Amir ZiaEven for Pakistan—one of the world’s most violence-hit countries—the hijacking of a passenger train by terrorists in a remote part of its southwestern Balochistan province was an unprecedented incident.
In a brazen attack on March 11, dozens of terrorists belonging to the banned Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) blew up the railway track to stop the Peshawar-bound Jaffar Express in a remote mountainous region near Sibi and held 440 passengers and crew-members hostage. A number of these passengers were unarmed soldiers, heading home on vacations.
The terrorists then shot and killed several passengers, mostly security personnel, after verifying their identity before the troops could reach the spot. However, the terrorists freed a number of hostages, including women, children and the elderly, following ethnic profiling.
In an ensuing operation lasting 36 hours, Pakistani forces killed 33 terrorists and managed to free those hostages who were used as “human shields”.
A total of 26 hostages, including 18 security personnel, three railroad employees and five civilians, were killed. Five soldiers also lost their lives.
The train hijacking incident underlines the complicated terrorism challenge of Pakistan, which is fighting a multifront war in its northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan provinces – both bordering Afghanistan.
The militants have also carried out terror attacks in Karachi, the capital of the southwestern Sindh province, mainly targeting Chinese nationals.
If the hardline terror groups, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Daesh-K, are active in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the violent separatist BLA terrorists operate mostly in Balochistan.
One commonality between the two ideologically diverse sets of terror groups is that they allegedly use Afghanistan as a springboard for their activities in Pakistan, and sometimes even collaborate with one another in carrying them out. The Kabul government denies any involvement in or tolerance for these activities.
Sunni Baloch constitute a minority but represent a disproportionate number of those executed every year in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The strategic shift
Not long ago, terror attacks were limited to the occasional hit-and-run assaults on security personnel and infrastructure, or the improvised explosive device (IED) blasts, targeting government vehicles in remote areas.
But in recent months, BLA terrorists have started storming security pickets, police stations and government installations, and are carrying out suicide attacks with greater frequency and ferocity.
The unprecedented train attack is an example of their growing capability. It also shows a marked change in their strategy and availability of greater resources in terms of money, sophisticated arms and ammunition, including high-intensity sniper rifles, thermal night vision weapons and communication devices.
Leftover weapons of the withdrawing US and NATO troops in Afghanistan further complicate the situation. A large quantity of these weapons has now reportedly fallen in the hands of the terrorists.
The terror groups are swelling their ranks with willing young recruits who feel alienated with the system because of economic woes and the country’s growing political polarisation.
The escalation in terrorism has jolted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government, which has again vowed to toughen its stance against terrorism in the aftermath of the train hijacking incident.
The intensity and scope of anti-terrorism operations can be gauged from the fact that the security forces killed 1,250 terrorists and lost 563 of their own in the past 14 and a half months.
The security forces conducted 59,775 major and minor intelligence-based operations in 2024 – around 164 a day. But in 2025, the daily average of operations has shot up to 180.
In recent years Baloch separatists have launched several suicide attacks worrying US officials as Pakistan draws closer to the US on the Afghan issue.
Alleged Afghan connection
Pakistan, which has long accused the Afghan Taliban for allowing their country to become a hub of terrorist groups, again pointed the finger at their neighbour after the passenger train hijacking.
The Pakistan Foreign Office and the military spokesman have said that the intelligence and operational findings confirm that perpetrators of the train attack were in touch with “handlers in Afghanistan” throughout the incident.
However, the Afghan Taliban Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, in a post on X rejected Pakistan’s allegations and asked Islamabad to resolve its own security and internal problems instead of making “such irresponsible remarks.”
“No members of (the) Baloch opposition have a presence in Afghanistan, nor have they ever had or have any links with the Islamic Emirate.”
Many Pakistan-Afghanistan watchers find the rapid deterioration of ties between the Afghan Taliban and their one-time supporter, Pakistan, quite ironic.
Some Pakistani critics believe their government could take a more balanced approach to managing relations with Afghanistan, rather than placing too much emphasis on a single issue—the demand for action against the TTP.
The critics say that this single-point strategy and the use of overt pressure have eroded Islamabad’s clout in Kabul.
However, the Shehbaz government accuses the Afghan Taliban of undermining the Doha Accord, which bars them from allowing the Afghan soil to be used for terrorism against any other country.
The strained relations between these allies of yesteryear now often spark border skirmishes as Islamabad, in a bid to pressurise Kabul, has started deporting the undocumented Afghan migrants.
But Islamabad’s strategy does not seem to be working as an uncooperative Afghanistan remains one of the key factors complicating Pakistan’s fight against terrorism.
The Indian nexus
Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry in a presser on Friday accused India of sponsoring terrorism.
“We must understand that in this terrorist incident in Balochistan, and others before, the main sponsor is your eastern neighbour (India).”
Pakistan has been long accusing India of state-sponsored terrorism, particularly in the restive Balochistan province from where it arrested an Indian spy, Kulbhushan Jadhav, in 2016.
Jadhav, an official of the Indian spy agency RAW, is on death row after being convicted by a military court in 2017 for sponsoring and masterminding terrorist attacks in Pakistan.
Islamabad also remains wary of the Indian propaganda blitz – both on traditional and social media.
Gen Chaudhry pointed out that the Indian media used fake and AI-generated videos and photos in an attempt to legitimise terrorists and their narrative.
Internal contradictions
Although external players are certainly aggravating Pakistan’s terrorism challenge, they are doing it by exploiting the country’s internal contradictions.
The BLA terrorists, who were fringe groups until recently, are able to recruit many youngsters against the backdrop of allegations of state accesses, including disappearances of dissenting voices in their province. While even the mainstream Baloch nationalist parties, which stand by Pakistan, raise the issue of “forced disappearances”, the government says that they are mostly “self-disappearances.” By this, the government means that the people themselves are disappearing to join terror groups.
Balochistan’s former chief minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch told this scribe that in his province, the missing persons’ issue remains one of the most sensitive ones, which is being exploited by the terrorists.
The growing feeling of political and economic marginalisation and the fear of being transformed into a minority in their own province because of immigration from other parts of the country also weigh heavily on the hearts and minds of many Baloch nationalists.
They say that the resources of their mineral-rich province are not being shared fairly and even development done in the name of the much-propagated China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is ignoring the local population.
But the government says that since 2010 Balochistan’s share in national resources has tremendously increased and measures are being taken to eradicate poverty, improve social development indicators and create employment opportunities for the youth of Balochistan, which is still the country’s most backward province.
Pakistan's political instability in recent years is also taking its toll on counter-terrorism efforts and counter-narrative building.
While a broad national consensus exists on taking on the violent religious and ethnic terrorists, opposition parties say that the government’s one-dimensional approach that relies on the use of force is not bearing results. They say that along with fighting the terrorists, the government should ensure reforms, fast-track development work in terrorism-hit areas, hold dialogue with stakeholders, ensure the rule of law, and uphold the constitution.
The military is doing what it does best: fighting the terrorists. But this huge effort needs to be supported and cemented by reforms, dialogue and winning over the hearts and minds of those Pakistanis who feel alienated from the system.
