A separatist group in Pakistan reportedly took credit for a terrorist attack on Sunday that killed two Chinese nationals and left several others injured, apparently targeting a Chinese-funded company.
Local authorities in Karachi, where the bombing took place, blamed an improvised explosive device (IED) for the blast, which targeted a convoy carrying employees of the Port Qasim Electric Power Company, a Chinese-linked company. Turkey’s Anadolu news agency reported a “massive explosion” sufficient to burn several vehicles in a convoy carrying “dozens” of Chinese citizens late on Sunday, near the Karachi airport. The bomb appeared to target the convoy shortly after a plan carrying about 40 Chinese nationals landed in Jinnah International Airport, a flight believed to be affiliated with the electric power company’s work.
The Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday that the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed the attack. The BLA is an ethnic Baloch separatist terror group of Marxist bent that has for years orchestrated terrorist attacks against Chinese citizens and, more generally, projects affiliated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI is a sprawling, global infrastructure plan in which China grants predatory loans to poor countries in exchange for help building cost-prohibitive infrastructure projects, such as entirely new railway lines or new ports to aid in the expansion of Chinese exports to the targeted country.
Pakistan has invested heavily in the BRI through a subsection of the project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Xinhua reported on Monday that the blasts set multiple vehicles on fire near the airport. Initial reports suggested a tanker explosion was responsible for the blast, through later police indicated they believed that an IED caused it. Images from Pakistani and Indian news networks showed a cluster of incinerated vehicles near each other, including at least one overturned car still on fire.
China’s embassy in Islamabad issued a statement demanding that the Pakistani government do more to protect its citizens in the country – and urging its nationals to “make every effort” to stay safe, suggesting Pakistan’s police will not necessarily protect them.
“The Chinese embassy and consulates in Pakistan remind Chinese citizens and companies in Pakistan to be vigilant, pay close attention to the local security situation, strengthen security measures, and make every effort to take safety precautions,” the statement read.
The Chinese embassy further demanded that Pakistani police “conduct a thorough investigation of the attack … severely punish the perpetrators … [and] take practical and effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese citizens, institutions and projects in Pakistan.”
Pakistan has failed for years to stop attacks later attributed to the BLA. The BLA thrives in the restive Pakistani region of Balochistan, seeking to found a sovereign state for the ethnic Baloch people carved out of Pakistan. While maintaining friendly relations with both the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, the BLA is a Marxist terrorist organization founded by fighters who trained under the former Soviet Union. It is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization as of 2019.
In designating the group, the State Department detailed a string of attacks against Chinese workers connected to the BRI.
“BLA has carried out several terrorist attacks in the past year, including a suicide attack in August 2018 that targeted Chinese engineers in Balochistan, a November 2018 attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, and a May 2019 attack against a luxury hotel in Gwadar, Balochistan,” the State Department noted.
The Chinese Communist Party first began to expand its economic influence in Pakistan in 2015 with the establishment of the CPEC, designed to work as a pivotal leg of the revival of the Ancient Silk Road – the premise upon which China founded the BRI. According to organizers, CPEC has received $15 billion in investments to strengthen the abilities of the Pakistani power grid, build new ports and roads to aid interconnectivity, and establish “special economic zones” for businesses specifically associated with the Chinese led project. The BLA began to attack Chinese-affiliated projects shortly after Chinese engineers, businessmen, and government officials became a constant fixture of Pakistan’s economic landscape.
In 2017, suspected BLA terrorists targeted CPEC projects in a string of attacks in which gunmen opened fire on Chinese and Pakistani workers at a construction site, killing at least ten, and killed three others with a similar attack that same week. Later that year, yet another attack in which gunmen stopped a convoy carrying Chinese nationals, abducting and killing their victims, occurred, though the Islamic State took responsibility for that incident.
One of the BLA’s largest attacks occurred in April 2022, when a woman later identified as a teacher, Shari Baloch, committed a suicide bombing in front of the Confucius Institute at the University of Karachi. Confucius Institutes are Chinese regime-controlled academic bodies that spread Communist Party propaganda and pressure professors and students to adopt political positions favorable to the Chinese regime. The suicide bombing killed four people, three Chinese teachers and a Pakistani national, at the Institute in addition to the suicide bomber, who hid her explosives in a burqa.
In August, another string of attacks believed to have been orchestrated by the BLA killed over 70 people. The attacks were a string of suicide bombings and roadside ambushes targeting Chinese BRI workers. Authorities described one attack as setting dozens of vehicles on fire, while others involved gun battles killing dozens.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.