QUETTA: The militant group behind a deadly train siege has ramped up violence in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province in the past year.
The Baloch Liberation Army is the most active group fighting against the state for independence in the mineral-rich province.
Here's what we know about the group that captured a train with more than 450 passengers.
Decades-long insurgency
Pakistani forces have for almost two decades fought an ethnic Baloch separatist insurgency, which has killed hundreds of people.
The Baloch Liberation Army has emerged as the biggest threat targeting foreign interests, security forces and Pakistani labourers from other regions, particularly the province of Punjab, the richest in the country.
Balochistan is rich in hydrocarbons and minerals, but 70 percent of the 15 million inhabitants live below the poverty line.
“The valuable natural resources in Balochistan belong to the Baloch nation,“ the BLA said in a recent statement.
“Pakistani military generals and their Punjabi elite are looting these resources for their own luxury.”
Last year was the deadliest in a decade in Pakistan, following a trend of rising militancy since the Taliban took control in Afghanistan in 2021.
In Balochistan, attacks surged by 90 percent compared to 2023, according to the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies.
Accusations of rights abuses
Baloch separatists and rights groups say the military's heavy-handed counter-terrorism response to the insurgency has included widespread enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has said there was “impunity for the perpetrators and indifference on the part of the government”.
Baloch rights activists regularly hold protests in the province accusing the authorities of abuses, mostly led by women grieving missing men.
The BLA “has been able to exploit legitimate local grievances”, Abdul Basit, a researcher at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told AFP.
He said local voices were sidelined after Baloch nationalists were removed from parliament and politicians without local popularity installed.
Without another platform, “people turn to those who allow them to express themselves, through violence”, Basit said.
Today, the BLA is estimated to have around 5,000 members, he said.
Energy projects at risk
There has been a “shift in the composition and pattern” of the insurgency, according to researcher Farzana Shaikh with Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific Programme.
“The most significant change is the involvement of a growing number of educated middle-class professionals who are transforming the insurgency from a movement dominated by traditional tribal chiefs to one with greater popular appeal,“ she said in a report published last year.
They have also used women suicide bombers who were law students and medicine graduates, according to the BLA.
The train siege, which follows an attack in August when a highway was seized and travellers shot dead, was “meticulously organized and carried out in a very strategic manner”, Basit said.
It “raises great concern about the capabilities of Pakistani intelligence”, he added.
The government is particularly sensitive to foreign investment in the country and has repeatedly vowed to protect Chinese citizens and infrastructure projects, many of which run through the province.
China has poured billions of dollars into Pakistan, including the deep-water port of Gwadar, the flagship project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Rising violence blamed on Afghanistan
Islamabad has repeatedly accused Kabul of failing to root out militants sheltering on its side of the border. Kabul denies the charges.
In a joint statement to the United Nations in October, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and China said the BLA was among several militant groups “based in Afghanistan” that “pose a serious threat to regional and global security”.
On Tuesday evening, Pakistani representative to the UN, Munir Akram, accused the BLA of collaborating with the Pakistani Taliban, which is mostly active in the northwestern border regions with Afghanistan.
However, for researcher Basit, while the militants may shelter in Iran and Afghanistan, “the real fault lines are in Balochistan”.
