Al-Qadi, who worked as a secretary for physician Rania Al-Abbasi, was last seen on March 11, 2013, when she left her home in the Dummar district of Damascus after receiving what relatives described as an urgent telephone call. According to family members, she never returned.

Her case remains unresolved despite years of inquiries, unverified reports and searches through available records. Family members say they have received no official confirmation regarding her whereabouts or fate.

Speaking to Syria’s state news agency SANA, relatives described Al-Qadi as a strong-willed and responsible daughter who often assumed a protective role within her family. Her father, Mohammad Fares Al-Qadi, recalled personal memories of his daughter, including performing Umrah together, which he said had helped sustain him through years of uncertainty.

Her sister, Fatima Al-Qadi, said the family learned after her disappearance that Majdoleen had quietly participated in humanitarian efforts, helping distribute aid to displaced families in the Dummar area.

According to relatives, Al-Qadi was detained upon arriving at the home of Al-Abbasi, along with members of the doctor’s family, in an operation allegedly carried out by military intelligence under the government that ruled Syria at the time. The family said they were never formally informed of her detention or subsequent location.

Family members said years of searching exposed them to conflicting reports, false leads and individuals who claimed to possess information in exchange for money. Mahmoud Sheikh Al-Shabab, Al-Qadi’s uncle, said the family repeatedly received contradictory accounts suggesting she had been transferred between detention facilities, but none could be independently verified.

The prolonged uncertainty took a significant emotional toll. Relatives said Al-Qadi’s mother experienced deteriorating health during the years-long search and died in 2018 after being diagnosed with cancer.

In an effort to find evidence, Fatima Al-Qadi recently reviewed archival videos and records related to detainees and missing persons, including materials held by Syria’s National Commission for Missing Persons. She said she was unable to identify her sister in any of the available footage, although she recognized children belonging to Al-Abbasi’s family.

With no confirmed information emerging, the family held condolence gatherings on June 4 and 5. Relatives emphasized that the event was symbolic and intended to honor Majdoleen’s memory rather than represent official confirmation of her death.

Her case reflects a broader national challenge confronting Syria. According to estimates previously released by the National Commission for Missing Persons, between 120,000 and 300,000 missing-person cases remain unresolved across the country, making it one of the largest humanitarian and accountability issues stemming from more than a decade of conflict.

For families such as the Al-Qadis, the absence of definitive answers continues to leave a void that neither time nor speculation has been able to fill.

Some disappeared are released, broken by torture. Some are formally charged. Some are killed and their bodies dumped.

Some human rights crises burst into international consciousness through a single image, a single video, a single act of resistance that the world cannot ignore. Other crises unfold in the dark, year after year, building a pile of unaddressed suffering that grows so high it becomes invisible. Balochistan belongs to the second category. It is the most underreported sustained human rights crisis in modern South Asia, and the international community’s silence on it is one of the diplomatic failures of our time.

The numbers, when assembled, are difficult to dismiss. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee documented over 1,250 cases of enforced disappearance in 2025. The Human Rights Council of Balochistan recorded 1,455 cases in the same year. Paank, the human rights wing of the Baloch National Movement, documented 95 enforced disappearances in November 2025 alone, along with 21 cases of severe torture and 20 extrajudicial killings. These figures, reflecting only what could be verified, suggest that what is happening in Balochistan is not occasional repression but a sustained campaign of state violence against a population.

The Pattern of Disappearances

The mechanism of enforced disappearance in Balochistan follows a well-documented pattern. Pakistani security forces, operating in plain clothes or in uniform, conduct raids on homes, often at night, and take individuals away without warrants, charges, or notification of family members. The detained person enters a network of informal detention centres run by the army or intelligence services, where they may be held for weeks, months, or years without external contact.

Some of the disappeared are eventually released, often visibly broken by torture, with explicit warnings against speaking publicly about their experience. Some are formally charged after extended periods in incommunicado detention and transferred to regular prison. Some are killed during their detention, with their bodies dumped near roads or in remote areas, in what Baloch activists call kill and dump operations. And some simply vanish, never accounted for, leaving families to wait indefinitely for information that does not come.

The targets of disappearance are not, by and large, militants. They are students, lecturers, journalists, doctors, lawyers, and human rights activists. Mahrang Baloch, the woman human rights defender who has emerged as the most prominent voice of the movement, is a medical doctor. Many of her colleagues in the Baloch Yakjehti Committee come from professional and academic backgrounds. The pattern is one of targeting the educated, articulate, and organisationally capable members of Baloch civil society, not just suspected separatists.

