On July 5, 2026, Pakistan’s security forces launched Operation Shaban after militants attacked a police post guarding the Mangi Dam construction site in Ziarat. It is the latest in a long line of military campaigns in Balochistan, each one announced with confident tallies of militants killed, each one meant to prove that the state finally has the province under control. But those numbers say little about why the violence keeps returning. At its core, this is not simply a security problem; it is a governance problem, one that Pakistan’s National Action Plan promised to fix a decade ago and has barely touched in Balochistan since.

Sarfraz Bugti was in Ziarat Cross last week, calling on grieving protesters to clear the national highway. Two days earlier, 11 soldiers were killed in Lasbela in another highway ambush. When Pakistan’s new military leadership decided to broadcast its vow to “chase and hurt” those responsible for the attacks on national security, the people of Balochistan were already grappling with another set of numbers – the scale of the response. According to the country’s military command, which announced this latest toll on national television, over 100 militants have already been killed in the last two weeks.

The numbers say little about the circumstances in which the attacks occurred or the response to them. Why was this particular police station in Ziarat completely overrun despite the presence of heavily armed paramilitary police? Why did the provincial government respond to the attacks by suspending the service of one police official and setting up an inquiry committee? What does it mean that it took 15 days for Balochistan’s new chief minister to resume normal traffic flow on the national highways when the security situation showed all the signs of returning to the status........

© Paradigm Shift