The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

by Declan Walsh

It made little sense. The Baloch insurgency posed a puny military threat to Pakistan’s military, the world’s sixth-largest, with 800,000 men under arms. Western apathy toward the plight of the Baloch left Pakistan’s generals free to fight the rebels as they pleased. And yet, Balochistan had become the biggest chip on their shoulders. Why? Certainly, the province had strategic value – vast mineral resources and remote locations suitable for hiding nuclear weapons – and was the focus of a multi-billion-dollar economic corridor funded by China. On top of that, the army had a reflexive contempt for tribesmen it viewed as impudent upstarts. But perhaps, also, it came down to less tangible