ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF TERRORISM IN PAKISTAN: A CASE STUDY OF BALOCHISTAN

Abstract

This study explores the intricate interaction between models of the political economy and the persistence of terrorism in Balochistan, which is the largest province territorially in Pakistan but the most economically marginalized area. Although Balochistan has a lot of natural resources, such as natural gas reserves, copper deposits, and coal mines, Balochistan has been entangled in underdevelopment cycles, with the poverty rates much higher than the national rates, and unemployment among the youth being a major socioeconomic problem. The paradoxical nature of the province, consisting of an abundance of resources and institutional poverty, requires strict consideration of the processes by which the failure to govern resources can be transformed into the threat of security. This paper uses a research method that incorporates a two-theory approach (Relative Deprivation Theory and Structural Violence Theory) to explain how institutional structures tend to ensure that resource extraction benefits are concentrated at the federal level and costs and environmental degradation are transferred to provincial communities. This skewed distribution creates accumulating grievances beyond the material deprivation to include political marginalization, cultural marginalization, and loss of institutional legitimacy. The research, based on systematic qualitative analysis of historical sources and records of the policies as well as the literature by scholars, proves that terrorism in Balochistan is a logical reaction to structural injustice instead of an expression of ideological extremism.