Pakistan faces new frontier against attacks: Balochistan’s Pashtun areas

Islamabad, Pakistan — 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.

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 (62 miles) east of Quetta. A police officer, speaking to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, said more than a dozen paramilitary personnel were killed. The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent armed separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Pakistani military’s media wing, has not officially acknowledged the attack.

Al Jazeera sent seven questions to Pakistan’s military media wing about the security situation in Balochistan, including a query about the September 3 ambush, but received no response. Al Jazeera also sought comment from Babar Yousafzai, an official in the Balochistan home department, who did not respond. 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.

Its weekly review for the first week of that month recorded 25 attacks and 102 deaths in Balochistan alone, pointing to “increasing TTP activity in northern districts” as a contributing factor. The TTP, formed in 2007, is separate from the Afghan Taliban, though they fought together against United States-led forces in Afghanistan. The TTP has also hosted Afghan fighters in Pakistan.