The night of 12 March shook Pakistan as the insurgent Balochistan Liberation Army hijacked a train destined to Peshawar from Quetta.
Of course, by the afternoon of 13 March, the military’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) announced that it had completed a counter-operation that killed 33 terrorists, and managed to rescue a majority of the passengers. The train, Jaffar Express, was carrying 450 people including Pakistan Army personnel.
The shocking incident was noticed around the world as it got reported in major international newspapers and channels, with condemnations issued by several governments. However, this hijack isn’t the real story. The real story is about Pakistan’s largest province becoming highly ungovernable, and the security establishment’s repeated inability to provide protection in the area.
The train hijacking was obviously a case of intelligence failure as the authorities overseeing the province were unable to see the attack coming. This is not even the first time that Jaffar Express has been targeted. The same train was attacked in November 2024, during a suicide bombing at Quetta station that killed 32 people, including some Pakistan Army officers. It’s a known fact that the train regularly carries a significant number of military personnel, returning to their homes in the north of the country or to the Army General headquarters in Rawalpindi. But the intelligence completely failed to anticipate and prevent the incident.
A Karachi-based journalist, who covers Sindh and Balochistan, told me that much of Balochistan, particularly areas in the interior and toward the coast, are governable by state authorities only during the day. It’s the insurgents that have influence after sunset. Baloch insurgents present a bigger challenge than the religious extremists operating in the area because they have support from the local population. When militants raided a police station in Mastung the same evening as the train hijacking, several residents took pictures and videos while eulogising the perpetrators.
A deepening wedge
Balochistan has become difficult to control operationally. This is mainly because Baloch people are unhappy with the Pakistani state and its agents. Forced abductions of Balochis from across the country, unequitable distribution of resources, and unjust treatment have deepened the rift between the establishment and Balochistan. The Pakistani state looks at the insurgency in Balochistan as an India-inspired and facilitated activity without taking the trouble of reaching out to the local population.
The 2024 elections played a major role in intensifying this divide as the governance of the province was handed over to mafia elements and unelectable, unrepresentative people such as current chief minister Sarfaraz Bugti. This reinforced the belief that the Pakistani state will never be fair to Baloch people. The story of Balochistan, thus, is truly one of state-driven misery and injustice.
Such treatment is the basis of the growing success of Baloch insurgency, which has gained strength over the last decade. Two fundamental developments have occurred in the Balochistan movement during this period.
First, war-fighting capacity has undergone a qualitative change. Gone are the days when the BLA and other Baloch insurgent groups could only acquire soft targets. They are increasingly able to attack hard military targets, most of which do not get reported. Media blackouts in Balochistan result in limited coverage of the attacks against state functionaries or facilities. Most information comes from insurgent sources themselves, with very little of it seeping into the national media. These are tactics to keep the rest of the population in the dark about conditions in Balochistan and maintain an illusion of control.
Incidents such as the Jaffar Express hijacking are designed to make such a splash that the state would be unable to suppress the news. Balochistan is part of an extended territory and next door to unstable and conflict-ridden countries like Afghanistan. Proximity to Afghanistan also means abundant access to military hardware, and an excellent training ground even for non-religious terrorists such as the Baloch insurgents.
Second, literate men and women are leading the Balochistan cause, ever willing to die for it. This appears to them as the only viable solution compared to a state that isn’t keen on dialogue. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee’s 2023 protest march to Islamabad, led by central organiser Mahrang Baloch, is a case in point. Young women like Mahrang and Sammi Baloch spearhead not just a woman’s resistance but a bigger movement against forced abductions. Increased terror attacks tend to act like a double-edged sword, making things more difficult for organisations and movements such as the BYC. They are bound to face greater opposition from the state after the hijacking incident.
Also read: Train hijack by Baloch insurgents in Pakistan holds critical lesson—railways can drive geopolitics
Bleeding wound
Balochistan today is emotionally disconnected from the state, with no silver lining in the form of a dialogue or reconciliation between insurgents, Baloch people, and the state. Unfortunately, the government only shows increased lack of understanding of the region’s problems, exhibiting neither the capability to find a political solution nor a willingness to look beyond Punjab. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)’s Khwaja Asif could only find time to criticise Imran Khan’s party for its narrative on the hijack incident rather than talking about the need for sustainable political solutions.
In the same breath, it would be naïve to conclude that Balochistan will eventually succeed in its bid to separate from Pakistan. Balochistan is not East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and is more reminiscent of north and north-eastern Sri Lanka.
Unlike in the erstwhile East Pakistan, where Bengalis constituted an overwhelming majority, Balochistan is made up of just 55 per cent Balochis; the rest of the population consists mostly of Pashtuns who are unwilling to leave the state. As in Sri Lanka, the Baloch people face the wrath of a security state that, at least on this issue, has support from the majority Punjabi population. Furthermore, Baloch people may get sympathy and assistance from neighbouring countries, but no one from among these state actors would risk helping them to the same extent as India did East Pakistan in 1971. The nuclear deterrence environment does not allow this.
The Pakistani state has consistently responded in a typical manner – making tall claims that the territory will be secured, and that all threats will be fought. The army is brazenly misleading its own men, hiding the exact number of military casualties from the media’s gaze. However, such obfuscation of facts will not help in improving either security or marketing Balochistan’s mineral resources, which Islamabad is keen to sell to the outside world. Even if Balochistan remains hanging on to Pakistan, it has already turned into a bleeding wound that no one any longer knows how to nurse.
Ayesha Siddiqa is a senior fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)