The Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA) has placed its “female suicide commando” at the center of its armed strategy, consolidating a phenomenon that violently shakes the security protocols traditionally designed to fight male insurgents, the Spanish news agency EFE writes on Thursday.
They were young women, students and from middle-class families who, according to the BLA group, decided to give up everything to don the explosive vest. In some cases that shocked the country, among these women there were also mothers, notes Agerpres.
The women were on the front lines in the latest offensive on January 31, the bloodiest in years, which left nearly 200 dead, allowing the insurgency to simultaneously attack 12 key points of the Pakistani security apparatus that were under close surveillance.
The women of the Majeed Brigade
The Majeed Brigade is the elite unit of the Balochistan Liberation Army, the group being dedicated to sacrificial (fidayee) missions. In August 2025, the US State Department officially designated it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), linking it to an escalation of suicide bombings and mass kidnappings.
Although the group is traditionally male, it has institutionalized a female wing that has shifted from logistical duties to carrying out high-impact attacks against military and strategic targets.
The female composition allows the group to avoid suspicion and access restricted facilities, an operational advantage that facilitated attacks against the headquarters of the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) in the latest offensive.
A 21-year-old woman threw herself into the air
Asifa Mengal is one of the young women who have been part of the latest wave of suicide attacks.
According to the BLA, she joined the Majeed Brigade in 2023, when she was only 21 years old, ready to be part of a new attack strategy.
Mengal died late last week after driving an explosives-laden vehicle into the headquarters of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Noshki, a key enclave for military control of the region.
Operational advantage
For the BLA, the deployment of women is an operational advantage.
In a conservative society, where women's physical searches are limited due to behavioral norms, female insurgents are able to approach targets that would otherwise be inaccessible to men.
This security blind spot has facilitated attacks on strategic interests, such as those related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), aimed at increasing the cost of foreign investment and forcing the withdrawal of Beijing's infrastructure projects from a region separatists consider to be under colonial exploitation.
Online recruitment
The insurgency has moved its recruitment narrative to platforms like Telegram, where it posts heroic posters and high-resolution photos minutes after each attack.
The BLA exploits this mystique by disseminating photographs of its “martyrs,” with detailed biographies and videos that present the suicide attacks as the “ultimate commitment” to the cause.
Ethnic conflict
Unlike the insurgency of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) in the north of the country, women in the BLA do not want the implementation of Sharia law, Islamic law.
Their driving force is ethnic nationalism and control of mineral resources in Pakistan's largest and poorest province.
The inclusion of figures like Yasma and Waseem Baloch, who died in an attack in Pasni, reinforces the group's strategy of presenting the insurgency as a family and generational cause that allows no return to the political path.
A teacher unleashed female terror in 2022
The origin of this phenomenon dates back to April 2022, when Shari Baloch became the first woman to carry out a suicide bombing with the BLA.
A primary school teacher with a master's degree in zoology and a mother of two, she detonated an explosive device as a van carrying Chinese nationals was passing the University of Karachi.
His attack set an operational precedent that rendered useless the intelligence manuals, which until then had focused on the profile of the rural male insurgent.
“Operation Herof”
The official death toll in this latest offensive, dubbed Operation Herof 2.0 by the BLA, is around 60, including 22 members of the security forces and 36 civilians, while authorities claim to have killed nearly 200 insurgents in military counter-operations.
According to the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), 2025 was the bloodiest year of the last decade, with a 34% increase in total violence.
The army reported that 75,175 intelligence-gathering operations were conducted, resulting in the deaths of 2,597 militants, the highest number recorded in a single year.
