Massacres in Balochistan: Pakistan’s nightmare just got worse

The series of attacks by the Balochistan Liberation Army targeting security forces and civilians in Pakistan’s Balochistan province are testimony of a significant escalation in violence in the region. The attack killed at least 38 people. This is the first time the outlawed militant group has carried out an operation of this scale and sophistication. Designated as a terrorist group by Pakistan and the United States, the BLA, which is fighting for an independent Balochistan carved out of Pakistan and territories in Iran and Afghanistan, has carried out many attacks against Pakistani security forces and civilians over the last two decades, including against Chinese nationals. But this is perhaps the first time it launched several, apparently coordinated, attacks within a few hours.

The attacks began on August 26 night and continued into the morning of August 27. In one incident that has shaken Pakistan, the attackers pulled out 23 Punjabi passengers from a civilian bus and shot them dead. 

Baloch militant groups have targeted members of Pakistan’s dominant ethnic group living or working in Balochistan several times before, like in this incident in October 2023, when six Punjabi workers were shot dead, and in 2015 when construction workers from outside the province were targeted. This is the first time that the BLA has plucked out passengers in civilian transport after determining their ethnicity on the basis of their identity cards and lined them up to shoot them in cold blood. In 2019, three other militant groups held up a civilian bus, used passenger ID cards to identify military personnel, and shot dead 14 men. The manner of these bus killings recalls the 2012-2013 killings of Shia minority Hazara Baloch by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the Punjab province-based sectarian terrorist group.

The attackers also targeted police stations, blocked highways, and blew up rail tracks. The BLA also claimed a suicide attack by its Majeed Brigade on a paramilitary base, but this has not been confirmed by Pakistani authorities. The attackers set fire to trucks, buses, and vans on an interprovince highway. The attacks were spread across Balochistan – from Musakhail in north-eastern Balochistan near the Punjab border, where the bus passengers were shot dead, to Gwadar in southern Balochistan, Bolan in the centre of the province, to Quetta and Pishin near the Afghanistan border. At least 14 security forces personnel were killed in clashes with the militants.

Increased capacity

“The attacks are an escalation by the BLA. They show that the group has gained significant capacity to hit both soft and hard targets, and it will further deepen the suspicion in Pakistan that the BLA receives foreign help,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani commentator on political and military affairs.

Pakistan routinely blames the country’s “enemies” for the violent acts of Baloch nationalist militants. Since 2017, Pakistani authorities have used purported statements made by the captured ex-navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who remains in Pakistani custody, to allege an Indian hand in the troubles in Balochistan. Ten days ago, after the killing of the deputy commissioner of Balochistan’s Panjgur district, the Chief Minister alleged that India’s external intelligence agency RAW was funding the BLA.

After the latest attacks, the Balochistan Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said that the government had a “good idea” of who was behind the attacks. “They have carried out all these attacks in a single day in a clear and well-thought-out manner,” he said.

Pressure up on army

For the Pakistan army, the escalation in Balochistan adds pressure on its western side, where it is already facing an even more serious challenge from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. All at a time, when the Pakistan army Chief General Asim Munir is preoccupied with fixing former Prime Minister Imran Khan and controlling the divisions this has caused within the force, threatening the national dominance of what is often described as the country’s “most powerful institution”.

Siddiqa predicted a heavy-handed security response, the default option of the Pakistan army in Balochistan over the decades. “There will be more arrests, more disappearances, and more extrajudicial killings after this,” Siddiqa said, pointing to the absence of meaningful political engagement by Pakistan’s governing military-political establishment with the Baloch people and their historic grievances against Islamabad.

The Pakistani military has a long record of repression and human rights violations in Balochistan. The 2023 report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has this to say: “Of all the human rights concerns raised at various meetings and consultations during the mission, the problem of enforced disappearances—allegedly carried out by local security agencies or at their behest—remained a constant refrain…”

Civil society groups such as the Voice of Baloch Missing Persons and Baloch Yakjeheti Committee, which raise the issue of extrajudicial killings or missing persons, have met with a determined push back by the security forces.

Baloch grievances

Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province. It is also its least populated, and therefore that much easier to ignore and suppress. The Baloch see the Punjabi-dominated army, the federal government, and their cronies as exploiters of the province’s rich natural resources – gas, copper and gold mines. Over the last two decades, Pakistan’s invitation to China to set up shop in Gwadar to develop a new port and a China-Pakistan “economic corridor”, CPEC – including a highway linking to China at Gilgit-Baltistan’s border with Xinjiang – has caused high levels of resentment in the local population. Delhi has protested against the CPEC as it goes through what it calls “inalienable” Indian territory. The Baloch do not see any benefits flowing to them from these economic activities and have carried out protests against the port and other projects. Over the last few years, the BLA has carried out several attacks on Chinese targets in Balochistan.

In October 2022, after one such attack, China was reported to have told the Pakistan military that it would bring in its own security personnel. But the Pakistan military, aware of the domestic political fallout as well as the geopolitical risks involved in this proposal, managed to ward off Chinese pressure on this front.

China’s state-run media have echoed Pakistan’s allegations against India for the violence in Balochistan.

Political alienation

The latest attacks came on the 18th anniversary of the killing of Akbar Khan Bugti, the charismatic sardar of the Bugti tribe. The missile strike that killed him in his hideout was ordered by Pakistan’s then army ruler, Pervez Musharraf. 

Bugti had been a minister in the federal government as well as a governor of the Balochistan province, so very much part of Pakistan’s governing class before assuming leadership of an armed revolt against the state. And many Pakistani politicians were still actively in touch with him. His killing shocked Pakistan and was described by the media then as the biggest blunder since the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. 

It gave the Balochistan cause a larger-than-life martyr. The BLA, which was formed in the 1970s, sprang back to life after this incident, and Pakistan’s troubles in Balochistan have only increased since then.

Elections in Balochistan have always been “managed” by Pakistan’s civilian-military establishment, resulting in provincial governments led by pro-Pakistan national parties such as the Pakistan People’s Party or the Pakistan Muslim League (N) or by non-secessionist Baloch nationalist politicians who pitched for more provincial autonomy and more financial resources from the federal government. The army has also played on the divisions between the Baloch and Pakhtun populations of Balochistan. 

But since 2018, the Pakistan military has strived to marginalise established politicians and create new political faces. It created the Balochistan Awami Party with disgruntled elements in the provincial PML (N) and other small national parties. The BAP formed a coalition with the then newly-elected Prime Minister Imran Khan’s PTI. The Baloch Nationalist Party too threw in its lot with this coalition after extracting commitments from the PTI for a “grand reconciliation” in the province.

The Pakistan army calls the shots in Balochistan, and no such political outreach was launched, not even to civil society organisations such as VBMP or BYC.

In the February 2024 elections, the PPP emerged as the winner, but the nomination of Sarfaraz Bugti as Chief Minister surprised and angered many in the party and outside. The pro-military Bugti had joined the party only three months prior to the election. It has increased the political alienation in the province.

In response to the latest attacks, the Balochistan interior minister dismissed the idea of Baloch grievances, saying no one in the province was “naraaz (angry)” with the government, “there are only terrorists” and that they would be dealt with in an appropriate manner.

No respite for India

Indian security and strategic thinkers and policy makers have often assumed that pressure on the Pakistan military on its western borders due to the TTP and Baloch resistance groups would lead to a scaling down of terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the last three years of terrorist attacks in J&K have amply demonstrated that this hope is misplaced.

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