Australia’s decision to impose counter-terrorism financing sanctions on the Balochistan Liberation Army and three of its senior figures has given Pakistan a much-needed opening in its international campaign against a group that has made civilian terror part of its political method. Canberra’s foreign minister, Senator the Hon Penny Wong, noted how the BLA had conducted attacks across Pakistan targeting civilians, critical infrastructure, foreign nationals and the Pakistani state.
Earlier in 2019, the US had also designated the BLA as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and last year, it even went further by designating the BLA and its Majeed Brigade as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation. Australia has now moved through its own UN-linked sanctions law, invoking the counterterrorism obligations associated with UN Security Council Resolution 1373, which requires states to suppress terrorist financing, freeze assets and prevent support to terrorist actors. That combination gives Pakistan a stronger diplomatic record than it had a decade ago.
More importantly, these developments matter because Balochistan’s tragedy has long been abused by dishonest camps determined to turn every act of separatist violence into the poetry of resistance. The BLA, in particular, has learned to speak the dialect of the internet age, where a suicide attack can be wrapped in grievance.
Last May, BLA militants bombed a school bus in Khuzdar that killed eight people and injured 53, including 39 children. Earlier in March, the Jaffar Express was attacked in Balochistan after the outfit blew up the track and killed 32 people. The suicide bombing outside Karachi University’s Confucius Institute in 2022, which killed three Chinese teachers and a Pakistani driver, introduced the doctrine of female suicide bombers.
That is the part Pakistan must say carefully, repeatedly and with credible evidence. The killing of children in a bus, teachers at a university, railway staff on duty and labourers on roads cannot be laundered through rights language.
Pakistan should press partner states to examine fundraising channels, front organisations, crypto flows, travel documents, shell charities, media handlers and lobbying ecosystems that allow violence in Balochistan to acquire polite distance abroad. The BLA must be isolated internationally, prosecuted financially and denied the romance it seeks.
That Balochistan covers 43.6 per cent of Pakistan’s land area and sits on mineral wealth including coal, copper, gold and gas, yet the province remains politically wounded and economically underserved, cannot be stressed enough. No counterterrorism policy can succeed if ordinary Baloch citizens experience the federation mainly through suspicion and grievances. *