Some disappeared are released, broken by torture. Some are formally charged. Some are killed and their bodies dumped. Some simply vanish, never accounted for, leaving families to wait indefinitely.

The Recent Escalation

The crisis in Balochistan has escalated sharply since 2024. The triggering events have included a March 2025 attack by Baloch separatists on a passenger train, after which Pakistani authorities launched broad sweeps under the Counter Terrorism Department and arrested or disappeared several prominent Baloch human rights defenders. In response to peaceful protests organised against these arrests, Quetta police stormed a Baloch Yakjehti Committee gathering at the University of Balochistan in March 2025. A subsequent sit-in, organised by Mahrang Baloch and other activists, was raided by police using batons and tear gas at five-thirty in the morning.

The pattern continued through 2025 and into 2026. The provincial government’s approval of the Balochistan Prevention, Detention and Deradicalisation Rules 2025, signed off by Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti, was understood by human rights organisations as a state attempt to legalise the disappearance system that had been operating informally for years. The new rules permit the designation of individuals as suspects subject to interrogation in detention centres, formalising what had previously been an extra-legal practice.

Federal-level changes have made the situation worse. Amendments to Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 now allow law enforcement to detain individuals for up to three months without charge or judicial oversight. This power has been used repeatedly against Mahrang Baloch and other Baloch Yakjehti Committee activists. The legal framework that emerged in 2025 essentially provides Pakistani authorities with broad discretion to detain whoever they wish for as long as they wish, with minimal accountability.

The International Response Gap

The international response to Balochistan has been thin compared to the scale of the crisis. UN human rights experts have issued statements. Some Western governments have raised concerns in private diplomatic channels. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have published reports. But there has been no sustained international campaign comparable to those organised around other comparable crises. There has been no UN Security Council attention. There have been no targeted sanctions against the Pakistani officials responsible. There has been no equivalent of the Magnitsky-style measures that Western states use for other human rights abusers.

The reasons for this gap are partly geopolitical. Pakistan has been treated as an important state by various Western governments, by China, and by Saudi Arabia. Each of these relationships has imposed costs on the willingness of those states to confront Pakistan publicly on its conduct in Balochistan. But the gap is not just about external geopolitics. It is also about the difficulty of access. Foreign journalists are largely barred from Balochistan. Foreign human rights observers face severe restrictions. The information space is, by Pakistani design, opaque. As a result, what is happening in Balochistan does not generate the kind of viral images and stories that drive sustained international attention.

This dynamic has allowed the Pakistani state to operate in Balochistan with a degree of impunity that would not be tolerated anywhere with greater external scrutiny. The pattern of disappearances has continued for over two decades. The international response has been incremental concern, rarely translating into structural pressure.

What Operation Sindoor Changed

Operation Sindoor, indirectly, has begun to change the international information environment around Pakistan. The detailed exposure of Pakistan’s relationship with Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba during the May 2025 conflict, combined with international attention to the Pahalgam massacre, has raised broader questions about the Pakistani state’s conduct. Some of those questions extend naturally to Balochistan. If Pakistan’s security establishment is willing to host UN-designated terrorists in major cities, what is it willing to do to its own citizens in marginalised provinces?

Indian diplomatic engagement with international human rights bodies has also become more sophisticated. The contrast between India’s open society in Kashmir, where journalists work and tourists travel, and Pakistan’s closed system in Balochistan has been highlighted in international forums by Indian representatives in ways that previously felt heavy-handed but now resonate more credibly.

The Baloch movement itself has become more articulate, more organised, and more capable of presenting its case in international languages. Mahrang Baloch’s prominence as a face of the movement has helped. So has the work of diaspora communities in Europe, North America, and the Gulf, who have built advocacy networks that did not exist a decade ago.

These developments are early. They have not yet translated into the structural international pressure that would force a change in Pakistani conduct. But they represent a shift in the information landscape that, if sustained, may eventually force the world to look more carefully at what has been happening in Balochistan for far too long. The first step is to refuse to look away. Operation Sindoor, by exposing what Pakistan does abroad, may help sustain attention on what Pakistan does at home. That is a small consolation for the families of the missing. It is not nothing.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

Women survivors of Nepal’s decade-long internal conflict are increasingly shaping the country’s transitional justice process, as advocacy efforts led by survivors push for accountability, legal reform, and recognition of conflict-related sexual violence.

The conflict between government forces and Maoist insurgents from 1996 to 2006 left at least 13,000 people dead and more than 1,300 missing, according to United Nations estimates. Women were among those most affected, facing arbitrary detention, torture, rape, forced displacement, and other violations, while also playing significant roles as combatants and political actors.

