Israel is trying to hijack the Baloch struggle

Al Jazeera

4 days ago

As Israel loudly beat the drums of war one day before its unprovoked surprise attack on Iran, a small but significant piece of news slipped by almost unnoticed: The announcement of a new research project on the website of a Washington, DC think tank. On June 12, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) announced the launch of the Balochistan Studies Project (BSP). Significantly, in addition to mentioning Balochistan's abundance of natural resources 'such as oil, gas, uranium, copper, coal, rare earth elements and the two deep seaports of Gwadar and Chabahar', MEMRI's statement justifies the project's necessity by identifying the region as 'the perfect outpost to counter and keep under control Iran, its nuclear ambitions, and its dangerous relations with Pakistan, which may provide Tehran with tactical nukes'.
MEMRI is well known for its selective translation of snippets of Arabic, Persian and Turkish-language media, screenshots from which often end up being shared as memes on social media platforms. Originally founded in 1998, the think tank has consistently peddled a pro-Israel agenda, with its founder, Colonel Yigal Carmon, having served in the Israeli Military Intelligence Corps for more than 20 years. Additionally, MEMRI has been involved 'unofficially' in intelligence gathering for the Israeli state since at least 2012.
Given this context, MEMRI's creation of the BSP can be seen as an indication of an Israeli attempt to co-opt the Baloch national struggle against both Iran and Pakistan for Israel's geopolitical objectives. Given the strategic advantages that a successful co-optation of the Baloch cause would grant Israel, and the potential ramifications it would bear upon the resistance of stateless peoples within the region, including Palestinians as well as the Baloch, themselves, there is a need to examine the limitations of geopolitical thinking within national liberation movements.
MEMRI's announcement of the BSP is riddled with logical inconsistencies and misinformation regarding the reality of exploitation and resistance in Balochistan. For example, centring the fact that the states of both Iran and Pakistan are currently fighting counterinsurgency campaigns in Balochistan, MEMRI's website calls for 'the international community' to 'understand that Balochistan is a natural ally of the West' – ignoring the fact that Western companies such as Barrick Gold and BHP Billiton have played key roles in enabling colonial resource extraction and ecological destruction in the region.
Another example relates to the personnel involved in the project. One article on the BSP on MEMRI's website welcomes a 'renowned Baloch writer, scholar, and political scientist' called Mir Yar Baloch, whose X account 'has been defined as one of the most influential in the Subcontinent', as a 'special adviser'. In May of this year, Baloch made headlines for unilaterally declaring the independence of Balochistan in a series of posts on X, where he also announced to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India had 'the backing of 60 million Baloch patriots' after it launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan.
More than for his grand proclamations, Mir Yar Baloch is interesting for the amount of mystery that surrounds him, given his supposed status as an important and influential Baloch intellectual. Despite being profiled by a variety of news outlets – notably all Indian – none have deviated from regurgitating a biography for him as limited as that published in the MEMRI article. Significantly, however, more well-known Baloch activists have been quick to distance themselves from him. Niaz Baloch of the Baloch National Movement, for example, posted on X that there exists no consensus for a declaration of independence among Baloch leaders. Crucially, he also listed four 'fake accounts', including that of Mir Yar Baloch, that he stated 'should be reported and unfollowed immediately'. Baloch activists therefore speculate that Mir Yar Baloch is a fake persona created by a state with interests in the region to support its objectives.
Balochistan is a region that spans the border between Iran and Pakistan, where both states are engaged in counterinsurgency campaigns that often spur tensions between them. Each has accused the other of fostering instability by sheltering militant groups across the frontier. Crucially, many Baloch people on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border view themselves as marginalised and systematically oppressed by the states that govern them.
In this context, an Israeli overture towards supporting the Baloch cause opens the door to new avenues of entrenching Israeli influence in the wider West Asia region. Beyond Israel's infiltration of the Iranian state and security apparatus, demonstrated to devastating effect by the events of June 13, declaring overt support for the Baloch cause allows Israel to build relationships with secessionist groups in regions where Iranian and Pakistani political legitimacy is limited. Taking into account Israel's objective of containing and crushing Palestinian resistance, support for such groups also creates conditions that enable Israel to actively undermine efforts at transnational solidarity-building between Palestinians and other stateless populations, such as the Baloch.
Any Israeli gesture towards Balochistan would also be scaffolded by Israel's strategic partnership with India, which has long positioned itself as a key supporter of the Baloch cause – a position that has notably undermined attempts at solidarity-building between the Baloch and stateless peoples forced to live under Indian rule, such as Kashmiris. In a substantive sense, it is notable that Mir Yar Baloch, who has tweeted in support of Israel and India, owes his public profile almost entirely to the Indian media. Furthermore, his messaging is overwhelmingly directed at Indian audiences. The BSP thus represents a case of India and Israel's strategic partnership manifesting in a projection of both Israeli and Indian cross-regional influence.
I do not deny the relevance of geopolitics in strategising and building capacity for resistance, but elevating it to top priority can be harmful. A 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' approach risks undermining principled long-term alliances. History offers a warning: The Palestine Liberation Organisation's (PLO) alliance with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a relationship described by Sadiq al-Azm as 'unprincipled', alienated Kurds and indirectly facilitated the development of relatively warm relations between Israel and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. More recently, Iran's crackdown on Kurdish – and to a lesser extent Baloch – groups following its war with Israel cited fears of their possible collaboration with Israel as a pretext.
A post-geopolitical approach to foreign policy formulation among stateless groups, therefore, would necessarily take into account the factory defect of nation-states: their necessary prioritisation of survival and the maintenance of a constellation of privileges and interests over a substantive struggle towards justice. In this context, a principled anticolonial inter- and transnationalism that looks beyond geopolitics does not represent a utopian ideal detached from the practicalities of struggle. Instead, it represents a form of long-term pragmatism in and of itself that pushes against the short-termist gains of privileging geopolitics above principles.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.