South Asia Terrorism Portal

PAKISTAN

Baloch Rebels Hit Economic Targets
Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management
 

At least 11 persons were killed when four terrorists attacked the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Chundrigar Road in Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh, on June 29, 2020. Those killed included four private security Guards, one Policeman, two bystanders and all the four attackers. The equipment, arms, and ammunition recovered from the attackers indicated that they had come prepared for a long siege. Majeed Brigade, the suicide squad of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), headed by Baloch secessionist Hyrbyair Marri, who is in self-exile in the UK, claimed responsibility for the attack.

On May 11, 2019, the luxury Zaver Pearl-Continental Hotel in the Gwadar area of Balochistan was targeted. At the time of the attack, the Hotel had around 70 guests, including 40 Chinese nationals. Nine persons, including four hotel employees, one Pakistan Navy soldier and all four attackers were killed during the eight-hour long siege. Six persons, including two Army captains, two Pakistan Navy soldiers and two hotel employees, were injured. BLA’s Majeed Brigade claimed this attack as well.

On October 31, 2018, at least five construction workers of non-Baloch ethnicity were shot dead while another three suffered injuries in an attack near Ganz, some 15 kilometers west of Jiwani town in the Gwadar District of Balochistan. According to official sources, the labourers were working at a China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)-related private housing scheme on Peshkan-Ganz road, which links Gwadar with Jewani. BLA 'spokesperson' Azad Baloch claimed responsibility for the attack.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Baloch groups have claimed at least nine attacks on economic targets in two provinces – Balochistan (eight) and Sindh (one, the June 29, 2020, attack) – of Pakistan, since March 2000, when SATP started compiling data on conflict in Pakistan. These attacks have resulted in 41 deaths – Balochistan (31) and Sindh (10).

Out of the nine attacks claimed, the BLA has claimed six (33 deaths) and the Balochistan Republican Army (BRA) has claimed three (eight deaths). 

Another 297 attacks on economic targets resulting in 67 deaths have been reported in Balochistan. Though no one has claimed responsibility for these, Baloch groups are suspected because they have repeatedly declared that they want to disrupt Pakistan’s economy as they believe that Balochistan has long been economically exploited.

Indeed, claiming the June 29, 2020, attack, BLA 'spokesperson' Jeehand Baloch asserted that the attack was aimed at targeting Pakistan's economy which is built on seventy-two years of exploitation of Balochistan and the genocide of Baloch people. Asserting that his organization saw the Pakistan Stock Exchange as a base and symbol of the exploitative machinery of Pakistan, he added,

He further warned,

The Baloch groups have also carried out attacks directly targeting Chinese nationals engaged in economic activities, as they believe that China, in connivance with Islamabad, is exploiting the Province. The Chinese consulate has also been attacked. SATP data shows that there have been at least three such attacks resulting in 43 deaths since March 6, 2000. These include:

November 23, 2018: Majeed Brigade conducted an attack targeting the Chinese Consulate in Block 4 of the Clifton area in Karachi, leaving at least seven people dead. No Chinese national was hurt in the attack.

August 11, 2018: Six persons – among them three Chinese engineers – were injured in a suicide attack on a bus in the Dalbandin area of Chagai District. The bus carrying 18 Chinese engineers was being escorted by Frontier Corps (FC) troops to the Dalbandin airport from the Saindaik copper and gold mines, when a suicide bomber tried to drive his explosives-laden vehicle into the bus.

July 19, 2007: A suicide bomber tried to ram his explosive laden vehicle into a van taking Chinese engineers to Karachi from Hub town, at the Gadani Bus Stop in the industrial town of Hub in Balochistan, but missed the target when a Police van blocked its way. At least 30 people, including seven Policemen, were killed and 28 others injured. All seven Chinese engineers, including a woman, remained unhurt.

After the August 11, 2018, attack, Jeehand Baloch, the BLA ‘spokesperson’, had stated, “We targeted this bus which was carrying Chinese engineers. We attacked them because they are extracting gold from our region, we won’t allow it.”  

There is a Chinese angle to June 29 Stock Exchange attack as well. According to a December 2016 report in the Dawn, the Pakistan Stock Exchange sold 40 per cent strategic shares to a Chinese consortium comprising three Chinese exchanges — China Financial Futures Exchange Company Limited (lead bidder), Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange — which bought 30 per cent of the strategic stock, and local financial institutions Pak-China Investment Company Limited and Habib Bank Limited, both of which bought five per cent each. The transaction was valued at USD 85 million. “The significant feature of the deal [is that it is the] first such sale of strategic interest in a bourse in the regional markets. Through the deal, the Chinese bourse has also made its first foray in an acquisition outside China,” Dawn observed at the time.

