens when a movement’s demands move beyond ordinary political bargaining and challenge the conduct of security institutions.
The Price of Peace: How the State Managed Capital Sieges
IN AUGUST 2014, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) launched a joint sit-in in Islamabad. They demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and a forensic probe into alleged election rigging. Thousands of demonstrators breached the heavily secured Red Zone, paralyzing the capital for 126 days. Protesters occupied government land, stormed the state television headquarters, and clashed with police. The confrontation near the Prime Minister’s residence left several people dead and hundreds injured.
Two months earlier, in June 2014, a violent police operation at the PAT headquarters in Lahore’s Model Town had killed 14 political workers and injured more than 100 others. PAT initially demanded criminal proceedings against senior officials over the deaths. An FIR was eventually registered against 21 people, including then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, but the FIR did not include Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
Despite the deaths and the direct challenge to state authority, the confrontation remained within the political and judicial system. During the Islamabad crisis, the Supreme Court constituted an inquiry commission to investigate PTI’s allegations concerning the 2013 elections. PTI remained part of electoral politics and won the 2018 general election.
A similar pattern emerged during the 2017 Faizabad sit-in. For more than three weeks, the hardline religious group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) blockaded the interchange linking Islamabad and Rawalpindi over changes to the electoral-law provisions concerning the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat oath. The protest severely disrupted the twin cities and was accompanied by violence and clashes with police.
The confrontation ended through an agreement brokered with the involvement of the military. Major General Faiz Hameed, then serving in the ISI’s counter-intelligence wing, signed the agreement as a guarantor. Major General Azhar Naveed Hayat, then Director General of Punjab Rangers, was subsequently filmed distributing Rs1,000 envelopes to some departing protesters as travel expenses. Contemporary reporting also documented the release of arrested protesters under the agreement.
The episode later became the subject of a Supreme Court judgment that criticized the role of intelligence agencies and their involvement in political affairs. A later government inquiry commission, however, cleared Faiz Hameed of wrongdoing, illustrating that even the institutional interpretation of the episode remained contested.
The significance of the 2014 and 2017 confrontations is not that the state ignored violence or disorder. It is that, despite prolonged disruption and serious clashes, the conflicts ultimately remained susceptible to political negotiation, judicial intervention, or reintegration into the political system.
The 2021 TLP Crisis: From Proscription to Negotiation
IN 2021, TLP launched nationwide protests demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Major roads and transit corridors were blocked, and clashes with law enforcement resulted in deaths and hundreds of injuries.
The federal government proscribed TLP under the Anti-Terrorism Act in April 2021.
The designation, however, did not last. In October, TLP supporters again marched toward Islamabad, triggering further clashes with police. The state returned to negotiations. On October 31, the government and TLP reached an agreement to end the protest.
By November, the government had agreed to withdraw the proscription, and the movement was subsequently allowed to return to electoral politics.
The episode demonstrated another feature of the state’s approach: a movement could be designated under anti-terrorism law and then, following negotiations, be brought back into the political system.
The significance lies not simply in the ban itself, but in its reversibility.
PTI and May 9: When the Security Framework Tightened
THE STATE’S APPROACH changed sharply after the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan on May 9, 2023. PTI had already been engaged in an increasingly direct confrontation with the military establishment, accusing it of political interference and seeking to influence the country’s political system.
Following Khan’s arrest, PTI supporters attacked military and state installations, including the Rawalpindi General Headquarters (GHQ) and the Lahore Corps Commander’s residence.
The state responded through a combination of criminal prosecutions and military-court proceedings. In December 2024, military courts sentenced 25 civilians to prison terms ranging from two to 10 years for attacks on military installations. Civilian anti-terrorism courts also handed down lengthy sentences in cases arising from the May 9 unrest. In June 2026, for example, an anti-terrorism court sentenced four senior PTI figures to 10 years in prison in one May 9 case, while acquitting former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and 11 others for lack of evidence.
The contrast with earlier confrontations was significant. The state had previously negotiated with movements responsible for prolonged blockades and violent clashes. After May 9, attacks on military installations became the basis for an expansive security and criminal-justice response.
That difference raises the central question of this investigation: What determines whether disruptive dissent is managed through negotiation or prosecuted as a national-security threat?
The Quetta Demonstrations: Negotiation Even After Major Disruption
IN JULY 2026, two separate protests in Quetta demonstrated that the state can still choose negotiation when faced with prolonged and highly disruptive mobilization.
In Hanna Urak, an armed clash on July 6 left four people dead and others injured. Protesters subsequently placed a victim’s body on Airport Road and blocked one of Quetta’s busiest routes while demanding action and the recovery of abducted relatives. The five-day sit-in ended after negotiations with Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti and other officials, who agreed to demands including compensation and measures for the affected families.
