The blast in Mastung which killed nine people, was directed against the police, but only one policeman was killed. Five of the nine were little girls, between five and 10 years old. If the initial reports were true, that the targeted police van was on guard duty with a polio vaccination team, it would hd a certain macabre consistency, for those who were not unfazed by the prospect of children being permanently crippled by polio, would not be much disturbed by killing them. This would also apply to Baloch separatists. In August they stopped buses in Musakhel district and killed Punjabis. On the other hand, Mastung is 89 percent Brahui-speaking and seven percent Balochi-speaking, making it firmly part of the core Baloch area. Thus Baloch separatists are willing to kill other Baloch. And not Baloch who separatists might consider traitors for cooperating with the state, but schoolgirls. It would be supposed that these are the very people for whom the separatists are struggling to liberate, not to kill.
This leads to the inevitable suspicion that the Baloch separatists are now working for forces inimical to the Pakistani state, that they are both as amoral and cynical as their masters. It is possible that many may have been drawn to taking up arms against the state because they felt a sense of deprivation, but their foreign backers did not. Instead, they felt a dislike and hatred produced by an extremist mindset. That mindset seems to have been passed to those Baloch who sought their assistance. This attack, more than anything else, shows that the terrorists are not misguided Baloch separatists, but coldblooded agents of an enemy power, who are fearful of the consequences of Gwadr being developed as one end of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
The governments, both federal and provincial, have indulged in the usual hand-wringing, but should be aware that this offers no permanent solution. It would be helpful if all intelligence outfits, whether civilian or military, got busy tracking down these terrorists rather than spying on politicians and chasing after political activists. The government must also keep a weather eye open for the anti-vaxxers, not forgetting that they must be told they are on the same side as the Israeli authorities who prevented a second round of vaccinations in Gaza on October 13, by bombing the areas the teams were operating, with resumption only possible because of WHO intervention.
