Islamabad's repressive measures in Balochistan reminiscent of pre-1971 East Pakistan

New Delhi, July 28 (AHN) The history of Pakistan's fractures within is marked with crises, where there is a recurring pattern in which a central power dominated by political and military elites extracts resources and authority from peripheral regions while treating local populace as "second‑class citizens".

That pattern was starkly visible in the 1971 crisis that created Bangladesh and has been invoked repeatedly in studies and reports describing Balochistan today.

A grievance in both cases is the sense that despite supplying wealth to the centre, it receives little in return.

In the-then East Pakistan, economists and historians have documented how fiscal transfers, trade policies, and industrial investment favoured West Pakistan, producing persistent economic disparities.

As one study put it, East Pakistan "contributed disproportionately to Pakistan's export earnings while receiving a smaller share of public investment", a structural imbalance that fed political alienation.

Balochistan today is repeatedly described in similar terms where a province rich in minerals, gas, and strategic coastline remains Pakistan's poorest province.

A 2019 policy review and subsequent reporting highlight that large projects in mineral extraction, gas pipelines, and the China‑Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) investments have often been negotiated without local participation.

The benefits from such projects flow to federal actors, private contractors, and outside investors rather than to Baloch communities.

Balochistan has vast mineral resources with major gold and copper mines in Saindak and Reko Diq at its Chagai district.

With estimated reserves of nearly six billion tons of ore, Chagai reportedly has the world's largest untapped copper mine.

The Baloch hardly have representation in companies extracting minerals here, iterated an article in Bangladesh's Prothom Alo newspaper on Tuesday.

In 2024, the Canada-based Barrick Mining, reported earnings of three billion dollars, according to the article, which further added that the company is now estimating about 60 billion dollars from the Chagai project. Out of this, gold will account for 54 billion dollars, and the rest will come from copper.

Yet Chagai is the poorest area on average in all of Pakistan, it said, where all that copper and gold can't change the Baloch's fate.

"Even Pakistan's international friends don't bother about it. For this reason, the Baloch are opposed not just to Islamabad, but also to China and the US. They are unwilling to seek help from any international elders in their national struggle," it added.

However, Barrick itself claims on its website that as of March 2025, 77 per cent of the employees of Reko Diq Mining Company were from Balochistan province, 353 households have been provided with "reliable clean and safe water", 80 per cent population under 10-years-old have been provided access to education, and that $6.8 million have been invested in community initiatives.

The Prothom Alo article says that the reason why Islamabad and multinational companies can extract and market resources here without caring about local opinions is that there are very few people living in the mineral-rich, but inhospitable terrains.

It also pointed that in 2015, as part of China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing and Islamabad started developing an economic corridor in Balochistan.

"Initially, there were talks of a $60 billion investment. The US wasn't too happy about China's significant presence in this strategically important region," it said.

Citing Baloch's unhappiness with the CPEC project and on Gwadar port falling into China's hands, the article stressed that local people claim that only Islamabad and Beijing are benefitted, not residents.

Separate media reporting and human‑rights analyses document arrests, enforced disappearances, and restrictions on political practices having deepened the sense among many Baloch that they are treated as "second‑class citizens" within the Pakistani polity.

Earlier, in erstwhile East Pakistan, the political exclusion of Bengali leaders and the denial of meaningful power‑sharing all culminated in the refusal to accept the 1970 election results.

That led to the popular uprising and the creation of Bangladesh.

The crisis escalated in 1971 when Islamabad deployed overwhelming military force against political dissent in East Pakistan.

The use of force, and the refusal to negotiate, transformed a political crisis into a humanitarian and international catastrophe.

Historians note that the military's central role in decision‑making and its preference for coercion over accommodation were decisive.