Significantly, after the June 29, 2020, attack the BLA 'spokesperson', Jeehand Baloch, reiterated,

After the May 19, 2019, attack a BLA video warned Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pakistan to withdraw their projects immediately from Balochistan:

The insurgencies in Balochistan have principally been linked to a sense of deprivation and under-development in the region. Natural gas was discovered at Sui in Balochistan as far back as in 1952, yet only a tiny fraction of current output is supplied within the Province, and large regions of Balochistan remain deprived of natural gas. The sharing of CPEC benefits repeats the same pattern, where the people of Balochistan are denied the benefits of projects that exploit the Province’s own resources. On December 10, 2018, Pakistan’s CPEC Cell, in its briefing to the Balochistan Cabinet, revealed that Balochistan’s share in the USD 62 Billion CPEC project was a miniscule nine per cent, approximately, USD 5.6 Billion. It was also disclosed that, out of this committed sum, less than USD one Billion had been spent since CPEC was launched.

The apprehension that CPEC will not benefit Balochistan has been confirmed by numerous indicators.  Indeed, the Senate (Upper House of the National Assembly) was informed on November 24, 2017, that 91 percent of the revenues to be generated from the Gwadar Port as part of CPEC would go to China, while the Gwadar Port Authority would be left with a nine percent share of the income for the 40 years. This was disclosed by the then Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping, Mir Hasil Bizenjo, after senators expressed concern over the secrecy surrounding the CPEC long-term agreement plan, with many observing that the agreement tilted heavily in China’s favour.

Not only the insurgents, but the mainstream political parties are also rightly apprehensive of the exploitation of Balochistan. Indeed, the Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M), part of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led alliance Federal Government exited the alliance on June 17, 2020. BNP-Mengal chief Sardar Akhtar Mengal observed that they had signed two agreements with the PTI. One was the six-point agreement including recovery of missing persons, implementation of the National Action Plan, observance of a six per cent quota for Balochistan in federal government departments, immediate repatriation of Afghan refugees and construction of dams in the province to resolve the acute water crisis. In the second agreement, they had demanded allocations for various developments projects for Balochistan. None of the demands were fulfilled. Crucially, Baloch activists and leaders have particularly underlined the systematic campaign of extermination of ethnic Baloch people through enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, a trend that SAIR has repeatedly highlighted.  

The BNP-M chief alleged that the government was more concerned about Kashmir and the peace process in Afghanistan, and had no time to look into Balochistan's issues. He argued,

Given the depth and persistence of exploitation of the region by Islamabad, and the increasing complicity of China, there is an increasing in trust deficit in Balochistan, and it is unlikely that Baloch groups will cease their attacks on economic targets in Pakistan. 

AFGHANISTAN

Children Under Threat
Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

June 20, 2020: At least three children were killed in a mine explosion in Paikamari village in Ferozkoh city of Ghor Province.

June 18, 2020: A mortar bomb blast inside a seminary in Ishkamish District of Takhar Province killed nine seminary students. Six students were also injured in the explosion.

April 1, 2020: A roadside bomb killed six children while they were travelling with their family in a minivan in Helmand Province.

February 12, 2020: Five children were killed and three sustained injuries as a mine went off in Dasht-e-Archi District of Kunduz Province.

According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)’s report, Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict First Quarter Report: 1 January 31 March 2020, released in April 2020, 152 children were killed (and 265 were injured) in Afghanistan in terrorism-linked incidents in the first three months of 2020. While the report does not give the proportion of these casualties inflicted by the Taliban, it does emphasise the Taliban was responsible for 505 civilian casualties (215 killed and 290 injured). According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), since April 1, 2020, at least another 28 children have died in such violence (data till July 5, 2020). 

UNAMA data indicates that at least 7,059 children have been killed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2019.

Meanwhile, the United Nations ‘Annual Report [2019] of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict’ released on June 15, 2020, described the war in Afghanistan as the world’s deadliest conflict for children in 2019, a status the country has held for five consecutive years. The report says that 874 children were killed and another 2,275 injured by the war through 2019:

The prominent incidents involving child fatalities in 2019 included:

November 27, 2019: Eight children were killed when the vehicle they were travelling in hit a land mine in Kunduz Province.

November 4, 2019: Four children were killed in mine blast in an unspecified location of Baghlan Province.

November 2, 2019: Nine children were killed when a mine exploded as they walked to school, in an unspecified location of Takhar Province.