Separately, on July 6, 27 police personnel were killed in a terrorist attack on a police post in Ziarat. Families of the dead officers began a sit-in at Quetta’s Koila Phatak on July 9, bringing the bodies of the deceased with them. After 10 days, the protest ended following an agreement with the Balochistan government.
Both protests caused significant disruption. Both involved the public display of bodies. Both produced prolonged blockades of major roads. Yet the immediate response was negotiation rather than the large-scale anti-terrorism prosecution seen in the BYC cases.
The comparison is important because it shows that the state’s willingness to negotiate has not disappeared. The question is why that option appears more available to some movements than to others.
BYC Long March: When Non-Violent Protest Becomes a Security Matter
IN DECEMBER 2023, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee mounted a long march from Balochistan to Islamabad. The demonstrators included women, children, students, elderly people, and families of victims of enforced disappearances. They traveled roughly 1,000 miles to the capital to protest alleged extrajudicial killings and demand information about missing relatives.
The response was markedly different from the negotiated settlements seen in earlier capital confrontations.
As the protesters approached Islamabad, police used force to prevent the march from entering the capital. Water cannons, batons, arrests, and detentions were reported. The protesters eventually established a sit-in outside the National Press Club on December 22.
There they remained for roughly a month in near-freezing temperatures.
Amnesty International reported that the authorities subjected protesters to repeated intimidation, arbitrary arrests and detentions. Contemporary reporting also documented continued pressure on the camp and the registration of FIRs against supporters.
The protest ended in January 2024 without the kind of high-level political settlement seen during the 2014 or 2017 confrontations. On January 23, the protesters called off the sit-in and returned from Islamabad.
The contrast was stark. The state had previously negotiated with movements that had blocked major roads, disrupted the capital and become involved in violent confrontations with police. The BYC arrived in Islamabad with a largely civilian mobilization centered on families of the disappeared, yet its demands were met with restrictions, arrests and sustained pressure rather than a comparable political settlement.
Gwadar 2024: The Securitization of Political Assembly
IN JULY 2024, the BYC organized the Baloch National Gathering, or Baloch Raaji Muchi, in Gwadar.
The government imposed restrictions on movement and assembly as participants traveled toward the gathering. Highways were blocked and security checkpoints were established across routes leading toward Gwadar. A UN communication later documented reports that security forces opened fire on people traveling to the gathering, injuring at least 14 people, while provincial authorities imposed restrictions under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The confrontation escalated. Three protesters were killed in clashes with security personnel between July 28 and August 2, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2024 human-rights report.
The gathering subsequently became central to criminal cases against BYC leaders.
The distinction between political assembly and security threat was becoming increasingly consequential.
The Trial of Mahrang Baloch: From Protest to Anti-Terrorism Court
ON MARCH 21, 2025, a confrontation between Baloch protesters and security personnel in Quetta left at least three protester dead. The circumstances of the deaths were disputed, with activists alleging that security personnel used lethal force and authorities presenting a different account of the confrontation.
The deaths were followed by a sit-in on Sariab Road involving the bodies of the deceased. Dr. Mahrang Baloch and other BYC activists demanded accountability.
In the early hours of March 22, police arrested Mahrang Baloch and other activists. Human-rights groups reported that the arrests followed a security operation involving tear gas and water cannons.
The subsequent prosecution brought terrorism and other serious criminal charges against BYC leaders.
The legal strategy culminated on June 22, 2026, when an anti-terrorism court in Quetta sentenced Mahrang Baloch and fellow BYC leader Sibghatullah Shah to life imprisonment in connection with the death of Frontier Corps personnel during the July 2024 Gwadar protest.
The prosecution argued that the two activists were responsible for violence surrounding the death. The defense rejected the allegations and challenged the fairness of the proceedings. Human rights organizations criticized the trial, saying that the proceedings had been conducted under conditions that raised serious due-process concerns. Amnesty International said the convictions involved terrorism and murder charges and questioned the evidentiary basis linking the activists to the alleged violence.
The Balochistan government, by contrast, defended the verdict as a legitimate response to violence against state personnel.
That disagreement is central to the case. The state sees prosecution as accountability for violence; rights groups and BYC supporters see it as the criminalization of political dissent.
Whatever conclusion is reached about the underlying allegations, the legal trajectory is clear: a movement that had emerged around enforced disappearances and alleged extrajudicial killings had become the subject of terrorism and murder prosecutions.
After Mahrang: Pressure on the Movement’s Next Generation
THE PRESSURE DID not end with Mahrang Baloch’s conviction.
