Group of tourists and their companions was fired on while walking through a market in central Afghanistan.
Three Afghan nationals and three Spanish tourists were killed in central Afghanistan’s Bamyan province, the Taliban government has said, as it raised the death toll from the attack in a market.
On Saturday, the government said that the bodies of the three Afghans and three Spanish tourists were transported to the capital, Kabul.
The group was fired on while walking through a bazaar in the mountainous city of Bamyan, about 180km (110 miles) from Kabul, on Friday.
“All dead bodies have been shifted to Kabul and are in the forensic department and the wounded are also in Kabul. Both dead and wounded include women,” Ministry of Interior Affairs spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told the AFP news agency.
“Among the eight wounded, of whom four are foreigners, only one elderly foreign woman is not in a very stable situation.”
According to hospital sources in Bamyan, the wounded were from Norway, Australia, Lithuania and Spain.
Qani said that the fatalities included two Afghan civilians and one Taliban member.
A Taliban soldier stands guard in front of the ruins of a destroyed 1,500-year-old Buddha statue in Bamyan, Afghanistan [File: Ali Khara/Reuters]
“They were roaming in the bazaar when they were attacked,” he added.
Seven suspects were in custody and one of them was wounded, according to Qani, who said the investigation was continuing.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Spain’s government on Friday announced that three of the dead were Spanish tourists, adding that at least one other Spanish national was wounded.
“Overwhelmed by the news of the murder of Spanish tourists in Afghanistan,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez posted on X.
The bodies would likely be brought back to Spain on Sunday, according to Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares, who spoke on Spanish public television TVE.
He said one of the wounded had already undergone surgery in Kabul.
Afghanistan’s flailing tourism sector has seen the number of foreign tourists up 120 percent year on year in 2023, reaching nearly 5,200, according to official figures.
Bamyan is Afghanistan’s top tourist destination, home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the remains of two giant Buddha statues that the Taliban blew up during their previous rule of Afghanistan in 2001.
Since taking over the country again in 2021 after the withdrawal of United States-led forces, the Taliban have promised to restore security and encourage a small but growing number of tourists.
Friday’s attack was the deadliest since the Taliban took over three years ago.
The Spanish embassy was evacuated in 2021, along with other Western missions, after the Taliban took back control of Kabul.
Officials in the central region expect the number of casualties to increase as rising waters destroy thousands of homes.
At least 50 people have been killed and thousands of homes destroyed following a new bout of heavy rains and flooding in central Afghanistan, the authorities confirmed.
Flash floods caused by torrential seasonal rains have, for weeks, devastated a wide swath of territory across Afghanistan, killing hundreds of people, leaving thousands injured and destroying homes and communities.
At least 50 people were confirmed dead in the province of Ghor, police spokesman Abdul Rahman Badri said on Saturday, adding that he expected the number of casualties to rise.
“These terrible floods have also killed thousands of cattle … They have destroyed hundreds of hectares of agricultural land, hundreds of bridges and culverts, and destroyed thousands of trees,” he said.
According to preliminary reports, dozens of people were missing, said Abdul Wahid Hamas, spokesman for Ghor’s provincial governor.
Mawlawi Abdul Hai Zaeem, head of the information department for Ghor, said the latest wet spell began on Friday, cutting off many key roads to the area.
He said that 2,000 houses were completely destroyed, 4,000 partially damaged and more than 2,000 shops were under water in the province’s capital, Firoz Koh.
Last week, the Taliban’s Ministry for Refugees said the death toll from flooding in northern Afghanistan had risen to 315, with more than 1,600 people injured.
Afghanistan is prone to natural disasters and the United Nations considers it one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change.
On Wednesday, a helicopter used by the Afghan Air Force crashed due to “technical issues” during attempts to recover the bodies of people who had fallen into a river in Ghor, killing one person and injuring 12 people, the Ministry of Defence said.
People displaced in earlier floodings were lacking adequate humanitarian aid. Survivors have been left with no home, no land, and no source of livelihood, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said.
Most of Baghlan, the worst-hit province in the north, was “inaccessible by trucks,” said the WFP.
