In what seems a clear sign of escalating confrontation, ethnic Baloch rebels have now killed at least ten Pakistan security forces members in an attack in Balochistan, the Pakistan Military confirmed, making it the deadliest attack in recent months. The attack came at a time when the TTP insurgents have already stepped up its attacks in the country’s northwest. 

In a statement on Thursday, the ISPR, the media wing of the Pakistan Military, said that militants had attacked a security post in the Kech district of Balochistan, triggering a firefight that killed 10 soldiers and an assailant. The incident happened overnight from January 25-26. 

Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), an armed separatist group, claiming to be fighting for the independence of Balochistan from Pakistan, took responsibility for the attack. However, they said the casualty figure was at least 17. Importantly, the attack came little over a week after Baloch insurgents, belonging to a different group, had claimed a bombing attack in the northern city of Lahore on January 20. 

Following the attack, the military said it had arrested three insurgents and the search operation for more attackers involved in the incident is currently on. 

Housing just a little over five percent of the country’s total population, Balochistan is one of Pakistan's most resource-rich provinces that is having substantial deposits of coal, iron ore, marble, limestone, sulphur, chromite and others. Over half a dozen ethnic and other rebel groups operate in the province, accusing the Pakistani state of exploiting their resources with little benefit to the locals. 

For years, Pakistan had been blaming India and the NDS, now-defunct intelligence agency of the former US-backed Afghan government, for fomenting instability and separatism inside the country.

For almost over a decade, Islamabad had accused India and the former Afghan government of providing safe heaven to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an Islamist group, waging war on the Pakistani state in the northwestern region, and Baloch rebels.

Now with no let-up in the TTP violence and the group’s open ties with the Afghan Taliban, the government appears struggling to manage domestic expectations and the country’s continued support for the Afghan Taliban, which provides refuge to the TTP. 

“Organised terrorist networks are still operating on the Afghan soil which is still being used against Pakistan,” Moeed Yusuf, the country’s national security advisor, was quoted as saying by the Express Tribune on Thursday during a briefing to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. 

Reportedly, he also added that Islamabad wasn’t “completely optimistic” about Afghanistan’s "fledgling" Taliban government, and the group’s return to power there would not mean the “end of all problems in the region.”

He also disclosed that the TTP, which had signed a month-long ceasefire agreement in November last year, had unilaterally scrapped the ceasefire. The agreement—a result of the back door negotiations between the TTP and the Pakistan government—was brokered by the Haqqani Network of the Afghan Taliban. 

(SAM)