Pakistan’s vast and mineral-rich province of Balochistan has witnessed the largest-ever coordinated attacks by separatist militants, who are waging an increasingly potent insurgency against Islamabad.
The unprecedented attacks have highlighted Pakistan’s failed policy of using violence and political repression to stamp out the decades-old insurgency in the strategic region bordering Afghanistan and Iran and home to the marginalized Baluch minority, experts say.
Armed groups have exploited growing anger at the state, which locals accuse of exploiting the region’s natural resources and committing gross human rights abuses, to expand their recruitment, according to analysts. Separatists and militants have also adopted more lethal tactics and acquired more sophisticated weapons.
For some Baluch, “militancy is the only remaining way to resist political marginalization and repression,” said Kiyya Baloch, a Norway-based Pakistani journalist and commentator who tracks militancy in the region. “The government needs to move away from policies that have only deepened resentment.”
Largest-Ever Attacks
On January 31, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist militant group fighting for Balochistan’s secession from Pakistan, launched dozens of simultaneous attacks in cities and towns across the province, storming police stations, military installations, and banks. Some of the attacks lasted for days.
The government said at least 30 civilians and 18 soldiers were killed in the attacks. Authorities said over 170 BLA fighters were killed. The insurgents said they killed over 200 government security personnel and lost 34 fighters.
RFE/RL could not independently verify the conflicting claims by the two sides in the sparsely populated region inaccessible to journalists. The government has also imposed an Internet shutdown in the province, making verification even more difficult.
Pakistan's security forces on February 4 wrested control of Nushki, a town of some 50,000 people, from separatist militants after three days of fighting. The army used drones and helicopters against the militants, the authorities said.
The scope and scale of the attacks have “not been witnessed before” in Balochistan, where separatists and militants have typically relied on classic guerrilla hit-and-run tactics, said Baloch.
“This level of rebel operational capacity marks a dramatic escalation,” he added.
Simmering Insurgency
The BLA has waged an insurgency against the Pakistani state for more than 20 years, carrying out mostly small-scale attacks against government forces. But the group has become a more organized and increasingly potent fighting force in recent years.
The BLA is considered the largest armed group operating in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest and poorest province. Experts believe the BLA has several thousand members.
The US-designated terrorist group is believed to have obtained American weapons and military equipment left behind by US and international forces who departed neighboring Afghanistan in 2021.
The BLA, a secular group, has also adopted more lethal tactics used by Islamist militant groups, including the use of suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and so-called complex attacks involving multiple attackers and vehicle-borne IEDs.
Experts say the BLA has been successful in recruiting Baluch youth. Around 65 percent of Balochistan’s 15-million population are under the age of 30.
“Years of contested resource control, political exclusion, and crackdowns have left space for violence to persist,” said Imtiaz Baloch, a Balochistan researcher in Islamabad.
Changing Course?
Experts say the growing strength of Baluch armed groups has exposed the limits of Islamabad’s heavy-handed approach to resolving the insurgency in Balochistan.
Pakistan’s powerful military has been widely accused of using brutal tactics, including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings of political activists and suspected separatists, arbitrary arrests, and torture, to pacify the region.
“Dialogue is the only way to resolve this issue,” Ishaq Baloch, a leader of the National Party, a Baluch nationalist parliamentary political party, told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal.
“Locals need to be engaged in such an effort because they are suffering politically, economically, and socially,” he said.
Sarfaraz Bugti, the chief minister of Balochistan, the most senior elected official in the province, appeared to rule out talks with the BLA.
“They want to impose their ideology through the barrel of a gun and are seeking to force the Baluch people into a useless war,” he told journalists on February 1.
