Suicide Bombers

Abdul Basit adds:

Known for its leftist and secular leanings, the Baloch insurgency had not been associated with extreme violence like suicide bombings until 2018. That was when the BLA established the Majeed Brigade, its suicide squad, and started hitting high-profile targets like the Chinese Consulate in Karachi, the Pearl Continental Hotel in Gwadar, the Pakistan Stock Exchange, and the headquarters of Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force, in Balochistan’s district. In fact, Sumaiya’s fiancé, Rehan Baloch, the son of Aslam Baloch, who founded the brigade, became the movement’s first male suicide bomber when he targeted a bus of Chinese engineers working on the CPEC in Dalbadin district in 2018.

Since then, Baloch militants have perpetrated around 10 suicide attacks, including so-called fedayeen (“self-sacrificers”) operations, in which activists participate with the intention of not coming out alive. The brigade also follows an open recruitment policy under which insurgents from any group can volunteer for self-sacrificing missions, whether they are looking for revenge or recognition, or want to provoke a reaction from the counterinsurgent forces.

Although only two cases have been reported, the BLA has claimed that a sizable number of women have volunteered for self-sacrificing operations. Until the two suicide bombings took place, Baloch women’s participation in the insurgency had been largely peaceful, and they lent their support mostly in their capacity as mothers, sisters and wives who had lost their loved ones due to enforced disappearances or extrajudicial killings. Around 5,000 people have been declared missing in Balochistan, according to Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, which includes dissidents and those branded as supporters and sympathisers of insurgents. In the majority of cases, families do not know their whereabouts or the charges against them. Since most of them are men and the sole earners in their families, women end up facing the brunt of the repercussions.

Recently, many women activists have also become officeholders in activist organisations, working to highlight grievances of the Baloch and the issues of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial arrests and killings of dissidents.

[Abdul Basit is a research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore]