Border Disputes

The South American nation is only the second country to recognise Israel’s claims over the illegally annexed Syrian territory.

Colombia has become only the second country to recognise Israel’s claim of sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, just days after far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella took power.

Colombia’s Foreign Ministry made the announcement on Monday, joining the United States as the only other country to recognise Israel’s annexation of the territory in 1981.

“The Government of Colombia recognises Israeli sovereignty over this territory, as well as that State’s right to protect itself against external threats,” read a statement published on X.

“Colombia recognises that maintaining Israel’s control and sovereignty over the Golan Heights is an essential component of its national defence,” it added.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar thanked his “good friend” de la Espriella for the “historic” recognition.

He said the pair had agreed on the move in the Colombian city of Barranquilla a day before de la Espriella’s inauguration.

Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, before illegally annexing the territory in 1981. The move was rejected by most of the international community, although the US formally recognised Israel’s claim in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

The United Nations recognises the region as a part of Syria, and last month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated that stance, describing Israeli occupation as “totally unacceptable”.

Syria tried to regain the Golan in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, but was thwarted. Israel and Syria signed an armistice in 1974, and the Golan has been relatively quiet since.

Colombia’s recognition of the Israeli claim comes as Israel expands its military footprint in Syria following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024. Israel has moved troops into a UN-monitored buffer zone and seized strategic territories, including the Syrian side of Jabal al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon), which overlooks the capital, Damascus.

De La Espriella, the new Colombian president, ran a bombastic campaign during which he promised close relations with the US and Israel as a way to combat armed groups in his country.

The US-backed millionaire has promised to restore Bogota’s ties with Israel after his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, criticised Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, severed diplomatic relations and halted Israeli arms imports.

De La Espriella has also cancelled Petro’s plans to open an embassy in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

A China Coast Guard vessel has fired its water cannon at Philippine government boats near Scarborough Shoal, the latest in a series of confrontations in the disputed South China Sea.

The incident adds to concern that Moscow’s war on Ukraine risks spilling over to entangle neighbouring NATO states.

A Romanian fighter jet has shot down a drone, suspected to be Russian, that breached the country’s airspace.

The incident on Friday marked the first time the Eastern European country has intercepted an intruding aircraft since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, President Nicusor Dan noted.

However, concern that Moscow’s war on Ukraine risks entangling neighbouring NATO states is on the rise. Romania is one of several alliance members to confront repeated stray drones recently, as Russia and Ukraine launch hundreds of drones daily.

Dan reported that a Romanian F-16 jet shot down the drone after it entered the country’s airspace, adding that the fighter had shot over an uninhabited area.

A Romanian military source told the Reuters news agency that Russia was the suspected point of origin, given the pattern of previous incursions in the region.

Romania’s Ministry of National Defence said a radar first detected the drone about 20km (12 miles) east of the Black Sea port of Sulina, before it crossed into national airspace on a path through Braila, Fetesti and Buzau county.

Two Italian Eurofighter Typhoon jets, deployed to Romania under NATO’s air policing mission, were joined by two Romanian F-16s. One F-16 engaged the target with an air-to-air missile, downing it over unpopulated ground near the village of Padina. No casualties or injuries were reported.

Romania, an EU and NATO member sharing a border with Ukraine, has recorded dozens of drone incursions since the war began. This incident marked the first successful interception.

In late May, a drone struck an apartment building in the city of Galati, injuring two people – the first time such a strike hit a populated area in a NATO country.

NATO and European Union officials condemned the incident. The European Commission said it showed Russia’s war had “crossed yet another line”.

A month later, a Ukrainian sea drone exploded at the port of Constanta. Kyiv said that it had launched the vessel, which had been knocked off course by Russian jamming.

The Baltic states have also reported repeated airspace violations in recent months, incursions that contributed to the collapse of Latvia’s government in May.

NATO chief Mark Rutte has said Moscow’s “reckless behaviour is a danger to us all”. United States ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, has pledged the alliance will “defend every inch” of its territory.

Thousands of people who travel every day between the southern tip of Spain and the British territory of Gibraltar will no longer have to cross a physical border from Wednesday.

