The scene is more or less the same, familiar and grim, like the global fate of people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A bus or train with people on a mission begins its journey to reach a destination with passengers who have the hows and whys in their minds written in ink of different blood from those on the other side.
On the evening of Sunday, October 13, 2024, around 11 PM, an attack was carried out by Pakistani terrorists of the BLA (Baloch Liberation Army) targeting a group of Chinese engineers and investors as they were leaving the airport in Karachi. Among the injured were several police officers who were escorting the Chinese convoy. Pakistani news channels broadcast footage of burning vehicles and thick smoke rising from the scene, while security forces cordoned off the area. However, the people had already lost their lives.
The fact could not obviously go uncommented by Pakistan .”These attacks were unprecedented and mark a new escalation in tensions in Balochistan,” said Kiya Baloch, a Pakistani journalist and commentator who monitors military activity in the region. “It shows the determination of the BLA to demonstrate its growing power.”
The Chinese embassy in Islamabad confirmed that two Chinese nationals were killed and one was injured, noting that several Pakistanis were also injured in the attack. The convoy was linked to the Port Qasim Electric Power Company, a China-Pakistan joint venture. This attack, as is logical, shook the relations between the two countries.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry condemned the attack, expressing its condolences to the families of the victims and committing to bringing the perpetrators to justice. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also condemned the bombing, calling it an “atrocious act” and promised that Pakistan would ensure the safety of its Chinese partners.
This latest attack comes just a week before Pakistan is set to host the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, a security group founded by China and Russia to challenge Western alliances. It is reasonable to raise concerns about the country’s ability to ensure the safety of foreign nationals and to host high-profile events.
According to Lin Minwang, deputy director of the South Asia Studies Center at Fudan University, if China maintains a strict non-intervention policy, the issue of violence against Chinese interests is unlikely to be resolved as Pakistan does not have the capacity to eliminate terrorist groups.
“China firmly supports Pakistan’s counter-terrorism efforts and is ready to actively promote counter-terrorism cooperation with Pakistan and assist it in strengthening its counter-terrorism defenses.” “Unfortunately, it has been caught in the conflict between Islamabad and the separatist fighters, and targeting Chinese interests has become a useful tool for the BLA,” said Li.
Lin said that the issue of terrorism unfortunately remains for two decades, with the number of attacks increasing after the creation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the infrastructure projects being carried out to support this purpose. He added that any intervention by China would test its military capabilities abroad and would depend on Islamabad’s willingness, which seemed to be lacking.
However, apart from the Chinese, the members of the BLA do not want the Americans either.The withdrawal of American troops from neighboring Afghanistan, where they had carried out counter-terrorism measures, also contributed to the increase in attacks, he said.
But before they left, they left behind the knowledge and means they had regarding the art of war. It is believed that when American and international forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, they left behind military equipment and weapons worth billions of dollars, which were subsequently seized by the Taliban after they took power.
But who are the BLA separatists, how did they emerge, and what interests do they serve? The BLA, which has approximately 3,000 fighters, seeks the independence of the southwestern region of Balochistan and has a history of targeting both Pakistani security forces and Chinese nationals, particularly those involved in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.
BLA has also adopted more lethal tactics used by Islamist armed groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, with the most extreme group operating among them.
Perhaps their most extreme expression to date took place in 2022 when a 31-year-old mother became the first woman to carry out a suicide attack for the BLA. The move was considered a “paradigm shift” by some observers.
These people want the autonomy of the region both from Pakistan and from the Chinese or the Americans. They are young, desperate, capable of anything, having only seen the worst part of reality, and trapped in the blinders of Islam in its most extreme form, dreaming of a theocratic paradise far from any driving force of progress. Every action in life and politics brings a reaction. At this moment, Pakistan is trying to present a face of change to the global community by building relations with China through their economic agreement BRI and by attempting to leave behind its troubled past with America.But when it becomes evident that Pakistan cannot fight terrorism within its borders, how can foreign powers, including the USA, trust it? Pakistan has not taken into account that changes must be based on solid ground to stand, and here we are talking about the ground of a country where terrorism is a weed so deeply rooted that it is about to drive away anything that touches it.