ISLAMABAD : Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri has urged the United Nations to officially designate the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) as a global terrorist organization, warning that the militant group is exploiting the province’s poverty to recruit vulnerable youth and posing an escalating threat to regional and international stability.
In an opinion piece titled “UN Must designate Global Terror Threat BLA,” the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) senator asserted that the BLA is not a representative voice for the Baloch people but rather an organized militant network that has turned the region’s deep-rooted socioeconomic grievances into a weapon.
“The BLA does not represent Balochistan. It weaponises Balochistan’s deprivation,” she wrote.
Senator Zehri highlighted that Balochistan’s severe multidimensional poverty has created a fertile ground for militant recruitment. She stated that the BLA specifically targets young people aged 15 to 25, using encrypted online platforms, ideological indoctrination, and propaganda that glorifies violence to draw them in.
According to the senator, recruits are systematically isolated from their families and convinced that armed conflict is their only option. Some are later turned into suicide bombers for the group’s Majeed Brigade. She described these youths not as heroes but as victims, writing that they are “the children of Balochistan” whose futures are destroyed by violence.