This came after the European Union and United Kingdom on Tuesday signed a treaty that delivers “economic and trade certainty for the people and businesses of Gibraltar, safeguards British sovereignty and protects the autonomous operation of UK military facilities”.

The treaty was signed in Brussels by the European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, British Minister of State for Europe Stephen Doughty, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares and Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo.

“Gibraltar was left out of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement following Brexit, creating the prospect of a devastating ‘hard border’ for the 15,000 people – more than half of Gibraltar’s workforce – who cross the land border between Spain and Gibraltar every day,” the treaty said.

Here’s what we know about the treaty:

What does the treaty include?

Britain secured Gibraltar, a strategically important enclave at the southern tip of Spain, in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of Spanish Succession.

The contested British overseas territory of 38,000 people is perched at a strategic location, only 8 nautical miles (15km) from Morocco where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea.

The new agreement allows residents of Gibraltar to cross into Spain using residence cards without needing to have their passports stamped. In return, Spanish citizens will be allowed to enter Gibraltar using a government ID card.

The treaty in effect brings Gibraltar into the EU’s Schengen free-travel area, which allows people from 29 countries to move among them freely without needing visas.

At Gibraltar’s airport and port, entry and exit checks will be conducted by both British and Spanish border officials. The arrangement is similar to what’s in place at Eurostar train stations in London and Paris, where both British and French officials check passports.

Travellers to Gibraltar from countries outside the Schengen area, including the UK, will have to contend with the EU Entry/Exit System, which was rolled out in Europe in April and replaced passport stamps with biometric data collected through photographs and digital fingerprints.

Under the older system, every person had to face two border checks, one by Gibraltarian border agents and the other by Spanish officials when entering or exiting the Schengen area. The checks caused long queues, heavily impacting the workers who made the crossing daily.

The British government said the agreement brings “fluidity for people and goods crossing the Gibraltar-Spain border to support economic growth and jobs in the region”.

What was the motivation behind the treaty, and how does Brexit feature in it?

In a 2016 referendum in which UK voters approved leaving the EU, 96 percent of voters on “the Rock”, as Gibraltar is popularly known in English, supported remaining in the bloc.

When Britain eventually left the EU in 2020, the relationship between Gibraltar and the bloc was left unresolved. Previous talks on a deal to ensure people and goods could keep flowing across the border had made halting progress.

While the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which came into force in 2021, broadly covered relations between the bloc and Britain, it was decided that Gibraltar would be addressed in separate negotiations because of its unique situation because it’s not in the EU customs union or the Schengen area.

In 2025, the EU and UK announced an agreement on those issues after more than three and a half years of negotiations.

Does the treaty place Gibraltar in a special position, and do any other British overseas territories have the same privileges?

Yes, Gibraltar is in a unique position because it has now gained EU privileges without being an actual EU member.

Still, it is under British sovereignty, and the treaty solely seeks to resolve post-Brexit cooperation with the EU and border management due to its open land border with the EU.

None of Britain’s other overseas territories, which include 14 territories scattered across the Caribbean and the Antarctic, has a deal similar to Gibraltar’s due to the shared land border.

Some of the territories have international arrangements, including Bermuda, which has its own immigration and tax systems, and the Falkland Islands, which govern themselves.

Relations begin to thaw as both countries reinstate ambassadors and reopen airspace closed to each other since April 2025.

More than a year after a diplomatic fallout, relations between Algeria and Mali are beginning to thaw, with both countries reinstating their ambassadors and reopening their airspace to one another.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced on Saturday that the country’s ambassador would return to Mali, a day after Algiers fully reopened its airspace to civilian and military aircraft travelling to and from its southern neighbour.

Issa Ousmane Coulibaly, spokesperson for Mali’s military government, confirmed in a statement that Bamako had taken reciprocal measures.

Relations between the two African nations deteriorated in April last year after Algeria said it had shot down a Malian surveillance drone for violating its airspace. Bamako disputes this, saying the drone was downed within its own borders.

The fallout between Algeria and Mali has jeopardised security in the Sahel region. Mali is a member of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), along with Burkina Faso and Niger. Both Ouagadougou and Niamey also withdrew their ambassadors to Algeria in April last year in solidarity with their ally.

