On November 13, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, along with number of other high profile people, including the Army chief, officially inaugurated the Gwadar port. A day before the inauguration, a suicide attack targeted a Sufi shrine in Baluchistan which resulted in the death of at least 52 people while more than 100 were reportedly injured.
The attack on Shrine is the third consecutive attack that has taken place in Baluchistan province in the space of three months. The attack on police academy in Quetta a few weeks ago killed more than 60 cadets while the attack on the provincial court killed at least 70 lawyers. In Pakistan, while the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been celebrated as an economic plan that can alter the fate of the country, the deteriorating security situation of Baluchistan, the centre of the entire project, points towards a deep rooted ideological, political and economic reality that if left unresolved may adversely affect the fate of the project.
The chest thumping that followed the Gwadar port’s inauguration focused on foiling all external enemies plan’s aimed at disrupting the mega economic project by spreading terror in the province. What was unfortunately missing from the official explanations was the answer to this question: how the Islamic State (ISIS) was able to carry out three terrorist attacks in the province in less than three months? No one has explained the fact that even after a two year long brutal campaign, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), has not only survived but has established itself as a novel militant challenge for the state.
The sideling the internal challenges by solely blaming foreign enemies will not make the CPEC a success story. While LeT, a sectarian organization that has operated in Pakistan for more than a decade now, claimed the previous two attacks on behalf of ISIS, Islamabad blamed Kabul and New Dehli for the attacks. The LeJ’s – along with other sectarian groups, such as the ASWJ – operations and workings, at one point, were legitimized by the state. Previously, the state tolerated these sectarian groups in Baluchistan largely due to their utility as a counter force to Baloch nationalist groups. However, due to such policy, numbers of Muslim minority groups, such as Hazaras, have been brutally victimized for years.
The typical rhetoric of “foreign force” involvement in spreading militancy in Baluchistan when all evidence points towards domestic factors cannot be used to divert criticism or lure sympathetic public views. The state has not just refused to accept the failure of its counter terrorism strategy, but has also continued to woo various banned militant outfits that are a direct challenge to the state’s survival in the long run. In the last few weeks, ASWJ, a proscribed outfit was able to organize public rallies despite the fact that it is a banned organization with known links with LeJ in the past.
As I have argued elsewhere: “One cannot deny that in order to maximize their militant capabilities on the face of the Army’s military action against them, these [sectarian militant] groups, in near future, might form alliance with Baloch militant groups [in Baluchistan]against the state. Any such unlikely nexus cannot be overruled entirely where both fronts stand to gain against the state.” The Baloch insurgency in post-colonial Pakistan has been a direct consequence of the machinations of the state. In Baluchistan, instead of dealing with the local factors giving rise to these nationalist struggles the situation has been made worse by the government. This condescending attitude towards the province is revealed in the almost absolute omission of the province’s Baloch community from the political, economic, bureaucratic, and military structures of Pakistan.
For a long time, the state has been employing the same ideological measures to combat tribal ethnic sentiment to control the insurgency. In this regard, the use of sectarian and other militant groups in the province has remained strategic. Moreover, Musharraf’s military government’s support for the MMA in Balochistan, which largely deepened the sense of alienation of the Baloch people, was also meant to achieve similar objectives.
The attack just a day before the inauguration of the port also reflects the growing presence and effective planning of the involved group. The steak of attacks highlights the need for deeper coordination among the country’s intelligence agencies.
Besides, Pakistan’s militant challenge is far from over: Punjab which is considered the hub of sectarian organization remains untouched; one can only imagine dread and fear if a military action was taken against the groups based in Punjab that have far more influence and support base in the country’s mainland.
On the other hand, turning Baluchistan into a fortress is not a durable answer as far as the success of the CPEC is concerned. The economic project will become a success story when the country doesn’t need to deploy contingents of troops to guard the route or the people working there. Unless the state changes its attitude of blaming neighboring countries for its own policy failures and recognizes the immediate rising militancy challenges – sectarian and otherwise – the CPEC’s troubles will only grow.
