ISLAMABAD: Top Pakistani officials said on Wednesday militants were using the territory of neighboring Afghanistan and receiving support from India’s Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) spy agency to launch attacks in Pakistan, including a string of recent deadly attacks that killed over 50 people in the southwestern Balochistan province.
This is the first time that senior government officials have named nations behind attacks that began on Sunday night, when separatists militants in the country’s largest province took control of a highway and shot dead 23 people, mostly laborers from the eastern 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 the Bela and Kalat districts respectively. On Tuesday night, militants tried to capture a key highway but were forced to retreat into the mountains after paramilitary forces arrived.
Sunday’s 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.
“This conspiracy against us is being hatched from two places,” Sindh Governor Kamran Tessori told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s linked to the RAW [Indian spy agency] set up in Afghanistan and all of these activities are being carried out in Pakistan through RAW’s set up in Afghanistan.
“These anarchists are after Pakistan’s economy and its armed forces,” the governor added.
“And this narrative of hate, you can connect its series, [it becomes stronger] whenever Saudi or CPEC [China-Pakistan Economic Corridor] projects gain momentum, whenever Pakistan receives investments from UAE or Türkiye or when Pakistan’s relations with Iran are headed toward improvement.”
India and Afghanistan have not yet commented on Tessori’s accusations.
A day earlier, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said militants wanted to hurt Pakistan’s economic interests, especially in resource-rich Balochistan, which is a centerpiece of China’s investments in Pakistan.
“RAW does not want CPEC projects to be completed in Pakistan,” Tessori added. “They don’t want Pakistan to improve its ties with its neighboring countries.”
Separately, Interior Minister Mohsin Raza Naqvi met a delegation of United Nation representatives and also raised the issue of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or the Pakistani Taliban using Afghanistan soil to launch attacks in Pakistan. In the past, Kabul has denied such accusations.
“Outlawed TTP is using Afghan soil for attacks that have to be stopped at all costs,” Naqvi said.
Pakistan’s federal government has ruled out a military operation against separatists after Sunday’s attacks but vowed a targeted response.
