Fire and echoes: How Nawab Akbar Bugti's killing ignited the fourth wave of Baloch resistance

Nearly 20 years later, the fourth wave is still in motion. The targets have shifted from lone outposts to coordinated, province-wide strikes like July 2025's Operation Baam, but the grievances have not.

- MAJ GEN R.P.S. BHADAURIA (RETD) NEW DELHI

The mountains around Kohlu in Balochistan are a hard place to hide. Jagged cliffs cast deep shadows across dry riverbeds, and the heat in August clings like a second skin. On the afternoon of August 26, 2006, those cliffs carried the echo of gunfire. Inside a narrow cave, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti—former governor and former chief minister of Balochistan, and the chief of the Bugti tribe—was making his final stand.

The hideout, located inside a cave in the Chalgri area of the Bhambhoor hills, was shelled and bombed by the military. Bugti's death was a result of intense bombardment and crossfire between his men and troops. Approximately 21 security personnel and dozens of Bugti's aides and followers were also killed during this operation.

However, there have been attempts to skew the fact, with claims that the cave collapsed due to an explosion of undetermined origin during what was described as a negotiation attempt by the military. That explanation has largely been seen as narrative control by the Pakistani security establishment.

When the dust from the firing cleared, Bugti was dead, along with several of his companions.

For President Pervez Musharraf's government, it was presented as a decisive victory against a "rebel chieftain." For many in Balochistan, it was the death of a leader who had refused to yield on demands for greater autonomy—and the beginning of the province's most enduring insurgent phase.

MAKING OF A MARTYR Bugti's political career was as complicated as the province he led. Educated in Lahore and Oxford, fluent in both the language of the tribes and the language of Islamabad, he had served as interior minister, as governor, and as chief minister. He could be combative—breaking alliances, switching sides—but his positions on Baloch control over resources rarely wavered.