Days after deadly attacks, separatists attempt to capture key highway in southwestern Pakistan

QUETTA: Militants tried to capture a key highway in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Tuesday night, officials said, days after a string of deadly attacks in the region killed over 50 people, including 19 security officials. 

On Sunday night, separatist militants in Balochistan took control of a highway and shot dead 23 people, mostly laborers from Punjab province. They also blew up a railway bridge that connects Balochistan to the rest of Pakistan and tried to separately storm camps of the paramilitary Frontier Corps and Levies forces in Bela and Kalat respectively. 

The assaults were the most widespread in years by ethnic militants fighting a decades-long insurgency to win secession of the resource-rich province, home to major China-led projects such as a port and a gold and copper mine. The Pakistani state denies it is exploiting Balochistan and says it is working for the uplift of the region through development schemes.

On Tuesday evening, insurgents tried to take over the Quetta-Karachi highway in Mastung district, about 52 kilometers from the provincial capital of Quetta, and had started stopping vehicles.

“Levies [paramilitary] and other law enforcing agencies timely retaliated and the armed militants escaped into the mountains in the dark,” Sana Ullah, a spokesperson in the Levies’ control room in Mastung, told Arab News over the phone.

“The highway has been restored for traffic and additional security has been deployed at the vital N-25 highway.”

Separatists in Balochistan have in the past blocked highways and pulled out of vehicles and killed workers from the country’s eastern Punjab province, who they see as outsiders exploiting the province.

Speaking to Arab News, a resident of Bela, who lives close to the FC camp that was targeted by militants on Sunday night, called the attacks a “horrific” experience for people who live in the city in Balochistan’s Lasbela District. 

“We heard a powerful explosion at 11 PM [on Sunday night] that was followed by another blast and then intense firing that lasted for the whole night and during much of the next day,” he said on condition of anonymity over the phone, fearing for his safety if he was named.

“We witnessed the vehicles of the security forces heading toward the camp being attacked by terrorists and saw ambulances going to Karachi.”

He added that “normalcy” had returned to the city today, Wednesday, and schools and business activities were now.

Arab News also reached out to the family of 40-year-old Nazir Ahmed, a resident of Multan in Punjab province, who was among 23 people killed on the highway near Musa Khel which armed men blocked, marching passengers off vehicles, and shooting them after checking their identity cards.

Ahmed was on a truck carrying fruits. 

“Nazir used to travel to Balochistan with fruit and vegetable trucks because he was a laborer and a loader,” his uncle, Ahmed Bukhsh, said over the phone from Multan. “Like him, many poor laborers travel to Balochistan to make a living.”

“After Nazir’s death, there is no one in his family to take care of his wife and two little children.”

Pakistan’s federal government has ruled out a military operation against separatists after Sunday’s attacks but vowed a targeted response.

Many independent analysts say groups like the Baloch Liberation Army, among the most prominent separatists operating in Balochistan, have taken an “extreme approach” in recent months because authorities are solely using force to suppress the two-decade conflict instead of seeking political solutions. 

The army has recently repeatedly referred to an ethnic rights movement in Balochistan being led by young people and women a “terrorist proxy.” The protesters have been calling for an end to what they describe as a pattern of enforced disappearances and human rights abuses by security forces, which deny the charge.

“Unfortunately, Pakistani media and the security establishment still make fun of Baloch claims that their loved ones are missing,” said Malik Siraj Akbar, who covered the insurgency in Balochistan as a journalist for many years but has lived in exile in the US since 2010.

He said young Baloch people were joining armed groups because they could see no “justice” in sight and the government had failed to find a “political solution” to the separatist conflict.

Addressing his cabinet on Tuesday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said his government would “completely eliminate” militants and others taking up arms against the state.

“People who believe in dialogue, who want to see Pakistan’s green and white flag raised high, who have complete trust in the constitution,” Sharif said, “the doors of communication are always open for them.”