With the rollout of the Belt and Road Initiative, China's international cooperation in Europe and Asia has become more and more, and hundreds of large and small enterprises have gone abroad and taken root in foreign countries.
China's industry has benefited many countries and led to the transformation of the mainland's economy, but there is also a danger in this change - in the past five years, terrorist attacks against Chinese abroad have increased.
For example, at the end of March 2024, a terrorist attack occurred in Pakistan, killing five Chinese staff members.
Pakistan is an important partner in China's Belt and Road Initiative, and the economic corridor from Gwadar port to Kashgar in Xinjiang is both an energy and logistics corridor that can revolutionize the strategic landscape of China and Pakistan.
Unfortunately, since the beginning of close cooperation between China and Pakistan, a group of terrorists has been harassing the CPEC, the notorious "Balochistan Liberation Army", and they are responsible for this terrorist attack in 2024.
The Balochistan Liberation Army (PLA) comes from the western province of Balochistan, which is located in the desert of western Pakistan and is the driest and poorest part of Pakistan.
In fact, not only Pakistan's Balochistan province, but also the entire Balochistan region, which straddles Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, is unstable. This people is independent of the desire to establish its own unified nation-state, just as the Kurds in West Asia do.
So, what is the history of Balochistan? How did Pakistan collide with the local independence forces? Why does the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor have to pass through Balochistan?
[a]
Baloch: Where did I come from?
In the far west of the subcontinent, tens of millions of Baluchis, who live in the desert mountains on the border of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are a group of Caucasian nomads who speak the Persian dialect but believe in Sunni Islam.
About 70 percent of the Baloch population lives in Pakistan's Balochistan province, with the majority living in Iran's "Sistan-Baluchistan province", while there are only about 200,000 Balochs in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan.
The situation of the Balochs is very similar to that of the Kurds in West Asia, they are all cross-border peoples who have been artificially divided into many countries, and the main culprits in this situation are the Western powers.
In modern times, the British encroached on the Indian continent and gradually expanded northward, controlling Iran and southern Afghanistan.
Later, when Tsarist Russia moved south, Britain and Russia collided in Afghanistan, and the two sides manipulated Iran and the Kingdom of Afghanistan into the war, fighting a war for half a century in the mid-19th century.
In both wars in Afghanistan, Britain lost its troops but did not win all of them, and finally withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of the 19th century.
In 1893, British-controlled British India was bordered by Iran and Afghanistan, which became known as the "Durand Line" and the "Goldsmith Line".
This line implements the nature of the British as a "-stirring stick", and without considering the actual situation, they arbitrarily divide multiple ethnic groups into two halves, such as the Pashtuns and Balochs, which are divided into two or even three countries.
The Baloch family had a big business, and the land they lived on was not much smaller than that of Afghanistan, and they were very cohesive, and they divided the nation in favor of British rule in the region.
In the deserts and mountains of the Balochistan region, the Baloch people live in great poverty, but because of religion, the local upper class has been relatively stable.
The Baloch were once classified as part of the "Persian nation" because they spoke the Persian dialect, but they actually believed in Sunni Islam.
Therefore, the Baloch themselves have a legend that their people migrated from Syria for hundreds of years.
In the 20th century, Arabs also supported the Baluchis migration theory, which would strengthen the Sunnis.
However, just looking at the map, it was too difficult to run from the distant Mediterranean to South Asia and across the entire Iranian plateau in the Middle Ages.
Therefore, the migration theory of the Balochs may be just a legend, and it can only be said that they were indeed part of the Persian nation, and as for the difference in faith, this point is related to the maritime mission.
On the map of Iran, there are mostly Sunnis in the coastal areas, because the Arabs are on the other side of the Persian Gulf. The Omani Empire once controlled southeastern Iran and the southern region of present-day Pakistan, and it is entirely possible that they spread Sunni Islam there.
[two]
From left-wing fighters, to terrorists
In the 40s of the 20th century, after a long period of British occupation, the Indians gained independence, but independence was followed by a great schism.
