Rife with historical tensions, Balochistan was fated for insurgency movements even before the inception of the Pakistani state in 1948. The reliance of the leading men on brutal force to suppress demands for increased political representation and rights have only served to awaken a once dormant Baloch nationalism. Extrajudicial killings and have been a regular feature of Baloch life for decades where tribal elders continue to make live a living hell for those under their reign. Those suspected of threatening thei narrative are immediately arrested and kept in secret detention centers without the oversight of official judicial processes. Some are eventually released but most are never seen again. Interrogated relentlessly for answers they don’t have and tortured until the skin meets the bone, these hapless beings remain at the receiving end of violence even as Pakistan transitioned from military dictatorships to democratic rule. The most recent of these incidents involves a triple-murder in Quetta’s red-zone, leading hundreds of Marri tribesmen to organize a sit-in against provincial minister, Serdar Khetran, who kept three young men and a woman captive in his private jail. While the Marri tribe only accounts for a small percentage of the region’s population, their relationship with the government has always been fraught with tension, isolating them from mainstream political structures. The sit-in was called off when Khan Muhammad Mari was reunited with his wife and missing children, all except two whose bodies were recovered at Barkhan. A post-mortem investigation revealed that the third body found at Barkhan, previously thought to be Marri’s wife, belonged to a 17 year old woman who was raped repeatedly then shot in the head and mutilated with acid to obscure her identity. Some demonstrators have decided to extend the sit-in until authorities are able to verify the unknown woman’s identity and the circumstances behind her murder. Serdar likely wouldn’t have been arrested if the media hadn’t caught wind of the incident. Since Pakistan’s inception, Baloch people have been systematically exploited by sardars, who inherited their special status under the British colonial system. The provincial government has done very little to remedy this. It is as though Balochistan’s serdars inhabit a parallel world where their worst impulses are excused as the norm, political stakeholders turn a blind eye as if nothing as happened at all. *