Four foreign nationals and three Afghans were also injured in the attack on Friday when gunmen opened fire, ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said.
Four people have been arrested, he said.
The Taliban government “strongly condemns this crime, expresses its deep feelings to the families of the victims and assures that all the criminals will be found and punished”, Qani said in a statement.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the late evening attack.
Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs later confirmed that the three individuals killed on Friday were Spanish citizens. At least one Spanish national was also among those injured.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a post on social media that he was “overwhelmed by the news of the murder of Spanish tourists in Afghanistan”, offering his condolences to the families and friends of the victims.
Sanchez also said he was following the situation closely and pledged consular support.
The mountainous region of Bamyan is Afghanistan’s top tourist destination, home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the remains of two giant Buddha statues that the Taliban blew up during their previous rule of Afghanistan in 2001.
Since taking over the country again in 2021 after the withdrawal of United States-led forces, the Taliban have promised to restore security and encourage a small but growing number of tourists trickling into the country.
Friday’s attack was the deadliest since the Taliban took over three years ago.
ISIL (ISIS) claimed an attack that injured Chinese citizens at a hotel popular with Chinese businessmen in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in 2022.
The European Union condemned the attack in Bamyan in a brief statement on Friday.
“Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of the victims who lost their lives and those injured in the attack,” it said.
Former Australian Army lawyer David McBride has been sentenced to five years and eight months for revealing information about alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.
Supporters of McBride have long expressed his concern that the Australian government was more interested in punishing him for revealing information about war crimes rather than the alleged perpetrators.
“It is a travesty that the first person imprisoned in relation to Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan is not a war criminal but a whistleblower,” said Rawan Arraf, the executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, in a statement released after the sentencing.
“This is a dark day for Australian democracy,” Kieran Pender, the acting legal director of the Melbourne-based Human Rights Law Centre, said in the same statement, noting McBride’s imprisonment would have “a grave chilling effect on potential truth-tellers”.
McBride, who arrived at the Supreme Court in Canberra, Australia this morning with his pet dog and surrounded by supporters, will remain behind bars until at least August 13, 2026, before he is eligible for parole.
In an interview with Al Jazeera before his trial began last year, McBride said he had never made a secret of sharing the files.
“What I want to be discussed is whether or not I was justified in doing so,” McBride stressed.
The former Australian Army lawyer’s sentencing comes almost seven years after Australian public broadcaster, the ABC, published a series of seven articles known as the Afghan Files based on information McBride provided.
McBride has attracted support from Australian human rights advocates, journalists and politicians who fear his sentencing has consequences for freedom of speech [Mick Tsikas/EPA-EFE/]
The series led to an unprecedented Australian Federal Police raid on ABC headquarters in June 2019 but details published in the series were also later confirmed in an Australian government inquiry, which found there was credible evidence to support allegations war crimes had been committed.
A Spokesperson for the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) told Al Jazeera that a former Australian Special Forces soldier who was charged with one count of the war crime of murder on March 20, 2023, is on bail with a mention scheduled for July 2, 2024.
“This is the first war crime arrest resulting from [joint investigations between the Office of the Special Investigator (OSI) and the Australian Federal Police]”, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said the investigations were “very complex” and “expected to take a significant amount of time” but that they were conducting them as “thoroughly and expeditiously as possible”.
In a separate case last year, an Australian judge found Australia’s most decorated soldier Ben Roberts-Smith was “complicit in and responsible for the murder” of three Afghan men while on deployment. The finding was made in defamation proceedings brought by Roberts-Smith against three Australian newspapers who had reported on the allegations against him.
Roberts-Smith has appealed against the defamation ruling.
‘Greyer, murkier, messier’
McBride’s sentencing comes four months after Dan Oakes, one of two ABC journalists who wrote the Afghan Files, was awarded an Order of Australia Medal, with the citation simply saying he was recognised “for service to journalism”.
Oakes was quoted by the ABC at the time as saying, “I’m very proud of the work we did with the Afghan Files and I know that it did have a positive effect in that it helps bring some of this conduct to light.
“If [this medal] is at least partly due to that reporting then I do feel some sense of satisfaction.”
