What’s behind the armed insurgency in Balochistan?

QUETTA: Baloch separatists in Pakistan’s Balochistan province carried out a series of deadly attacks against security forces and civilians earlier this week. Who are these rebels and what is the conflict about?

The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Monday, resulting in at least 70 deaths, including 14 soldiers. The coordinated assaults targeted police stations, railway lines and highways.

Read more: President directs for complete elimination of terrorists in Balochistan

In the deadliest incident, BLA militants took control of a highway and shot dead at least 23 people, mostly labourers from the neighbouring Punjab province, in what the province’s chief minister described as “execution-style shootings.”

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that the separatists wanted to disrupt China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) development projects that aim to expand Beijing’s presence in Pakistan and across Central and South Asia in order to counter influence from the United States and India in the region.

Sharif vowed retaliation for the violence, which coincided with a visit from a top Chinese general to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Beijing has heavily invested in the region through the CPEC, part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to reach markets in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and beyond.

Who are the Baloch?

The Baloch are a Sunni Muslim ethnic group who live on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border, and also in parts of southern Afghanistan. Balochistan forms the largest part of this region, followed by the province of Sistan and Balochistan on the Iranian side.

The area, which is roughly the size of France, is sparsely populated by around 9 million Balochs who are organised into tribes.

Balochistan is rich in natural resources such as gold, diamonds, silver, and copper — yet the local population remains among the poorest in Iran and Pakistan.

What is the Balochistan Liberation Army?

The BLA is the largest Baloch militant group and has been fighting an insurgency against the Pakistani government for decades, seeking independence for Balochistan and the expulsion of China.

BLA militants have carried out attacks, particularly targeting Pakistani security forces and Beijing’s CPEC project.

The BLA and other separatist groups argue that the local population does not receive a fair share of the profits from the resources in a province where poverty is rife. They also accuse Beijing of exploiting their resources and land, and fear that the influx of Chinese investments and workers might further marginalise the Baloch people.

These accusations of exploitation have fueled the BLA’s insurgency and led to increased militant activities, which have escalated over recent days.

Alarming escalation

Analysts view the latest coordinated attacks as alarming due to their unprecedented scale and intensity, raising serious concerns about the security impacts.

“These are extremely significant attacks because of their scale — in terms of number of fatalities, the geographic scope of the attacks, and the wide range of targets, both civilian and security,” Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told DW.

Kiyya Baloch, a journalist and commentator who has extensively covered Balochistan, said that Monday’s attacks marked a new level of seriousness due to their meticulous planning and coordination.

“This indicates that the use of force by the state in Balochistan in the last two decades is not effective. It is backfiring and worsening the situation,” Baloch told DW.

For nearly two decades, Baloch armed groups have engaged in a prolonged conflict against Pakistani security forces.

Attacks tarnish image of protest movements

During this time, various peaceful rights movement in Balochistan have gained mass support. They campaign for the civil, political and socioeconomic rights of the Baloch, and have galvanised massive protests across the province through rallies.

“We fear that in countering the new wave of violence, the state will also target our peaceful movement,” Hidayat ur Rehman Baloch, an activist from Gwadar, a port city in Balochistan with massive Chinese investment, told DW.

“The attack on dissent will further deteriorate the situation. The attacks should be on the terrorists who are operating in the organised attacks and spreading violence,” he added.

Analysts fear that peaceful activists will bear the brunt of these attacks and any retribution from the Pakistani government.

“I fear that if Islamabad initiates a major crackdown in Balochistan, and it likely will, then peaceful activists and any peaceful government critics could get caught up in it,” Kugelman underlined, adding that there’s a risk of Islamabad using counterterrorism imperatives as a pretext to crack down on peaceful dissent.

Read more: Balochistan incidents sheer intelligence failure: Shibli Faraz

“It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened, but it would add to an especially tense situation in Balochistan given both the threat of militancy and growing anti-government sentiment resulting in large public peaceful protests in recent months,” Kugelman stressed.