MAKING AND UNMAKING BORDERS IN SOUTH ASIA: THE PARTITION OF INDIA AND THE BALOCHISTAN UNREST

Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, home to an enormous amount of natural resources of all kinds, from natural gas to gold, located in an area of major geopolitical importance at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, is also one of the most unstable places in the world. Balochistan is the region where, during the years of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and, subsequently, Operation Enduring Freedom and beyond, to the present day, fighting groups acting both across the border in Afghanistan and on Pakistani soil were trained and armed. Always a frontier land, Balochistan was the subject of British plans to divide the Indian subcontinent: British military and air bases were concentrated here. With the independence of India and Pakistan, it was of vital importance to Britain and the United States to maintain military control of Balochistan and did so by amalgamating the region with a weak and easily manipulated state like Pakistan. The article reconstructs the events that led to India's partition, detailing the view that British military circles had of Balochistan, offering a totally novel perspective, given that, when discussing the partition of South Asia, we mostly focus on other areas, such as Kashmir, neglecting areas that were equally important but have so far escaped scholarly attention. The current instability in Balochistan, where the interests of several players, the US, Pakistan, China, and India, now intersect, is a consequence of the geopolitical arrangements encouraged in 1947 by Britain.