To the people of Balochistan, connectivity is not meant by scrolling through their social media or by undertaking a light entertainment. Internet access is tenuous at best, which – in one of the most poorly dealt with provinces in Pakistan – serves both as a lifeline to education, economic opportunity, and communication with the rest of the world. However, on 6 August 2025, that lifeline was immediately severed as the provincial government ordered a blanket block on mobile internet access in all of its 36 districts, saying that it would remain blocked until 31 August.
This was not an extraordinary incident. Pakistan has developed an ominous reputation of normalising digital repression. In 2024 alone, internet access was terminated 18 times with a total of more than 9,700 hours of shutdowns, costing the national economies an estimated USD 1.62 billion. Pakistan has become one of the worst culprits in the world next to India and Ethiopia.
A Manufactured Silence
Supporters of these shutdowns argue that blocking internet access is necessary to protect national security and to prevent militant coordination. Contrary to what might be true, some of the deadliest attacks have been in the places already bereft of internet access.
A question, then: assuming that militants can operate offline, what exactly does cutting the internet off to the rest of the population accomplish?
Are these actions maintained in the interest of security or are they in the interest of power centers?
Think of the timing. The inordinate closure of the government is also done around times of political sensitivities. There was a deliberate cell shutdown during the days of Muharram in July of 2024 in a number of districts. In July 2025, following a coordinated effort of insurgent groups to organize Operation Baam, the state reacted not by acting in transparent way, but with another communications blackout.
Everyday Lives, Interrupted
On the human side, the cost is high. Students have missed online classes, exams, and the status of online submission of online applications are uncertain. To the proprietors of businesses, electronic banking and consumer interactions go down in one night. Journalists are not able to verify events, or report on time; hence, it has been termed by many as an intentional information blackout.
In Panjgur, a young student of journalism recalled his 4 years of life without mobile internet, but this was only possible through an expensive landline PTCL connection. In Gwadar, Nafeesa Baloch, a climate activist, complained that she had missed important deadlines to fill out grants and had lost international partners due to the August blackout: “This did not merely happen inconveniently; it silenced us on our work.” It is a bitter irony. While the leaders of Pakistan are so proud to talk about digital innovations, whole communities have to live as if they had never seen the modern internet.
Defying Courts, Defying Citizens
Considerations of executive competence dominate even where the courts intervene. In July, the Balochistan High Court ordered a partial restoring of internet service, but the government has continued the blackout irrespective of the order of the court. When a high court judgment can be blatantly disregarded, does a constitutional assurance of communication and expression have a quality anymore?
Local coalitions, including the All Parties Kech grouping, have criticised curfews and internet cut-offs as an antipathetic step toward the people, an impediment to the supply of basic commodities and a gag order to representatives of people expressing differences with the state apparatus and its controlling corporations .
A Historical Continuum of Control
This is not a recent. On Pakistan Day in 2012, the mobile services were blocked throughout Balochistan. In 2017, Dalbandin had six months of no mobile data). In more recent times, in 2024 during the general elections, they went again to silence a platform, X like they did to YouTube in 2010. The tendency is another pattern that can only be described as the reaching of the off switch by the state on the part of insecurity.
International Alarm, National Denial
Watchdogs of freedom of expression, including the UN Special Rapporteur himself, have criticised the repeated use of blackouts not only as an attack on liberties but also for their effect on the credibility of Pakistan in the international arena. Nevertheless, the authorities perpetuate it, despite realising the damage to Pakistan’s reputation. Pakistan is in need of foreign investment, yet its digital ecosystem is driven to its knees.
What tone relay to investors about the stability of Pakistan’s institutions?
How can one present the country as a tech hub of the future when connectivity is not a right, but a privilege?
The Questions That Remain
- If security is truly the objective, then why do militant attacks continue even in areas that are already disconnected from the internet?
- What happens to democratic checks and balances, if court orders are not enforced?
- When education, healthcare, journalism, and livelihoods are being disrupted, whose security is being given first priority?
- Above all: when a government opposes and muzzles its citizens far more than it protects them, who is the government actually serving–the populace, itself, or other interest groups?
In Balochistan, every outage is not merely a time out in communication–it is another brick in the wall of isolation under duress. There is a danger that these emergency regulations would become a never ending reality of digital instability.
When the only infrastructure between a people and the rest of the world is a susceptible bridge of connectivity, how long before such a bridge falls entirely?
The post Digital Siege of Balochistan first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Syed Salman Mehdi.