Pakistan Is Treating Every Grievance as Terrorism, and It’s Failing

From KP to Balochistan and beyond, instead of addressing the underlying causes of unrest, the country’s rulers are hell-bent on targeting the opposition.

Pakistan faces mounting political, economic, and security crises. But instead of addressing the underlying causes, the country’s rulers are hell-bent on targeting the opposition and treating it as the problem.

I have seen this approach firsthand in Balochistan, Pakistan’s militancy-ridden southwestern province. For years, the state has responded to political dissent and social, economic, and political grievances primarily through a security lens, via arrests, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. The consequences have been severe: such policies have pushed thousands of youths toward a violent insurgency. But this approach is no longer confined to Balochistan.

Recent developments in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa suggest that the same logic is increasingly being applied elsewhere. On October 11, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari declared a state of emergency and suspended the provincial government led by Sohail Afridi, an ally of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Pakistani media reports said Afridi had been arrested and his whereabouts remain untraceable. 

Enforced disappearances are a longstanding practice in Pakistan, particularly in its peripheries. But the disappearance of a politician who was the chief minister until Sunday morning raises disturbing questions about the rule of law and the fate of ordinary citizens with far less visibility or political influence.

The scenes from Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial capital, tell a similar story. Security forces have filled roads with brightly colored shipping containers to prevent Khan supporters from reaching Islamabad. On October 4, Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), took to the streets to demand his release. The federal government has defended the barricades and its latest actions as necessary to prevent unrest.

Such restrictions on political dissent go beyond the PTI.

In Balochistan, the authorities have confronted the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, a large grassroots movement against enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Its popular crowd-puller leader, Mahrang Baloch, was sentenced to life imprisonment on June 22 by an anti-terrorism court, alongside fellow activist Sibghatullah, over the alleged killing of a paramilitary soldier during a protest in Pakistan’s new emerging port city Gwadar in July 2024. The court found they had incited the crowd. Baloch’s lawyers boycotted the proceedings, held inside Hudda jail, and called it a faceless trial.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, another civil rights movement demanding rights for ethnic Pashtuns, has faced an intensive crackdown. Its soft-spoken, 34-year-old charismatic leader, Manzoor Pashteen, has been among those targeted, as the government has attempted to ban the movement and its leadership.

Authorities have used similar tools in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, long described by Pakistani leaders as the country’s “jugular vein.” On June 5, the Azad Jammu and Kashmir government designated the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), a grassroots coalition that has organized protests over economic and political demands, as a proscribed organization under the region’s anti-terrorism law.

These are different movements, with different demands. But the state responds in a common way: it treats every political grievance as a security threat.

Laws such as the Fourth Schedule, once intended for terrorism, are also being used against lawyers, journalists, and political opponents. In particular, the controversial cyber law, the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), is frequently used against activists and journalists. 

In January, an Islamabad court handed prominent human rights lawyers Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and her husband, Hadi Ali Chattha, prison terms totaling 17 years over social media posts the state called anti-state. The sentences were to run concurrently, so they were to serve 10 years. In September, the Supreme Court suspended the sentences and ordered their release on bail. Within hours, authorities........

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