THE assassination of police surgeon Dr Syed Baqir Shah is a reflection not just of the murkiness of the Kharotabad incident but of the broader lawlessness in which Balochistan is trapped. The temptation has been to link his murder to his finding that the police and Frontier Corps shot dead five unarmed foreigners in the infamous Kharotabad case, and to the subsequent sacking of two police officials. Given the province's range of violent actors it is too soon to establish this link but the impulse to do so throws into stark relief the dubious reputation that the security and intelligence agencies have developed regarding their role in Balochistan. In particular, the appearance of the dead bodies of missing people since 2010 has led to the widespread belief that these forces are carrying out extrajudicial killings in the province with impunity. The provincial government's complaints that it has no control over their operations have only strengthened this impression. Given his role as a forensic investigator, Dr Shah was likely to have had a number of enemies. But there is deep mistrust about the role that security and intelligence agencies play in Balochistan. Until the matter is investigated in an independent manner and other culprits found, the suspicion will remain that he was murdered for his rebuttal of the law enforcers' claim that the Kharotabad victims did not die at their hands.

Also telling was the instinct to wonder if Dr Shah's killing was carried out by other armed groups that are holding Balochistan hostage: nationalists, extremist groups targeting Shias and a militant nexus that includes Al Qaeda and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. In this case, many of these links are unlikely. Dr Shah was not Shia and, unlike the mainly Punjabi settlers targeted by nationalists, hailed from the border areas of Sindh and Balochistan. But the very fact that his killing raises questions about a range of possible motivations indicates the state of near-anarchy in which Balochistan is caught, surviving at the mercy of several different armed camps that operate with impunity.

The incident also raises questions about the performance of the Balochistan government in the face of these dangers. Given the fact that the doctor had been receiving death threats, and that he had been physically assaulted during the investigation of the Kharotabad case, the lack of police security can only be seen as a fatal oversight on the part of the provincial administration. While security forces do exercise outsized influence in the province, the elected government cannot wash its hands of its responsibility to prevent the increasingly common targeted attacks on the residents of Balochistan.