July 25, 2019: Three children, along with six women were killed in a roadside mine blast in the Wazir area of Khogyani District of Nangarhar Province.

May 9, 2019: Four children were killed in an explosion triggered by an Improvised Explosive Device explosion in Dawlatabad District of Faryab Province.

April 14, 2019: Seven children were killed while they were playing outside their houses, when a discarded mortar shell blew up in Dasram area, a village in the outskirts of Mihtarlam city in Laghman Province.

Afghanistan is all about never-ending conflict, poverty and devastation, where children suffer from the unspeakable horrors of four decades of war and conflict. Fatalities alone are no measure of the quantum of suffering inflicted on the children of Afghanistan: physical disability, recruitment by militants, destruction of education system, drug addiction, child labour, physical and sexual abuse, and the sheer, crippling exposure to the brutalities of war, of personal loss, and of relentless uncertainty, have scarred generations.

The education system has collapsed across wide areas in Afghanistan. Schools are often damaged in the constant fighting, and there is a constant threat of attack on school complexes. According to a May 28, 2019, UN News report, attacks on schools in the country surged from 68 in 2017 to 192 in 2018. According to a February 18, 2020, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report, as of December 2019, 488 schools had been reported to have been forcibly closed due to insecurity, affecting around 150,000 children (72,000 girls and 78,000 boys). Uruzgan (204 schools), Paktika (117 schools) and Logar (64 schools) were the top three Provinces, with the highest number of closed or damaged schools. Moreover, an estimated 3.7 million children between the ages of seven and 17, nearly half of all school-aged Afghans, are out of school in the country.

War and destruction of infrastructure has caused extreme poverty in Afghanistan, and the unceasing conflict has destroyed the institutions meant to protect children. The high numbers of civilian casualties also indicate the loss of breadwinners within Afghan families, consequently forcing young boys and girls to quit school and help to financially support the family. The resultant crisis of child labour has ruined the lives of many children. With an estimated 55 per cent of the population living below the poverty line, children often work to contribute to their family income. According to a July 24, 2019, report, the increased financial struggle the country is experiencing, as well as the closure of hundreds of schools due to violent conflict, and poor enforcement of labour laws have led to an increase in child labour. Despite billions of dollars being pumped in for the protection for children, their condition remains precarious and their future prospects shabby. 

Physical disability caused due to violent incidents is also at catastrophic levels. An estimated 95 per cent of children with disabilities do not attend school. The latest United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan Report, titled, Preserving Hope in Afghanistan: Protecting children in the world’s most lethal conflict, published in December 2019, revealed that an average of nine children were killed or crippled every day in Afghanistan in the first nine months of 2019. The report further added, almost 15,000 children were injured between 2009-2018, in Afghanistan. The presence of numerous land mines in the country still results in regular accidents, sometimes even fatal ones, especially among the very young who often fail to recognise dangerous sites. Many Afghan children are handicapped due to land mine explosions. The United Nations has been involved in clearing landmines in Afghanistan for 29 years, and over that period, has cleared some 730,000 anti-personnel and anti-tank mines at a cost of USD 1.5 billion in Afghanistan.

There is also the persistent problem of drug-addiction among children. Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium. According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report, 2020, Afghanistan is the country where the most opium is produced, accounting for approximately 84 per cent of global opium production. According to an April, 2019, report, the Taliban has an estimated USD 200 million-a-year opium trade, and around 60 per cent of Taliban's finances come from the narcotics trade. Addiction among children wasn't properly counted until 2015, when the UN reported that 9.2 percent of children up to 14 years old tested positive for one or more type of drugs and were likely to be active drug users. There is no further data on this parameter.

Children in Afghanistan have been used as soldiers by the Taliban and the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP). Poverty, unemployment and limited access to basic services, and the absence of social protection, have been key factors driving children to join parties to conflict. According to a February 26, 2020, report, the Taliban has nearly 50,000 children on a waiting list to be suicide ‘martyrs’. Their parents receive thousands of dollars as payment to use their child for this ‘holy cause’.

A UN report, Children and Armed Conflict in Afghanistan, published in September 2019, noted,

Further, according to a February 18, 2020, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report:

On February 29, 2020, the US and the Taliban officially signed the 'Agreement for bringing peace to Afghanistan' at Doha, Qatar. Subsequently, it was claimed that this agreement would ensure enduring peace in the country. Worryingly, however, developments since then are not indicative of any quick ending to hostilities in the foreseeable future. The conflict in Afghanistan is likely to continue, and so will the sufferings of the children, as they have always been one among the worst victims in any conflict, world-wide.