On June 28, 2026, security forces raided the Karachi home of human-rights defender Sammi Deen Baloch while she and her family were away commemorating the 17th anniversary of her father’s enforced disappearance. Front Line Defenders reported that authorities seized her computer, educational certificates, personal items, valuables and the only photograph remaining of her father. The organization described her as a prominent human-rights defender and a key figure in the BYC.
The incident is significant because it illustrates how the pressure surrounding the BYC extends beyond a single leader. Following the imprisonment of senior organizers, other figures associated with the movement have faced criminal cases, restrictions, raids and measures under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism framework. Front Line Defenders has documented the placement of multiple BYC leaders and members under Schedule 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The state’s response therefore extends beyond the removal of one prominent organizer. The legal and administrative pressure has reached the movement’s wider leadership network.
The BYC Paradigm: Gender, Class and a Different Form of Dissent
THE BYC HAS challenged established channels through which dissent in Balochistan has traditionally been represented and managed.
Its mobilization has placed women, families of missing persons, students and other actors outside conventional political elites at the center of public protest. Its leaders have not relied primarily on parliamentary office, tribal authority or established party machinery.
Dr. Mahrang Baloch became the most prominent symbol of this model. Her political authority did not derive from an elected office or inherited position within a traditional political structure. It developed through a movement built around personal loss, enforced disappearance and the experiences of families searching for missing relatives.
Under this model, disappearance is not an abstract security statistic. It becomes a public claim made by mothers, daughters, sisters and other relatives carrying photographs of missing people into the streets and before the media.
That matters politically because the demands are not easily reducible to the normal currency of political bargaining.
A movement asking for a ministry, an electoral concession, a legislative amendment, or a change of government can be accommodated within an established political system.
A mother demanding to know where her missing son is, cannot be satisfied with an infrastructure budget.
A family demanding an investigation into an alleged extrajudicial killing cannot be compensated simply by being offered a parliamentary seat.
The demands are directed not only at government policy but at the accountability of institutions associated with security and counterinsurgency.
That makes the conflict harder to resolve through conventional political bargaining.
The Breakdown of the Negotiation Model
THE CONTRAST BETWEEN the BYC and mainstream or right-wing movements points to a structural difference in the kinds of demands the state is accustomed to negotiating.
PTI, PAT and TLP have, at different moments, pursued objectives that could be addressed through familiar political mechanisms: changes in government, legislative demands, electoral competition, judicial processes, or political settlements.
The state has repeatedly demonstrated that it can negotiate under extraordinary pressure.
The BYC’s central demands are different. They concern enforced disappearances, alleged extrajudicial killings, and accountability for the conduct of security institutions.
Those demands are difficult to absorb through patronage or coalition politics because the requested remedy is not primarily a distribution of political resources. It is an investigation into the exercise of state power itself.
This may help explain why the response to the BYC has increasingly moved away from negotiation and toward criminalization.
The state can bargain over a budget.
It can bargain over a ministry.
It can bargain over an election.
It cannot easily bargain away a demand to produce a missing person or investigate an alleged extrajudicial killing.
The Gendered Challenge to Traditional Political Structures
THE BYC HAS also challenged the gendered structure of political representation in Balochistan.
Political management in the province has historically involved established male politicians, tribal intermediaries, and formal state institutions. The BYC has instead placed women and families of the disappeared at the center of public mobilization.
Mahrang Baloch became the defining figure of this shift, but she is part of a broader movement of women who have transformed private loss into public political action.
The result is a form of dissent that is difficult to reduce to conventional patronage politics.
A woman holding a photograph of a missing relative is not merely making a policy demand. She is asking the state to account for what happened to a member of her family.
That changes the political language of the dispute.
The PTM Parallel: Where the Perimeter of Tolerance Narrows
THE PASHTUN TAHAFUZ MOVEMENT (PTM) provides an important comparison.
Emerging in 2018 under Manzoor Pashteen, PTM similarly bypassed traditional political dynasties and parliamentary machinery. Its platform focused on the consequences of security policies in Pakistan’s Pashtun-majority areas and demanded an end to enforced disappearances, accountability for civilian casualties, removal of landmines, and constitutional rights.
Its leaders subsequently faced arrests and criminal cases. Manzoor Pashteen was detained in 2020 on charges including sedition and criminal conspiracy. Ali Wazir faced prolonged detention and repeated cases.
The state’s treatment of PTM eventually moved beyond individual prosecutions. In October 2024, the federal government formally proscribed the movement under Section 11B of the Anti-Terrorism Act, citing threats to national peace and security. The government alleged that PTM had engaged in anti-state activities and links with militant organizations; PTM rejected such allegations and described itself as a rights movement.
The comparison with the BYC is therefore important, but it should not be overstated.
