Pakistan arrest of anti-China rebel may not protect Belt and Road billions

Pakistani authorities whose recent arrest of a leading local fighter against China’s Belt and Road investments in Balochistan may be inflating their success in the war against armed insurgency in the region bordering Afghanistan and Iran.

On April 7, the media wing of Pakistan’s military announced the arrest of Gulzar Imam, leader of the Baloch National Army (BNA) responsible for “dozens of bloody attacks” in Pakistan, including assaults on law enforcement agencies, the Inter-Services Public Relations office of the Pakistan Army said.

Gulzar Imam, the BNA leader known as Shambay, is among the leaders of a separatist alliance formed in November 2018 “to launch assaults against the Chinese interests in Balochistan,” security analyst Ahmad Baloch told The China Project from Quetta.

The alliance targeted Belt and Road projects announced in 2015 by Xí Jìnpíng 习近平, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC. Projects valued at roughly $62 billion including highways, power plants, and mines.

In 2022, Gulzar Imam told an online news agency that “the armed struggle against Chinese investments in Balochistan will continue until Beijing realizes that these investments are not secure.”

A day after his arrest was announced, Chinese state-run media published that the event was “a great success,” quoting Balochistan’s information secretary Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat.

Bad blood

Anti-Chinese sentiment in Balochistan is nothing new. Beginning in 2002, resource extraction at the Saindak Copper-Gold Project in Balochistan was leased by a state-owned enterprise to the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC, 中国冶金科工集团有限公司), which operated, critics said, with scant independent monitoring.

In October 2022, MCC completed 20 years of operations at Saindak, where management said the company had mined 290,000 tonnes of blister copper worth $2.6 billion, paid more than $500 million to the Pakistani lessor, Saindak Metals Ltd., created more than 1,900 jobs, and paid $1.2 billion for local procurement.

“Most of the nationalists in Balochistan are opposed to the exploitation of their natural resources, as they argue it is being done without their consent,” Mohammad Zahir, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Balochistan, told The China Project. “There were sporadic attacks against the Chinese workers even before the announcement of CPEC.”

But following the announcement of CPEC in 2015, attacks on Chinese installments by Baloch insurgents, including Gulzar Imam, increased, Professor Zahir said, adding that security in Balochistan has worsened since the Afghan Taliban’s August 2021 takeover in Afghanistan, just across the border.

Lǐ Bìjiàn 李碧建, China’s Consul General in Karachi from December 2019 to January 2023 said he hoped CPEC projects would improve the lives of Pakistanis and expressed concern about security.

“If the locals do not see much change and improvement, it fosters resentment. For instance, they ask ‘where are our jobs, water, electricity, education, and health?’ These are valid and legitimate demands,” Li told The China Project in an interview. “In the past few years, these problems have persisted, and have now become a big issue. Then, there is this spillover from Afghanistan following the withdrawal of troops, as there have been some changes there.”

Days after Gulzar Imam’s arrest was announced, Chinese state-run media reported that another regional insurgent group, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) was among so-called terrorist groups considered by the foreign ministers of China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran as threats to regional security. Other groups included al-Qaeda and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, led by Turkic Muslims in northwest China.

Pakistani authorities are touting Gulzar Imam’s arrest as “a big achievement for both Pakistan and China, as well as for the future of CPEC projects in the country,” a Pakistani security official told The China Project. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the security official said that some monitors of Balochistan believe that Gulzar Imam’s arrest occurred in Turkey as early as May 2022, and was kept secret while Pakistani authorities interrogated him about his network and other militant groups.

Impact unclear

The overall impact of Gulzar Imam’s arrest on security in Balochistan is unclear. While Balochistan home minister Ziaullah Longove told the media that Gulzar Imam had masterminded many of the attacks on Balochistan’s Makran Division, background interviews suggest he led far fewer insurgents there than his counterpart in yet another group, the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), Dr. Allah Nazar Baloch.

“Although Gulzar Imam’s arrest is a shock to the Baloch separatist groups, it does not make a huge difference,” security analyst Shahzada Zulfiqar told The China Project from Quetta.

Zulfiqar noted that even after the killing in 2018 of separatist leader Aslam Acchu, his group of suicide bombers “has still been carrying out attacks against Chinese interests in Balochistan and elsewhere out of the province.”

Indeed, of several groups active in the region, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) — notably not Gulzar Imam’s group — has been even more explicit about their hostility to the Chinese presence there.

Gulzar Imam, 45, was born in Balochistan’s Panjgur District, bordering Iran. He started his political career in 2003 with the Baloch Students’ Organization, a leftist group formed in 1967. Gulzar Imam then joined the Baloch insurgency after the 2006 killing of Nawab Akbar Shanbaz Khan Bugti, a Baloch tribal leader and former governor and chief minister in Balochistan.

Background interviews suggest that in 2009 he joined the Baloch Republican Army (BRA), a separatist militant group that arose after Bugti’s killing under the leadership of his grandson, Brahamdagh Bugti. Gulzar Imam worked his way up, eventually becoming Bugti’s deputy, until the two recently parted ways after differences emerged.