Pakistan’s efforts to attract foreign investment in Balochistan’s mineral sector are facing growing uncertainty after coordinated attacks by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), analysts have warned.
Senator and senior political analyst Syed Mushahid Hussain said the timing and scale of the attacks — carried out across multiple districts since early Saturday under the second phase of the BLA’s “Operation Herof” — were “highly significant” and could directly undermine Islamabad’s attempts to market its mineral wealth to international investors.
He outlined three factors that he said made the current situation particularly sensitive.
The first, he argued, was rising speculation that US President Donald Trump was being urged by Israel to consider possible military action against Iran. With Iran sharing a roughly 900-kilometre border with Balochistan, any escalation could trigger instability “similar to Sudan, Somalia and Libya”, he said.
The second factor, according to Mr Hussain, was the strategic importance of Gwadar Port, the centrepiece of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). He said attacks in or around Gwadar carried “serious risks” for regional connectivity and major infrastructure already under strain.
The third factor, according to Hussain, is Pakistan’s effort to introduce Balochistan’s mineral resources to the global market. “If the current security situation persists,” he cautioned, “the interest of foreign investors could be severely affected.”
International Analysts Echo Concerns
Within hours of the attacks, US analyst Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, said the scale of the operation highlighted the risks facing foreign companies evaluating mining opportunities in Pakistan.
“Today’s attacks in Balochistan should serve as a wake-up call to those, including in the White House, keen to invest in Pakistan’s critical mineral reserves,” he wrote on X.
He noted that many mineral sites lie in areas affected by the assaults and said one of the BLA’s long-standing grievances was “external exploitation of local resources”.
Mr Kugelman said the emerging pattern of attacks would require Washington to reassess whether conditions in Balochistan were compatible with long-term investment.
‘Instability is structural’, say experts
Sahar Baloch, a Berlin-based researcher focusing on Balochistan, told Al Jazeera that Pakistan’s investment outreach carries a “core contradiction,” arguing that the state is promoting Balochistan’s resources internationally while “failing to address longstanding political grievances”.
“Balochistan’s instability isn’t episodic. It is structural and rooted in longstanding grievances over ownership, political exclusion and militarisation,” she said.
She argued that until the political crisis was addressed, large-scale extraction projects would remain high-risk and heavily securitised, making them viable mainly for “state-backed actors like China, not market-driven Western investors”.
Even Chinese projects under CPEC have faced repeated attacks, she noted, forcing Pakistan to deploy thousands of troops to secure limited infrastructure — a challenge that has strained Islamabad’s resources.
Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, said the surge in attacks was already discouraging companies from taking financial risks in the country.
“No sane national or international investor will risk their money in an extremely volatile situation,” he said.