Escalating Violence in Balochistan's Pashtun Areas Opens a New Front for Pakistan's Security Forces

Pakistani security officials stand guard near the Customs regional warehouse where security forces and fighters clashed following an attack in Pishin district, Balochistan, Pakistan, on September 1, 2026. Violence has surged since June across Balochistan’s Pashtun-majority districts, areas which had largely escaped the fighting that has engulfed much of Pakistan’s southwestern province. Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province by area, resource-rich but its least developed, bordering Afghanistan and Iran. While Baloch nationalist rebels have waged an armed rebellion against the state there for two decades, the Pashtun-majority districts had, until recently, remained largely outside that conflict. That pattern has now changed.

On September 1, security forces said they had repelled an attack, claimed by the Pakistan Taliban (known by the acronym TTP), on a customs facility at a major intersection, Ziarat Cross, in the Pashtun-dominated Pishin district, 100km northeast of Balochistan’s capital Quetta. Several armed fighters and six security and customs personnel were killed. Three days later, security forces said they had killed 26 more fighters from the group in a separate operation in Shaban, on the outskirts of Quetta, another Pashtun-populated area. It was during the same period, on September 3, that gunmen ambushed a paramilitary convoy returning from Ziarat district, situated more than 100 kilometres east of Quetta.

Data from multiple Pakistani monitoring organisations tracking violence shows that Balochistan has this year overtaken neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as the country’s most violent province. The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), an Islamabad-based think tank, publishes monthly and weekly assessments of violence across the country. According to its data, Balochistan has been Pakistan’s most affected province through most of 2026, with the gap over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa widening sharply from July. PICSS called July “the deadliest month of 2026” nationally and said the security situation had deteriorated most sharply in Balochistan.

The military’s own moves suggest it is treating the shift seriously. Faisal Naseer, until recently the director-general for counterintelligence at Inter Services Intelligence, was appointed national coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) on September 4. The following day, Naseer was in Quetta when Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir visited Quetta Garrison, where he was given a detailed briefing on measures aimed at maintaining peace and stability across Balochistan.

Open-source tracking by the Durand Dispatch shows that 11 Pashtun-majority districts – Zhob, Sherani, Qila Saifullah, Loralai, Musakhail, Duki, Barkhan, Pishin, Qila Abdullah, Ziarat and Harnai – recorded not a single attack by an armed group between January and May. That changed the following month, with Pashtun-majority districts recording at least 13 attacks by armed groups since then, significantly straining trade corridors like the N-40 and N-25 highways used for commerce with Iran and Karachi.