Pakistan is set to intensify counterterrorism operations in the mineral-rich province of western Balochistan in the aftermath of Wednesday’s suicide bombing on a school bus – which Islamabad had attributed to Indian spies.
The attack in the town of Khuzdar, which claimed the lives of five high-school girls and five soldiers, came amid Chinese diplomatic efforts to cool tensions between Islamabad and Kabul over cross-border Pakistani Taliban and Baloch insurgent attacks staged from Afghanistan.
A further 51 people were injured in the bombing – including 37 children, seven of whom remain in critical condition.
With tensions with New Delhi still running high after their five-day air war earlier this month, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday vowed that Pakistan’s security forces and law enforcement agencies would “relentlessly pursue all those involved in this barbaric act”.
“The architects, abettors and enablers of this crime will be held accountable and brought to justice and the truth about India’s cunning role, a real perpetrator of terrorism but feigns as a victim, stands exposed before the world.”
Following his statement, Pakistan’s government ordered the national media to refer to Baloch rebel groups as “agents of Indian chaos” in its coverage.
Indian external affairs ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal rejected the “baseless allegations made by Pakistan” on Thursday, and condoled the “loss of lives in all such incidents”.
Reiterating India’s allegation that Pakistan’s intelligence agencies were behind an April 22 terrorist attack that killed 27 tourists in Kashmir, Jaiswal said it had become “second nature for Pakistan to blame India for all its internal issues … in order to divert attention from its reputation as the global epicentre of terrorism and to hide its own gross failings”.
“This attempt to hoodwink the world is doomed to fail,” he added.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied any involvement in the Kashmir attack, and also offered its condolences at the time.
Beijing hosted talks between the foreign ministers of China, Pakistan and Afghanistan on Wednesday following a phone conversation between the national security advisers of Pakistan and Iran.
Analysts said these engagements showed that Islamabad was urgently working to secure its western borders because of the pressure on its eastern flank with India.
Need for stability
According to Farwa Aamer, director of South Asia initiatives at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York, “China sees Pakistan’s stability and security as important for many reasons” – a prominent one being the US$64 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) programme of the Belt and Road Initiative.
The cornerstone of CPEC is the overland road connection between Xinjiang and the Chinese-operated port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea coast of restive Balochistan.
But Baloch insurgents have hampered the development of the port by staging attacks on Chinese nationals working there since 2004.
Their campaign against Chinese nationals and interests has intensified since the launch of CPEC in 2016, straining relations between Beijing and “ironclad friend” Islamabad.
An expansion of CPEC into Afghanistan has “been on the cards” since the Taliban regime seized power in Kabul in 2021, “so a stable Afghan-Pakistani border and more cooperative relations would serve China’s interests,” Aamer told This Week In Asia.
She said the “alternate scenario could compromise security and economic goals of all, especially at a time when intraregional dynamics are extremely tense following the recent India-Pakistan escalation”.