The AES has experienced a surge in attacks by armed groups linked to the ISIL (ISIS) group and al-Qaeda in recent years. Many analysts argue that such groups were able to establish a foothold in the Sahel partly because of the NATO-backed overthrow of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The ousting of Gaddafi left a power vacuum that has been exploited by armed groups. Vast stockpiles of weapons belonging to forces loyal to him were looted and are believed to have been used by those groups.

Algeria has previously mediated peace talks between the Malian government and Tuareg separatist rebels waging an armed rebellion there.

However, last year’s diplomatic fallout led Algiers to step back from its role as mediator, raising concerns about Mali’s security and territorial integrity while also posing a threat to Algeria’s own internal security.

This April, Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf reaffirmed Algiers’s support for Mali’s territorial integrity, rejecting what he described as all forms of “terrorism”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Iran will not be permitted to charge tolls or fees for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz under any final agreement with Washington, exposing one of the biggest points of friction in negotiations aimed at ending months of conflict across the Middle East.

The dispute comes after Iran announced it would waive planned transit fees through the strait that crosses through its territorial waters for 60 days while talks with the United States continue in Switzerland, suggesting charges could be introduced once the negotiating period expires.

Washington and Tehran signed a preliminary agreement in Switzerland this week to halt hostilities and launched a 60-day diplomatic process focused on sanctions relief, Iran’s nuclear programme and the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz.

Pakistan, which helped mediate the talks alongside Qatar, has said negotiations to end the four-month US-Israel war on Iran are expected to resume early next week, likely on Tuesday.

The future of Hormuz has already emerged as a key sticking point after Iran effectively closed the waterway during the war, severely disrupting maritime traffic through one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints and causing the price of oil to soar.

In peacetime, one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies are shipped for export by Gulf producers through the waterway.

In April, the US imposed a corresponding naval blockade on Iranian naval ports in a bid to stem Iranian oil exports.

While a number of ships have crossed through the strait since the US-Iran agreement was signed last week, uncertainty remains over whether Tehran intends to impose permanent fees or service charges on shipping operators using the route. Here’s what we know – and what else is happening in the Strait of Hormuz this week.

What are the US and Iran saying?

On Friday, Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) said planned fees for ships using the waterway would be suspended during the 60-day negotiation period established under the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed with the US.

Earlier this week, Iran and Oman said in a joint statement that they would study the future administration of the trade route as well as possible charges for services provided there, while maintaining their sovereignty claims over territorial waters bordering the strait.

Speaking at the start of a regional tour in the United Arab Emirates, Rubio rejected the idea of transit fees. “It’s an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway,” he said, adding that he believed “all the countries in this region would agree”.

Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has signalled that Tehran views the post-war arrangement as fundamentally different from the status quo that existed before the conflict, however. Experts also say that Iran will not give up control of the strait, which has proved to be its greatest point of leverage in the conflict with the US.

“Hormuz will never return” to its prewar status, Ghalibaf said, despite both sides agreeing on Monday to establish “communication mechanisms” aimed at keeping the waterway open.

What does international law say?

International law protects the right of transit through strategic waterways such as the Strait of Hormuz, preventing coastal states from imposing explicit tolls simply for passage through international shipping lanes, even when they are passing solely through territorial waters.

However, countries can charge for specific services, including inspections, navigation assistance, security measures and certain insurance-related requirements, insurance experts say.

Examples include fees associated with transit through the Suez Canal and Panama Canal, as well as some services provided in Turkiye’s Bosporus and Dardanelles straits.

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, an economist at Germany’s Philipps-Universitat Marburg, told Al Jazeera last month that Iran, like Turkiye, could justify a negotiated mechanism for transit fees or service-based contributions through natural straits as payment for maintaining a safe passageway, reducing environmental risks and providing predictability in a waterway that supports global energy, food and technology supply chains.

A key difference, however, is that while those waterways pass through the territory of a single state in each case, the Strait of Hormuz passes through the territorial waters of both Iran and Oman, while also connecting to waters used by the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states.

“This sort of arrangement is unprecedented, and there would not be such an outcome, unless there is a complete coordination between the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries and Iran, with the approval of major international powers, such as China and the United States,” Nader Habibi, an Iranian American economist, told Al Jazeera.

