USA Declares BLA As Terrorist Group

The United States on Tuesday 2nd July declared the BLA as a global terrorist group, making it a crime for anyone in the US to assist the militants and freezing any assets they own in this case. The listing was made at the official site of US Department of Treasury. BLA was designated as a terrorist organisation in Pakistan on April 7, 2006, after the group conducted a series of attacks targeting security personnel.

“The BLA is an armed separatist group that targets security forces and civilians, mainly in ethnic Baloch areas of Pakistan.The outfit has carried out several terrorist attacks in the past year, including a suicide attack in August, 2018 that targeted Chinese engineers in Balochistan, a November, 2018 attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, and a May, 2019 attack against a luxury hotel in Gwadar,” The State Department noted.

The BLA threatened more attacks and warned China to stop “exploitative projects in Balochistan” after claiming the hotel attack.  They have targeted Chinese Nationals multiple times and killed four people in November 2018 in an attack on Chinese consulate. This declaration is seen as a positive development since Pakistan has been calling for this decision since a long time. It is hoped that this will cause BLA to minimize their operations and attacks. The timing of this is well ahead of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to Washington, US. The decision could be an influence of the recent US-Iran conflict as BLA operates from both Iran and Afghanistan.

“Additionally, the Department of State has amended the terrorist designations of Jundallah to reflect the group’s new primary name Jaish al-Adl and associated aliases. These aliases have been added to the group’s designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), and as an SDGT under EO 13224,” the State Department said.