The Nature of the Balochistan Conflict in Pakistan: Exploring the Greed and Grievance Theories

In this paper the primary emphasis is on the nature of the Balochistan conflict in Pakistan. I will explain the greed theory highlighting the central arguments of Collier, Collier and Hoeffler. I uphold the viewpoint of Murshed and Korf, who declare that it is not only greed, or indeed, only grievance, that provokes civil conflict, but that it is both greed and grievance that are causes of conflict. Balochistan is one of the federating units (called provinces) of Pakistan, which constitutes 45 % of Pakistan's total territory, has been in a state of confrontation with Pakistani state since 1948. There is no doubt that greed and grievance are both equally important factors when one wants to determine the causes of conflict. My argument is that the conflict in the Pakistani province of Balochistan is not only a greed-grievance nexus but it is also all about ethnicity and ideology. This is a multi-dimensional conflict. The greed-grievance nexus, ethnicity, the marginalization of ethnic Baloch, their relative economic deprivation, and various historical reasons are escalating the conflict in Balochistan. While greed-based theory seems to explain this very well empirically, the problems come in trying to relate these greed-based findings with reality as many of their affirmations are non-credible, for example, grievances that motivate rebels may be substantially disconnected from the larger social concerns of inequality, political rights, and ethnic or religious identity. On the other hand, grievance-based arguments are good in explaining theoretically the factors relating to civil conflict, but their lack of empirical evidence and their insistence on making philosophical statements make them lose legitimacy. For this reason, a combination of both greed and grievance models which includes ethnicity and ideology could give us a more complete picture of the situation in countries with civil conflicts. The Balochistan conflict in Pakistan may be one of the illustrations, that is the dominant view in this paper.