Balochistan’s city of Gwadar has been the center of protests for the last few days. Roads and highways leading into the city have been blocked and countless protestors have been arrested. Uzair talks to Dr. Mahvish Ahmad to figure out what is going on in the province and better understand the underlying reasons for the crisis in Balochistan.

Dr. Mahvish Ahmad is an Assistant Professor in Human Rights and Politics. Before joining LSE, she was an A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape. She completed her PhD in Sociology at Cambridge. Earlier, Mahvish was a journalist covering military and insurgent violence in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, and co-founded the bilingual Urdu/English magazine Tanqeed with Madiha Tahir. She is currently completing a book on state violence in Pakistan’s southern province of Balochistan.

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

2:05 What’s going on in the province?

7:00 Multiple issues driving protests

13:30 Missing persons

19:05 Resource extraction

25:40 Historical drivers

32:55 Baloch protestors v. TLP

37:10 Islamabad politics and Balochistan

42:05 Evolution of Baloch society

51:05 Path forward

57:20 Reading recommendations

Reading recommendations:

- https://loksujag.com/special-edition/bloch-women-long-march

- https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/items/dee93c5f-6f5e-43a8-bfd7-e79de8d2d35f

- https://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/home-front-changing-insurgency-balochistan

- https://www.scribd.com/document/554334646/The-Problem-of-Greater-Balochistan-PDFDrive