23/05/2026
'When Mashal Khan was lynched on a university campus in Mardan after being falsely accused of blasphemy nine years ago, we were told something would give. Some argue that the apparent clampdown on the TLP is indicative that things have indeed changed, but that is to miss the point because no matter what the official policy is with respect to any kind of religiously inspired militancy, voices like Junaid Hafeez and Mashal are still being suppressed.
Baloch intellectuals are the biggest targets of all. The outrageous abduction of the two most senior administrators of Gwadar University is the latest example. Writers, poets and journalists are killed in cold blood. To simply attribute all of this wanton violence to separatist militants is neither here nor there; many in Balochistan don’t buy the claim that all targeted killings are the work of insurgents, and in any case, a state that cannot protect the cream of Baloch society from ‘enemies’ is failing to perform its basic function.
It is not by chance that Pakistan’s most pressing social, economic and political challenges today are more or less the same ones that have bogged us down since the early years; the centre-periphery divide; the weaponisation of religion; an extractive development model that benefits elites and their imperial patrons whilst pulverising the mass of people; and, finally, the militarisation of state and society. Things have continued to spiral because the establishment and its hangers-on refuse to allow interrogation of these structural crises. Those who nevertheless persist in raising critical questions are declared persona non grata, and even clumped together with the external ‘enemies’ that are supposedly the sole instigators of our problems.
Overall trends notwithstanding, the state has clamped down on social media discourse too. Those with even a cursory understanding of the digital surveillance apparatus know that what we are experiencing now is only the tip of a very large, totalitarian iceberg.
This does not mean that critical intellectuals will just die out. Indeed, growing repression is actually confirmation of their continued relevance. Those who continue to historicise and undertake in-depth interrogation of social phenomena, not least of all our long-standing structural crises, do so not to receive state-sanctioned medals but because of ideological and political commitments. History testifies that it is such commitments that prevent the complete dehumanisation of society and undergird the unending struggle for freedom.' Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
For most of our history, they have been at best isolated, and at worst criminalised.