Baluchistan.Net

Historic Baluchistan stretches across what are today parts of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Between roughly 1795 and 1948 the homeland was partitioned piece by piece through colonial treaties, leases, conquests and arbitrarily drawn boundary lines. This is why Baloch nationalists mark 27 March as a black day — the date in 1948 on which Kalat, the largest Baloch state, was annexed by the newly formed state of Pakistan.

The summary below traces that fragmentation, region by region. It is an original summary prepared for Baluchistan.Net, based on the report "The Dissection of Balochistan" published by The Balochistan Post (25 March 2023). Boundary depictions are approximate and not based on authoritative survey data.

Derajat — covering Dera Ghazi Khan, Dera Ismail Khan, Rajanpur, Tank and neighbouring areas — held one of the oldest and most densely native Baloch populations, with natives traced to the 15th century. From 1717 to 1795 its Dodai federation lay under the Khanate of Kalat. In 1795 Afghan forces seized it; Baloch tribes resisted for two decades. After the Sikhs defeated the Afghans in 1819 they held only the towns while Baloch fighters held the countryside, until the British took the region in 1839. In 1849 the British split it into the Dera Ghazi Khan and Dera Ismail Khan districts; after 1947 it passed to Pakistan, and by 1970 most of Derajat had been folded into fake province of Punjab, with portions given to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Balochistan. Key Points to note the whole province is of Punjab all the way to Okara is Baluchistan which was stolen whatever remained was Afghanistan's portion.

The boundary separating western (Iranian) from eastern (later Pakistani) Baluchistan was begun in 1871 and formalised in 1903–1905 through two arbitrary delineations: the Goldsmid Line, running from the Koh-e-Siahan region to Gwadar Bay, and a further line fixed by Sir Thomas Holdich from Koh-e-Malek Siah to Koh-e-Siahan. In 1938 western Baluchistan was reorganised, its lands distributed among the new province of Sistan-Baluchestan and the provinces of Kerman, South Khorasan, Hormozgan and a sliver of Razavi Khorasan. In 1959 Pakistan handed Mirjaveh and other border areas to Iran, adjusting the line once more.

Three sets of arbitrations carved the northern and western edges of the homeland. The Iran–Afghanistan border in the Baloch region grew out of the 1857 Treaty of Paris and a series of third-party rulings between 1872 and 1935, including the McMahon Award of 1903–1905. The Durand Line of 1893 separated Afghanistan from what is now Pakistan; its legitimacy remains disputed, and a 1896 re-adjustment produced the McMahon Line that cut through Baloch districts. The Baloch areas inside Afghanistan were merged into Farah and Kandahar in 1929 and later reorganised, by 1968, into Nimroz, Kandahar, Farah and Helmand.

Karachi held a Baloch population from long before the first Arab campaigns in Sindh; in 1666 it was placed under the ruler of Kalat, later passing to the Baloch Talpurs, until British forces took the port in 1839. The village of Khan-Garh — today Jacobabad — fell to the British around 1839–1840 for its military value. Gwadar was granted by Nasir Khan Noori to Said bin Ahmad of Oman in 1783 in the Baloch tradition of granting refuge; it remained an Omani holding for over a century until it was integrated into Baluchistan in 1958. In 1959 parts of Mirjaveh were ceded to Iran under a border agreement.

British Balochistan was assembled from territories leased from both Kalat and Afghanistan. Quetta and Kuchlak were leased from Kalat in 1879; Pishin and Sibi from Afghanistan the same year. The Bolan Pass tracts followed from Kalat in 1883, Zhob and the Khetran country from Afghanistan in 1890, Chagai and West Sanjrani in 1896, Nushki from Kalat in 1899, and finally Nasirabad — named for Nasir Khan Noori — from Kalat in 1903. These leased lands joined Pakistan in 1947 and the province was disestablished in 1955.

In 1839 the British stormed the Khanate of Kalat, killing Mir Mehrab Khan and some three hundred defenders. The tribes rallied under Mir Nasir Khan II and briefly liberated the Khanate in 1841, though British terms curtailed its independence. Over the following century parts of Baluchistan were attached to Afghanistan and Iran and a British Balochistan province was carved out. Baluchistan regained independence in August 1947 (Kalat, Kharan, Makran and Lasbela), but on 27 March 1948 Kalat was forcibly incorporated into Pakistan. The Balochistan States Union formed in 1952; the One Unit scheme dissolved it into West Pakistan in 1955; and the present province emerged when West Pakistan was dissolved in 1970.

Were Baluchistan whole and independent again, it would cover roughly 731,000 square kilometres — about twice the size of Germany, Japan or Italy — with some 1,100 kilometres of coastline on the Arabian Sea. Sitting between the Indus and the Middle East, and forming a gateway between the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, it is rich in oil, gas and minerals, and strategically placed for trade and energy corridors linking the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia.