Wake-up call for Pakistan in Balochistan
A trail of deadly attacks in Pakistan's Balochistan province on the night of August 26 and continuing into the morning of the next day, killing at least 38 people, a majority of them civilians of Punjabi ethnicity, may serve to help the Pakistan ruling class, including its Army, to focus on internal security challenges rather than on its self-inflicted grudge matches with each other. The Pakistan Army particularly, after its overweening subordination of the civilian government, appears more preoccupied with ensuring that former prime minister Imran Khan gets no opportunity to challenge it again. Not surprisingly, despite its huge presence in Balochistan, it seems to have been taken completely by surprise by the attacks, which have been claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), an ethnic Baloch nationalist insurgency, which Pakistan has banned as a terrorist organisation. The BLA traces its roots to the 1970s armed struggle for control of Balochistan by leftist guerrilla groups, which was crushed ruthlessly by the Pakistan Army. It was dormant until the early 2000s, but since the killing of the Baloch leader Akbar Khan Bugti in 2006 by the military, has been waging a low-intensity war against the Pakistani Punjabi-dominated establishment.
Over the last three years, the BLA seems to have set its sights on escalating its hit-and-run operations into something bigger, targeting the large Chinese presence in Gwadar and other parts of the province. The coordinated attacks covered almost the entire geographical expanse of Balochistan, Pakistan's biggest province in terms of territory. The insurgents pulled passengers out of buses and shot them, set fire to trucks and other vehicles on an important highway, sabotaged rail tracks, and attacked police stations, walking away with the weapons inside. The BLA also claims to have launched a four-member suicide attack on a camp of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary that functions under the leadership of the military. The claim has not been confirmed by officials. Even so, the BLA seems to have grown into a formidable opponent of the Pakistani State.
Insurgencies everywhere grow out of people's grievances, and the one in Balochistan is no different. The problem is that the Pakistani State is in denial that the decades of political discrimination that it has inflicted on Balochistan, its exploitation of the province's rich natural resources while denying a fair share of the earnings to the people of the province, a heavy-handed, over-securitised handling of a strategically important province leading to terrible human rights violations, have all contributed to the making of a long-festering wound. Pakistan would rather pin the blame on India for its troubles in Balochistan. Perhaps that is easier than facing up to its own shortcomings.