But Oakes, who has reportedly not spoken to McBride in six years, later told the ABC’s Four Corners programme that the story was “much greyer and murkier and messier than people appreciate”.
While Oakes and McBride have not stayed in touch, the whistleblower has attracted the support of a wide range of Australians, including human rights lawyers, senators and journalists.
Ben Roberts-Smith was ‘complicit in and responsible for the murder’ of three Afghan men, an Australian judge found in 2023 [Dan Himbrechts/EPA]
On Tuesday, supporters gathered outside the court, with speakers on McBride’s behalf including Australian Greens Senator David Shoebridge.
It would be “an indelible stain on the Albanese Labor government” if McBride “walks into the Supreme Court this morning” and is then “taken out the back to jail”, Shoebridge said before the sentencing hearing.
In a joint statement from several Australians issued after the hearing, Peter Greste, the executive director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, said that “press freedom relies on protections for journalists and their sources”. He also noted that Australia had recently dropped to 39th in the global press freedom rankings.
Greste is a former Al Jazeera reporter who was jailed with two colleagues in Egypt from 2013 to 2015 on national security charges brought by the Egyptian government.
“As someone who was wrongly imprisoned for my journalism in Egypt, I am outraged about David McBride’s sentence on this sad day for Australia,” said Greste.
McBride is one of several Australians facing punishment for revealing information, while high-profile Australian Julian Assange will face hearings on his potential extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States later this month.
Thousands of houses have been destroyed or damaged in the worst-hit northern province of Baghlan.
At least 153 people have been killed in flash floods in northern Afghanistan triggered by torrential rains, the Taliban’s Ministry of Interior Affairs has said.
On Saturday, ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani put the number of injured at 138 people in three provinces, the Reuters news agency reported.
Heavy rains on Friday led to flooding in several areas of the country, with fears of the death toll rising.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the chief spokesman for the Taliban government, said in a social media post on Saturday that “hundreds … have succumbed to these calamitous floods, while a substantial number have sustained injuries”.
Apart from Baghlan in the north, the provinces of Badakhshan in the northeast, central Ghor and western Herat were also heavily affected, he wrote on X, adding that “the extensive devastation” had resulted in “significant financial losses”.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) told the AFP news agency on Saturday that more than 200 people were killed and thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged in the worst-hit province of Baghlan alone.
The air force had started evacuating people and moved more than 100 injured people to military hospitals, the Taliban Ministry of Defense said on Saturday, without mentioning from which provinces.
“By announcing the state of emergency in [affected] areas, the Ministry of National Defense has started distributing food, medicine and first aid to the impacted people,” it said in a statement.
Hedayatullah Hamdard, the head of Baghlan’s natural disaster management department, earlier told AFP that the toll “will probably increase”, adding that light rain had continued into the night in multiple districts of the province.
Residents were unprepared for the sudden rush of water set off by the heavy downpour in recent days, he added.
Emergency personnel were “searching for any possible victims under the mud and rubble, with the help of security forces from the national army and police”, Hamdard said.
Since mid-April, floods have killed about 100 people in 10 of Afghanistan’s provinces, with no region entirely spared, according to the authorities.
Farmlands have been submerged in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40 million people depend on agriculture to survive.
Mohammad Akram Akbari, the provincial director of natural disaster management in Badakhshan, said the mountainous province had seen “heavy financial losses in several areas … due to floods”.
He said casualties were feared in Tishkan district, where floodwaters had blocked a road and cut off access to an area where about 20,000 people lived.
Children survey their damaged homes after heavy flooding in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan [Mehrab Ibrahimi/AP]
Officials say residents were unprepared for the heavy flash floods, adding that the death toll could rise.
At least 50 people have died in Afghanistan in flooding following heavy rain in the northern province of Baghlan, a spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior said, adding that the death toll may rise.
Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qaniee told the Reuters news agency that there had been flooding in more than five districts in Baghlan after heavy rains, and that some families were stuck and in need of urgent help.
He added that two heavy storms had been predicted for Friday night.
“The Ministry of Interior has sent teams and helicopters to the area, but due to a shortage of night vision lights in helicopters, the operation may not be successful,” he said.
