Baloch Insurgency: revenge or realization?

Pakistan has established a state of terror in Balochistan, in which the Baloch population, which has been peacefully raising their legitimate demands, but by the police and armed forces along with Islamic militants, has been made a victim of constant persecution. The young political and social activists of Balochistan who raised their voice against the oppression and vandalism of Pakistan in Balochistan were harshly suppressed. But it is also natural to raise a voice against this repression. Therefore, we sometimes got news of violent actions against Pakistan's military forces. These days there has been some acceleration in such activities. More recently seven Pakistan soldiers related to Frontier Corps (FC) Balochistan were killed in a gun attack on a post of this in Harnai district. Senior police officers in this area gave a slightly higher death toll than the army, saying that during the exchange of fire, six paramilitary personnel and two private guards were killed on the spot and several soldiers were critically wounded in the attack. The attack on the Frontier Corps comes a day after a bomb exploded near a football field, killing two spectators and wounding another six in Panjgur district in southwestern Balochistan.

Prior to this attack on the Frontier Corps, there have been attacks on military, paramilitary, and police forces. Two months earlier in mid-October, 14 security men seven personnel of the Frontier Corps, and as many civilian guards were killed in an armed attack on their convoy on the Coastal Highway in the Ormara area of Gwadar district.

 

 

The Pakistan Army has launched several operations in Balochistan and has supported by criminals and religious fundamentalists, which locals call "death squads". A large number of political activists, intellectuals, women, and children in Balochistan are victims of enforced disappearances by the security agencies. And the violent incidents against the military forces are mere responses to these atrocities. This is notable that five days prior to this incident, security forces killed 10 suspected "terrorists" in a skirmish in the Awaran area of Balochistan province.

The Frontier Corps is a paramilitary force of Pakistan that is currently stationed in the western frontier provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to maintain law and order while overseeing the control of the country's sensitive borders with Afghanistan and Iran. The Frontier Corps is an umbrella term for two separate organizations: FC NWFP stationed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province and now including the Federally Administered Tribal Areas), and FC Balochistan stationed in Balochistan province.

Pakistan security forces have been undertaking regular counter-terrorism operations in this area as part of Operation ‘Radd-ul-Fasad’, a combined military operation by the Pakistani military in support of local law enforcement agencies to disarm and eliminate the terrorist sleeper cells across all states of Pakistan, launched on 22 February 2017. The objective was to consolidate the gains of Operation ‘Zarb-e-Azb which was launched on 15 June 2014 in North Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as a renewed effort against militancy’. The Pakistan Army has shown a quick and prompt attitude toward killing its own people in these operations; often viewed as a battle between the Pakistani Punjabis and the rest of the country’s populace.

 

 

 

Balochistan, which shares borders with both Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan’s largest and most volatile province. It faces a multipronged threat from several armed terrorist groups, including the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Taliban, and other movements who opposed the accession and seeking the province’s secession from Pakistan. Along with armed forces, other targets of the groups include projects initiated by China under a $62bn investment plan are common. Incidents of attacks on Chinese people have also increased. recently a Chinese citizen and his interpreter survived a gun assault on a car showroom in the outskirts of Karachi, Recent attacks on Chinese citizens in Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi show that insurgent groups opposing China's Belt and Road Initiative have changed their strategy, focusing on the country's urban centers and targeting Chinese nationals and investments. It is noteworthy that Balochistan is of immense geostrategic importance and is rich in natural resources like Gas and Oil. It’s the country’s largest province in size but the least populated and has been gripped by misery and insurgency since the inception of Pakistan as a separate state. Local tribes were strongly opposed to the crooked tricks of Jinnah to merge the province with Pakistan in 1947. Since then Baloch nationalists have been fighting for political and economic autonomy including independence. Islamabad has always had stressful relationships with Baloch nationalists who complain that the local people haven’t benefitted from the resources of the province.

 

Several Baloch rights activists across the globe have been performing anti-Pakistan protests by the Baloch diaspora since September 2019. Recently Japan’s leading newspaper Nikkei reported that “The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S. based nonprofit organization conducting real-time data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping, has recorded an increase in organized violence by groups opposing the BRI since the beginning of 2020.” These facts endorse well that the violent incidents in Balochistan are part of a larger conflict.