Forget India. Pakistan is already at war—with itself

For the past few days, headlines have whisked around the possibility of escalating tensions between India and Pakistan. As always, the uncertainity looms—will there be another conflict, another round of rhetoric, or even a war?

But to be fixated on the India-Pakistan border is to be blind to a more pressing, more pressing reality—one that plays out not in Jammu and Kashmir, but in the alleys of Quetta, Gwadar, Turbat, and Dera Bugti. For even as Pakistan postures on the international stage, it is disintegrating not from the outside, but from the decay infecting its very center.

Pakistan's biggest threat is not India. It is Pakistan itself.

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The truth is this: Pakistan is already at war. But not with India. It is fighting battles across its own soil—against its own people.

At the heart of this disintegration is Balochistan—a province chained under military regimes, strangulated by institutional neglect, and crying out to be heard in a land that responds only with steel and silence.

Balochistan: Abundant resources, deficient rights

Balochistan is the country's biggest province, accounting for almost 44% of the country's landmass and resting on enormous deposits of natural gas, minerals, and a strategic Arabian Sea coastline. It should be the crown jewel of Pakistan's economy. Instead, it's an open sore.

Balochistan has made its claims for autonomy, equal representation, and a fair share of the wealth stolen from its land since the country was founded in 1947. In retaliation, the state has dealt with its citizens not as citizens, but as insurgents. Whole generations have come of age under the shadow of occupation. Towns have been destroyed in counter-insurgency campaigns. Mass graves have been found. Thousands have "disappeared"—students, activists, professors, journalists—dropping into the machinery of the security state, never to be heard from again.

Pakistan's official history writes off this decades-long insurrection as terrorism, a matter of national security to be "managed" by brute force. But the reality is much dirtier, and much more indicting. Balochistan is not just rebelling—it is screaming. And the cry is being drowned out in the sound of fighter planes and the silence of complicit media.

The Pakistan Army: From defense to domination

Over the past few years, Islamabad's civilian government has increasingly been dismantled, granting unparalleled power to the military in the name of national security. Pakistan's army no longer just defends borders—it dictates the state.

The army runs huge business empires, dictates foreign policy, manipulates election results, and dominates the national narrative. It is judge, jury, and, all too often, executioner. The price of this militarised rule has been catastrophic—not just for Balochistan but for every region of Pakistan.

In Sindh, student movements lament the kidnapping of their comrades. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where terror war ghosts haunt villages, villagers seethe in anger against the militants and against the soldiers engaged in fighting them. In Gilgit-Baltistan, mineral-rich but politically abandoned, there are demands for rights that find no voice.

The myth of unity

The Pakistani establishment is only too eager to whip out the cry of "One Pakistan." But unity cannot be created by coercion. It cannot be maintained on the shoulders of disappearances, censorship, and repression.

The federation is breaking apart. Ethnic minorities—Baloch, Sindhis, Pashtuns, and others—are increasingly alienated, demonised, and disposable. Unifying Pakistan today is not a sense of shared purpose, but fear—fear underpinned by men in uniform and policies scribbled in secret.

This is no longer a set of regional complaints. It is a national crisis of legitimacy. And with state violence increasingly displacing political discourse, the underpinnings of the nation itself begin to shift.

India's role

It will be tempting for India to respond—to meet every insult with strength or diplomatic artillery. But Pakistan is no longer a monolithic threat. It is a house divided, weak and explosive.

Militarily engaging with such a divided state threatens to destabilise the region further and reinforce the Pakistani military's narrative of foreign threat—enabling it to further suppress dissent in the name of nationalism.

The more prudent way for India is restraint—not weakness, but tactics. Observe closely. Record the facts.

A country at war with its own

Governments tend to divert internal failure by creating external foes. Yet no amount of diplomatic battles or spats can hide the fact that Pakistan is a warring state—with its provinces, with its people, and with the concept of democracy.

The fire in Balochistan is not isolated. It is symbolic. It reflects the deeper illness afflicting the entire state structure: A refusal to listen, to engage, to compromise. A preference for control over consensus. Militarism over governance. Suppression over reform.

And this internal strife cannot be won with guns. Because when a state starts to lose the faith of its own citizens, no army is big enough to keep it intact.

The real battlefield

As the war drums beat ever louder throughout South Asia, it's so easy to concentrate on aerial bombardments, summits, and the next diplomatic crisis. But the actual war is within Pakistani boundaries—within Balochistan villages, Sindh universities, and Gilgit-Baltistan mountains.

The conflict in Balochistan is not just a regional issue—it is a mirror reflecting the broader dysfunction of the state. Until Pakistan begins to confront its internal contradictions, any talk of confrontation with India is not just misguided—it is a dangerous distraction.

Before it hoists the flag of war abroad, Pakistan must fight for peace, justice, and dignity at home. Because however loudly the slogans are shouted or high-flying the missiles, a nation divided against itself is already defeated.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)