The toll was confirmed by local official Hedayatullah Hamdard, the head of the provincial natural disaster management department, who also told AFP that the death toll could rise.
Hamdard explained that heavy seasonal rains caused the flooding, and residents were unprepared for the sudden rush of water.
Emergency personnel were “searching for any possible victims under the mud and rubble, with the help of security forces from the national army and police,” he said.
Since mid-April, flash flooding and other floods have left about 100 people dead in 10 of Afghanistan’s provinces, with no region entirely spared, according to authorities.
Farmland has been swamped in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40 million people depend on agriculture to survive.
Afghanistan – which had a relatively dry winter, making it more difficult for the soil to absorb rainfall – is particularly vulnerable to climate change.
The nation, ravaged by four decades of war, is one of the poorest in the world and, according to scientists, one of the worst prepared to face the consequences of global warming.
Afghanistan, which is responsible for only 0.06 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, ranks sixth on the list of countries most at risk from climate change, experts have said.
Most casualties have been from roof collapses, while some 600 houses have been damaged or destroyed, authorities say.
At least 33 people have been killed over three days of heavy rains and flash flooding in Afghanistan, according to the government’s disaster management department.
“From Friday onwards, because of the rains there were flash floods which caused high human and financial losses,” department spokesman Janan Sayeq said on Sunday.
“The primary information shows that, unfortunately, in the floods, 33 people were martyred and 27 people got injured.”
Most casualties were from roof collapses, as some 600 houses were damaged or destroyed. In addition, 200 livestock have perished, nearly 600km (370 miles) of road have been destroyed, and about 800 hectares (1,975 acres) of agricultural land have “flooded away”, the spokesman added.
Twenty of the nation’s 34 provinces were lashed by the heavy rains, which followed an unusually dry winter season that has parched terrain and forced farmers to delay planting.
Western Farah, Herat, southern Zabul and Kandahar are among the provinces that suffered the most damage, Sayeq said.
People wait to cross a flooded area in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province [Sanaullah Seiam/AFP]
The authorities have warned that more rain is expected in the coming days in most of Afghanistan’s provinces.
Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the flow of foreign aid into the impoverished country has drastically diminished, hindering relief responses to natural disasters.
At least 25 people were killed in a landslide after heavy snowfall in eastern Afghanistan in February, while about 60 were killed in a three-week spate of precipitation ending in March.
The United Nations last year warned that “Afghanistan is experiencing major swings in extreme weather conditions”.
Scientists say harsh weather patterns are being spurred by global warming. After being ravaged by four decades of war, Afghanistan ranks among the nations least prepared to face climate change.
His soldier son toured Afghanistan with fighters in his crosshairs, but US traveller Oscar Wells has a different objective – sightseeing promoted by the Taliban’s fledgling tourism sector.
Marvelling at the 15th century Blue Mosque in northern Mazar-i-Sharif, 65-year-old Wells is among a small but rising number of travellers visiting Afghanistan since the war’s end.
Decades of conflict made tourism in Afghanistan extremely rare, and while most violence has now abated, visitors are still confronted with extreme poverty, dilapidated cultural sites and scant hospitality infrastructure.
They holiday under the austere control of the Taliban authorities, and without consular support, with most embassies evacuated following the fall of the Western-backed government in 2021.
They must register with officials on arrival in each province, comply with a strict dress code and submit to searches at checkpoints.
ISIL (ISIS) attacks also pose a potential threat in the country.
The number of foreign tourists visiting Afghanistan rose 120 percent year on year in 2023, reaching nearly 5,200, according to official figures.
The Taliban government has yet to be officially recognised by any country, in part because of its heavy restrictions on women, but it has welcomed foreign tourism.
“Afghanistan’s enemies don’t present the country in a good light,” said Information and Culture Minister Khairullah Khairkhwa.
“But if these people come and see what it’s really like,” he added, “they will definitely share a good image of it.”
Wells, on a trip with travel company Untamed Borders, which also offers tours of Syria and Somalia, describes his visit as a way to connect with Afghanistan’s people.
