Pakistan arrested anti-China militant leader

 

Pakistan's arrest of anti-China militant felt from Beijing to Tehran

Islamabad aims to secure Belt and Road as it vows new campaign against terror

 Pakistan says it has a top anti-Chinese Baloch separatist militant leader in custody, a development insiders hope will help to secure Beijing's interests as the government in Islamabad attempts a broader crackdown on terrorism. It could also affect diplomacy with Iran, experts say.

"Gulzar Imam, alias Shambay, was apprehended after an innovatively conceived, carefully planned and meticulously executed operation, spanned over months over various geographical locations," according to a statement issued on Friday by ISPR, the Pakistan Army's mouthpiece.

The statement did not reveal where Imam was arrested.

Islamabad has struggled to protect Chinese nationals and Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative investments in the country. The projects are centered on the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Separatists and Islamist militants alike have targeted China as a way of disrupting development and complicating the government's relations with a crucial economic partner.

A student leader turned militant commander, Imam joined the Baloch Republican Army in 2009 and later broke away as leader of its faction in the Makran region, which includes the key Belt and Road port of Gwadar. In early 2022, he merged his faction with another militant group to establish the Baloch Nationalist Army (BNA).

Imam told an online news portal in January 2022 that the armed struggle against Chinese investments in Balochistan would continue until Beijing realizes that these investments are not secure.

A Pakistani security official speaking on condition of anonymity said confirmation of Imam's arrest will send a chilling message to other Baloch separatist leaders. "If they do not stop attacks against Chinese interests then they will face the same fate," the official said, also alluding to the death of another separatist leader, Aslam Baloch, as a cautionary tale. A commander of the Baloch Liberation Army who had openly threatened China, he was killed in a suicide bombing in Kandahar in December 2018.

Imam may have been in detention for some time. Kiyya Baloch, an independent analyst who tracks violence in Balochistan, first reported late last year that Imam had been nabbed by Pakistani security forces. The BNA itself claims he was arrested in Turkey last May, though Nikkei Asia could not independently verify this.

According to Kiyya Baloch, a Chinese investigation team even interrogated Imam in September, although again this could not be independently confirmed. In any case, the analyst believes Imam's arrest is a very significant development because he was not just any militant leader.

"Imam played a pivotal role in expanding militancy in the Makran region, which holds huge strategic significance due to it being the home of the Chinese-built and operated Gwadar port," Kiyya Baloch told Nikkei.

He stressed that Imam's arrest will hurt the Baloch separatist insurgency but not end it.

That insurgency is just part of the militancy Islamabad is confronting. Pakistan since late last year has experienced a sharp rise in terrorist attacks, especially from the local branch of the Taliban. This comes amid a brutal political battle between Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government and his ousted predecessor, Imran Khan.

Another struggle -- the country's dire economic crisis -- could plunge Pakistan into default.

The government has cited both terrorism and a shortage of cash as reasons to delay elections demanded by the opposition.

On Friday, Pakistan's national security committee announced a new "all-out comprehensive operation with the entire nation and the government, which will rid the country of the menace of terrorism with renewed vigor and determination."

Meanwhile, Imam's arrest, the details of which remain a mystery, could have geopolitical implications. Although the BNA says he was caught in Turkey, most experts and security officials interviewed by Nikkei agree he had been operating out of Iran.

Kiyya Baloch believes it is no accident that Imam's detention was announced as Beijing brokers an Iran-Saudi rapprochement. "Pakistan hopes that China will put pressure on Tehran over the issue of support of Baloch militancy through its newly formed role of a peace broker," he added.

Experts say Tehran does not consider anti-Islamabad groups enemies and sees them as potentially useful allies against other hostile groups. But Luke Przybyszewski, president of the Abhaseed Foundation Fund, a Polish group of Middle East experts, said the situation presented by the arrest of Imam has created some room for mediation by Beijing.

"It's not a black-and-white situation in which Beijing would resort to just disciplining Iran," he told Nikkei, "but rather could see this as another diplomatic opportunity to increase its regional role."

Przemyslaw Lesinski, an expert on Afghanistan and Iran at the War Studies Academy in Warsaw, said Beijing would like to see regional proxy conflicts come to an end. "We can be quite certain that China will put pressure not only on Iran but also on other [players] in the region, too," he said, suggesting Beijing would be a beneficiary of security cooperation between Tehran and Islamabad.