ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Baloch separatist group is becoming as big a threat to Pakistan’s national security as the Pakistani Taliban, according to a think tank.
Last month, the Baloch Liberation Army killed dozens of people in the restive southwestern Pakistani province of Balochistan. The deadliest assault was a suicide bombing at a train station in Quetta.
The BLA wants independence from the federal government, which last month launched an operation against armed groups operating in the province.
A report published Thursday by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies said the surge in frequency and intensity of BLA attacks reflected a “significant evolution” in the group’s operational strategy and capabilities that required the government to update its approach.
The country experienced 61 terrorist attacks in November, a 27% increase from the previous month, said the report. The number of fatalities increased from 100 in October to 169 in November.
The BLA carried out 12 attacks last month. These killed 45 people, more than the fatalities from Pakistani Taliban attacks in November, the report added.
A research analyst from the institute, Safdar Sial, said the BLA was learning from the tactics of the Pakistani Taliban.
There was no ideological common ground between the two banned outfits, he said, but the BLA were successful at hitting soft targets to get big casualty numbers and deploying suicide bombers.
“This is not the same BLA as four or five years ago,” Sial told The Associated Press on Friday. “They are perpetrating tactical assaults. The targets have changed. The tactics have changed. It will be difficult (for the government) to tackle the threat that has developed.”
Though Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan is its least populated. It’s also a hub for the country’s ethnic Baloch minority, whose members say they face discrimination by the government.
There are also deep grievances about enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and the exploitation of the abundant natural resources at the expense of people in the province.
Rights activists say that those who demand a greater share of natural resources often go missing after being detained by security forces.
The BLA enjoyed public support in the province by aligning itself with people’s concerns about enforced disappearances, state exploitation, and inequity, said Sial.
The group’s propaganda painted the casualties of its attacks as government collaborators or accused them of being from eastern Punjab province, he added.
The BLA has targeted people from the east of the country as part of its drive to expel outsiders from Balochistan, which lies in the southwestern part of Pakistan, bordering Iran.
Sial said the government needed to win “hearts and minds” in Balochistan because the BLA was recruiting young people.
Nobody from the provincial government was available for comment on the report.
But Balochistan’s former information minister Jan Achakzai said the state had curtailed the BLA’s ability to attack infrastructure, military installations and personnel, causing the group to pivot to softer targets. The BLA were a tactical threat, he said, while the Pakistani Taliban were a strategic threat, whose goal was to overthrow the government and impose its interpretation of Islamic law in the country.
And while there was no comparison between the Pakistani Taliban and the BLA when it came to size or external support, the Baloch separatists were increasingly audacious, ruthless — and they were making headlines, Achakzai said.
“The recent attack was an open space, a railway station, with no security. There were civilians. They (the BLA) come out on the main highways, which aren’t easy to man” with security, he said.
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