How many ships are getting through the strait now?

Ship movements through the Strait of Hormuz remain well below prewar levels, when between 120 and 140 ships transited the passage each day, including tankers carrying about 20 million barrels of oil from the Gulf.

As the strait begins to open up, Oman says it is working with the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) on temporary arrangements to facilitate safe transit through the strait, launching an operation to evacuate more than 11,000 sailors stranded in the area after the conflict left hundreds of vessels trapped for months.

Traffic through the strait has also been held back by ongoing concerns about the possible presence of sea mines in the central shipping channels used by international vessels before the war.

The Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC), which includes representatives from the US and other maritime partners, has warned ships to avoid the area “due to the existence of mines”.

Other countries, including Japan, are currently weighing up whether to send ships to help with efforts to remove mines from the strait.

While Iran has never confirmed the presence of mines in the strait, when it first issued a map of the waterway for vessels it had approved for transit while the conflict was ongoing, it ordered ships to pass close to its coast to avoid possible mines. Ships had previously passed much closer to the coast of Oman.

The graphic below illustrates how much shipping through the strait dropped off as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Could the dispute over strait fees derail a peace deal?

Mostafa Khoshcheshm, a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Tehran, told Al Jazeera that Iran is unlikely to abandon plans to introduce long-term service fees in the strait.

“According to the MoU, Iran is not going to charge service fees for 60 days, but afterwards, Iran is definitely going to do that,” Khoshcheshm told Al Jazeera.

He said many Iranians were already unhappy that Tehran had agreed to suspend fees for the duration of the negotiating period.

“The money is not the real core of the issue,” he said. “The point here is how to impose your new protocols in the region. This is highly important for the Iranians.”

Cyrus Schayegh, professor of international history and politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told Al Jazeera the success of any new administrative arrangement would depend heavily on regional support.

“I think this is a very big question, and the biggest question is whether they will be able to sell it to the Emirates,” Schayegh told Al Jazeera.

“I think the Emirates will need to be involved in a really substantive way for any sort of new authority to actually work.”

More broadly, he said, the future of Hormuz forms part of a wider debate over Gulf security architecture following the war.

“It is only one piece of a much larger puzzle,” Schayegh said, adding that several regional states now accept that Iran has strengthened its deterrence capabilities following the conflict.

What other issues remain unresolved?

Hormuz is far from the only serious obstacle to a peace deal.

Questions also remain over the future of Iran’s nuclear programme, with Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, saying that access for international inspectors to nuclear facilities damaged during the war would only be addressed as part of a final agreement with Washington.

His comments came after US President Donald Trump claimed Iran had agreed to “the highest level” of nuclear inspections.

Iranian officials insist no commitments were made in Switzerland regarding Tehran’s nuclear programme and say they did not meet representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including Director-General Rafael Grossi.

Regional security remains another major source of disagreement, with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz insisting Israeli forces will not withdraw from southern Lebanon “even if there is an American demand” to do so.

Meanwhile, Ghalibaf has identified the withdrawal of foreign military forces from the Middle East as one of Tehran’s strategic objectives in the negotiations.

The future of Iran’s frozen assets also remains a sticking point, with Trump indicating Washington is reluctant to release large sums of Iranian funds directly, arguing that money could ultimately benefit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Instead, he has suggested a mechanism under which some funds would be used to purchase US goods.

“Food is desperately needed in Iran, and we will be purchasing it for them exclusively from the United States,” Trump said. Iran has not confirmed plans to do this.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Two roadside bomb blasts in northwestern Pakistan have killed at least seven people.

The first explosion on Saturday hit a vehicle, and the second was detonated as rescuers responded, police said.

“A private pick-up truck carrying passengers was targeted with a remote-controlled IED,” said Yasir Afridi, a police officer in Bannu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, using a common acronym for a homemade bomb.

“The injured were being transported to hospital in a car for emergency treatment when a second IED exploded,” he said, adding that three people were wounded.

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack and said the government would bring those responsible to justice.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the blast, but the Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, and other armed groups operate in the area.

