Baluchistan: Trying to rehyphenate India with Pak, the US balances TRF with BLA!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Amid outrage in influential American sections that President Donald Trump has wasted two decades of efforts to bring India closer, Washington on Monday designated the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) as a terrorist group, days after it pasted the same sticker on The Resistance Front (TRF), who took responsibility for the April 22 massacre of 26 Hindu-only tourists in Jammu and Kashmir.
The US officially designated the BLA and its alias, the Majeed Brigade, as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO). The Majeed Brigade was also added as an alias to the BLA’s previous Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) classification, the media reported.
The move came during the second visit of Pakistan’s Army chief, “Field Marshal” Syed Asim Munir, alias “Mulla Munir,” to Washington in two months. As usual, he spewed venom against India and even threatened to take down “half the world” in a nuclear war.
Ignoring his rant, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the designation of the BLA as a terror group. “Since 2019, BLA has claimed responsibility for additional attacks, including by the Majeed Brigade.”
While the BLA was already on a US terror list, this new and expanded designation is widely seen as a significant diplomatic outcome for Pakistan, while introducing new complexities for India. Pakistan has long accused the BLA of being pro-India.
The decision to designate the BLA as FTO comes at a time when the US is cosying up to Pakistan. It also announced its intention to invest in mining and oil exploration in Baluchistan.
Interestingly, China, which has invested billions of dollars in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPE), flanking Baluchistan, is carefully watching its “all-weather friend” Pakistan sleeping again with the US.
With India refusing to sign on his dotted lines on the trade and tariff matters, US President Donald Trump is now trying to re-hyphenate India and Pakistan, putting them on the same pedestal. India has also refused to endorse his repeated claims that he caused the ceasefire during the Operation Sindoor in May.
On July 18, his administration designated the TRF, an offshoot organisation of UN-designated anti-India terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyba (LeT), responsible for the Pahalgam terror attack, as the FTO. Since then, Pakistan’s foreign office and its military establishment, who hired as many as seven American lobbyist firms, lobbied with the Trump administration to accord a similar status to the BLA.
For years, Pakistan has been locked in a fierce battle with a separatist insurgency in its mineral-rich Baluchistan, its largest province by area but least populated. The BLA, an armed insurgent group, has been at the forefront of this conflict, claiming to be fighting for an independent Baluchistan and accusing the Pakistani state of resource exploitation. The group has carried out numerous deadly attacks on Pakistani security forces and key infrastructure, including suicide bombings at the Gwadar Port and the hijacking of the Jaffar Express train.
Mulla Munir has consistently accused India of running a “proxy war” in the region and framed BLA’s actions as a direct result of India’s “defeat” in the recent four-day Operation Sindoor.
India has firmly rejected these claims and maintained that Baluchistan is an issue of Pakistan’s internal failures.
Some Baluch leaders have supported India’s position. Mir Yar Baloch, in May, declared Baluchistan independent from Pakistan and urged India and its media to stop referring to the Baloch people as “Pakistan’s own.”
He also backed India’s demand for Pakistan to leave Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK). Following India’s military success in Operation Sindoor, a report cited a BLA representative expressing hope that India’s growing military power could aid their cause and urged New Delhi to highlight human rights abuses in Baluchistan on the international stage.
