Pakistan and Iran Air Strikes and the Balochistan Struggle for Autonomy

Pakistan has launched missile strikes into Iran, killing nine people, after Iran carried out strikes in Pakistan late on Tuesday. Pakistan said its strikes had hit terrorist hideouts in Iran’s south-eastern Sistan-Baluchestan province. Iran condemned the attack, which it said killed three women, two men and four children who were not Iranian.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry said its strikes around the Iranian city of Saravan had come in light of credible intelligence of impending large-scale terrorist activities”and added that it fully respects Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

In its own statement, Pakistan’s army said the precision strikes were conducted with drones, rockets and long-range missiles and targeted the Balochistan Liberation Army and the Balochistan Liberation Front.

Both groups are part of a decades-long struggle for greater autonomy in Balochistan, a remote region in south-western Pakistan.

There are over 13 million in the Balochistan province. There were over 12 million in the last 2017 census, but the population had almost doubled from 1998.

This is about 33% of the population of Afghanistan.

The Iranian Persions and the Pakistan Punjabi are each about 45% of their total population.

In Pakistan’s Balochistan province, insurgencies by Baloch nationalists have been fought in 1948, 1958–59, 1962–63 and 1973–1977, with an ongoing low-level insurgency beginning in 2003.