EDITORIAL: The restive Khuzdar district of Balochistan continues to be wracked by tribal conflicts and militant violence. During the last year several people, including a BNP-M leader, a journalist and president of the Khuzdar Press Club along with two others, and a CTD official were killed in gun attacks and IED explosions. In the latest incident on Wednesday, Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) militants launched a brazen foray into the Zehri tehsil of Khuzdar.
According to reports, around 80 armed men entered the area from the nearby mountains, setting up checkpoints around the main bazaar overlooked by pickets on the mountains to resist any action from the security forces. They stormed a Levies station, took the personnel hostage, ransacked the records, and set the building on fire before taking away with them 20 AK-47 rifles, 4,000 rounds of ammunition and 10 motorbikes.
Later the armed men targeted the municipal committee building and NADRA office where they destroyed all official records, computers and other equipment. Next, they arrived at a private bank, took the staff hostage and seized over Rs 90 million from the strongroom. This went on for at least eight long hours until the security forces arrived and the militants escaped taking two Levies vehicles with them. Luckily, no one was killed.
Insurgent attacks have been on the increase both in intensity and frequency with targets ranging from security men, workers from other provinces, and Chinese interests. Those at the helm tend to blame it all on forces inimical to this country.
Indeed, it is no secret that India is involved in instigating insurgent violence to destabilise Pakistan, of which RAW operative, Kulbhushan Yadav, caught red-handed in Balochistan back in 2016, is a living proof. There is not much, however, outsiders can do beyond providing militant elements with material support. The reality is more complicated. Fuelling the insurgency are long-standing genuine grievances of the Baloch people, further aggravated by the appalling phenomenon of enforced disappearances.
Many of those the mainstream Bloch nationalist leaders refer to as ‘angry Bloch youth’ are children of the ‘missing’. Also worth noting is the fact that whereas the previous insurgencies — as many as four — in that part of the federation were led by tribal chieftains, the present one is driven by regular people and sustained by the Baloch people’s growing sense of alienation.
It has gone on, with some ebbs and flows, since 2003 when the then military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf, ignoring an agreement a beleaguered Nawab Akbar Bugti had reached with a delegation of PML-Q leaders, ordered military action, saying “they won’t even know what hit them.” Over two decades on, kinetic operations have not resolved anything.
Badly needed, therefore, is a change of course. Instead of insisting on doing more of the same, the powers that be should listen to Baloch nationalist leaders who have the trust of their people, and also authorise them to find a durable solution to the trouble. In the end, it is a political problem that can be better resolved through political means.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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