British India was divided according to faith, with Muslims included in the State of Pakistan and Balochistan in Muslim and West Pakistan.
The Baloch people wanted independence at that time, but the local people were poor and weak, and the independence voice was too small, and the independence movement set off by a few stalwarts was extinguished by the Pakistani government.
To add insult to injury, the Baloch people at that time were in abject poverty, the local natural environment was harsh, mainly mountainous and desert, precipitation was scarce, agriculture was backward, and animal husbandry was the only industry that supported human survival.
At that time, camels and goats were the main livestock of the Baloch people, and the local economy was self-sufficient, grazing on the basis of tribes, and there were dozens of large and small tribes.
According to international investigations, even tax collection in Balochistan at that time was a problem, so as early as the British colonial era, the British simply stocked the land and let the local big tribal leaders manage the local area by themselves, and the British Indian government basically did not interfere in local internal affairs.
Since Pakistan's independence in 1948, the resistance of the Baloch tribe aristocracy has never stopped, basically maintaining a frequency of 10 years of climax.
The "Baloch Nationalist Movement", founded in the 60s, was the earliest Baloch independence organization, and the Pakistani government has been strongly suppressing local tribal forces, and the poor Baloch people have little status in the international community and cannot receive support.
But that all changed in 1979.
At the end of the 70s, the Soviet Union could not bear it anymore in the face of the Afghan government, which had played several tricks on the Soviet Union, and Brezhnev wanted to break the southern encirclement of the United States in one fell swoop.
At this time, the Soviet army came up with two plans: one was to eliminate the Afghan government and establish a socialist Afghanistan. This move was relatively safe, but the aftermath was difficult to deal with, because the Soviets knew that the United States would use Pakistan to harass the Soviet Union and the new Afghan government.
Therefore, the Soviet army also has a bold plan - to directly penetrate Afghanistan and Pakistan, deploy troops in the Indian Ocean, and establish a Balochistan state in the rear of Pakistan to contain Pakistan.
Once the plan is realized, the Soviet Union will get the hands of Afghanistan and Balochistan to directly tear the South Asian region apart, and India will inevitably take the opportunity to enter Kashmir, and South Asia will become a chaotic era, and the Soviet Union and New Afghanistan will be safe.
This move was very bold and had a relatively high success rate, but Brezhnev, in view of the military risks and international perspectives, retreated and proposed not to invade Pakistan, but to support the independence of the Baloch people, so that the locals could fight for independence on their own.
Thus, in the early 80s, the "Baloch Student Union" and the "Baloch Liberation Army" formed by Baloch left-wing intellectuals were established separately.
They received money and weapons from the Soviet military intelligence, known as the GRU, and Soviet instructors secretly trained the core elements to wreak havoc in Pakistan.
After 20 years of endurance, the Baloch finally switched guns with the support of the Soviet Union, and their independence activities grew stronger and stronger.
The Soviets also taught the left-wing students a powerful weapon, the mass movement, which allowed the guerrillas to spread independent ideas among the different tribes, especially the idea of "the plundering of Baloch's property", which was supported by the tribal elders.
In fact, the reason why the liberators of Baloch were able to get a response from all sides of the clan was also driven by interests.
As early as the 50s, Balochistan discovered a huge amount of natural gas, and there are still a lot of ore resources in the local area, but these riches are controlled by the central government, and the locals do not eat any dividends.
This information succeeded in attracting the attention of the tribal elite, and while the Pakistani government promised to develop Baloch vigorously in the future, widespread guerrilla warfare was difficult to suppress.
Since Pakistan received a large number of Islamic fundamentalists during the 10-year war in Afghanistan, they parasitized the Pakistani people and cultivated the "Taliban" and "al-Qaeda" in the north.
Under this momentum, the "Baloch Liberation Army" in the south has also changed its appearance and turned into an ultra-religious terrorist organization.
