Aug. 11 (UPI) — The United States on Monday designated the Pakistan-based separatist group Balochistan Liberation Army and its Majeed Brigade suicide attack unit as foreign terrorist organizations.
The designations from the State Department come years after it designated the BLA as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2019. The move on Monday also includes designating the Majeed Brigade as an SDGT.
The BLA is primarily located in Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, and seeks independence from Islamabad, while the Majeed Brigade is a unit of the BLA that conducts suicide attacks on its behalf.
According to West Point’s Terrorism Center, the Baloch insurgency has intensified this year. On March 11, the BLA hijacked a Jaffar Express passenger train, kidnapping 400 people and resulting in the deaths of at least 26 hostages.
In the past year, it has claimed responsibility for suicide attacks near the Karachi airport and the Gwadar Port Authority Complex.
Often targets of the Majeed Brigade are Chinese workers or enterprises as the BLA opposes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
The State Department blacklisted the BLA in 2019, following several terrorist attacks in the preceding year, including the targeting of Chinese engineers in Balochistan and the Chinese consulate in Karachi in November 2018.
“Terrorist designations play a critical role in our fight against this scourge and are an effective way to curtail support for terrorist activities,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday in a statement.
The new terrorist designation is broader than the previous SDGT, and bars U.S. citizens from supporting the BLA.
It also comes nearly a month after the State Department designated The Resistance Front, which it called a front and proxy group of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.