Devi Khadka, a former member of Nepal’s Constituent Assembly and a prominent women’s rights activist, is among those who have transformed personal trauma into sustained advocacy. Detained at the age of 17, she was tortured and subjected to gang rape by police who accused her of aiding her brother, a Maoist activist.

Reflecting on her experience, Khadka said a lack of understanding about trauma at the time shaped her response. “I didn’t understand why I suffered this,” she said, describing how she later joined the Maoist movement during a period marked by psychological distress and a desire to confront her circumstances.

Years later, the public disclosure of her rape by Maoist leaders compounded the trauma, exposing her to further harm and reinforcing the challenges faced by survivors in seeking dignity and privacy.The 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement formally ended the conflict and initiated Nepal’s transition toward democratic governance. Transitional justice mechanisms, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons, were established to investigate violations and promote reconciliation.

However, progress has been slow, and transitional justice remains one of the agreement’s unresolved commitments.Women survivors have faced systemic barriers in accessing justice, including stigma, social exclusion, and institutional limitations. Many lost family members who were primary earners, leaving them to assume economic responsibilities while also dealing with long-term psychological and physical impacts of violence.

Official data underscores the extent of underreporting. Of more than 63,000 complaints filed with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, only 314 were classified as cases of sexual violence prior to legal reforms in 2024. Analysts attribute this gap to fear of retaliation, social stigma, and a lack of trust in institutions.

In response, Khadka and a group of survivors established Aparajit, meaning “the Undefeated,” a network aimed at supporting victims and advocating for systemic change. The organization has facilitated access to medical and legal services while promoting collective action among survivors.Khadka said the initiative initially faced resistance and accusations of undermining national reputation.

However, support from media organizations helped bring visibility to the issue, enabling the movement to expand and gain broader recognition.Advocacy efforts have contributed to tangible legal reforms. In August 2024, Nepal amended its transitional justice law to address longstanding gaps in the treatment of sexual violence cases.

The revised legislation includes provisions to classify sexual violence more comprehensively, remove statutes of limitation, and ensure that serious crimes are not subject to sentence commutation.Khadka said previous legal definitions were inadequate, narrowly interpreting rape and excluding various forms of sexual violence. “We brought up almost 75 percent of cases where the victim herself doesn’t call it sexual violence, and society doesn’t either,” she said, highlighting the need for broader recognition of such crimes.

The amended law also reopened the process for filing complaints, allowing survivors who had previously been unable or unwilling to come forward to seek redress. These changes reflect a shift toward a more inclusive and survivor-centered approach, though implementation challenges remain.At the international level, Khadka and other survivors have engaged with United Nations platforms to advocate for reforms.

Speaking at a Human Rights Council panel in Geneva in September 2025, she emphasized the importance of including survivors in designing justice mechanisms.“Especially in the case of sexual violence… it should be done with the involvement of the survivors themselves,” she said, noting that legal frameworks often fail to capture the lived realities of victims.

UN Human Rights has supported Nepal’s transitional justice process through technical assistance, policy advice, and engagement with government institutions, civil society, and victims’ groups. The organization has emphasized the need for a victim-centered approach that aligns with international legal standards and addresses root causes of conflict.

Efforts also focus on integrating gender considerations into justice mechanisms. The UN’s Women’s Rights and Gender Section has worked to highlight issues such as gender-based violence and women’s participation in post-conflict governance, aiming to ensure that survivors’ experiences inform policy decisions.Khadka said international support has been critical in advancing reforms and amplifying survivor voices.

Representing more than 3,800 individuals in her network, she noted that access to global platforms has strengthened advocacy efforts and contributed to legislative progress.For many survivors, participation in these processes carries both practical and symbolic significance. Public testimony, particularly in the presence of state authorities, can serve as a form of recognition and validation, helping to restore dignity.

Khadka described this recognition as central to recovery. “If a person’s lived experience becomes untrue… then there is no meaning to a life,” she said, underscoring the role of acknowledgment in the pursuit of justice.Nepal’s experience reflects broader challenges in post-conflict societies, where balancing accountability, reconciliation, and institutional reform requires sustained political commitment and inclusive approaches.

The increasing involvement of women survivors in shaping policy marks a shift toward more participatory models of transitional justice.As reforms continue, the emphasis on survivor-led advocacy highlights the role of lived experience in addressing systemic gaps and advancing accountability within complex post-conflict environments.

