Quetta, May 2026: The Enforced Disappearances Pakistan's Army Will Not Explain

On a Wednesday morning in March 2026, Farzana Majeed stood outside the Quetta Press Club holding a laminated photograph of her brother. She had been standing there for two thousand one hundred and seventy-three days. The photograph showed Zakir Majeed at twenty-eight, wearing a white shalwar kameez, his hair neatly combed. He was a geology student at Balochistan University. On November 8, 2019, he left his hostel room to buy bread. Four men in civilian clothes forced him into a white Toyota Corolla with tinted windows. His roommate watched from the window and wrote down the license plate number. The car belonged to the Intelligence Bureau, Quetta division.

Farzana filed a petition with the Balochistan High Court three weeks later. The Intelligence Bureau denied having any record of Zakir Majeed. The Deputy Commissioner of Police, Quetta, submitted an affidavit stating that no person by that name had been arrested or detained in the city. The university confirmed he had stopped attending classes on November 8, 2019. His hostel room was cleared out by unknown persons on November 15. His books, laptop, and clothes were never recovered. The court ordered the provincial government to produce Zakir Majeed or explain his whereabouts. The government did neither. The case remains open. Zakir Majeed remains missing.

Farzana is one of four hundred and sixty-two people who gather outside the Quetta Press Club every Wednesday. They call themselves the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons. They hold photographs. They chant slogans. They have been doing this since 2014. The youngest protester is seven years old. Her father disappeared in 2023. The oldest is seventy-nine. Her son disappeared in 2006. Between them, they represent twelve thousand documented cases of enforced disappearance in Balochistan since 2001, according to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, a Pakistani government body that has itself acknowledged the crisis it cannot resolve.

The Pattern the State Refuses to Name

The enforced disappearances follow a pattern so consistent that human rights lawyers in Islamabad can predict the sequence. A young Baloch man—typically between eighteen and thirty-five, often a student or low-level political activist—is seized by men in plain clothes driving vehicles without license plates or with government-registered plates. Witnesses see the abduction but are too afraid to intervene. The family files a First Information Report with the police, who claim no knowledge. The family then files a petition with the high court under Article 199 of the Constitution, demanding habeas corpus. The Intelligence Bureau, Inter-Services Intelligence, or Military Intelligence submits a denial. The court orders an investigation. The investigation produces no results. The case remains open indefinitely.

In some cases, the disappeared person is found months or years later in a detention facility run by the Frontier Corps or the Counter-Terrorism Department, held without charge under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997. In other cases, the body is found in a remote area with signs of torture—burns, broken bones, gunshot wounds to the head. The police classify these as "unidentified bodies" or "terrorist casualties." In the majority of cases, the person is never found. The family continues to protest. The state continues to deny.

The Pakistani military frames the disappearances as counterinsurgency operations against the Balochistan Liberation Army, the Balochistan Liberation Front, and other separatist groups that have waged a low-intensity insurgency since 2004. The insurgency has killed an estimated 2,100 security personnel and 1,800 civilians, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal. The military argues that Baloch nationalists receive funding and training from Indian intelligence—a claim India denies—and that the insurgents target Chinese workers and infrastructure linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which runs through Balochistan and represents $62 billion in planned investments.

But the families of the disappeared say their sons and brothers were not insurgents. They were students, shopkeepers, teachers, farmers. Zakir Majeed had never been arrested. He had no police record. His university transcript showed he attended classes regularly and maintained a 3.2 grade point average. His professors described him as quiet and apolitical. His roommate said he spent his evenings studying mineralogy and listening to music. He did not own a weapon. He had never left Quetta.

What the Documents Show

In February 2025, the Asian Human Rights Commission obtained internal records from the Frontier Corps detention facility in Khuzdar, Balochistan, through a whistleblower. The records, covering the period from January 2022 to October 2024, list three hundred and forty-seven detainees held without formal charges. The list includes names, ages, dates of detention, and a column labeled "status." Fifty-one detainees are marked "released." Seventy-nine are marked "transferred." The remaining two hundred and seventeen are marked "in custody." None appear in official detention records submitted to the courts.

Among the names is Zakir Majeed. The document shows he was detained on November 8, 2019, and held in Khuzdar until March 2021, when his status changes to "transferred." No destination is listed. The Asian Human Rights Commission cross-referenced the list with missing persons cases filed with the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances. One hundred and ninety-three names matched. The Commission shared the findings with Pakistan's Ministry of Interior in April 2025. The Ministry called the documents "fabricated" and declined to comment further.

Farzana Majeed showed the leaked document to her lawyer. He filed a new petition in March 2026, citing the Khuzdar records as evidence that Zakir had been in state custody. The Frontier Corps submitted a one-page response stating that it "does not operate detention facilities in Khuzdar" and that the document was "a forgery designed to malign the armed forces." The court has scheduled a hearing for June 2026. Farzana does not expect a resolution. She has attended thirty-one hearings since 2019. Each one ends the same way: the case is adjourned, the state denies knowledge, and she returns to the protest outside the Press Club.