He describes a “sense of guilt for the departure” of United States troops.
“I really felt we had a horrible exit, it created such a vacuum and disaster,” he said. “It’s good to help these people and keep relations.”
For solo traveller Stefanie Meier, a 53-year-old US citizen who spent a month travelling from Kabul to Kandahar via Bamiyan and Herat in the west, it was a “bittersweet experience”.
“I have been able to meet people I never thought I would meet, who told me about their life,” she said, adding that she did not face any issues as a woman on her own.
She did experience “disbelief that people have to live like this”, she added. “The poverty, there are no jobs, women not being able to go to school, no future for them.”
Spring has arrived in Afghanistan, and Afghan children have returned to their schools to begin a new academic year. Girls beyond the 6th grade across much of the country, however, are still unable to pursue an education and remain unsure what the future holds for them.
Two years ago, on a spring day like today, the hopes and dreams of Afghan schoolgirls were crushed by the Taliban’s interim government.
On March 21, 2022, the Taliban promised to reopen all schools in Afghanistan, seemingly ending the temporary ban it had placed on girls attending secondary school since its return to power seven months earlier.
Two days later, while many girls were enthusiastically preparing to return to school, the authorities reversed the decision and restricted girls over the age of 12 from attending state-run schools. In an apparent attempt to soften the blow, the Ministry of Education said the closure would be temporary and schools would be reopened once it put in place policies that would ensure compliance with “principles of Islamic law and Afghan culture”.
Six months later, with no plan in place to reopen secondary schools to girls in the foreseeable future, the government issued a new edict and banned girls and young women in Afghanistan from higher education.
This move prompted countless analysts and experts around the world, including myself, to invite Taliban leaders to rethink their decision. We pointed out that “depriving Afghan women of an education would benefit no one” and these anti-education edicts actually stand against the very foundations of Islam.
Regrettably, the Taliban did not listen. This March, exactly two years after the supposedly temporary ban on girls attending secondary schools and universities, another academic year in Afghanistan began without the presence of women and girls.
The hopes and dreams of teenage girls, who believed the ban on their education was indeed “temporary” and they would return to their classrooms once the conditions were “right”, have likely begun to fade away.
As we enter the last week of Ramadan, it is a good moment to reflect on the importance of not reneging on a promise. Those leaders who claim to execute the Divine Will have the responsibility of fulfilling the promise made to millions of innocent Afghan schoolgirls who find themselves oppressed and deprived of their God-given right to an education.
The Taliban’s stance on this issue defies both worldly and religious logic.
Afghanistan, a post-conflict nation that has just emerged from the jaws of multiple protracted armed conflicts spanning four decades, needs all hands on deck to work towards getting the country out of the economic abyss that it finds itself in.
The Taliban takeover of Kabul in 2021 and the ensuing uncertainty precipitated the exodus of a vast number of Afghan professionals, leading to a brain drain at a very precarious time. The last thing that the nation needed was its new leaders to handicap it further and jettison any prospects of recovery by excluding half the population from participating in education, and thus the recovery efforts.
The exclusion of girls from education also contradicts the Taliban’s aim to build a gender-segregated society.
How can women have dedicated healthcare when no female healthcare workers are trained in the country? According to the World Health Organization, 24 women died each day in Afghanistan from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes in 2020 – one of the highest rates in the entire world.
While this statistic was a significant improvement from the situation in 2001 when the Taliban was last in power, experts fear that the situation is likely to get worse, and the Taliban’s diktats on curtailing women’s education in schools and universities are not helping either.
From the religious perspective, too, the Taliban leaders must realise that they are accountable before Allah SWT for thrusting ignorance upon a generation of girls just so they can claim a perceived localised victory of tradition.
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan in their previous avatar from 1996 to 2001, the education of women was banned across the nation as were most of the avenues for their employment.
This time, the Taliban gave public assurances that it would do things differently and avoid earlier pitfalls and mistakes. The people of Afghanistan believed it. They put their trust in the Taliban.
This trust, this “Amanah”, is an asset the Taliban should value and not waste away in pursuit of meaningless political gains.
