By Uzma Ehtasham
There is a particular kind of cruelty in setting a man on fire while he is still breathing. There is another kind, colder and more calculating, in turning that man’s death into a line item on a spreadsheet of statecraft. Both kinds were on display in the dusty, unforgiving terrain of Chagai district in Balochistan, where ten employees of the National Refinery Limited, among them foreign nationals, were torn from this world not by accident or impulse but by design. Their attackers did not merely shoot. They watched the oil reserves burn. They understood, as any arsonist does, that fire spreads. And the fire they lit was meant to leap from the pipelines of Balochistan to the economic arteries of the entire country. This was not a skirmish. It was a message.
For years, the people of Balochistan have lived with a low-grade war that the rest of Pakistan has often preferred to call a law and order problem. That euphemism has become a moral hazard. What happened in Chagai strips away any remaining pretence. The attackers arrived with modern weaponry, tactical discipline, and an operational sophistication that no ragtag insurgent group should be able to muster on its own. The Baloch Liberation Army and its affiliated outfits have, over time, mutated from a separatist movement with local grievances into something far more sinister: a proxy army with foreign patrons and a transnational agenda. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is the grim arithmetic of intelligence assessments, confessions, and the unmistakable footprint of external support.
Consider the case that should have shocked the world but barely raised an eyebrow beyond South Asia. Kulbhushan Jadhav, a serving Indian naval officer, was caught operating inside Pakistan’s Balochistan province, running a network of subversion and sabotage. His trial, his confession, and the International Court of Justice’s subsequent ruling did not create a rupture in diplomatic relations between New Delhi and Islamabad because, quite simply, the rupture was already there. What Jadhav’s case proved, beyond reasonable doubt, is that India’s Research and Analysis Wing does not merely watch Pakistan from across the border. It reaches into its flesh. It finances militias. It trains men to pull triggers and plant explosives. And it does so with the plausible deniability that only a state apparatus can provide.
Why would India take such a risk? The answer lies a few hundred kilometers north of Chagai, in the sprawling infrastructure of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Balochistan is not just a province of mountains and deserts. It is the geographical prize of the CPEC, the gateway through which Chinese investment flows to the Arabian Sea. Every port built, every road laid, every pipeline sunk into Balochi soil is a thread in a new economic tapestry that India does not wish to see completed. The attacks on Chinese engineers, the targeted killings of foreign nationals, the torching of oil reserves—none of this is random violence. It is a slow, deliberate campaign of economic strangulation. Kill the project by killing the people who build it. Terrify the investor by setting the infrastructure ablaze. Make Balochistan synonymous with risk, and watch the capital flee.
Then there is Afghanistan, that tragic neighbor whose soil has become an open wound for Pakistan. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which Islamabad now rightly calls Fitna al-Khawarij, operates from across the border with an impunity that mocks the very idea of territorial sovereignty. The same sanctuaries that shelter militants attacking Afghan cities also shelter those who slip into Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to carry out their massacres. The Taliban administration in Kabul has thus far offered cooperation that is more gesture than substance. Border tensions flare, bodies pile up, and the militants rest easy. This is not sustainable. Pakistan has every right to demand that Afghan authorities act against these groups, not as a favor but as an obligation under international law.
But let us be honest about the domestic dimension as well. For all the talk of external conspiracies, the state must also confront the uncomfortable truth that Balochistan’s grievances have been real. The province has suffered from economic neglect, political marginalization, and a military-heavy response that has too often alienated the very people it sought to protect. Successive governments have offered reconciliation packages, development funds, and amnesty to those who renounce violence. And yet, each time, the militant leadership has used these openings not to lay down arms but to regroup, rearm, and return to killing. This is the tragedy of bad faith: one side extends a hand; the other uses it to reload.
Pakistan now faces a moment of decision. The attack in Chagai is not an isolated tragedy. It is a stress test of the state’s resolve. There can be no more half-measures. Militant groups, regardless of their stated political goals, must be met with zero tolerance. Diplomatically, Islamabad must take the evidence of Indian state sponsorship—not just of the Jadhav case but of ongoing financial trails and intercepted communications—to every international forum that will listen. The silence of the global community on India’s role has been deafening, and that silence has a cost measured in blood. On the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan must move beyond requests and into structured, verifiable security cooperation, with clear consequences for non-compliance.
There is no room left for the luxury of patience. The men who died in Chagai did not sign up for a geopolitical war. They went to work. They had families who are now learning to live with an absence that nothing will fill. The state owes them more than condolences. It owes them a strategy that matches the ruthlessness of its enemies. Fire, after all, spreads. But so can resolve. The question is whether Pakistan is ready to burn the safe havens of terror or only its own oil.
(The writer is a public health professional, journalist, and possesses expertise in health communication, having keen interest in national and international affairs, can be reached at uzma@metro-morning.com)
