Inside was a group of sparkling minerals. His demonstration was part of Pakistan’s latest offer to the Trump administration: the country was willing to open its minerals to American investment.
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Less than five months later, that promise is in jeopardy. Most of Pakistan’s rich mineral reserves are in Balochistan province. The province – the country’s largest and poorest by area – has long witnessed a separatist movement driven by anger over the perception that the interests of the local population have been ignored by the federal government. On Saturday, fighters killed 31 civilians and 17 security personnel in coordinated attacks across Balochistan, while the army killed 145 fighters, providing a stark reminder of the challenges Pakistan and potential investors face in the province.
Balochistan is also at the heart of China’s investments in Pakistan, making Saturday’s attacks particularly sensitive for Islamabad.
Within hours of the attacks in at least 12 locations, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi blamed neighboring India. “These were not ordinary terrorists. India is behind these attacks. I can tell you with certainty that India had planned these attacks in collaboration with these terrorists,” Naqvi said without presenting any evidence to support his claims.
The attackers belonged to the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist group that has long sought independence for Balochistan and has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Pakistani state along with several other armed groups.
In a video posted on social media, BLA leader Bashir Zeb said the attacks were part of the group’s “Herof 2.0” operation, a follow-up to a similar coordinated attack launched in August 2024.
India on Sunday rejected Pakistan’s allegations and termed them as an attempt to divert attention from Pakistan’s “internal failures”.
“Instead of making frivolous claims every time a violent incident occurs, it would be better to focus on addressing the long-standing demands of our people in the region,” India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement.
Amid the blame game, analysts said the roots of Pakistan’s crisis in Balochistan go deeper than any single incident – and ignoring them will not help Islamabad as it tries to woo both the US and China for investment in the province.
roots of unrest
According to the 2023 census, Balochistan is home to about 15 million of Pakistan’s 240 million people. Despite its vast natural resource wealth, it is the poorest province in the country.
It has significant reserves of oil, coal, gold, copper and gas, resources that generate substantial revenue for the federal government.
While Pakistan has promised to cede part of this resource wealth to its closest allies China and the US under a landmark agreement signed last year, concerns remain that rising violence could jeopardize not only billion-dollar projects but also the country’s fragile economic recovery.
Captured by Pakistan soon after its partition from India in 1948, Balochistan has been the site of a separatist movement since the country’s founding.
Since then the province has seen at least five major rebellions. The latest phase began in the early 2000s when demands for greater control over local resources gradually transformed into demands for full independence.
The government response has been marked by heavy-handed security operations. Human rights groups have accused authorities of killing and forcibly disappearing thousands of ethnic Baloch suspected of joining or sympathizing with separatist groups.
In March, BLA fighters carried out one of their most audacious attacks, attempting to hijack the Jaffar Express, a passenger train traveling from Quetta to the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. More than 300 passengers were rescued after an operation that lasted more than a day, during which at least 33 fighters were killed.
The incident was part of a broader increase in violence in Balochistan along with the rest of the country. According to the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, there were at least 254 attacks in the province in 2025, a 26 percent increase from the previous year, resulting in more than 400 deaths.
The latest wave of violence comes just days after Pakistan hosted a minerals summit aimed at attracting Chinese companies.
China has already invested heavily in the province, including the development of Gwadar, Pakistan’s only deep sea port. The port is an important node in the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which aims to connect southwestern China with the Arabian Sea.
In September, US-based mining company USSM also signed a $500 million MoU to invest in mineral exploration in Pakistan.
Saher Baloch, a Berlin-based researcher focusing on Balochistan, said there was a “core contradiction” in Pakistan’s efforts to attract international partners by emphasizing the province’s resources without addressing its political grievances.
“Balochistan’s instability is not episodic. It is structural and rooted in long-standing grievances over ownership, political exclusion and militarization,” he told Al Jazeera.
As long as violence continues, large-scale extraction projects will remain high-risk and highly securitized, he said, making them viable primarily for “state-backed actors like China, not market-driven Western investors”.
“Even Chinese projects under CPEC have faced repeated attacks, forcing Pakistan to deploy thousands of troops to secure limited infrastructure,” he said.
Abdul Basit, a research fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, offered a different view, arguing that the province’s main investors, China and potentially the US, are already fully aware of the risks.
“China has made CPEC investments in the country, and the US signed a minerals deal in September last year, a full year after HERF 1.0, so they both know the risk profile and what they are doing,” Basit told Al Jazeera, referring to another coordinated BLA attack on multiple locations in August 2024.
“Obviously, such attacks shake investor confidence, but these are government-to-government deals. These are part of the strategic investment calculation, and neither the US nor China will withdraw their investments,” he said.
economic share increases
Pakistan’s long-struggling economy has faced sustained pressure in recent years. The country narrowly avoided default in the summer of 2023, securing a last-minute bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Since then, Pakistan has regained some stability under its latest IMF program, the 25th time it has turned to the lender, and has secured $7 billion in funding.
Despite official efforts to market Pakistan as an attractive investment destination, foreign direct investment (FDI) remains weak.
Central bank data released last month showed a sharp decline from July to December. According to the State Bank of Pakistan, the country received only $808m FDI during the first half of FY26, down from $1.425bn in the same period a year ago.
Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies, said the increase in violence in Balochistan and elsewhere is scaring investors.
“No sensible national or international investor will risk their money in an extremely volatile situation,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that the crisis is “rooted in problems concentrated in the province and linked to Islamabad’s approach”.
Balochistan also shares a long and porous border with Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province. This adds to the perception of the region as a “high-risk area” for investors.
“Continued attacks show that even heavily guarded projects are vulnerable,” he said. “Lack of local consensus increases the potential for backlash.”
external vs internal issue
The attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, came a month after the Jafar Express train attack in March, which killed at least 26 people.
Those incidents escalated into a four-day military confrontation between India and Pakistan in May, which featured missile attacks, drone strikes and cross-border shelling.
Pakistan has repeatedly accused India of training and facilitating Baloch insurgents and, following the Jafar Express attack, formally designated Baloch separatist groups as “Fitna al-Hindustan”, indicating Indian involvement.
But Basit said such claims must have credible evidence.
He said, “This attack was carried out in broad daylight and was carried out by local people. This is a direct failure of intelligence and local security apparatus. Although the response time was quick and they were able to restore control, the question is why such an attack could happen in a major city.”
Sahar Baloch described Islamabad’s focus on India as a familiar strategy that may provide short-term diplomatic cover but does little to address the deeper issues.
“Pakistan wants to turn Balochistan from a political conflict to a security problem to attract diplomatic sympathy and divert attention from internal investigation,” he said, adding that this approach has limits.
“There is now a much greater awareness that Balochistan’s unrest is driven primarily by domestic factors, such as enforced disappearances, lack of political autonomy and economic marginalization,” he said.
Gul said that although local grievances are central, prolonged instability could still serve the interests of external actors.
He argued that India could benefit from limiting China’s influence in the region. “I would not be surprised if there are external motives and that is why money is poured into violence and insurgency to keep Balochistan under tension,” he said.
Basit said the involvement of both China and the United States already gives the conflict an international dimension but stressed that the roots of the violence remain local.
“External elements are always secondary because the primary reason why conflict and violence occurs in the province are internal fault lines. The government must bridge the gap to ensure that those external elements do not take advantage of those internal issues,” he said.
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