The group that claims to follow the path of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the Amin, the trustworthy, should not be seen to break the Amanah of the people.
The Taliban’s refusal to allow Afghan women and girls to receive an education is also a strategic mistake that stands in the way of the government’s efforts to gain international acceptance and find reliable partners that would support Afghanistan’s economic and structural development.
The important geostrategic location of Afghanistan has led to it receiving a lot of political attention from major global and regional powers for much of its history. Oftentimes, this translated into protracted conflict and resulted in security issues overshadowing all global discussions and engagement with Afghanistan.
If it is serious about bringing stability to and building a prosperous future for the country, the Taliban must endeavour expand the global interest in Afghanistan beyond security and divert the agenda of global engagement with the country to issues of development.
Such a change would not only create the conditions for international projects and initiatives that would create employment and alleviate the suffering of millions of Afghans living in dire conditions but would also help end the international isolation of Afghanistan and pave the way for its integration into the rest of the world.
By allowing another academic year to pass without resolving the issue, the Interim Government in Kabul is demonstrating a worrying lack of capacity to work out what should have been a straightforward mechanism to create the conditions under which girls would be allowed back to school.
Thus, it is signalling to the international community, including the Muslim World, that it cannot be trusted and is practically putting a block on any development-focused engagement that could put an end to its ongoing isolation.
Any further procrastination on the issue will no doubt reflect negatively locally, regionally, and globally on the Taliban and on their efforts to demonstrate the applicability of political Islam to today’s development challenges.
It is high time for the Taliban to undo this egregious mistake and prove to its own people and the rest of the world that it is a trustworthy leader, and a responsible caretaker of the future mothers and daughters of its nation.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Islamabad, Pakistan: In the 10 days between March 16 and March 26, Pakistan witnessed five different attacks, three in its northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and two in its southwestern Balochistan province, resulting in the deaths of at least 18 people.
All five attacks were suicide bombings, in which at least 12 military personnel, five Chinese nationals and one Pakistani citizen died.
While the country has experienced a dramatic surge in violence during the last year, the latest series of attacks, their targets, and the audacity with which they were carried out could signal a new chapter in Pakistan’s fight against armed groups, say analysts.
The last three attacks, coming so quickly in succession, appear to target Chinese interests in Pakistan. First, armed fighters attacked Pakistan’s Gwadar port in Balochistan, which was built with Chinese help. Then, an armed group attacked one of Pakistan’s largest naval bases, also in Balochistan, citing Chinese investment in the region as their motivation. And finally, fighters targeted Chinese engineers working on a Chinese-funded hydropower project in the country’s north, near Besham city.
That pattern has prompted concerns within Pakistan’s security establishment, which believes that attacks on the Chinese in Pakistan is part of a “larger plan” to hurt the economic interests of the country, as well as sabotage ties between the countries, said Iftikhar Firdous, a security analyst and researcher on armed groups.
(Al Jazeera)
‘Iron brothers’
China is one of Pakistan’s closest allies and has invested $62bn in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an infrastructure project that spans a series of highways linking southwestern China to Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea.
The attack on Chinese workers triggered a sharp response from Beijing. “China asks Pakistan to thoroughly investigate the incident as soon as possible, hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice. Meanwhile, we ask Pakistan to take effective measures to protect the safety and security of Chinese nationals, institutions, and projects in Pakistan,” its Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on March 27.
In response, the Pakistani government said it would bring “terrorists, and their facilitators and abettors to justice”, and announced the formation of an investigation team to further examine the attacks.
“Pakistan and China are close friends and iron brothers. We have no doubt that the Besham terror attack was orchestrated by the enemies of Pakistan-China friendship. Together, we will resolutely act against all such forces and defeat them,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued a day later.
Chinese interests have also been attacked repeatedly in the past. Two gunmen targeted a convoy of 23 Chinese engineers in Gwadar in August last year, but their attack was foiled by security officials.
In July 2021, at least nine Chinese engineers working on a hydropower project were killed when a suicide bomber rammed into their bus, in an attack that was eerily similar to what unfolded on March 26.
But what differentiates the two attacks is that while incidents in Balochistan were readily claimed by rebel secessionist groups, the attack in the north was not claimed by any group.
