Is Pakistan Heading For Division ? Baloch Liberation Army seizes Quetta

Over the past several days, the Baloch Liberation Army has launched intense attacks on Pakistani millitary forces. While Pakistan is busy launching futile drone and missile attacks on Indian civilians and military sites across its eastern front, Baloch rebels have stepped up their offensive against Pakistani security forces.

Is Pakistan Heading For Division ? Baloch Liberation Army seizes Quetta

Why In News

• Over the past several days, the Baloch Liberation Army has launched intense attacks on Pakistani millitary forces. While Pakistan is busy launching futile drone and missile attacks on Indian civilians and military sites across its eastern front, Baloch rebels have stepped up their offensive against Pakistani security forces.

All You Need To Know

• At least three groups of Baloch fighters have seized control of parts of its western province, Balochistan. The developments come amid fighting between several rebel groups and Pakistani forces escalating and calls for Balochistan’s independence growing louder. Images and videos of Baloch people hoisting their flags after pulling down Pakistan’s are all over social media. Baloch pro-independence groups carried out coordinated attacks on Pakistani security forces and their assets swept across Balochistan.

• Baloch rebels on Friday attacked Pakistani forces in Quetta’s Faizabad area. In a separate attack, Islamabad’s security forces were targeted in a hand grenade attack at a military camp in Sibbi, sources said. The Baloch groups have intensified to such an extent that the forces of the Pakistani security forces faced at least four attacks by “unidentified armed assailants” in the provincial capital of Quetta on Thursday.

• Explosions and intense gunfire were reported across Quetta, according to Balochistan-based Radio Zrumbesh English. Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) rebels targeted “the Pakistani Army and its collaborators in six separate attacks in Kech, Mastung and Kachi”, according to Radio Zrumbesh English.
• “Baloch people have started hoisting their own flags and taking down Pakistani flags. Time for the world to pull back their diplomatic missions from Pakistan and shift them into the newly emerging country of Balochistan. Farewell to Pakistan, welcome to Balochistan,” Baloch writer Mir Yar Baloch posted on X.
• This spate of attacks comes days after former Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said that Pakistan’s federal government and army were losing control over the restive province of Balochistan, especially after dark.
• Abbasi said senior government officials and ministers couldn’t move around in Balochistan without security escorts. Abbasi also challenged the narrative of Army Chief Asim Munir regarding the scale of rebellion in Balochistan.

Baloch Rebels Ramp Up Attacks On Pak Army

• BLA fighters targeted a bomb disposal squad of the Pakistani army in Dashtuk, Kech District, using a remote-controlled IED, killing one soldier on the spot.
• In a separate incident, BLA fighters launched an attack on a Pakistani army outpost in Katgan, also in Kech, using automatic weapons, reportedly killing some security personnel, Balochistan-based journalist Bahot Baluch wrote on X, citing Jeeyand Baloch, the BLA spokesperson. Similar IED blasts on the Pakistani army and its supply vehicles took place in Zamuran’s Sah Dem area, which claimed several lives, according to Bahot Baluch.

• These attacks on Thursday followed several attacks on Wednesday where Pakistan’s critical infrastructure like gas pipelines and resource transport vehicles came under rebel attack. Three pro-independence Baloch armed groups claimed responsibility for these incidents, reported The Balochistan Post.
• Baloch writer Mir Yar Baloch also claimed that the rebels have attacked Pakistan’s gas fields in Dera Bugti, an area where over 100 gas wells, operated by the state-owned Pakistan Petroleum Limited, are located.

• “A possible announcement should soon be done as the collapse of the terrorist Pakistan is near. We have claimed our independence, and we request India to allow Balochistan’s official office, and embassy in Delhi,” Mir Yar Baloch wrote on X.
• While the Pakistani army chief, Asim Munir, has claimed that the “unrest” in Balochistan is the result of just 1,500 people, the government in Islamabad has conveniently blamed the Indian government for the home-grown, decades-long resistance in the province. While Balochistan is rich in natural resources, the Islamabad-Rawalpindi combination has for decades extracted the mineral wealth, giving nothing in return to the local Baloch people. While Balochistan has seen episodes of the fight for liberation, this is one of the longest-running resistances in recent decades.

• Former Pakistan PM Abbasi, who raised the alarm about the situation in Balochistan, said, “This is not a breakdown in law and order. It is a sign of the state’s fading authority”. Abbasi’s also challenged Munir’s absurd assertion on Balochistan, saying, “whatever Asim Munir may say is his opinion, I am only stating what I saw”. On May 6, as if to prove him right, the BLA killed 14 army personnel of the Pakistan army in two separate attacks in Balochistan’s Bolan and Kech, news agency ANI reported.

Why Balochistan Uprising Against Pakistan China Is Different

• The people of Balochistan, since Pakistan went back on its words and occupied it in 1948, have faced economic marginalisation, resource exploitation, and human rights abuses.
• Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by area and mineral-rich yet least populated, has been plagued by a decades-long armed and peaceful movements by ethnic Baloch people over economic marginalisation, resource exploitation, and human rights abuses. Pakistan’s federal government, its powerful army, and Chinese assets are facing the fiercest wave of resistance yet from the Baloch rebel groups.

• The resistance, led by the BLA, has intensified attacks on Pakistani security forces and infrastructure built by the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
• The Pakistani military has responded with heavy-handed tactics, including enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
• It’s not just armed groups resisting the Pakistani state. Women like Mahrang Baloch are at the forefront of a peaceful movement, challenging the Pakistani army’s forced disappearances of Baloch men, with courage and defiance.

• Mahrang, herself, is now in jail. Some Baloch women have picked up arms and are turning into suicide bombers. The attacks by Baloch armed rebel groups have dealt massive damage to the Pakistani apparatus, and Chinese assets, in the province.
• In 2024, Pakistan’s civil and military security forces witnessed a 40% increase in casualties (383) in Balochistan compared to 2023, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
• Now, the Baloch rebels, knowing that Pakistan is distracted after Operation Sindoor, have intensified their attacks on the Pakistani forces, including in Quetta, and hoisted flags of independence.