Conquest without Rule: Baloch Portfolio Mercenaries in the Indian Ocean. 

By: Lutfi Ameem, 2008 

The central question this dissertation engages with is why modern states in the Persian Gulf rely heavily on informal networks of untrained and inexperienced recruits from the region of Balochistan. The Baloch continued to find a place in the Gulf’s protection industry through historically shaped informal, familial, commercial, and parapolitical transnational networks. Flexible and persistent Baloch networks provided territorially bounded states the ability to access resources outside their boundaries without investment in formal international contracts.