From a political and literary household in Nushki to the Pakistan Army, and from there to the leadership of the Baloch Liberation Army. For this special profile, The Balochistan Post emailed questions to the BLA’s official address. This feature was compiled from the responses received from spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch.
The Balochistan Post — Special Feature
When Rahman Gul joined the Baloch Liberation Army, he underwent a rigorous training process. For the first forty days, he performed langri duties: cooking, washing dishes, handling everyday chores and gathering firewood. He had been a captain in the Pakistan Army. He brought with him training at Kakul and experience from postings in Waziristan and Kashmir, but his initial responsibility in Bolan was langri work. The organization in which his journey began with these everyday tasks has now announced his selection as its new commander-in-chief.
According to the statement issued by the BLA, the Senior Command Council elected Rehman Gul, also known as Mureed, following consultations and with the support of the organization’s leadership and commanders. The statement identifies him as a former member of the Senior Command Council and commander of the Majeed Brigade. It introduces him as a senior commander who has held various responsibilities within the organization, but part of his life lies beyond a list of military positions.
Some readers of Brahui literature know him as Mureed. He began writing poetry before entering the army, stopped during his military service and resumed after reaching Bolan. His memories of home include Urdu verse and stories of war told by his mother, a sister who wrote his school speeches, and Maxim Gorky’s novel Mother, which his mother had read.
An entire career in the Pakistan Army lies between that childhood home and the mountains of Bolan. His life did not change direction in a single day. Unease came first, followed by more reading and discussion, a resignation, and an environment to which he needed time to adjust. This journey opens up a story extending beyond the new chief’s brief, formal introduction.
The Playing Fields of Nushki
Born on August 14, 1984, to Mir Afzal Khan Mengal and Meena Mengal, Rehman Gul belongs to Nushki’s Zagar Mengal family. Before political conversations enter his childhood recollections come playing fields, farmland, an agricultural setting and local games. Baadi, tilli, marbles and beeri were among the games he played with friends from the neighborhood. These memories offer a glimpse of everyday life in Nushki that tends to receive little space in later military biographies.
He received his early education at Government Model High School in Nushki and later attended Quetta Degree College. Throughout this period, politics and literature remained part of conversation at home. Gul Khan Naseer was frequently mentioned. His Mother recited Naseer’s Urdu poetry, while his father’s recollections featured Lawang Khan Mengal and accounts of the war he had fought. Two different traditions, literature and armed resistance, thus existed in the same household. Gul Khan Naseer, the prominent Baloch nationalist leader, former provincial minister, historian and poet, and Lawang Khan Mengal, the well-known guerrilla commander of the 1970s, were uncles of both Gul’s father and mother. Former Balochistan governor Amir-ul-Mulk Mengal is his uncle. Poetry, nationalist politics, armed struggle and public office appear within the same extended family. Yet treating these relationships as a complete explanation of Gul’s later choices would make his journey appear more straightforward than it was.
His father participated in the Baloch armed resistance of the 1970s, spending approximately seven years in the mountains. Stories from that period were part of family conversation. His father’s accounts and his mother’s recitations meant that political history was more than a sequence of events recorded in books. It was also family memory, with certain events retold and certain names recalled with personal familiarity.
The significance of these details lies beyond the famous names: they describe an environment in which political discussion, songs, speeches and reading were intertwined. Nevertheless, the young Rehman Gul’s next step took him into the Pakistan Army.
The Road to Kakul
Gul does not attribute his decision to enter the army to a longstanding personal ambition. A brother had joined the Rangers, a friend had entered the military, and his childhood classmate, had joined the army a year before him. These examples brought the possibility of military service closer. At that point, the family’s political tradition and his choice of profession were not moving in the same direction.
He entered the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul in 2002 and completed his training in 2004. Alongside his military education, he also graduated from the University of Peshawar.
