On July 25, 2025, a report on the Al Jazeera website claimed that Israel was planning to “hijack the Baloch struggle” in Pakistan. Since July 1948, Pakistan has faced multiple insurgencies in the province of Balochistan. These insurgencies have ebbed and flowed, advanced and receded for almost 77 years now. From tribal uprisings, to leftist ‘liberation’ insurgencies, to separatist sub-nationalist surges, Balochistan has witnessed numerous Baloch nationalist outfits and movements.
Some still claim to be working for the rights of the Baloch people within Pakistan’s federal paradigm. However, in the last decade or so, outfits looking to completely separate from the federation have grown. Like most separatist movements anywhere in the world, the Baloch ‘liberation’ movements too have had external supporters. Separatist movements cannot survive without these. But this is not to suggest that survival in this regard always leads to victory.
Indeed, there have been cases in which the survival of separatist movements — aided by external forces — has succeeded in achieving their end goals. Some examples in this regard include the erstwhile East Pakistan, where Bengali nationalists, who were militarily supported by India, managed to break away from the rest of Pakistan and become Bangladesh.
Another example is that of the Kosovo Liberation Front (KLF). Initially formed to ‘liberate’ the Kosovo region from Yugoslavia, the KLF’s target became Serbia when the region became part of Serbia after Yugoslavia dissolved in 1992.
History offers examples of separatist movements succeeding with foreign help — but most often, they become pawns in geo-political rivalries. Is the insurgency in Balochistan, which may reportedly see the involvement of Israel, destined to remain trapped in this vicious cycle?
The KLF struggled to sustain its presence until the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) countries began supporting it. Nato wanted to remove the Serbian nationalist regime headed by Slobodan Miloševi. In the late 1990s, KLF fighters and informants helped Nato dismantle the Miloševi’ regime as Nato jets bombed Serbia’s military installations. By 2000, Miloševi was gone. Nato mainstreamed the KLF and kept a military presence in Kosovo until the region declared its independence from Serbia in 2008.
But on most occasions, external support for separatist movements has only been able to prolong their presence. They’ve failed to take these movements over the finish line — sometimes as policy. According to the researcher Joshua C. Underwood, if an external supporter doesn’t provide military aid, separatist movements usually collapse.
Underwood gives the example of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. Wanting to create a homeland for Sri Lanka’s Tamils in the north of the country, the LTTE — from 1983 till 1987 — ran a relentless campaign of terror against the Sri Lankan state.
According to the Indian academic Rajat Ganguly, during this period, India provided weapons and training to LTTE militants. But, in 1987, supporting Tamil separatism increasingly began being viewed as counterproductive by India because of concern that it may spread into India’s own Tamil-majority areas, and because the LTTE had begun to eliminate other Tamil outfits who too enjoyed support from many Indian Tamils.
Also, India only seemed to have been interested in creating a continuous state of instability in Sri Lanka because it viewed Sri Lanka as being pro-Pakistan. Sri Lanka addressed this by signing an accord with India that allowed Indian troops to operate in Sri Lanka and ‘help’ Lankan troops fight Tamil militants. According to Underwood, LTTE’s survival became tougher once India stopped providing it with military aid. By 2009, the Tamil separatist movement had been crushed by the Sri Lankan armed forces.
There are three main types of aid that an external force provides separatist movements: economic, military and moral. But military aid is the most vital — even if the policy of the external force is to only keep a country in a permanent state of instability. India is now almost openly supporting the Baloch movements in Pakistan for this very purpose. The thinking is that continuous instability in Balochistan will destabilise China’s economic presence in Pakistan.
Israel’s reported entry in this regard is not that surprising. But, historically, Israel has not supported separatist movements as such, apart from showing support for the separatist movement of the Kurds in Iraq and Israel’s recent military support for the Druze in Syria. Its motive vis-a-vis Balochistan also seems to be to keep the province in a perpetual state of instability. But it is India that remains the central external actor in Balochistan.
Over the decades, Baloch separatist movements in Pakistan have depended on various external actors: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and, now, India. Iraq is no more active in this regard, and Afghanistan’s support to Baloch separatists has continued to move away to supporting anti-Pakistan Islamist movements. Iran’s involvement is linked to the alleged support that Pakistan extends to the anti-Iran Baloch communities. But never has any external actor been so heavily invested in Baloch separatism as India has, especially since 2014.
According to the researcher Mir Sherbaz Khetran, since Balochistan has been a politically and economically neglected area, its vulnerabilities have provided enough fodder to foreign actors to use it as a platform to create disruption and instability in Pakistan.
But the question is, to what end?
Pakistan is a nuclear power. Western powers may be as troubled as India is by China’s growing economic and military investments in Pakistan, but they wouldn’t want to trigger total collapse of a nuclear state — unless they’re stupid enough to want Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal falling in the wrong hands. One can, therefore, conclude that the idea is to keep Pakistan unstable, enough to keep China at bay. India has increasingly tried to do this by providing funds, weapons and training to Baloch (as well as Islamist) militants.
Consequently, this has stripped whatever little ‘ideology’ that was left attached to Baloch separatism. Baloch separatists, along with Indian-backed Islamists, have become willing tools of instability.
The KLF succeeded in acting as foot soldiers and informants for Nato forces in Serbia, enough for them to eventually break away from Serbia when it was attacked from the air by Nato planes. But India’s aerial and missile attacks against Pakistan in May this year could only draw fiery anti-state rhetoric from Baloch militants. The fact that Pakistan effectively retaliated against Indian aggression made a KLF-type scenario almost impossible in Balochistan.
As China’s strategic relationship with Pakistan deepens, I can’t see how a ‘defeated’ India will be able to maintain its support for Baloch militancy, despite the fact that it has intensified its involvement in the province after the war. The Baloch militancy is likely to remain stuck in a vicious circle — and it may even recede if Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to lose popularity in India.
Maybe this is why Israel has jumped in?
Published in Dawn, EOS, August 3rd, 2025
