Hidden war embodies Pakistan's struggle Relatives of the missing protest in Islamabad. Up to 14,400 people have disappeared since 2001 Faces of the missing stare from dozens of portraits housed in the tent where Qadeer Baloch keeps vigil. He believes he may soon share their fate. Since his son's broken body was found on a patch of wasteland six months ago, the former bank clerk has emerged as an unlikely hero of the struggle against an epidemic of disappearances sweeping Baluchistan, a province in south-west Pakistan. At a kerbside encampment in Karachi, the country's commercial hub, he leads a small band of activists nursing a quiet rage at the security forces, and a suspicion that they may be next to be whisked away. "I received a phone call, they said "wind up your camp, it's creating a nuisance for us,"" says Mr Baloch, 70, a co-founder of Voice for Baluch Missing Persons, a lobby group. I'm not worried any more about threats - they've become routine. I'm just waiting for the moment when I'll be killed. Pakistan's story is often told through the prism of its stormy relations with the US, strained by tensions over Afghanistan and the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, on Pakistani soil. Not much is heard about the little-known, dirty war simmering in Baluchistan, a parched land of broken hills where militants seeking the unlikely goal of independence are locked in a vicious showdown with the state. Sandwiched between Afghanistan and Iran, Baluchistan houses only about 8m of Pakistan's 180m population. But it is also home to the natural gas that powers the country's lifeline textile industry. The province had also been on the verge of securing the country's biggest foreign investment - a $3.3bn copper and gold mine planned by Canada's Barrick Gold and Chile's Antofagasta - until the project became mired in a legal battle with the authorities last year. Yet the real reason Baluchistan matters is not resources. A trail of hundreds of bullet-riddled bodies of Baluch activists, students and even poets, provides a clue to the biggest question hanging over Pakistan's future. Can the fragile state garner the legitimacy needed to beat its many challengers, or is the nuclear-armed country locked in a spiral of violent decline? The Baluchistan conflict is both distinct from the tensions gripping other parts of Pakistan, and emblematic of them. Imbued with a national identity forged over centuries, the region has felt like it has been treated as a virtual colony by Punjab, the most populous province, since Pakistan's creation in 1947. Successive revolts have been followed by crackdowns, but little headway has been made in tackling the roots of Baluch marginalisation. While Baluchistan's history is unique, the belief among separatist fighters that the Pakistani state has lost legitimacy is shared by the country's diverse purveyors of violence, from Taliban insurgents in the mountains on the Afghan frontier, to warring political parties carving up territory in the back streets of Karachi. In Baluchistan, though, the sense of alienation is so strong that some reject the Pakistani project altogether. "More people are becoming aware of the right to become independent, and they're prepared to sacrifice themselves," says Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, a prominent Baluch nationalist. There would be many more people underground or fighting in the hills if we had resources. Anger has been inflamed even further by a new technique of repression that human rights activists call "kill-and-dump." Suspected separatists are abducted and tortured, their bodies left by the road as a warning. Pakistan's security forces have repeatedly denied carrying out extra-judicial killings in Baluchistan - a claim human rights groups find questionable. Nobody is quite sure how many have been taken. Human Rights Watch says some 300 corpses have been found since January last year. "What this indicates is the ratcheting up of hostilities in Baluchistan rather than an easing of tensions," says Ali Dayan Hasan, HRW's Pakistan director. Mr Baloch's group says 14,400 people have gone missing since 2001. Rehman Malik, the interior minister, admitted in 2008 that at least 1,100 had vanished. But in January 2011, Baluchistan's provincial government put the figure at several dozen, without explaining the discrepancy. The story of Mr Baloch's son, Jalil Reki, an activist in a Baluch nationalist party, is typical. Mr Baloch says he was seized from his home in February 2009 by security agents. In November, Mr Baloch learnt from the television news that his son's body had been found on a patch of wasteland. Shepherds assumed it had been heaved out of a helicopter they had heard thunder overhead. Mr Reki had been shot in the chest and face, his back was dotted with cigarette burns and his hands and legs were broken. All sides of the conflict appear to have blood on their hands. Baluch militants, who ambush troops and blow up gas pipelines, also stand accused of murdering teachers and settlers from Punjab. The government of Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, has offered extra money and powers to Baluchistan, but anger still boils. Mr Baloch says he has taken his grandson to see his father's body. The boy asked what had happened. "I explained that they are killing those who talk of freedom," the older man says. The boy's next question: on whom should he seek his revenge?