Also, wanted to add – Its arguably quite morally lazy to simply sweep the multi-generational struggle of the Baloch for self-determination – if not outright secession, that has repeatedly and consistently raised its voice in speech and in blood over the last 7-8 decades.
Nobody on BP outright denies or pretends that there disaffected secessionist tendencies do not exist in the Sunni Valley. Why then, are we going to pretend that the ‘troubles’ in Balochistan are somehow… inconsequential?
This growing tendency to treat every internal conflict in South Asia as if it were interchangeable with Kashmir (the “Sunni Valley“). This is a mistake, and in the case of Balochistan, a very serious one.
The distinction was once put very clearly to me by Benazir Bhutto herself. In the 1990s, while seeking international advocacy on Kashmir, she was asked by Saddam Hussein a blunt question: If we support Kashmir, why should the world not support Kurdistan? Her reply was immediate and precise. Kashmir, she said, is an international dispute. Kurdistan is not.
That distinction matters, and it still holds.
Kashmir is internationalized by design. It is anchored in UN resolutions, formal bilateral agreements, wars between recognized states, and sustained global diplomatic engagement. It belongs to the same narrow category as Palestine or Cyprus; flashpoints where sovereignty itself is contested between states and therefore cannot be reduced to a domestic matter.
Balochistan does not belong to this category.
Balochistan is not recognized by any international body as a disputed territory. It is not governed by UN frameworks. It is not the subject of binding international mediation. No major power treats it as an open sovereignty question. However severe its internal problems may be, they remain internal. That is not a moral judgment; it is a legal and political fact.
Attempts to equate Balochistan with Kashmir are therefore not acts of analysis but acts of advocacy. They rely on analogy rather than structure, and analogy is the laziest form of reasoning.
It is sometimes argued that Balochistan resembles Khalistan. Even this comparison is limited, but it is at least closer to the truth. Khalistan, like Balochistan, was a domestic insurgency framed retrospectively as a civilizational cause. It failed not because grievances were imaginary, but because the conditions required for internationalization never materialized.
International disputes are not created by suffering alone. They are created by sustained external recognition, legal scaffolding, and the willingness of other states to stake interests on them. Without these, insurgencies remain insurgencies.
What is striking about much contemporary commentary is not its concern for the Baloch, but its analytical laziness. The framework is usually fixed in advance: Pakistan is bad, Pakistan is brittle, therefore Pakistan must be about to break apart. Evidence is then selected to support the conclusion. This is not scholarship. It is confirmation bias with footnotes.
I say this without any vested interest. I am not defending Pakistan as an ideal state, nor minimizing Baloch grievances. On the contrary, I am fervently pro-India when forced to choose. But intellectual honesty requires recognizing that disliking a state does not make every problem it faces existential.
Balochistan is not Kashmir. Treating it as such does not help the Baloch, does not clarify South Asian politics, and does not elevate the discussion. It merely converts serious analysis into moral theatre.
If we want to understand the subcontinent, we must begin by distinguishing between what is internationally contested and what is not. Without that discipline, commentary becomes propaganda; and propaganda, however eloquent, is still false.
See, the thing is all these “UN resolutions” are just words. People just maintain the status quo internationally without acting on it because the LOC is the de-facto international border.
Kashmir is nothing like Palestine and Cyprus, countries which have separate limited recognition and their own systems/currencies.
Kashmiris uses Indian currency, have Indian passports, have Indian aadhars, elect representatives to the Indian parliament etc etc.
No country in the world distinguishes Kashmiris with Indian passports from other Indians.
Heck, even Hong Kong has a different system compared to China.
And post 370 anyone can go into Kashmir and become “Kashmiri” as have many many people who have been living in Kashmir for a while (lower caste valmiki sanitation workers from other states being a key demographic).
And there is no international condemnation etc against them like you have with Israeli settlers because the world doesn’t differentiate between Kashmir and the rest of India.
Sure, you might have the “UN resolutions” but what is the point when no country actually enforces it and considers Kashmiris separate from Indians.
And after Operation Sindoor, even the Indian state have acted similarly. Unlike before when Pakistan thought India would fight within Kashmir itself, it did not.
And of course Balochistan is not Kashmir. It is worse.
The Kashmir movement as an indigenous movement is dead. There are no more hartals, bandhs, calls of azadi from the streets. Geelani is dead. Mirwaiz has mellowed. Yasin Malik will die in jail. Everyone else has joined some party or the other.
And as India gets richer and more powerful and Kashmir more peaceful, the world will forget the Kashmir conflict even more just like it did the Tibet and Xinjiang conflict.
Balochistan is still burning.