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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.

Read the full briefing paper here.