Pakistan has blamed Afghanistan for a surge in attacks near the border, although the Taliban government in Kabul has repeatedly denied Pakistani accusations that Afghan territory is used as a sanctuary for armed groups.

Frosty relations have escalated into clashes in recent months, including Pakistani air strikes on Afghan cities.

Pakistani air strikes near the border this month killed at least 26 Taliban fighters, the Pakistani government said, while the Afghan government said 12 civilians were killed.

The border has remained largely closed since violence escalated in October, freezing bilateral trade and disrupting the movement of people and goods.

At least 24 people were killed and more than 50 injured when a suicide car bomb detonated on a train carrying soldiers in Quetta, capital of the southwestern Pakistani province of Balochistan, on Sunday.

The attack came amid Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s four-day visit to China, and the day before his meeting in Beijing with China’s President Xi Jinping, marking 75 years of diplomatic ties between the two nations.

Pakistan is among an exclusive group of countries China regards as an “all-weather strategic partner”, with ties featuring close economic, trade and security cooperation.

Responsibility for the train attack was claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), an armed Baloch separatist group which, apart from calling for an independent state, also strongly objects to large-scale Chinese investment in the region.

While the BLA has long carried out attacks that have killed civilians and members of the security forces in Balochistan and beyond, there has been a recent uptick in such incidents.

We examine what is behind this increase in attacks:

What happened in Sunday’s attack?

Reporting from the scene, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder said several houses and buildings adjacent to the railway line were severely damaged in the blast, which caused train carriages to overturn and catch fire.

According to local media reports, a state of emergency was declared at public hospitals in Quetta, with doctors and other medical staff ordered to remain on duty.

Footage shared online showed charred vehicles and train carriages lying on their sides, with thick plumes of black smoke rising into the sky.

Pakistan has experienced several attacks by separatist groups in recent months. The attacks have increased in ferocity and have also targeted Chinese workers amid protests over Beijing-backed infrastructural projects in Balochistan.

As part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project – one of the main arms of China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” designed to improve trading routes – China’s Xinjiang region has been connected to Pakistan’s deep-sea Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea in Balochistan.

Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif condemned Sunday’s train attack in Quetta in a post on X.

“Such cowardly acts of terrorism cannot weaken the resolve of the people of Pakistan. We remain steadfast in our determination to eliminate terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” he said.

He added that while initial reports indicated a suicide bombing, this has not been officially confirmed. If it is, Yunas Samad, an emeritus professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Bradford in the UK, told Al Jazeera, “this would reflect tactics that insurgent organisations in the region have increasingly adopted over recent years”.

“There are also persistent claims regarding the circulation of sophisticated weaponry originating from stockpiles left behind after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan,” he said.

Are we seeing a new phase of armed separatist attacks in Balochistan?

According to research gathered by the independent, Islamabad-based think tank Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, Balochistan recorded at least 254 attacks in 2025 – roughly 26 percent more than in 2024.

A December 2025 report published by independent conflict monitor Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) found that separatists had also intensified attacks and pressure on security forces. The report said the number of attacks using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and grenades, mainly targeting convoys and police stations, grew by more than 65 percent in the first 11 months of 2025, compared to the same time period in 2024.

The Global Terrorism Index (GTI) report this year found that there has been more Baloch armed group activity in Pakistan in 2025 as well. The GTI is an annual report published by the Australia-based independent think tank Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

Its 2026 report states that the BLA was responsible for Pakistan’s largest terror attack of 2025 – when the Jaffar Express, a train travelling from Quetta to Peshawar, was hijacked in March.

The BLA claimed responsibility and reported that six military personnel had been killed. Hundreds of people were taken hostage from the train, which was carrying 400 passengers.

“What can reasonably be said is that, following the earlier coordinated attack on the Jaffar Express, the Pakistani authorities appear to have intensified security measures around transport infrastructure, military personnel and key lines of communication,” Samad, of Bradford University, told Al Jazeera.

“The fact that this latest incident nevertheless occurred may suggest that militant groups retain a significant operational capability despite those efforts,” he noted.

The group stunned Pakistan’s security establishment in 2022 when it ‌stormed army and navy bases. In August 2024, militants carried out coordinated ⁠attacks across Balochistan, including highway assaults in which passengers were pulled from buses and shot after identity checks.

