ource of instabIlity:\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nPakistani security officials consider the BLA a major source of instability in Balochistan and the country as a whole.<\/p>\n
Militants loyal to the group have carried out attacks on government installations, security forces, and labourers from non-Baloch ethnicities.<\/p>\n
The group carried out 25 terrorist attacks in 2018, killing 36 people and injuring 78, according to an annual security report the Pak Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS), an Islamabad-based independent think tank.<\/p>\n
Since the arrival of Chinese investment worth billions into the Balochistan region, militant groups, particularly the BLA, have focused their attacks on Chinese individuals and interests in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
Beijing has established infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and linked projects, such as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) \u2013 that seeks to link its western province of Xinjiang with Pakistani port city of Gwadar.<\/p>\n
Militant groups say China is a colonising force operating under the pretext of investment.<\/p>\n
Three high-impact attacks by the BLA showed a shifting trend in the outfit\u2019s modus operandi.<\/p>\n
They included direct attacks on diplomatic missions and the use of suicide bombing. The attacks conveyed a warning to those participating in Chinese projects but also pushed the US government towards branding the insurgent group a terror outfit.<\/p>\n
In May, the BLA carried out an attack on Gwadar\u2019s only five-star hotel, where foreign businessmen, including Chinese workers overseeing the CPEC projects, frequently stay.<\/p>\n
In November, the BLA launched a brazen attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi; only a swift response by the security personnel present managed to avert multiple casualties. In August 2018, the BLA had attempted to hit a passenger bus full of Chinese engineers in the Dalbandin area.<\/p>\n
In the two attacks, the BLA militants wearing suicide bomb vests were not able to blow themselves up, but in Dalbandin attack, the BLA used Achu\u2019s teenage son to carry out a suicide attack on the bus carrying Chinese engineers to boost the morale of the militants.<\/p>\n
Last year, Achu formed a \u2018suicide bombers brigade\u2019 to train its militants in carrying out suicide attacks primarily targeting Chinese interests in the country.<\/p>\n
Pakistan has long suffered from suicide bombings but only at the hands of religious extremist groups, such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. But the BLA introduced the use of suicide attack among the Baloch separatists – who ostensibly possess liberal views.<\/p>\n
‘Weakened and fictionalised’<\/strong><\/p>\nMuhammad Amir Rana, PIPS Director, said that the use suicide bombings is an attempt to revive the weakened and factionalised Balochistan insurgency that was not able to achieve substantial progress in materialising their objectives after fighting with the state for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
In Pakistan, 71 militant groups are banned, and, among them, at least 13 outfits are linked with the ethnic insurgency in Balochistan. But, the US only listed the BLA, which was banned in Pakistan in 2006, among them. \u201cThe reason behind it is that the BLA had claimed responsibility for most of the high-impact attacks using suicide-bombing methods,\u201d Rana told TRT World.<\/p>\n
Experts also said that the recent ban will not affect the BLA within Pakistan nor in US, but it will provide Pakistan legitimacy in cracking down the Baloch separatist groups. The US move will also make the BLA\u2019s fundraising and the movement of their leaders in the region more difficult.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Malik Siraj Akbar, a Washington-based analyst and author of \u2018The Redefined Dimensions of Baloch Nationalist Movement\u2019, said that most of the Baloch insurgent leaders live in Europe and no one lives in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeen from the past, it does not seem that this decision will significantly reduce the BLA\u2019s operational capabilities because the United Kingdom had also declared the BLA as a terrorist organization in 2006 but the latter continued its operations without any interruptions,\u201d Akbar told TRT World.<\/p>\n
‘Rename and re-emerge’<\/strong><\/p>\nHowever, analysts believe that said it would not affect the militant outfit\u2019s subversive activities within the country because non-state actors tend to respond to situations like these differently. \u201cThey are not like universities or NGOs that you revoke their accreditation and they shut down their offices the next day. They regroup, rename and reemerge as soon as the dust settles down,\u201d said Akbar.<\/p>\n
Terming the ban \u201cbeyond comprehension and unjustified,\u201d the BLA said in a statement that the US and the European Union should \u201canalyse Pakistani brutalities against Baloch civilians and the expansionist and militaristic designs of China to find out who is the real terrorist in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the US to designate a separatist ethnic group like the BLA under the presidential executive order 13224 is significant because the State Department rarely designates groups of a similar profile.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US has around 125 groups designated under this order, which came into effect post 9\/11,\u201d said Asfandyar Mir, a fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf the 125 groups currently designated, only 28 are purely separatist\/ethnic\/nationalist, with no overt Sunni or Shia militant political claim. Since 2010, the State Department has designated around four such groups.\u201d<\/p>\n
This suggests that the designation is not just due to the terrorist activities of the BLA. There is more to this.<\/p>\n
Trump-Khan meeting<\/strong><\/p>\nAnalysts believe that the US administration wanted to acknowledge Pakistan\u2019s important and positive role in facilitating the Afghan peace process ahead of Prime Minister Imran Khan\u2019s Washington visit.<\/p>\n
The meeting between meet U.S President Trump and Prime Minister Khan will be on July 22.<\/p>\n
Under Trump, the US policy on Pakistan started out with aid suspension, threatening strikes against the Afghan Taliban inside Pakistan, targeted sanctions, and blocking Pakistan’s access to international financial institutions.<\/p>\n
Mir told TRT World: \u201cAround 18 months ago, the US stopped airstrikes inside Pakistan and instead started targeting militants Pakistan wanted dead in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US also started working with Pakistani officials on the Afghan peace process while keeping quiet on the Pakistani military’s meddling in domestic politics. \u00a0More recently, the US didn\u2019t try to block aid to Pakistan from Arab states and the IMF.\u201d<\/p>\n
He explained further that in return, Pakistan has pressured the Afghan Taliban on peace talks. Pakistan has also curtailed the activities of some India-focused Jihadi groups, such as Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and Jammat-ud-Dawa.<\/p>\n
The designation comes two months after China dropped its objections to a Security Council resolution against JeM\u2019s head Masood Azhar, naming him a global terrorist. \u201cThe US needs better relations with China on counterterrorism. The terrorist challenge from Afghanistan is likely to increase for the US, especially in case of a military drawdown from there. China will have an influence in a post-U.S Afghanistan and on Pakistan,\u201d Mir said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zia Ur Rehman, July 19, 2019 https:\/\/www.trtworld.com\/magazine\/what-s-behind-the-us-decision-to-proscribe-a-baloch-militant-group-28363 The US decision last week to designate a Pakistani separatist group as a terrorist organisation was an acknowledgment of Islamabad\u2019s cooperation in finding a political settlement to Afghanistan\u2019s 18-year-long war with the Taliban \u2013 one of the Trump administration\u2019s top priorities, according to analysts. On July 2, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1364,1361,18],"tags":[224,263,1175,1298],"class_list":["post-2222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afghan-migration","category-conflict-militancy","category-trt-world","tag-baloch-separatists","tag-bla","tag-suicide-bombing-in-pakistan","tag-us-bans-bla"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zia-ur-rehman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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