Arresting rebel leaders in Balochistan doesn’t impact the overall insurgency, and here’s why
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On April 7, Pakistan military’s media wing made the public announcement that it had arrested the influential founder and leader of the separatist Baloch Nationalist Army (BNA) Gulzar Imam, in a high-profile intelligence-based operation. His arrest is a major setback for BNA and a tactical victory for Pakistani security institutions’ counterinsurgency campaign in Balochistan. However, it is unlikely to impact the overall Balochistan insurgency.
Gulzar founded BNA, an umbrella group for Baloch rebels, in January 2022 by merging the Baloch Republican Army and United Baloch Army. After his arrest, the information gleaned from Gulzar has helped Pakistan’s security agencies weaken BNA’s network in the Makran region and detain several members of the separatist group.
Since Gulzar’s arrest some months ago, BNA which earned notoriety for launching several dozen attacks in a short span of time, has been significantly downgraded, particularly in the Makran region. According to open-source data, more than 140 BNA militants have been arrested or neutralized. The group suffered another major setback in March when it expelled its co-founder Sarfraz Bungalzai for violating organizational discipline and policies.
However, despite BNA’s weakening, Gulzar’s arrest will not have a major impact on the overall Baloch insurgent movement, which is not dependent on one insurgent group or leader. In the past, the Baloch insurgency has not only survived the killings of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in 2006, Mir Balach Marri in 2007 and Aslam Baloch in 2018, but emerged stronger. It will weather Gulzar’s arrest as well.
The current, or fifth, wave of the Baloch insurgency is the longest and most lethal as compared to the previous four waves. Moreover, unlike the previous insurgent waves which demanded political autonomy or concessions from the state, the current wave espouses separatism. Likewise, the current insurgent wave is spread across Balochistan unlike the previous waves which were confined to particular areas or regions of the province. More importantly, rather than drawing its strength from Baloch tribal structures, this insurgent wave has its center of gravity in the educated middle class and genuine ethnic grievances of political exclusion, socioeconomic marginalization, structural discrimination and everyday humiliations on the pretext of security.
In the past, the Baloch insurgency has not only survived the killings of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in 2006, Mir Balach Marri in 2007 and Aslam Baloch in 2018, but emerged stronger. It will weather Gulzar’s arrest as well.
Abdul Basit Khan
The present generation of Baloch youth have grown up in a securitized and militarized environment, feeling estranged and alienated. In one way or the other, they have been impacted by the issue of enforced disappearances. Almost all of them know someone from their families, friends or community circles who has gone missing for years on end. The issue of enforced disappearances, a militarized counterinsurgent campaign and manipulative political practices such as installing hand-picked political leaders instead of genuine public representatives have given birth to a more radicalized variant of Baloch nationalism invested in separatism. This generation of Baloch separatists carries no tribal baggage, it is tech-savvy and uses digital communication technologies and social media platforms to put across its separatist narrative in an unapologetic manner. Characters like Gulzar and Shari Baloch, the female suicide bomber who carried out the attack on Karachi University’s Confucius Center in April 2022, belong to this generation of Baloch separatists.
If the deep-seated sense of alienation and mistrust in Balochistan persists, leaders like Gulzar will continue to emerge. They are the byproducts of their circumstances which compel them to take a recourse to violent means to address their grievances. In other words, they are mere symptoms, not the causes. Hence, the arrest of Gulzar is the classical case of addressing the symptoms and ignoring the causes.
The current template of counterinsurgency in Balochistan has created more security challenges than addressing the existing ones. In asymmetric conflicts, the military power is used to create space for political forces to convert security gains into political advantages. In other words, the use of kinetic force is subordinated to a political strategy and vision. However, in Balochistan, we are witnessing a militarized counterinsurgent campaign without any political strategy guiding the overall process.
Balochistan needs a healing touch with an overdose of empathy and sympathy from the state. Primarily, the issue in Balochistan is political and has no security solution. The starting point of this political process can be allowing genuine political voices to represent the Baloch masses at the provincial and national levels instead of installing handpicked political actors who have no public roots. Then, the issue of enforced disappearances must be addressed transparently. Likewise, instead of implementing an exclusionary development model which furthers the Baloch sense of alienation, an inclusive approach is warranted.
In the absence of the above-mentioned steps, the vicious cycle of violence and counter-violence in Balochistan will continue endlessly and leaders like Gulzar will come and go. An entire generation of Balochs to which Gulzar belongs has been lost to the gun-and-bomb approach, we can save the next one through empathy and sympathy. The choice is ours.
- The author is a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Twitter @basitresearcher.