The two movements emerged from different regional and political circumstances. Yet both illustrate a similar trajectory: a grassroots movement rooted in a peripheral ethnic community challenges security policies and the conduct of state institutions; the dispute then moves from ordinary political contention toward criminalization and, ultimately, the national-security framework.
The Paradox of Securitization
THE STATE’S RESPONSE to dissent rests, in part, on the assumption that removing a movement’s leadership can contain the challenge it represents.
But when mobilization grows out of unresolved grievances, imprisonment does not necessarily remove the grievance itself. It can instead transform an individual leader into a political symbol.
History offers repeated examples of this dynamic. Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment became an international symbol of the struggle against apartheid. In Argentina, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo transformed private maternal loss into a sustained human-rights challenge to the military junta’s campaign of secret detention and enforced disappearance.
The same dilemma now surrounds Mahrang Baloch.
Her June 2026 life sentence severely restricts her ability to organize publicly. But the verdict cannot, by itself, answer the questions that generated the BYC’s campaign.
Where are the missing persons?
What mechanisms exist to investigate alleged extrajudicial killings?
And how can families in the periphery obtain constitutional remedies when the institutions they hold responsible are themselves part of the security establishment?
The government’s position is that the prosecution arose from serious criminal conduct surrounding the death of a security officer. Human-rights organizations and the BYC argue that the case represents the criminalization of peaceful political dissent. The dispute over the trial therefore becomes part of the larger political question rather than resolving it.
That is the paradox of securitization.
When a human-rights movement is moved into the anti-terrorism framework, public attention can shift from the original grievance to the legitimacy of the prosecution itself.
The state may remove a leader from the streets.
It may imprison her.
It may restrict the movement around her.
But none of those measures necessarily answer the question that brought the movement into existence.
The Pattern of Selective Enforcement
THE CASES EXAMINED in this investigation suggest that disruption, economic damage, or street violence alone do not determine the state’s response to political movements.
PTI and PAT brought the federal capital to a standstill for 126 days and became involved in violent confrontations with law enforcement, yet remained within electoral politics. PTI eventually formed the federal government.
TLP blocked major transit routes, became involved in violent clashes, and was formally proscribed under anti-terrorism law in 2021. Yet negotiations led to the reversal of that designation and the movement’s return to electoral politics.
In Quetta in July 2026, families protesting deadly attacks blocked major roads and displayed the bodies of victims for days. The government negotiated agreements that brought the protests to an end.
The BYC and PTM followed a different trajectory.
Both movements emerged from peripheral communities and built their platforms around grievances concerning security policy, disappearances, civilian casualties and state accountability. Both subsequently encountered sustained criminalization and national-security measures.
The distinction appears most clearly when the movements’ demands are examined alongside the institutions they challenge.
Movements seeking the resignation of a civilian government, legislative concessions, or electoral power operate within a familiar political framework. The state knows how to bargain with them.
Grassroots movements demanding direct accountability from security institutions present a different problem.
A family demanding the production of a missing relative cannot be appeased with an infrastructure package.
A family seeking an inquiry into an alleged extrajudicial killing cannot be satisfied with a parliamentary seat.
The question, therefore, is not simply whether the state tolerates dissent. The question: which forms of dissent the state is prepared to negotiate with—and which it chooses to define as a security threat.
The True Measure of Sovereign Power
THE STATE’S primary defense is that Balochistan’s complex security environment, marked by active armed insurgencies, requires exceptional caution. That context cannot be ignored. Pakistan faces genuine militant violence in the province, and the state has a legitimate responsibility to protect civilians and security personnel.
But national security becomes a more difficult category when it expands to encompass non-violent civil-rights activism.
At that point, the political origins of grievance can disappear from the view. The focus shifts from asking why a population has become alienated to determining how its public expression can be contained.
The progression can be stark:
A civic grievance becomes a security problem.
A security problem becomes an anti-terrorism file.
An anti-terrorism file becomes a life sentence.
The broader lesson of the BYC case is not that the state lacks the power to suppress dissent. It is that the exercise of sovereign power is ultimately tested by the distinctions it is willing to maintain.
A stable state must be able to distinguish between an armed threat and a political grievance, between kinetic violence and non-violent dissent, and between individual criminal responsibility and collective suspicion.
Political movements are often sustained by unresolved failures that allow individual leaders to become symbols of much larger grievances.
Pakistan has demonstrated that it can remove such a symbol from the streets and place her behind bars.
But imprisonment does not, by itself, answer the questions that created the movement.
As long as the constitutional questions driving the periphery remain unresolved, removing the symbol will not remove the crisis.
The definitive question remains:
Who is permitted to challenge the state and remain a political actor—and who is systematically redefined as a security threat?