{"id":179890,"date":"2025-07-26T17:30:54","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T12:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/?p=179890"},"modified":"2025-07-26T17:30:54","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T12:30:54","slug":"article-israel-is-trying-to-hijack-the-baloch-struggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/2025\/07\/26\/article-israel-is-trying-to-hijack-the-baloch-struggle.html","title":{"rendered":"Article: Israel is trying to hijack the Baloch struggle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Abdullah Moaswes<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Israel loudly beat the drums of war one day before its unprovoked surprise attack on Iran, a small but significant piece of news slipped by almost unnoticed: The announcement of a new research project on the website of a Washington, DC think tank.<\/p>\n

On June 12, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) announced the launch of the Balochistan Studies Project (BSP). Significantly, in addition to mentioning Balochistan\u2019s abundance of natural resources \u201csuch as oil, gas, uranium, copper, coal, rare earth elements and the two deep seaports of Gwadar and Chabahar\u201d, MEMRI\u2019s statement justifies the project\u2019s necessity by identifying the region as \u201cthe perfect outpost to counter and keep under control Iran, its nuclear ambitions, and its dangerous relations with Pakistan, which may provide Tehran with tactical nukes\u201d.<\/p>\n

MEMRI is well known for its selective translation of snippets of Arabic, Persian and Turkish-language media, screenshots from which often end up being shared as memes on social media platforms. Originally founded in 1998, the think tank has consistently peddled a pro-Israel agenda, with its founder, Colonel Yigal Carmon, having served in the Israeli Military Intelligence Corps for more than 20 years. Additionally, MEMRI has been involved \u201cunofficially\u201d in intelligence gathering for the Israeli state since at least 2012.<\/p>\n

Given this context, MEMRI\u2019s creation of the BSP can be seen as an indication of an Israeli attempt to co-opt the Baloch national struggle against both Iran and Pakistan for Israel\u2019s geopolitical objectives. Given the strategic advantages that a successful co-optation of the Baloch cause would grant Israel, and the potential ramifications it would bear upon the resistance of stateless peoples within the region, including Palestinians as well as the Baloch, themselves, there is a need to examine the limitations of geopolitical thinking within national liberation movements.<\/p>\n

MEMRI\u2019s announcement of the BSP is riddled with logical inconsistencies and misinformation regarding the reality of exploitation and resistance in Balochistan. For example, centring the fact that the states of both Iran and Pakistan are currently fighting counterinsurgency campaigns in Balochistan, MEMRI\u2019s website calls for \u201cthe international community\u201d to \u201cunderstand that Balochistan is a natural ally of the West\u201d \u2013 ignoring the fact that Western companies such as Barrick Gold and BHP Billiton have played key roles in enabling colonial resource extraction and ecological destruction in the region.<\/p>\n

Another example relates to the personnel involved in the project. One article on the BSP on MEMRI\u2019s website welcomes a \u201crenowned Baloch writer, scholar, and political scientist\u201d called Mir Yar Baloch, whose X account \u201chas been defined as one of the most influential in the Subcontinent\u201d, as a \u201cspecial adviser\u201d. In May of this year, Baloch made headlines for unilaterally declaring the independence of Balochistan in a series of posts on X, where he also announced to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India had \u201cthe backing of 60 million Baloch patriots\u201d after it launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan.<\/p>\n

More than for his grand proclamations, Mir Yar Baloch is interesting for the amount of mystery that surrounds him, given his supposed status as an important and influential Baloch intellectual. Despite being profiled by a variety of news outlets \u2013 notably all Indian \u2013 none have deviated from regurgitating a biography for him as limited as that published in the MEMRI article.<\/p>\n

Significantly, however, more well-known Baloch activists have been quick to distance themselves from him. Niaz Baloch of the Baloch National Movement, for example, posted on X that there exists no consensus for a declaration of independence among Baloch leaders. Crucially, he also listed four \u201cfake accounts\u201d, including that of Mir Yar Baloch, that he stated \u201cshould be reported and unfollowed immediately\u201d. Baloch activists therefore speculate that Mir Yar Baloch is a fake persona created by a state with interests in the region to support its objectives.<\/p>\n

(The writer is a Palestinian writer, researcher, educator and translator.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abdullah Moaswes As Israel loudly beat the drums of war one day before its unprovoked surprise attack on Iran, a small but significant piece of news slipped by almost unnoticed: The announcement of a new research project on the website of a Washington, DC think tank. On June 12, the Middle East Media Research Institute …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":179891,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmsnews.org\/kms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}