Pakistan is reeling after this week ‘s , hijacking , of the Jaffar Express by the terrorist-designated Balochistan Liberation Army ( BLA ). It’s hard to individually confirm the details given strict condition censorship, but around 400 people were taken prisoner, including soldiers traveling home on leave.
The BLA , demanded , the discharge of what they described as democratic prisoners, but the military staged a brave function to stop the day-long suffering otherwise. At least two dozen people were killed.
The Baloch conflict , owes its origins , to Balochistan ‘s , contentious incorporation , into Pakistan but has evolved in recent years to take on shades of “resource nationalism”.
What’s meant by this is that some citizens believe that their resource-rich place, the largest in Pakistan at almost half the government’s size, isn’t receiving its fair share of success.
The BLA and its backers also accuse Pakistan of selling the place out to China, which has invested in the Gwadar interface and a large neglected airport. Pakistan denies these claims and has always blamed , Afghanistan , and India for the conflict.
It, therefore, wasn’t surprising when the Foreign Office’s spokesman , said , on Thursday that” India has been involved in terrorism in Pakistan. In the particular attack on Jaffar Express, the terrorists had been in contact with their handlers and ring leaders in Afghanistan”. It also said the “mastermind” of the attack is in Afghanistan, without elaborating.
On Thursday, the Taliban denied any involvement in the terror attack, with foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi saying Pakistan’s claims were “baseless allegations” and that it should concentrate on its own security and domestic issues rather than making” such irresponsible remarks”.
” No members of the Baloch opposition have a presence in Afghanistan nor have they ever had, nor have, any links with Islamic Emirate”, he wrote on X, referring to the Taliban government.
Also on Thursday, the Observer Research Foundation, an influential New Delhi-based think tank, assessed,” The Taliban appear to be giving space to the Baloch as it gives them a certain leverage over Pakistan”. It suggested the Pakistan army may” carry out a scorched earth steamroller operation in Balochistan” in response to the train attack.
While the Afghan dimension is likely true owing to the Taliban sheltering the BLA and its , new de facto TTP allies, which the group considers to be a means of , asymmetrically restoring the balance of power , with Pakistan, the Indian angle is questionable.
Pakistan’s accusation against India is premised on their history of proxy warfare against one another over the decades, which makes it reasonable to suspect India of backing Baloch militants against Pakistan as response to Pakistan backing Kashmiri ones against India, among others.
There’s also Pakistan’s capture of , Kulbhushan Jadhav , in 2016, who Islamabad accused of being an Indian spy tasked with organizing terrorist attacks in Balochistan, while India has always insisted that he’s innocent of these charges.
Taken together, they form the cornerstone upon which Pakistan’s Foreign Office put forth its latest accusation, but it’s bereft of proof and instead comes off as a deflection from the conflict’s indigenous causes.
After all, the BLA is known to receive sanctuary in Afghanistan. Even if the Taliban pleads ignorance and claims that it can’t control all of its borders, which some would argue isn’t true, then that’s also a problem for the fracturing regime.
Whichever way one looks at it, the Indian angle is therefore questionable, but Pakistan pushing it is meant to accomplish three goals.
First, it’s intended to rally Pakistanis behind the government by blaming their historical rival for this latest terrorist attack. Second, Pakistan also hopes to rally the international community – or at least some of its SCO partners like China – against India. And finally, Pakistan might , authorize kinetic action , in Afghanistan, but on what it will likely present as an anti-Indian rather than anti-Taliban basis.
Building upon the last point, this could resemble Russia ‘s , special , operation , in the sense of how Moscow militarily intervened in Ukraine on an anti-NATO basis after accusing the bloc of exploiting Kyiv as a proxy, which Russia claimed could become a launching pad for more aggression if it wasn’t stopped.
Likewise, Pakistan might carry out comparatively smaller-scale strikes and/or incursions in Afghanistan that only target terrorist groups, but it could justify them on similar grounds.
The benefit of presenting things this way is that Pakistan can continue to claim that it has no problem with Afghanistan per se, just with how its historical Indian rival is allegedly exploiting that country as a proxy, which could become a launching pad for more aggression if it isn’t stopped.
The problem though is that this motive is much more questionable than Russia’s vis-à-vis NATO in its own special operation in Ukraine so Afghans as a whole might regard any larger-scale Pakistani kinetic action as a hostile act.
Even if Pakistan eschews such a response to this latest terrorist attack, officially tying India to what happened suggests that it has no interest in addressing the Balochistan conflict’s indigenous causes.
That’ll only lead to an even wider rift emerging between ethnic Baloches and the rest of the country, which in turn could result in more BLA sympathizers or recruits, thus intensifying the already self-sustaining cycle of instability there.
The larger the BLA’s pool of sympathizers and recruits becomes, the greater the unconventional threat Pakistan faces in Balochistan, which could embolden the , military regime , into doubling down on its controversial “preemptive” anti-terrorist policies like “forced disappearances“.
A more effective way to reduce the aforesaid pool is to empower responsible locals through meaningful economic and political partnerships with the state that show they have more to gain through unity than resistance.
For example, Baloch veterans could be appointed to lead new projects in their home region that would be obligated to reinvest a percentage of their proceeds into local initiatives.
These same figures and other similarly trusted ones could also be supported by the state as alternative community leaders for counteracting the influence of separatist-inclined tribal leaders. That’s easier said than done, but without it, the BLA’s pool of sympathizers and recruits will keep growing.
The combination of political radicalism and state failure is most responsible for perpetuating the Baloch conflict, not foreign forces, though the Taliban’s allowing BLA sanctuary in Afghanistan has definitely played a role.
Without adequately addressing these indigenous causes, which requires completely new thinking by the Pakistani government, outsiders will always be able to exploit the conflict. And while Pakistan may see cross-border kinetic action in Afghanistan as helpful, it won’t bring a lasting solution to the problem.
This article was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber , here.