“While statistics in such conflicts are always contested and should be treated cautiously, they do indicate that the intensity of the conflict has not significantly diminished,” Samad said.

“Whether this constitutes an entirely ‘new phase’ is perhaps too strong a conclusion at present. However, it does appear to indicate a degree of resurgence in militant capability and confidence among sections of the Baloch insurgency.”

Who are the BLA and major Baloch armed groups?

The BLA, which has a suicide squad called the Majeed Brigade, says it is fighting for the independence of Balochistan, a province located in Pakistan’s southwest and bordering Afghanistan to the north and ⁠Iran to the west.

It is the largest of several ethnic separatist groups that have been fighting the federal government for decades. Balochistan’s mountainous border region serves as a safe haven and training ground for both Baloch separatist fighters and Islamist armed groups.

The BLA often targets infrastructure and security forces in Balochistan, but has also struck in other areas – most notably the southern port city of Karachi.

The BLA has deployed women suicide bombers, including in an attack on Chinese nationals in Karachi, and was designated a “foreign terrorist organisation” by the United States in August 2025 in a move welcomed by the Pakistani government. Analysts say BLA is particularly known for its ability to recruit young, often well-educated fighters.

The group, separately, was at the centre of tit-for-tat strikes in 2024 between Iran and Pakistan over what each said were armed group bases on each other’s territory, which brought the neighbours to the brink of war.

What is the Baloch cause?

Home to about 15 million of Pakistan’s roughly 240 million people, according to the 2023 census, Balochistan is the country’s poorest region despite its wealth of natural resources, including coal, gold, copper and gas.

These resources generate significant revenue for the federal government – unfairly, according to the BLA, which wants Balochistan’s natural wealth to belong to its people and rejects federal control over resource extraction and security.

The province is Pakistan’s largest by area, but smallest by population. It has a long Arabian Sea coastline, not far from the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz oil shipping lane.

Balochistan is also home to one of Pakistan’s major deep-sea ports at Gwadar, a crucial trade corridor for China’s $65bn investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a wing of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative.

The province is home to key mining projects, including Reko Diq, which is operated by Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold and is believed to be one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines.

China also operates a gold and copper mine in Balochistan.

The province – which was annexed by Pakistan in 1948, six months after partition from India in August 1947 – has a long history of marginalisation. It has since experienced at least five separatist uprisings.

Separatist sentiment was particularly high in the 2000s, around the time the BLA emerged. Analysts of Baloch resistance movements say it was led by Balach Marri, the son of veteran Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri.

After the government of military ruler Pervez Musharraf killed prominent Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006, the separatist movement escalated.

Rebel fighters have targeted Pakistan’s army and Chinese interests, in particular the strategic port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, accusing Beijing of helping Islamabad to exploit the province. Fighters have killed Chinese citizens working in the region and attacked Beijing’s consulate and language centre in Karachi.

More recently, the BLA has also attacked civilians and migrant labourers from other provinces, a shift that officials say marks an escalation in tactics.

Pakistan accuses India and Afghanistan of backing Baloch armed fighters, an allegation both countries deny.

“Baloch separatist groups themselves have, at times, sought to internationalise their cause and last year publicly appealed for diplomatic recognition by India,” Samad said.

“However, establishing clear evidence of direct state support is considerably more difficult, and much of the discussion in this area remains politically contested.”

Hundreds of Baloch activists, many of them women, have protested in Islamabad and Balochistan over alleged abuses by security forces – accusations the government denies.

Over time, the BLA has set itself apart as a group explicitly committed to Balochistan’s full independence from Pakistan. Unlike more moderate Baloch nationalist parties, which press politically for greater provincial autonomy, the BLA has consistently rejected compromise.

Why is this significant now?

Regional stability and international investment

The attack comes as Prime Minister Sharif meets with China’s President Xi in Beijing to discuss economic and security cooperation – something the BLA is strongly opposed to.

The movement could pose a challenge to Pakistan’s attempts to retain Chinese and American investment, experts say, if it reveals a deeper instability.

