Armed separatists of the Balochistan [Pakistan] Liberation Army (BLA) stormed the Chinese Consulate in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi on Friday, triggering an intense…
Armed separatists of the Balochistan [Pakistan] Liberation Army (BLA) stormed the Chinese Consulate in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi on Friday, triggering an intense hour-long shootout during which two Pakistani civilians, two police officers and three insurgents died.
Although there have been numerous isolated attacks on Chinese personnel working in Pakistan conducted by the BLA and other insurgent groups like the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) and the Baloch Republican Army (BRA), this is the first assault on a major Chinese government facility in Pakistan.
Despite its relative smaller scale, some in the region compare its psychological effect to that of the 1968 Tet Offensive, which convinced many in the American media that the Vietnam war was unwinnable.
Balochistan — a traditionally secular and tolerant province — has also been the home of a festering ethnic insurgency since the partition of India in 1947, when the region was forcibly incorporated into Pakistan.
Despite its mineral wealth, the Baloch have been intentionally kept underdeveloped by the Pakistan government, which has been a cause for sporadic uprisings, along with oppression and alleged extrajudicial killings by the Pakistani military. Since the late 1970s, the Pakistani government has subjected Balochistan to an intensive “Islamization” program to reduce ethnic identification.
The BLA views Chinese investment in western Pakistan, represented by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), as a form of colonization.
