Wake-up call for Pakistan in Balochistan

A trail of deadly attacks in Pakistan’s Balochistan province on the night of August 26 and continuing into the morning of the next day, killing at least 38 people, a majority of them civilians of Punjabi ethnicity, may serve to help the Pakistan ruling class, including its Army, to focus on internal security challenges rather than on its self-inflicted grudge matches with each other. The Pakistan Army particularly, after its overweening subordination of the civilian government, appears more preoccupied with ensuring that former prime minister Imran Khan gets no opportunity to challenge it again. Not surprisingly, despite its huge presence in Balochistan, it seems to have been taken completely by surprise by the attacks, which have been claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), an ethnic Baloch nationalist insurgency, which Pakistan has banned as a terrorist organisation. The BLA traces its roots to the 1970s armed struggle for control of Balochistan by leftist guerrilla groups, which was crushed ruthlessly by the Pakistan Army. It was dormant until the early 2000s, but since the killing of the Baloch leader Akbar Khan Bugti in 2006 by the military, has been waging a low-intensity war against the Pakistani Punjabi-dominated establishment.