US-Pakistan ‘counter-terrorism’ dialogue: A cover to suppress Baloch movement

If you want to collapse in shock, read the latest gem from the US-Pakistan dialogue. This one is on counterterrorism and lauds Pakistan’s actions in such laudatory terms as to make any intelligence officer of any country feel sick. Regardless of reality, it seems Trump’s United States is on a headlong path against India and, worse, against logic. It might be an attempt to wean the country away from China and drag it firmly into the US camp, or it could be just petty point scoring. Whatever the motives, the news is not good.

The US-Pakistan Counterterrorism Dialogue

Consider the Joint Statement, which says, “Both delegations underscored the critical importance of developing effective approaches to terrorist threats, including those posed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), ISIS-Khorasan, and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and applauded Pakistan’s continued successes in containing terrorist entities that pose a threat to the peace and security of the region and the world”. There’s worse. The US “expressed condolences for the loss of civilians and members of law enforcement agencies in terrorist incidents in Pakistan, including the barbaric Jaffar Express terrorist attack and the bombing of a school bus in Khuzdar”.

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There is nothing to indicate that the Jaffar bus attack killed innocent civilians, but the BLA did kill security forces and their colleagues in intelligence. True also, that the school bus attack in May 2025 was particularly horrifying. But the BLA is the last group ever to do such an attack on their own. It would set the Baloch against them, and they know it. Pakistan’s agencies are not below killing their own or even the Chinese. Remember the attack on the latter at Dasu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last year that killed five Chinese travelling to a power project site? That was blamed on the Pakistanis themselves, to get Beijing to put pressure on Afghanistan on the TTP. And it worked. That’s exactly what China did, pressuring Kabul to mend relations with Islamabad on May 21st post Sindoor, in an ‘informal’ trilateral interaction.

Targeting Baloch

Now it’s the turn of the US. Its intelligence agencies are well aware of the fact that the Baloch have never ever targeted the US, not even when its logistics lines were going through their land to fight the mujahideen or later the Taliban. In fact, the odd reality is that the Majeed Brigade, now officially designated as a terrorist group, have only attacked the Chinese relentlessly for poaching on their land at the behest of the ‘Punjabis’. Logic demands that the US should quietly give them a hand against their sworn competitor. But it seems not to be. The farcical nature of the whole joint statement is apparent from the fact that the Pakistani signatory was Nabeel Munir, Special Secretary to the United Nations.

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Not a single Pakistani counter-terrorism official or anyone from the Interior Ministry. Last year’s dialogue also had similar representation but was far less laudatory and more matter-of-fact. It also noted US training of Pakistani personnel on counterterrorism. Most importantly, the 2024 statement made no mention of the BLA, though it was designated as a terrorist group in 2019. This time the focus is almost entirely on it, with the TTP just an add-on.

Accommodation of Pakistan’s Balochistan Narrative by the US

That is a worrying slide in policy, accommodating Pakistan’s frequent complaints of Indian backing of the Baloch resistance. The one and only ‘evidence’ that Rawalpindi claims is the arrest of former navy officer Kulbushan Jadhav, who was kidnapped from Iran and brought into Pakistan and made to ‘confess’ to various sins. Compare this to the available data on Pakistanis not in prison for terrorist activities, drug running and the like, but the hundreds of protests and agitations organised every year on “Kashmir Solidarity Day” or on any pretext whatsoever on Kashmir.

There has yet to be a single protest in India on Balochistan. The Indian public is largely ignorant of the serious Baloch crisis which has been brewing since Pakistan’s independence, with rebellion after rebellion leading to the kidnapping, torture and deaths of thousands. That includes entirely peaceful protestors like the charismatic Mehrang Baloch, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and now languishing in prison — with no access allowed to her family — and others like Mama Qadeer, leader of the ‘Voice of Baloch’, nominated for the Nelson Mandela peace award. Others, including their family members, lie incarcerated too.

Yet, the US, apparently the world’s most powerful democracy, entirely ignores the fact that it is such Pakistani practices that are fuelling the Baloch insurgency. Even if a foreign power is training fighters, it cannot, by any stretch of the imagination or even with the largest purse, create the groundswell of support for the fighters among ordinary people.

Also Baloch insurgency has turned a page. It is no longer a platform for the somewhat elite tribal leaders. BLA fighters are heavily part of student organisations and carry those ideals with them that lie with the youth. Shari Baloch, the first female suicide bomber, was an academic with an M.Phil degree. An additional point the US agencies would obviously know. There is not a shred of obscurantism or extremism about the BLA.

US Motivation and Further

The question that then arises is US motivation for this unalloyed public support, with the State Department spokesperson reiterating the important role played by the US in ending the conflict while then referring to the US–Pakistan counterterrorism dialogue. But the curious part is that there isn’t very much else. No great US financial largesse has come in. The F-16 package of $397 million is a technical package that also prevents these aircraft from being used against India. Neither have there been any weapons commitments — yet.

Pakistan gets almost its entire weaponry from China, but it is parity with India that Pakistan craves, now that the Terrorist Resistance Front, a proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba, was designated by the US recently. There is another important aspect. It might also mean that US Central Command is legally free to act against BLA—at least with intelligence—much as it used its drones to kill TTP leaders, on Pakistan’s urging. This is dangerous stuff.

Meanwhile, the designation benefits China in multiple ways. As a commentator says, it will secure Chinese projects and deal a blow to India. The hope among Pakistanis and Chinese is that Trump will mention—at the very least—that India is a state sponsor of terrorism. It could happen. So far it seems this is a personal grudge held by Trump against India because Delhi refuses to recognise a US role in ending the recent conflict or accept mediation. The latter is non-negotiable, and the State Department bureaucracy probably understands that. The former is a different thing altogether.

Delhi could acknowledge that Islamabad—as expected—went running to the US the moment it faced serious damage to its installations. That has been true for almost every single conflict between the two. India should also have anticipated the Trump offer of mediation, given that he offered this to an exuberant Imran Khan in 2019. Pakistan took advantage of that. India got the ‘bad guy’ image again, as Rawalpindi knew it would.

Time to change corners, as it’s going to be the Baloch who will suffer. Acknowledge the historical truth of the Pakistan army using the US for its own mischievous ends.

On no account must Islamabad be rewarded with ‘mediation’, simply because there is nothing to mediate. Especially since it has yet to detain or even mildly shake its finger at the many terrorists within its soil. Meanwhile, it’s time to name and shame. Get each terrorist into the limelight through media and diplomacy. Ramp up the terrorist dialogue. As the late strategic affairs analyst K Subramanyam used to say, even if one person listens, that’s good enough.

The author is Director (R&A) at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. She tweets @kartha_tara. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.