Truck driver Munir Ahmed was motoring along a darkened highway after a long day unloading sacks of rice in Pakistan’s Sindh province late Sunday, when he crossed over into Balochistan.
After entering the impoverished province, long seething with ethnic and economic resentments, he was “stopped by armed men wearing military-style uniforms,” pulled from his vehicle and added to a crowd of other captives, he told CNN.
“When they got down from the trucks, they were asked to show their identity cards. After checking the identity card, four people were taken aside and armed men started firing indiscriminately at them,” the 45-year-old said.
Ahmed saw three men die in front of him before he lost consciousness, having taken five bullets to his arms and legs. In total, 23 people were executed on the highway that night.
The mass roadside executions were the biggest of six separate attacks by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) on Sunday and Monday that killed 54 people in total, including 14 security personnel. The coordinated onslaught was sophisticated, with militants simultaneously targeting a police station and a military base, as well as highways and railway lines.
It was the deadliest day of the year so far for Pakistan, the latest flare-up in a long-running insurgency driven by inequality, ethnic resentments and colossal Chinese investments.
Somehow, Ahmed survived. The father of six young children had been assumed dead, but when his bullet-riddled body reached the hospital in Quetta, Balochistan’s biggest city, doctors quickly realized he was alive. He is still in critical condition.
History of mistrust
Balochistan is strategically important and rich in minerals. But its population is deeply disenfranchised, impoverished, and increasingly alienated from the federal government by decades of policies widely seen as discriminatory.
Monday’s bloodshed marked the anniversary of the killing of Akbar Khan Bugti, a popular Baloch tribal leader and an Oxford-educated politician, whose death in 2006 was blamed on Pakistan’s then military ruler Pervez Musharraf. Bugti’s death sparked a surge in separatism, and remains an open wound for the Baloch people, who have had their own richly distinct culture and language since long before Pakistan gained independence from the British in 1947.
Provincial security chiefs were seemingly unprepared for an attack on the important date for the BLA – the strongest separatist group in the province, with close to 4,000 fighters. That was a “grave mistake in intelligence” according to Abdul Basit, a research fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS).
But the violence came as no surprise to analysts who have been monitoring the region and blame what they say is the military’s interference in civilian affairs. “The political leadership in Balochistan has no roots with the people, genuine leadership has been sidelined, there is a political vacuum, and social media has allowed mobilization and organization,” Basit said.
The latest flare-up is a major challenge to the government’s authority.
“This attack shows that the militants are very active and can be lethal, demonstrates that the state has not been vigilant that these people have developed so strongly,” said Retired Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, a security commentator.
Most of the victims of Monday’s attack, like Ahmed and the murdered drivers, were from Punjab, Pakistan’s largest and most prosperous province. They were targeted because many separatist groups resent the perceived exploitation of their region and its resources. The BLA often refers to itself as warring with the “Punjabi establishment.”
In a statement released after the attacks, the BLA claimed all of their targets were linked to the military.
Though the insurgency has been running for decades, it has gained traction since Balochistan’s deep-water Gwadar port was leased to China, the jewel in the crown of Beijing’s ‘Belt and Road’ infrastructure push in Pakistan.
Beijing has invested tens of billions of dollars in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship Belt and Road project launched in 2015 that links China’s western Xinjiang region to Gwadar on the Arabian Sea with a network of roads, railways, pipelines and power plants.
Anti-China sentiment is rife among Baloch separatist groups. Militants are angered by what they say is the state’s exploitation of the region’s rich mineral resources, with little of the proceeds filtering down to people in what remains Pakistan’s poorest province. The port, often touted as “the next Dubai,” has become a security nightmare with persistent bombings of vehicles carrying Chinese workers, with many killed.
The state and security forces have responded severely, killing thousands of people in the last two decades. The government in Islamabad recently initiated a new military campaign, “Resolve for Stability,” to eliminate extremism, and has allocated millions of dollars’ worth of resources to the plan.
Severe economic crisis
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a statement on Thursday “commended the sacrifices and contributions of the people of Balochistan towards national progress and development, and resolved that enemies of Pakistan, bent on creating unrest in Balochistan, would be defeated with full force and national support.”
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said in a statement to parliament that the Balochistan attacks were “planned to ruin” the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation scheduled for October, which Pakistan is hosting under its rotating chairmanship. The SCO is a 10-member club of Eurasian countries spearheaded by China and Russia, acting as a counterweight to Western institutions led by the United States and its allies.
The military said in a statement Friday that three separate intelligence operations have been undertaken in Balochistan since Monday’s attack, adding that “five terrorists were sent to hell by the security forces.”
It emphasized that the “security forces of Pakistan, in step with the nation, remain determined to thwart attempts at sabotaging peace, stability and progress of Balochistan.”
But Fasi Zaka, an Islamabad-based political commentator, has questioned where the “attention of the state is going,” noting that the country is in the throes of a severe economic crisis that has “sapped the morale of the people.”
Pakistan is currently suffering high debt, low exports, energy inflation, and urgently needs a loan from the International Monetary Fund.
Masood, the retired general, agreed that economic factors were dragging on security. “Internally there must be peace within Pakistan, the economic conditions should be addressed so that people are not disgruntled,” he told CNN.
But as well as militancy, Balochistan’s alienation has also led to peaceful dissent, under a young generation of Baloch activists. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), led by 31-year-old Dr Mahrang Baloch, held protests in Islamabad last January and in the summer led a sit-in in Gwadar city which lasted for more than 10 days.
Her family has suffered acutely. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan,?Mahrang Baloch’s father was abducted in 2009, his mutilated body surfacing two years later. Her brother was also abducted in 2017.
Despite what they say is the state’s attempt to “forcibly link this movement with the separatist movement,” Bebarg Baloch from the BYC told CNN Monday’s attacks will not have any impact on their group. “It is a people’s movement, and it is moving forward due to people’s power. Baloch Yakjehti Committee has always maintained that we do not support violent incidents and believe in non-violence.”
Pakistani Taliban reappearing
It’s not just Balochistan that is testing the limits of central authority; this has been a long summer in parts of Pakistan far from the political heartland.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the country’s most militarized province, which also borders Afghanistan, thousands of young people came out to demonstrate after the government announced a new military campaign in the region.
Since Afghanistan returned to Taliban rule in 2021, the militant group’s Pakistani operation has increased activities along the border with a drastic uptick in attacks that have begun to worry locals already traumatized by years of violence at the hands of militant groups.
In some areas, the Taliban presence is testing the efficacy of state security forces, said Zulfikar Ali Shah, a shop owner from the northwestern town of Bannu. He said that “by late afternoon prayers, police stations are locked up with the police disappearing and rescue cars, police cars cannot roam in the evening in this area, the Taliban make check posts every other week in the tribal areas and search people despite the presence of the military.”
“The government does understand these issues but are not focusing on them,” said Masood. “They need a rethink, look at the way Pakistan is going downhill in terms of economy and prestige. Is the country democratic? Is the military’s involvement in politics helpful? These things need to be addressed.”
Basit agreed that “a reset in approach is needed,” but doubted such a reset is imminent.
“They will double down, their playbook is outdated, they don’t understand how this generation thinks, they don’t understand what makes them tick,” he said.
“When peaceful activists will see that peaceful gatherings are not allowed when there is a crackdown on peaceful activists then people will turn towards violence. “
CNN’s Asim Khan in Quetta contributed reporting.?