Pakistan's "Elephant in the room". The Mysterious Case of Balochistan
Dr. Emma Hooper
Associate Senior Research Fellow at CIDOB Associate Professor, EADA
Situated between Iran, Afghanistan and the Arabian sea, Balo-chistan is
the largest of Pakistan’s four provinces. Yet, paradoxi-cally, it is
also the poorest - despite being generously endowed with natural
resources that provide vast rangeland for cattle and other livestock.
Its southern border makes up about two-thirds of the national
coastline, giving access to a large pool of fishery resources. It has
large deposits of coal, lead, copper, gold and other minerals. The
province is ideally situated for trade with Iran, Afghanistan, Central
Asia and the Persian Gulf countries. Over the last four decades, the
province supplied cheap natu-ral gas to Pakistan’s economic centres,
and indeed, its Sui gas fields can be said to have fuelled Pakistan’s
20th century industri-alization.
However, the province continues to experience the highest levels of
poverty in the country (on par with the NWFP, the province with
traditionally the highest measured poverty levels in Paki-stan); the
lowest social indicators for education, literacy, health, water and
sanitation for 2006-07;1 and the weakest governance...Download