His unit was 19 Frontier Force, known as Piffer Tiger, with which he served in Okara. He was subsequently posted to South Waziristan, North Waziristan and Kashmir. His postings included Miranshah in North Waziristan and Khuiratta in Kashmir. He advanced from second lieutenant to lieutenant and then captain. When he left the army, he was at the examination stage for promotion to major. During his military service, he also held responsibilities as a platoon commander, company commander and battalion quartermaster.
Some memories of that service also became sources of unease and questioning. To understand his transformation solely as the transfer of military expertise from one institution to another would overlook its political and moral dimensions. While still in the army, he began asking more questions about the meaning of his work and its consequences.
Waziristan and the Decision to Leave the Army
Gul dates an incident that left a lasting impression on him to late 2004. According to his account, his detachment had been assigned to raid a compound in Miranshah. During the operation, unprovoked firing by another military detachment positioned outside killed members of a family traveling in a truck. The dead included four women, five children and other people. The bodies were brought to divisional headquarters, where he spent some time sitting near them.
He connects this memory with questions about his work and the institution he served. In his account, the brutal killing of ordinary Pashtun civilians forced him to consider what he was participating in. The incident prompted reflection and difficult questions about his own role.
The death of Nawab Akbar Bugti made the idea of leaving the army more definite. Gul was then in Quetta for a professional course and was on leave that day. Afterwards, he increased his reading on Baloch politics, turning to the newspaper Tawar and available websites. During his posting in Kashmir, the internet became an important means of accessing these discussions. Conversations about Baloch politics and resistance continued with friends, particularly Gohram.
Balach Marri’s death became the next decisive point in this journey. Gul was then stationed in Khuiratta, Kashmir. Approximately a month later, he submitted his resignation. Approval and clearance were not immediate. The process took roughly a year and involved General Headquarters and the relevant intelligence agencies.
A New Life in Bolan
On February 10, 2010, Gul arrived in Bolan and joined the BLA. He entered an environment in which language, conversation, humor, relationships and the everyday demands of mountain life differed considerably from his previous employment. The difficulties of that transition stayed with him for some time. Being a trained military officer did not automatically make everything easier. The initial adjustment was difficult. Some members’ ideas seemed clear to him, while other matters left him puzzled. He had brought military books, but initially did not find the environment for regular discussion of those subjects that he had expected. A gap remained between understanding his new surroundings and finding a place for his experience within them.
His first forty days of “Langri” belong to this transitional period. He had left an established professional structure for an organization offering fewer comforts and many times more challenges than his former employment.
Aslam Baloch, whom he calls Ustad Aslam, was central to this period. Gul could discuss the organization’s weaknesses, its direction and his own questions with him in detail. He attaches such importance to the relationship that he suggests he might not have remained part of the struggle without Aslam. Aslam Baloch became Gul’s mentor in the fullest sense.
After serving for more than a year as a rank-and-file member of the BLA, Gul began taking on operational and organizational responsibilities. He was initially tasked with providing rigorous basic training to new recruits. This work brought him into contact with young people from different schools of thought, regions, social backgrounds and cities. Bringing them into a common framework, drawing on useful aspects of the experience and abilities they brought, and establishing discipline through an understanding of the psychology of recruits from different backgrounds laid a foundation for later camp command and broader administrative responsibilities.
After training duties, he held patrol command and then camp command. During these stages, he sought to connect his previous military training with the practical demands of mountain and guerrilla warfare. He subsequently took up a position in the BLA’s operational command.
According to his account, after 2018 his contacts and collaboration increased with colleagues who favored turning the BLA from a traditional guerrilla group into a modern, regular army and restructuring it along new lines. Working with these like-minded colleagues, he helped advance efforts to professionalize training, camp discipline, the chain of command and operational readiness. After Aslam Baloch’s death, his central responsibilities increased further. Gul became a member of the BLA’s Senior Command Council and, at various times, was also entrusted with broader organizational affairs.
