New Dimension of Indian Sponsored Terrorism in Balochistan

By Sajjad Shaukat

Three Chinese teachers and a Pakistani driver had been killed, while four others were injured in a suicide attack outside the University of Karachi’s (KU) Confucius Institute on April 26, last year when a woman in a burqa struck a van.

Karachi Police also said that a female suicide bomber was responsible for the attack. The banned Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Addressing a press conference along with the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) chief in Quetta-capital of Balochistan province on March 22, 2023, spokesperson of the Chief Minister of Balochistan Babar Yousafzai said that a terrorist named Sharbat Gul had given the suicide jacket to Mahal Baloch.

He elaborated that Mahal Baloch, a woman who was reported missing since third week of February and was later declared as arrested, is member of a banned organization, and has been held with a suicide jacket.

He disclosed: “A close associate of Mahal Baloch has also been arrested. Mahal was going to give the suicide jacket to someone else. She was also being funded. We had arrested [both of] them red-handed…Sharbat Gul had asked Mahal to keep the jacket with her and said when the time comes, he will tell her whom this jacket should be given to.”

In fact, Baloch women are innocent; they are misguided and manipulated by foreign funneled terrorist groups.

However, there have also been a string of attacks on Chinese nationals and their interests by the BLA.

13 people, including 9 Chinese nationals, were killed on July 14, 2021 in an explosion that hit a bus convoy carrying Chinese engineers to a hydro-power plant construction site in northern Pakistan.

On June 29, 2020 at least five people died when the Pakistan Stock Exchange in Karachi was targeted in an attack claimed by the BLA.

The BLA accepted responsibility for an attack on November 23, 2018 in which gunmen tried to storm the Chinese consulate in Karachi, killing four people.

It is mentionable that when during the President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s regime in March 2002, Pakistan initiated the construction of Gwadar deep-seaport in Balochistan with Chinese assistance, sirens went off in the capitals of some European countries, especially the US, India and Israel which took it as a threat to their global and regional plans.

Afterwards, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which is part of China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative or BRI has been rapidly developing. CPEC will prove to be a gateway to prosperity for both countries as well as the region. Under the project, China is investing as much as $62 billion in various sectors in Pakistan in a phased manner.

Besides, energy projects, CPEC will open new doors of development relating to various fields, as the national economy of the country will grow fast, leading to creation of new job opportunities, poverty reduction, and development of transportation sector—boost agricultural and industrial growth, including exports.

And both India and the US openly opposed the CPEC and China’s OBOR or BRI.

In May, 2020, the outgoing US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Alice Wells had once again criticized BRI and CPEC by saying that the US was concerned about CPEC projects due to the unfair rates of profits which are guaranteed to Chinese firms. The Chinese Embassy called her statement totally baseless by stating: “We take Pakistan as an equal partner and never asked Pakistan to do more.”

Islamabad and Beijing have, repeatedly, dismissed the criticism as a Western propaganda and the latter also insisted that the CPEC will equally benefit Pakistan.

Nevertheless, Gwadar seaport project which is backbone of the CPEC will uplift the impoverished people of Balochistan, including developments in other backward areas by redressing their grievances, which the hostile elements, supported by the US, India and Israeli do not want.

In this regard, the ink on Pak-China agreements related to the CPEC was barely dry when especially American CIA, Indian secret agency RAW and Israeli Mossad had accelerated playing up the Baloch insurgency. Malicious propaganda against the CPEC coincided with the terror attacks in various regions of Pakistan, particularly in the Balochistan.

Besides BLA and its linked terror outfits, Islamabad also believed that Afghanistan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its affiliated militant groups are also behind various terror assaults on the Chinese nationals and their joint installations-projects in the country. For instance, the outlawed TTP through its social media outlets claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing at Serena Hotel in Quetta on April 21, 2021. In a prepared statement, the militants identified a meeting of local and Chinese foreign officials as the intended target. China’s ambassador was in the hotel but unhurt.

Pakistan’s Armed Forces and primary intelligence agency ISI have successfully broken the backbone of the foreign-backed terrorists. Peace has been restored in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and in Karachi as well as in other vulnerable regions.

But, in the recent past, terrorist assaults in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and particularly Balochistan show that these external intelligence agencies are destabilizing Pakistan and want to damage the CPEC.

Particularly, RAW is also using some terrorist outfits such as ISIS, TTP and the BLA-linked Majeed Brigade which claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist assaults on workers and labourers, working for the CPEC projects in Balochistan. These terror entities also abducted and killed many Chinese nationals.

It is noteworthy that when the Taliban fighters in August 2021 took control of Afghanistan, their government clarified that Afghan soil would not be used for any terrorist groups like TTP, Al Qaeda ISIS etc. for terror attacks against neighboring countries, including Pakistan. But, regarding some recent terror attacks, sources suggested that the militants of the TTP entered Pakistan from Afghanistan. Therefore, Pakistan’s civil and military leadership had warned Kabul to check this infiltration.

Meanwhile, Taliban skirmished with Pakistani security forces at the Pakistani territory from across the Chaman border on December 10, 2022 and fired mortars at civilian areas martyring at least 8 people.

While despite promises, Afghanistan failed to tackle the banned TTP and frequent border incidents and terror attacks inside Pakistan. The attacks occurred after the TTP on November 28, last year ended the ceasefire agreed with the Pakistan government in June and ordered its militants to stage attacks across the country. And both the TTP and Afghan Taliban share a similar hardline ideology.

Taking cognisance of the latest terror assaults by the TTP on Police in KP in Lakki Marwat Bannu Cantt, CTD in Bannua, deadly suicide blast at a mosque in the Peshawar Police Lines, which martyred many persons of the security forces, and civilians, including terror attacks in Balochistan, a high-level Pakistani delegation led by Defense Minister Khawaja Asif along with Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmed Anjum—head of the ISI, and other senior officials visited Kabul on February 22, 2023 with the main agenda of countering terrorism and the use of Afghanistan soil by the TTP militants.

The GDI-Afghan intelligence agency briefed Pakistani delegation and accepted the problem of terrorism originating from Afghanistan soil. They also presented details of the solution, but was found unsatisfactory. Hence, Pakistan warned the interim Afghan Taliban administration that if TTP involved in cross-border attacks are not eliminated, Islamabad would take action against them within Afghanistan.

In the meantime, in an interview with Voice of America on April 11, this year, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif stated: “The proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan is still using Afghan soil for launching attacks on Pakistan…especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa…The Afghan authorities have not succeeded in stopping the use of their territory in attacks on Pakistan.”

Nonetheless, by playing in the hands of anti-Pakistan foreign agencies, particularly RAW, the BLA and the TTP, and their banned affiliated groups are weakening the country, while terrorism related assaults by women show new dimension of Indian sponsored terrorism in Balochistan.

Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

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