Pakistan’s proxy wars come home

For the Baloch themselves, however, deniable armed power was hardly an American invention. By the late 2000s, reports of locally recruited pro-state militias had become an established feature of the conflict. Some were called peace committees, others tribal lashkars. Baloch activists generally used a less charitable expression: death squads. The Pakistani military and intelligence agencies have consistently rejected allegations that they created or controlled such groups, but Pakistani reporting and international research have documented accusations that Baloch gunmen-for-hire were used against nationalist organisations and activists. A Carnegie study published in 2013 explicitly compared the alleged system with the Al Shams and Al Badr militias employed by Pakistan during the 1971 war in East Pakistan.