Taking command of the Majeed Brigade was one of the most prominent chapters in this organizational development. Described as one of Asia’s most dangerous suicide-attack units, the brigade’s first commander was its founder, Aslam Baloch. After Aslam’s death in a suicide attack in Kandahar in 2018, command of the Majeed Brigade was handed to Gul.
The Poetry That Began Again
Gul’s poetry predates his entry into the army. Writing stopped during his military service and resumed in Bolan among companions with literary interests. The importance of his surroundings is evident in his recollection of that return: poetry first heard at home, then an interruption, followed by a return to his own words among other readers and writers. Direct involvement in war changed his subjects. Pain, separation from companions, hope and different emotional states entered his work. He describes writing during journeys, periods of waiting, and before or after fighting. A considerable distance separates the child listening to poetry at home from the man writing about the loss of companions. Literature nevertheless remains present at both ends of his journey.
His first book, Rukhsat Af (Not farewell), was followed by Pad Rand (The search). A third collection, Shaal Na Bishkhenda (Shaal’s smile), is being prepared for publication.
A wartime event may occupy a single day on a calendar, while the feelings it leaves can remain for years. Gul connects his poetry with that lingering experience. Between postings and positions, the part of a life that dates cannot contain calls for another language of expression. In Bolan, after a long interruption, he began putting his experience into words. Once, he had listened to poetry written by others; now, he was writing about events he had experienced himself. A substantial part of a life lies within that distance. Mureed is the literary name of those years, a name without a term of office attached to it, but carrying memories of time, relationships and separation. The military and organizational stages of his life can be listed. To reach what remained within the person who passed through them, his written words must also be read.
The BLA’s Institutional Moment
The selection of Rehman Gul, also known as Mureed, is more a test of the BLA’s structure than a story of individual success. The question is not who the new chief is, but whether the BLA now operates around a personality or an institution.
For the first time in the recent history of Baloch armed resistance, an organization has completed a change of leadership through an organized consultative process, without open confrontation or fragmentation. More than two decades of continuous war have produced a leadership pool within the BLA capable of absorbing losses. Military training, guerrilla experience, responsibility for training and command of the Majeed Brigade are stages that point less to personal greatness than to capabilities within the BLA. Gul is part of that pool.
His journey began in the kitchen. This detail provides more than human interest. It indicates that the BLA no longer operates solely on the basis of tribal or family names. A path to advancement based on ability and contribution is open. When rank-and-file members see such a trajectory, it can affect recruitment. The surge in recruitment among Baloch youth that will follow this appointment signals a threat to Pakistan’s military establishment whose origins lie in its own training institutions.
A former captain, trained at Kakul and posted to Waziristan and Kashmir, has become commander-in-chief of an opposing armed organization. For the army, this represents more than one individual’s rebellion. It is both an institutional failure and a symbolic blow to its reputation. The state is seeing an officer it trained in opposing ranks. This means the institution failed to prevent internal disaffection and ideological change. A captain’s rise to command on the opposing side at this level calls into question the Pakistan Army’s claims about internal discipline and loyalty.
When an organization selects as its chief someone who has served in the opposing ranks, it points toward professional evolution. Developments suggest that the BLA is moving beyond resistance driven by emotion. It is seeking to understand its opponent’s language and methods and turn them against it.
The Weight of the New Leadership
The BLA’s announcement reiterates its commitment to continuing the struggle for national independence, alongside its emphasis on consultation and support. The details of how the new leadership will change policy and decision-making have yet to emerge. The name at the top has changed. Subsequent decisions will show what continuity remains in the organization’s work and what changes. The experience Gul brings will now be exercised through wider authority.
The first forty days in Bolan return with a different significance. Then, the man cooking meals and washing dishes was learning to understand his surroundings. Today, the same organization has entrusted him with its highest responsibility. Between those stages lies a long journey of command, conversation, adjustment and writing. The story ahead has not yet been written.
Mureed can preserve his experiences in poetry. Other people will also bear witness to RehmanGul’s decisions.
His words are recorded in his books. The consequences of his authority will now be recorded in history.