Summary

Pakistan’s conflict-affected western borderlands are entering a mining boom while fundamental questions about land ownership, consent, regulation, security and benefit-sharing remain unresolved. Focusing particularly on Balochistan and the merged districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the analysis examines how extraction interacts with contested authority, customary ownership and a political settlement shaped by elite bargaining and security-backed control. Mining could generate revenue, investment, employment and infrastructure, but these benefits will not follow automatically. If licensing and investment continue to outpace inclusive governance, extraction risks deepening elite capture, community exclusion, environmental harm, distrust and violence. An extraction–development–peace approach would instead embed participation, equitable benefit-sharing, environmental protection, accountability and conflict sensitivity within the rules governing extraction. Decisions made before capital, rents and security arrangements become locked in will shape whether mining supports development and peace or reinforces existing instability.

Key Findings

  • Pakistan’s western borderlands are entering a mining boom before the rules of extraction have been settled. Exploration, licensing and early extraction are accelerating amid unresolved questions of customary ownership, local consent, environmental protection and regulatory authority.
  • Expanded extraction risks deepening elite capture rather than opening new avenues for distribution. Anticipated mineral rents provide existing elite coalitions with a valuable asset to capture without requiring changes to how decisions are made or who is included.
  • Mining is intensifying disputes over authority among federal, provincial and customary governance structures. Efforts to harmonise and modernise mineral regulation may centralise control while marginalising communities that continue to claim customary ownership and tribal consent rights.
  • Security arrangements that protect projects without accompanying local consent and benefit-sharing risk reproducing a longstanding pattern of security without peace and investment without legitimacy. Early disputes and violent incidents indicate the risks of allowing licensing to outpace inclusive governance.
  • Mining could expand national revenues, attract investment, create jobs and support infrastructure, but these benefits are not automatic. Communities bearing the greatest social and environmental costs may receive the fewest returns, particularly where ownership, consent and benefit-sharing remain unresolved.
  • The current period offers external actors significant leverage. Once capital is committed and rents and security arrangements become entrenched, extractive arrangements will become much harder to renegotiate.

Policy Implications

  • Investors can make access to capital conditional on governance standards by pricing in governance and security risks, requiring enhanced environmental, social and governance due diligence, and offering preferential terms for projects with binding community development agreements.
  • International financial institutions and donors should apply safeguards, conflict-sensitivity assessments and political-economy analysis during initial licensing and framework design, rather than after projects and financing arrangements have been established.
  • Bilateral donors and the home governments of mining companies can use development cooperation, investment agreements and company regulation to strengthen due diligence and conflict-sensitivity standards while ensuring investor protection does not override community rights.
  • Mining companies’ operating procedures should include transparent environmental, social and governance reporting, measurable sustainability targets, independent oversight, anti-corruption measures and trusted grievance-redress mechanisms. These commitments should address the realities of conflict-affected borderlands rather than merely satisfy formal compliance requirements.
  • Engagement at the company–community interface should include baseline social mapping, respect for customary ownership and tribal consent, and binding community development agreements. Licences in areas where ownership remains unresolved carry heightened risks for communities, project viability and local peace.
  • Conflict sensitivity needs to be embedded from the outset in licensing, concession design, revenue-sharing, infrastructure routing, security arrangements, community consultation and local value retention. Without these measures, mining risks producing extraction without development, security without peace and investment without legitimacy.

This policy brief is a part of the Contested Borderlands Elite Trajectories (CBET) project