The latest incident occurred on 27 September in the Dasht Konchati area of Kech, where Pakistani forces reportedly carried out a late-night raid. Two men — Altaf, son of Habtain, and Gulab, son of Ayub Baloch — were seized from the area. According to family members, no information has been provided by authorities about their location or condition.

Two days earlier, on 25 September, Saud, son of Haji Rahim, was taken from his home in Hairabad. His relatives remain unaware of his fate, heightening concerns he too has been forcibly disappeared.

Human rights activist Noora Marri, commenting on the pattern of detentions, said the situation has become unbearable for families across the province.

“Every week brings new names of disappeared Baloch men. Their families are left to suffer in silence while the state refuses to acknowledge their arrests,” she wrote in The Baloch Circle. “This cycle of fear must end.”

While several individuals remain missing, there have been a few recent releases. Sheeraz, son of Ghulam Qadir, from Barkhan, who was detained on 20 September, returned home a week later.

In Turbat, Siraj, son of Sanjar, was freed on 27 September after being detained the day before. Meanwhile, Asghar Karmdani has also been reunited with his family after spending three months in custody.

Security operations continue across the wider region. In Buleda, forces stormed homes in the Gardank area on Saturday, with local witnesses reporting gunfire in residential neighbourhoods — though no casualties have been confirmed. In Panjgur district, raids were conducted in Haji Isa Bazaar, Haji Hakeem Bazaar and Kadaan, where houses were searched and the surroundings photographed and filmed. No arrests or injuries have been reported in these operations.

For many in Balochistan, such raids — often followed by disappearances — have become a grim routine, reinforcing long-held fears of unchecked security powers and a lack of accountability.

In a formal communication dated 13 August 2025, UN Special Rapporteurs requested clarification from Islamabad following reports concerning the deaths of journalist and human rights advocate Abdul Latif Baloch and his son, Saif Baloch, as well as the arrest of civil society coordinator Gulzar Dost.

The experts said they were deeply concerned by allegations that the killings were linked to reprisals against Mr Baloch’s family. They called on authorities to ensure an “independent, impartial and transparent” investigation, warning that accountability was essential.

According to the letter, Abdul Latif Baloch was shot dead by unidentified armed men at his home in Mashkay, Awaran district, on 24 May 2025. His son Saif was reportedly detained by Pakistani military personnel on 28 February and subsequently disappeared. His body was recovered on 26 March, prompting fears of enforced disappearance and extrajudicial execution.

The communication also referred to Mr Baloch’s earlier detention and alleged torture by security agencies. It noted that his brother, Rasheed Ali Baloch, died in custody in 2011 – raising what the UN experts called a pattern of human rights abuses linked to security operations in Balochistan.

Concerns were also raised over the case of activist Gulzar Dost, coordinator of the Turbat Civil Society Forum. He was taken from his home on 6 July 2025 and charged under anti-terrorism laws despite the lack of an arrest warrant, the letter said. He was released on bail on 1 August, but UN experts argued the case illustrated how anti-terror legislation was being used to target human rights defenders.

The letter set out seven specific questions for the Pakistani government, including updates on investigations into the deaths of Abdul Latif, Saif and Rasheed Baloch, and clarification of the legal basis for Mr Dost’s arrest.

Pakistan, the experts said, remains bound by international obligations to safeguard the right to life, protect freedom of expression and ensure the safety of those defending human rights. They urged authorities to act swiftly in addressing the allegations.

The world must confront an uncomfortable truth: Pakistan does not merely fight extremism—it manufactures it, repurposes it, and unleashes it on its own people.

For decades, Pakistan’s security establishment has perfected a dangerous strategy: using extremist groups as tools of statecraft. While presenting itself as a frontline ally in the “war on terror,” Islamabad has quietly nurtured violent networks to crush dissent, manipulate politics, and control narratives. Nowhere is this duplicity more visible than in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest yet most neglected province, where Daesh-linked groups and sectarian militias operate under the shadow of state protection.

Daesh Sanctuaries in the Heart of Balochistan

Daesh has publicly admitted to having sanctuaries in Mastung and Khuzdar, two regions that were once strongholds of sectarian militants. Instead of dismantling these extremist hubs, Pakistan’s establishment allegedly repurposed them for political utility. Militants who once targeted Shias were redirected towards suppressing Baloch nationalists and silencing voices of dissent.

These sanctuaries offered more than mere safe haven. Training camps, recruitment networks, and financial channels enabled extremists to extend their reach across the province and beyond. Evidence points to these camps being linked to suicide bombings in Sindh and massacres of Hazara Shias in Quetta, demonstrating that Balochistan’s militancy is not isolated but integrated into a nationwide terror infrastructure.

