pakistan’s

modernizing middle-class nationalists. The second pits both groups (each favoring its own
type of social order while pressing for greater provincial autonomy) against the centripetal pull
of Pakistan’s powerful centralizing state, including the Pakistan Army (dominated, as it is, by
Punjabis). The third level pits different tribal leaders (even from within the same tribe) against
one another—some working to oppose and some working to gain access to various forms of state
power. The fourth pits nationalist (i.e., ethnic) Baluch against Baluchistan’s ethnic Pashtuns.
These four levels of tension are important. But over time analysts such as Frederic Grare have
also emphasized a shit within Baluchistan’s resistance movement. This shit offers a subtle twist on
the macro-level social changes discussed above in the context of Jhang and Chakwal. Whereas in
the past resistance-oriented tribal elites collaborated with middle-class nationalists against other
tribal elites affiliated with the state, Grare draws attention to the expanding influence of middleclass
activists based along Baluchistan’s southern coast (including, especially, those with close
ties to the Gulf). Drawing attention to many of the same trends of Gulf migration and mobility
described above, Grare points to a broad geographic shit “from rural to urban” and thus “from
the northeast of the province to the southwest.” 18 Ugo Fabietti shares this assessment and stresses
that Baluchistan’s middle-class activists remain closely tied to powerful transnational networks,
including lucrative networks for smuggling drugs and guns. These networks, including related
networks in Karachi, have allowed Baluchistan’s urbanizing middle classes to fund persistent
forms of ethnic-cum-nationalist resistance. 19
Given what Nina Swidler describes as the “partial” transformation of society in Baluchistan—a
transformation in which “tribal” Baluch are simultaneously caught up in “new forms of
consciousness associated with education and wage work”—it is difficult to describe the Baluch
resistance movement as categorically opposed to Baluchistan’s rival sardars. 20 Instead, it may be
more accurate to say that Baluch insurgents are only opposed to those sardars who support the
exclusionary policies of the state. These insurgents see the state as denying the Baluch population
access to public- and private-sector employment (e.g., public-sector jobs in Quetta and privatesector
engineering jobs in Gwadar) in favor of Punjabis, as well as denying or withholding access
to the royalties associated with the extraction of Baluchistan’s natural resources (e.g., natural gas
from Sui). The insurgents have also stressed rampant human rights violations perpetrated by state
actors in their push to pacify the province.
Together with this shit in favor of an urbanizing middle-class Baluch resistance movement,
however, some observers have also gone on to stress key changes within the state itself in favor of
religion. In particular, some allege that the pro-government vigilantes unleashed to “disappear”
Baluch insurgents maintain close ties to Punjab-based sectarian groups like ASWJ and its anti-Shia
militant wing, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. 21 In short, the battle for Baluchistan has slowly evolved along
rival middle-class agendas—a secular agenda dominated by insurgent Baluch (in collaboration
with certain tribal elites) versus a sectarian agenda dominated by Punjabis (working indirectly
with the state).
18 Frederic Grare, “Balochistan: The State Versus the Nation,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 11, 2013, 9,
http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/04/11/balochistan-state-versus-nation.
19 Ugo E.M. Fabietti, “Equality versus Hierarchy: Conceptualising Change in Southern Balochistan,” in Marginality and Modernity: Ethnicity
and Change in Post-Colonial Balochistan, ed. Paul Titus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 13–15, 18.
20 Nina Swidler, “Beyond Parody: Ethnography Engages Nationalist Discourse,” in Titus, Marginality and Modernity, 187–88.
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21 See Grare, “Balochistan,” 17.
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