The Bodies That Reappear

Between January 2014 and December 2025, authorities recovered one thousand four hundred and twelve bodies in Balochistan that bore signs of torture, according to data compiled by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. The bodies were found in ravines, irrigation canals, roadside ditches, and empty lots on the outskirts of Quetta, Khuzdar, Turbat, and Gwadar. Most were decomposed beyond recognition. Those that could be identified were linked to missing persons cases. The families describe the same injuries: cigarette burns on the chest and back, broken ribs, fractured skulls, bullet wounds to the head at close range.

In April 2023, the body of Hayat Baloch, a twenty-six-year-old missing since August 2021, was found near the town of Mastung. His brother identified him by a scar on his left ankle. The autopsy, conducted by the District Medical Officer, noted "multiple injuries consistent with blunt force trauma" and "a gunshot wound to the right temple." The police registered the death as "killed in an encounter with security forces" and classified Hayat as a member of the Balochistan Liberation Army. His family denies he had any connection to the insurgency. His university records show he was enrolled in a master's program in political science. He had no criminal record. The family filed a petition demanding a judicial inquiry. The petition is still pending.

The System That Protects Itself

Pakistan's legal framework offers no meaningful recourse for families seeking accountability. The Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997, amended multiple times, allows security forces to detain suspects for up to ninety days without charge. The Protection of Pakistan Act of 2014, which expired in 2016 but whose provisions were incorporated into provincial laws, grants immunity to security personnel acting "in good faith" during counterterrorism operations. The Pakistan Army Act of 1952 places military personnel under military courts, shielding them from civilian prosecution.

In practice, this means that even when families obtain evidence of detention or torture, they cannot prosecute. In 2022, the family of Ashraf Baloch, missing since 2017, obtained CCTV footage showing him being forced into a vehicle outside his home in Turbat. The vehicle was traced to the Counter-Terrorism Department. The family filed a criminal complaint under Section 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code, which criminalizes kidnapping. The complaint was dismissed on the grounds that the Counter-Terrorism Department had acted under the Anti-Terrorism Act and thus enjoyed legal immunity. The footage was ruled inadmissible. Ashraf Baloch has not been seen since.

The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, established in 2011 under pressure from the Supreme Court, has proven ineffective. It has no prosecutorial power, no authority to compel testimony from military or intelligence officials, and no enforcement mechanism. Its recommendations are non-binding. In its 2025 annual report, the Commission acknowledged that it had "successfully resolved" only thirty-three percent of registered cases—a resolution defined as confirming the person's death, locating them in detention, or securing their release. The remaining sixty-seven percent remain unresolved. The report noted that intelligence agencies "frequently decline to cooperate" and that "witness intimidation remains a significant obstacle."

The International Community's Silence

The enforced disappearances in Balochistan have drawn limited international attention, even as similar abuses in other countries have triggered sanctions and diplomatic pressure. The United States, which designated Pakistan a "major non-NATO ally" in 2004 and has provided $33 billion in security and economic assistance since 2001, has never publicly condemned the disappearances. The U.S. State Department's annual human rights reports mention the issue in passing but take no action. When asked about enforced disappearances during a visit to Islamabad in January 2026, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. "encourages Pakistan to uphold the rule of law" but declined to specify consequences for failing to do so.

China, which has invested $62 billion in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and relies on Balochistan's Gwadar Port as a strategic asset, has never commented on the disappearances. When Baloch separatists killed fourteen Chinese engineers in an attack on a CPEC construction site in August 2024, Beijing called for "stronger security measures" but made no mention of the conditions that fuel the insurgency. The European Union issued a resolution in March 2024 expressing "concern" over enforced disappearances but imposed no sanctions and continued trade negotiations with Islamabad.

The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has sent fourteen urgent appeals to Pakistan since 2018, requesting information on specific cases. Pakistan responded to six. The responses provided no new information. In September 2025, the Working Group requested permission to conduct a fact-finding mission in Balochistan. The Pakistani government has not replied.

Still Waiting

Farzana Majeed knows that Zakir is most likely dead. She has known this since 2021, when the Commission of Inquiry told her that detainees held longer than two years are rarely returned alive. She has attended the funerals of other families' sons and brothers, seen the bodies with the same wounds, heard the same police reports classifying them as militants. She has read the leaked documents showing Zakir was transferred in March 2021. She has calculated that five years have passed.

But she continues to stand outside the Quetta Press Club every Wednesday. She continues to hold the laminated photograph. She continues to chant the same slogans, demanding that the state produce her brother or explain where he is. She does this not because she believes it will bring Zakir back, but because stopping would mean accepting that his disappearance does not matter—that the state can take a person, hold him in an undocumented facility, transfer him to an unknown location, and face no consequences.

On the morning of May 5, 2026, Farzana stands in the same spot she has occupied for two thousand one hundred and seventy-three days. The sun is hot. The crowd is smaller than usual—some families have given up, others have been intimidated into silence. A photographer from a local newspaper takes her picture. She holds the photograph of Zakir toward the camera. His face is fading. The lamination has cracked. But his eyes are still visible, looking directly at the lens, frozen at twenty-eight, on the day before he bought bread and never came home.

The state has still not answered her question.