[three]
China-Pakistan cooperation is a long-term solution, and Balochistan cannot get around it
For nearly 30 years, the Baloch independence movement, which has become ultra-religious, has left the Pakistani government in the throat.
They are broken into pieces, and they always launch attacks on the military and police, public facilities, and foreigners, causing great social panic.
As early as 2006, the "Balochistan Liberation Army" attacked a Chinese engineering team to assist Pakistan, resulting in the death of three Chinese engineers.
At that time, Pakistan was under the rule of Musharraf, and the military president attached great importance to relations with China, and immediately after the tragedy, he launched a comprehensive revenge against the "Baloch Liberation Army", causing the "Baloch Liberation Army" to suffer huge casualties.
After that, the Baloch Liberation Army shifted its target and began attacking civilians and government officials and teachers in the province with the aim of causing panic among the people.
In 2009, they kidnapped and brutally murdered 20 Pakistani policemen, which was internationally criticized and listed as an international terrorist organization by many countries, but the United States and India refused to put them on the terrorist list.
Although the United States and Pakistan are allies, their attitude towards the Baloch independence movement is very ambiguous, and both the United States and India secretly support the "Baloch Liberation Army."
Of course, the purpose of the United States is to weaken Pakistan and make it more controllable; India's aim is to strike at the Pakistani government and to divide and disintegrate Pakistan.
In 2013, China started the Belt and Road Initiative, with Pakistan as the first tier partner. The main goal of cooperation between China and Pakistan is the Gwadar port in southern Balochistan, and an important energy corridor runs through Balochistan.
Some people wonder why China and Pakistan are stumbling in the uneven Balochistan region, when Pakistan is so big.
As early as ancient times, it was an important port in South Asia until it was bought back from Oman by Pakistan in the 50s.
In 2002, the Pakistani government asked China to revive Gwadar, and since then the Chinese have been operating here for more than a decade.
Gwadar is the leader of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which can directly bring oil tankers ashore in the Gulf of Oman, and where Chinese goods can be loaded and sold to Arabia, Africa and Europe.
Using this as a freight hub, the trade distance between Europe and Asia can be reduced by almost half.
Even the geographical superiority aside, the arid Balochistan is a cornucopia, and the local "Sui gas field" is the world's top gas field, with extremely high production.
The energy pipeline built by China and Pakistan must pass through it, and the Chinese-aided power station must also be built in Balochistan.
Therefore, the governments of China and Pakistan have never considered making the CPEC a "bypass", and Pakistan also hopes to promote the development of Balochistan and enhance the people's sense of belonging while building it.
Of course, China's participation can also deter core terrorists and ensure long-term peace and stability in the region.
After 2020, India was affected by the epidemic, the economy was sluggish, and the people were in turmoil, and the Indian government hurriedly diverted the contradictions, caused border issues with China in the northern Galwan Valley, and trained the "Baloch Liberation Army" in the territory and sent it back to Pakistan to make trouble.
Under the instigation of external forces, since 2021, the "Balochistan Liberation Army" of Pakistan has frequently launched attacks on Chinese.
In fact, the Pakistani government has already reacted to this. Locally, Chinese staff travel with personal bodyguards, and are escorted by armored vehicles and military personnel for long-distance travel, and most of the time they are safe.
But terrorists are pervasive, often using suicide bombings, and even using children as bombs, which makes the Pakistani military and police unable to guard against it.
After the March 2024 attacks, China and Pakistan jointly condemned Baloch terrorists, increased security for BRI personnel and facilities, and deepened intelligence and security cooperation with China.
In Iran, which also has the issue of Baloch independence, Iran and Pakistan will also carry out border security cooperation in 2024, and it is believed that with the efforts of China, Pakistan and Iran, the problem of terrorist attacks in Baloch will be fundamentally improved.
Literature / Shogakuno
Resources:
1. "A Review of the History of the Baloch People", Muhammad Shafee Khan Baloch
2. "Analysis of the Terrorist Activities of the Baloch Liberation Army", Ye Hailin