The United Nations (UN) should immediately designate the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) as a terrorist organisation due to its violent history of asymmetric warfare, targeting of civilians, and threats to regional and international infrastructure. Arguments and developments surrounding this push centre on undeniable facts which expose the ugly face of the terrorist outfit.
The BLA operates as part of a highly coordinated, multi-layered nexus involving India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), and religious extremist groups like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Al-Qaeda. While these entities hold completely contrasting ideological and political views, Pakistani intelligence and UN Security Council monitoring reports confirm they maintain a marriage of convenience.
Their singular, shared objective is to execute unconventional warfare to economically, politically, and physically destabilise Pakistan. As per Pakistan intelligence sources, RAW provides sophisticated funding and modern hardware. The BLA has increasingly used NATO-standard weapons and advanced explosive equipment-often routed through cross-border channels-to mount highly lethal assaults on Pakistani law enforcement. Security analysts highlight that RAW utilises the BLA in Balochistan and the TTP along the western border to trap Pakistan in a permanent internal security crisis.
A global UN designation would drastically shrink the operational space for the BLA and its external sponsors, significantly limiting their ability to raise funds internationally.
This is designed to overextend the Pakistan Armed Forces and divert the state’s focus away from its eastern borders. Pakistan’s official stance points directly to the 2016 arrest of Kulbhushan Jadhav, a serving Indian Navy officer captured in Balochistan, who confessed to financing and orchestrating BLA-linked subversive activities to disrupt Pakistan’s economy. Though the BLA claims a secular ethno-nationalist identity and the TTP fights for radical religious extremism, the two groups have formed an operational partnership. Reportedly, the BLA and TTP have engaged in a tactical, non-ideological alliance to maximise operational lethality against the state.
The BLA has heavily adopted the TTP’s trademark tactics, including complex suicide bombings (executed via the Majeed Brigade) and the kidnapping of security personnel for prisoner swaps. Official reports indicate both groups utilise the same ungoverned border territories and hideouts to launch asymmetric strikes, seamlessly coordinating logistically to move personnel and equipment across provincial borders. A landmark UN Security Council Monitoring Team Report exposed that the TTP and the BLA share active training camps in southern Afghanistan (specifically in areas like Shorabak and Walikot).
The BLA and its armed wing, the Majeed Brigade, have consistently carried out suicide bombings, train hijackings, and targeted killings of innocent civilians, including women and children, in Pakistan. The March 2025 hijacking of the Jaffar Express travelling from Quetta to Peshawar, which left 31 civilians and security personnel dead and involved holding over 300 passengers hostage, is an undeniable proof of hardcore terrorism claimed by the BLA. The banned terrorist group has explicitly targeted foreign interests, most notably Chinese nationals and projects connected to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as well as foreign diplomatic missions like the Chinese Consulate in Karachi.
By employing violence against state authorities, law enforcement, and critical infrastructure, the BLA actively subverts domestic and regional stability. The separatist group is already officially designated as a terrorist organisation by several international powers, including the United States, which has designated both the BLA and its Majeed Brigade aliases as Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTOs). Both Pakistan and China have actively lobbied the UN Security Council (UNSC) to add the BLA to the international sanctions and terrorist list, citing that the group uses safe havens in neighbouring Afghanistan to orchestrate cross-border attacks.
While nations like the US and UK have enacted unilateral terror designations to freeze assets and restrict BLA operations, achieving a formal, globally binding UN-wide terror designation faces geopolitical complexities. Pakistani authorities, supported by intelligence reports, maintain that the BLA operates from operational sanctuaries outside Pakistan’s borders-particularly in Afghanistan. A global UN designation would legally compel neighbouring states and member nations to eliminate these cross-border safe havens and cut off financial and logistical supply lines.
Securing a UN terrorist designation (such as under the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee) would impose significant legal obligations on all UN member states, as reflected here. One, mandating the freezing of all financial accounts and assets linked to the BLA and its members worldwide. Two, restricting the international movement of the group’s leadership and operatives.Three, prohibiting the supply of weapons, military equipment, or tactical training to the terrorists. A global UN designation would drastically shrink the operational space for the BLA and its external sponsors, significantly limiting their ability to raise funds internationally. The push for this listing remains a focal point of Pakistan’s diplomatic and counter-terrorism efforts with a larger aim of safeguarding the regional peace and stability.
The writer is a student.