The Baloch separatist movement is one of the major unresolved questions over Pakistan’s statehood. It is a constant reminder of the challenges of the Pakistani state to stay united, they say.

“More broadly, the persistence of insurgency has had implications for Pakistan’s wider political system,” Samad explained. “Security concerns in Balochistan have increasingly shaped governance and political discourse, strengthening the role of the military and security establishment in national affairs and undermining the democratisation process.”

“Internationally, the issue matters because Pakistan remains a nuclear-armed state of enormous strategic importance,” Samad told Al Jazeera.

“While speculation about state fragmentation is highly premature, any significant escalation in internal instability in a country with nuclear capabilities inevitably attracts international concern. For that reason alone, developments in Balochistan are likely to remain closely watched both regionally and globally.”

Rare-earth metals

Another major issue is that geological assessments suggest Balochistan contains 12 of the 17 rare-earth minerals on the periodic table. Rare earths are critical minerals used to manufacture a vast array of modern items, including batteries, clocks, wiring, military hardware, smartphones and semiconductors, among other technological products.

Since the start of his second term, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed plans to diversify Washington’s stockpile of critical minerals in order to reduce reliance on China, which currently dominates the supply and processing of the world’s rare-earth minerals.

When Pakistan’s Prime Minister Sharif met with Trump at the White House in September 2025, he offered the US access to critical minerals and rare earths.

Then, in December 2025, the US announced a $1.25bn investment in critical minerals mining at Reko Diq to drive “economic growth in Balochistan”.

Israeli forces had been preparing the makeshift sites in western Iraq since late 2024, the US newspaper reported.

Israel built two covert military outposts in Iraq’s western desert in advance of the US-Israel war on Iran, The New York Times has reported.

The daily reported on Sunday that Iraqi officials had identified two covert Israeli-operated base in Iraq’s western desert, citing an Iraqi official and a lawmaker. It said Israeli forces had been preparing to build one of the makeshift sites since late 2024, citing a regional official.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that one base was established shortly before the war began and operated with the knowledge of the United States. It said the installation housed Israeli special forces and served as a logistical hub for their air operations. It also reportedly included search-and-rescue capabilities for downed pilots.

According to the newspaper, Israeli forces launched attacks from the base against Iraqi units that came close to discovering the site in early March. Open-source analysts cited by the report identified the suspected location using satellite imagery near Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia.

The reports have added to months of conflicting accounts over alleged Israeli activity inside Iraq. On Thursday, Lieutenant-General Qais al-Muhammadawi, Iraq’s deputy commander of joint operations, said authorities had received reports of “individuals or movement” in the Najaf desert near Karbala, about 100km (62 miles) southwest of Baghdad, according to the state-run Iraqi News Agency.

The WSJ also referenced comments made in March by Israel’s former air force chief, Major-General Tomer Bar, who said Israeli special forces had carried out “extraordinary” operations during the conflict with Iran, though he did not specify where.

Iraqi officials have publicly denied authorising any foreign military presence in the area. “There is no agreement or consent for any force to be present in this location,” al-Muhammadawi said last week, before the details of the alleged Israeli outpost were reported.

However, the WSJ report said Baghdad privately lodged a protest with Washington in late March over suspected covert military activity, calling it a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

US officials quoted by the newspaper said Washington was not involved in the operation. On Sunday, a senior Iraqi security official again denied reports that Israel had established a military base in the desert, speaking to Turkiye’s Anadolu news agency.

On Tuesday, the commander of Iraq’s Karbala operations told Al Jazeera that an Israeli military group had been detected in the Najaf desert in March, although he said it had remained in the area for less than 48 hours.

The reports come as Iraq faces growing pressure amid escalating tensions between the US, Israel and Iran.

Washington has repeatedly urged Baghdad to curb the influence of Iran-backed armed groups operating in Iraq. In March, US forces carried out strikes against the Popular Mobilisation Forces after attacks on a US diplomatic and logistics facility near Baghdad airport.

Iran has also raised concerns over the allegations. Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday that Tehran would raise the issue with Iraqi authorities. He accused Israel of seeking to destabilise the region.

“Israel’s behaviour in the region shows that they do not respect any limits or red lines,” Baghaei said.