The Rise of Shafiq Mengal: From Extremist Recruit to State Asset

A central figure in this playbook is Shafiq Mengal, son of former Balochistan Chief Minister Naseer Mengal. After leaving Aitchison College, he immersed himself in a Deobandi seminary and developed links with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group long accused of enjoying state patronage. By the mid-2000s, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had reportedly recruited him as a pro-state tribal leader.

Mengal founded the Musalla Diffa Tanzeem, a militia that became synonymous with abductions, torture, and extrajudicial killings. His death squads targeted activists, students, and poets who championed Baloch rights. What began in Khuzdar soon spread to Wadh, transforming peaceful regions into hubs of sectarian terror. Under Mengal’s leadership, extremists flourished, often acting with complete impunity.

Pakistan’s “Kill-and-Dump” Strategy

Since 2008, Balochistan has witnessed a grim pattern of disappearances and executions, a policy critics describe as “kill-and-dump.” Death squads like Mengal’s were instrumental in executing this strategy on behalf of the state.

A grenade attack on a Baloch Students Organization (BSO-Azad) rally took place in 2010. This was followed by targeted assaults on cultural events, which killed and crippled young participants. Abductions and executions of minors, such as Balaach and Majeed Zehri, further deepened the climate of fear.

Each incident reinforced the perception that Pakistan’s security agencies outsourced their dirtiest operations to extremists. This outsourcing provided deniability to the Army while terrorizing Baloch civil society into silence.

The impact of these networks was not confined to Balochistan. Suicide bombings in Sindh’s Shikarpur, targeted killings of Hazara Shias, and assassination attempts on political leaders like MQM’s Khawaja Izhar-ul-Haq all traced their roots back to Wadh’s training camps.

In 2016, the first captured Daesh suicide bomber confessed that he had been trained in Wadh, and that his explosive vest was assembled by a handler named “Maaz.” Such revelations highlight how Balochistan’s extremist infrastructure fed directly into Pakistan’s broader sectarian and political violence.

The Double Game of Pakistan’s Establishment

The strategic logic behind nurturing militias becomes clear when examining their political utility. Baloch nationalist leaders, students, and intellectuals became primary targets of Mengal’s squads. Writers, poets, and activists who articulated demands for rights were branded “Indian agents” and eliminated.

Even established politicians, including Sardar Akhtar Mengal, accused the Army of arming and protecting militias to suppress nationalist movements. The complicity extended deep into the political class. Caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bughti, for example, has been accused of maintaining his own militia. This convergence of politics, militancy, and military patronage reveals how entrenched the system has become.

Pakistan’s security establishment has long practiced a dangerous double game. While presenting itself to Washington, Brussels, and Riyadh as a committed partner against extremism, it simultaneously sustains militias for “strategic depth.” In Balochistan, these groups are deployed to weaken nationalist movements. In regional politics, they offer Islamabad leverage in Afghanistan and India.

Figures like Shafiq Mengal are the byproduct of this strategy: once extremists, later repackaged as state allies, always indispensable for maintaining control. Meanwhile, dissenting voices are silenced through fear, exile, or assassination.

The Real Terror Factory

Behind the headlines lies a deeply human tragedy. Families of missing persons gather daily in Quetta and other cities, holding photographs of sons, brothers, and fathers who vanished at the hands of militias or security forces. Their peaceful protests are often met with indifference—or outright repression. Even demonstrations in Islamabad demanding accountability have been crushed, underscoring the hypocrisy of Pakistan’s claims to democratic governance.

Civil society remains caught between the hammer of the Army and the anvil of extremists. While families demand answers, groups like Daesh and Mengal’s militias operate with apparent freedom, enjoying access to weapons, vehicles, and funding.

Balochistan offers a sobering lesson in how states can manufacture and weaponize extremism for political ends. The Daesh footprint in the province is not merely about sectarian violence; it reflects a deeper policy of political engineering and state-backed terror.

The career of Shafiq Mengal illustrates this dangerous nexus. From jihadi recruit to Army asset, his rise exemplifies how Pakistan’s establishment uses extremists to crush dissent, control politics, and maintain its dominance.

The world must confront an uncomfortable truth: Pakistan does not merely fight extremism—it manufactures it, repurposes it, and unleashes it on its own people. Until this duplicity is acknowledged, Balochistan will remain a killing field where freedom is strangled, and extremists act as the silent enforcers of military power.