Quetta bombings and the proxy puzzle: Is ISKP Pakistan’s New weapon against Baloch nationalism?
By Arun Anand
For years, Kabul has accused Islamabad of using the Islamic State’s Khorasan arm (ISKP) as a pawn in its regional game. That charge, long dismissed as rhetoric, is looking harder to ignore.
ISKP’s recent strikes in restive Balochistan have only deepened suspicions that Pakistan’s deep state may be quietly enabling the group for its own ends.
This time, the extremist outfit seems to be deployed – directly or by design – to blunt the Baloch insurgency and silence a growing civil resistance.
Recently, in a chilling development on September 2, the Islamic State Pakistan Province (ISPP), a sub-branch of ISKP, orchestrated a suicide bombing in Quetta, targeting a rally of the Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M). The ghastly attack ended up killing 12 people and left another 32 wounded.
A few months ago, in a 36-minute-long, Pashto-language video released by the ISKP’s Al-Azaim Media on May 25, the group had declared war on armed Baloch nationalist groups as well as political organizations and rights groups.
The group alleged that in March this year, Baloch insurgents attacked one of its training camps in the Mastung district of the province, killing 30 of its fighters.
This accusation also confirmed reports and speculations about ISKP’s operational presence in the district. It is also important to note here that in late March, the chairman of the BNP-M, Sardar Akhtar Mengal, and other supporters of the party narrowly survived when a suicide bomber blew himself near their rally in Mastung.
Although the expansion of the Islamic State to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the form of ISKP came about in 2015 under Hafiz Saeed Khan Orakzai, the group’s presence in Pakistan intensified specifically after the Taliban ascended to power in Afghanistan in 2021.
The video released by the group characterises the Baloch nationalists as anti-Islamic and condemns their secular, nationalistic, and pro-democracy credentials, and calls upon its supporters to join them in their fight against the ‘infidels’.
Although the video also declares that the ISKP is not a proxy instrument of the Pakistani state but its rhetoric against Baloch nationalists and civil society activism leads one to some uncomfortable inferences.
Besides the Taliban’s relentless allegations of Pakistan’s collusion with the ISKP, there have been multiple reports indicating how the establishment is benefiting – by either directly cultivating or enabling by deliberate neglect – the proliferation and consolidation of ISKP.
Dr. Naseem Baloch, the Chairperson of the Baloch National Movement, stated in a meeting at the UN Headquarters in March 2024, “the active camps of the international terrorist organization known as Daesh are operating in Balochistan under the direct supervision and support of the Pakistani army”.
There have been instances when ISKP operatives have surrendered to or been apprehended by the Afghan Taliban and have, upon investigation, revealed their links to the Pakistani army/ISI.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, former spokesperson and senior Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander, in an interview with The Sunday Guardian in August this year, claimed that the Pakistani army had deployed Lashkar-e-Taiba, which he termed its ‘B-team’ and ‘most favoured proxy’, under the banner of ISKP to serve multiple strategic purposes, including the suppression of the Baloch resistance. It must be remembered here that LeT, along with other terrorist groups, is also known for its proxy operations in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, at the behest of Pakistan.
Considering Pakistan’s well-documented history of using terror as state policy – be it in Kashmir (the latest manifestation of which was the barbaric Pahalgam attack in April this year) or in Afghanistan for “strategic depth” – it is not surprising that it is employing the same tactic against its own people.
For decades, the state has brutalised the Baloch people and the Pashtuns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the name of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency.
Whoever has even slightly questioned the writ or empty narratives of the
Pakistani state has faced unspeakable persecution – reflected in the massive scale of deaths, displacement, enforced disappearances, and torture that Baloch and Pashtun communities have been subjected to as collective punishment.
On the other hand, domestic and international terror groups continue to flourish and instrumentalized to carry out operations in collusion with the state while also granting it plausible deniability.
At a time when the Baloch resistance is gaining renewed strength – with the BLA upping its operational and rhetorical sophistication and the civil resistance led by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) attracting surging domestic and international support despite the incarceration of its leaders, including Dr Mahrang Baloch, the Pakistani state is evidently on the backfoot.
In such a context, it does not seem far-fetched to imagine that the establishment, after failing to quell the Baloch resistance even after years of brutal suppression, has resorted to outsourcing its actions to radical proxy groups to open a new front for the Baloch nationalists.
However, this has been Pakistan’s playbook for some decades, and it has repeatedly produced dark and uncontrollable consequences for the country itself.
Pakistan must take the lessons from history and begin the long-overdue process of meaningful engagement with the Baloch community as rightful stakeholders in the country’s body-politic.
