Pakistan is reeling after this week’s hijacking of the Jaffar Express by the terrorist-designated “Balochistan Liberation Army” (BLA). It’s impossible to independently confirm the details given strict state censorship, but around 400 people were taken hostage, including servicemen traveling home on leave. The BLA demanded the release of what they described as political prisoners, but the military staged a daring operation to end the day-long ordeal instead. 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 locals believe that their resource-rich region, the largest in Pakistan at nearly half the country’s size, isn’t receiving its fair share of wealth. The BLA and its supporters also accuse Pakistan of selling the region out to China. 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.” 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 the 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 and the Taliban’s indisputably more direct role in what happened. After all, the BLA receives sanctuary in Afghanistan, so the Taliban is much more to blame for what happened. Even if the Taliban pleads ignorance and claims that it can’t control its borders, which isn’t true, then that’s also a problem.
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’ll present as an anti-Indian basis.
Building upon the last point, this could resemble Russia’s special operation in the sense of how Russia militarily intervened in Ukraine on an anti-NATO basis after accusing the bloc of exploiting Ukraine 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 and only target terrorist groups, but it could justify them on similar grounds.
The benefit in 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 for whatever reason, officially tying India into what happened suggests that it has no interest in addressing the conflict’s indigenous causes, instead preferring to blame everything on its neighbor like always. That’ll only lead to an even wider rift emerging between Baloches and the rest of the country, which can in turn result in more BLA sympathizers or even recruits, thus intensifying the already self-sustaining cycle of instability there.
The larger that the BLA’s pool of sympathizers and recruits becomes, the greater the unconventional threat that Pakistan faces in Balochistan, which could embolden the military regime into doubling down on its controversial “preemptive” anti-terrorist policies like “forced disappearances”. The most effective way to reduce the aforesaid pool is to empower responsible locals through meaningful economic and political partnerships with the state for showing them that they have more to gain through unity.
For example, Baloch veterans could be appointed to lead new projects in their home region, and these 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 pernicious influence of separatist-inclined tribal leaders. That’s easier said than done, but it should be attempted without delay otherwise the BLA’s pool 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 recent assistance has definitely been important. Without adequately addressing these indigenous causes, which requires a complete thinking on the part of the Pakistani government, outsiders will always be able to exploit this conflict. Accordingly, cross-border kinetic action in Afghanistan can be helpful, but a lasting solution requires much more than that.