Broader pattern of armed attacks
The attacks in Balochistan were claimed by the military wing of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), one of the many hardline armed groups seeking to secede from Pakistan.
Balochistan is the country’s largest province by area but also its poorest, despite being rich in natural resources, including oil, coal, gold, copper and gas reserves. This has bred accusations from many in Balochistan that successive Pakistani governments have neglected their concerns while exploiting the province and benefitting “foreigners”. The province has witnessed at least five rebellion movements since the formation of Pakistan in 1947. The government has been accused of initiating a violent crackdown and allegedly killing and disappearing thousands of ethnic Baloch who are suspected of either being rebels or supporting the rebellion.
However, the significant increase in violent incidents in the country in the past two years has coincided with the return of the Afghan Taliban to power in August 2021. In 2023, more than 650 attacks killed nearly 1,000 people, mostly those associated with the security forces.
The groups carrying out attacks include the regional affiliate of the Islamic State, called the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), and other, more obscure organisations such as Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan (TJP) among others.
The biggest challenge to the the Pakistani state, however, has come from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an armed group formed in 2007 which has targeted civilians as well as law enforcement personnel, resulting in thousands of deaths.
The TTP threat
Ideologically aligned with the Afghan Taliban, the TTP demands the reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and a stricter imposition of their interpretation of Islamic laws in the region.
But the TTP – which unilaterally ended a ceasefire in November 2022 and has since then accelerated its attacks on Pakistan’s security forces – issued a statement after the Besham attack, saying it had no part in it.
This, Firdous said, could point to the involvement of religiously inspired armed groups and individuals who do not declare affiliation with any established armed groups.
“The jihadist freelancers, the Pakistani military believe, are handled by hostile intelligence agencies, a term usually applied to allude to neighbouring India,” Firdous, who is also the founding editor of The Khorasan Diary, a non-partisan research platform, told Al Jazeera.
The security analyst also says that while almost all “jihadist armed factions” in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been anti-China due to its crackdown on its Uighur minority, the rulers of Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban, have been quiet.
“The Afghan Taliban, after they took charge of the country, have remained silent on the subject, but the groups operating under the Taliban umbrella don’t agree, and they see China as an oppressor of Muslims,” Firdous said. “Thus, if individuals associated with larger groups have attacked the Chinese, there are no official claims, which can perhaps explain why TTP denied its involvement in the attack.”
Fahd Humayun, an assistant professor of political science at Tufts University in the United States, said he believes that the Besham attack was carried out by either a “TTP affiliate or ISKP” and was clearly designed to target the Pakistan-China relationship to raise the costs for foreign governments and private companies to invest in Pakistan.
“While the TTP has issued a statement denying its involvement in the attack, it is worth remembering it has incentives to maintain plausible deniability on account of its relationship with the Afghan Taliban, which would be opposed to targeting the Chinese,” Humayun told Al Jazeera. “This aligns with the goals of such armed organisations of challenging the writ of the state and fostering internal destabilisation.”
Baloch anti-Chinese sentiments
At the same time, Firdous said Baloch insurgent groups see China as a superpower with an expansionist agenda, which is taking away their resources without their consent.
“The groups indiscriminately threaten Pakistani military as well as foreign investors, particularly Chinese nationals, that have been attacked quite a few times over the years now,” he added.
With increasing activity seen in Balochistan by the rebel groups, Firdous said the suicide squads of the BLA’s armed wing have carried out “three major attacks using more than 24 suicide bombers” this year alone, which he says signals a shift in strategy.
“They have moved from hit and run to direct assaults on bases of Pakistani security forces. This trend indicates increasing recruitment within the ranks of the Baloch insurgent groups,” Firdous said.
He says it is “crucial” for the government to prioritise the development and welfare of Balochistan, ensuring that the province benefits from its own resources and that the local population is given an opportunity to participate in the decision-making processes that affect their lives.
“Until these issues are addressed, the Baloch insurgency is likely to continue and pose a significant challenge to the economic stability and security of Balochistan and the rest of the country,” Firdous said.
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This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
