BLA is shifting from low-profile insurgency to strategic multimedia messaging, using narratives and visuals to shape legitimacy, perception, and conflict dynamics
The long-running confrontation between the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and the Pakistani state is witnessing noticeable tactical as well as narrative shifts on BLA's end. The BLA recently released several videos of its leader, Bashir Zeb, unmasked and composed, addressing supporters as well as the outside world. It also showed him moving through rugged terrain on a motorcycle, leading Operation Herof 2, an act designed to signify mobility, control, and defiance against the Pakistani State. It was a carefully framed assertion of legitimacy and the right to resist, articulated in moral and political terms rather than ideological slogans.
The Baloch case increasingly reflects this communicative turn, where controlling the interpretive frame of violence becomes as important as the act itself.
This moment captured how the Baloch insurgency, particularly factions such as the Majeed Brigade, has entered a new phase of information warfare. One that relies on calibrated exposure, narrative density and moral argumentation. In information warfare literature, such shifts are typically understood as attempts to shape legitimacy, perception, and narrative endurance alongside kinetic operations. The Baloch case increasingly reflects this communicative turn, where controlling the interpretive frame of violence becomes as important as the act itself.
For decades, the Baloch conflict remained largely absent from mainstream media coverage. Journalistic access was restricted, activists disappeared, and violence was often reduced to statistics. Rather than attempting to penetrate these domains, Baloch militant groups have increasingly chosen to build their own informational ecosystem.
This shift has accelerated in recent years. Attacks like the famous attack on Jaffar Express in March 2025 are now followed by detailed statements explaining the target selection, operational intent, and political rationale. Videos, often raw and unpolished, document coordinated attacks, synchronised withdrawals and emotionally powerful last messages by fighters. Multiple social media handles disseminate the same material simultaneously, creating resilience against takedowns by state agencies.
The result is not cognitive domination in the classic sense, but something closer to narrative saturation, ensuring that an interpretive frame accompanies every act of violence. While the measurable impact of this messaging remains difficult to establish, there is a strong resonance among Baloch and diaspora audiences as seen in social media chatter on the subject. This increasingly nuanced public-facing narrative tone indicates the BLA's awareness of broader informational contestation.
There is a marked shift from the terse, text-based claims and low-visibility communication to a more synchronised multimedia messaging. One of the most striking features of this strategy is the deliberate humanisation of its fighters, particularly suicide attackers. Members of the Majeed Brigade, often described as fidayeen, are presented through personal biographies rather than ideological abstractions. Viewers are presented with a diverse cross-section of participants—students, engineers, women, married couples and even grandparents—challenging conventional profiles of militancy.
Militancy is framed not as ethnic extremism or foreign manipulation, but as the natural culmination of accumulated loss, political closure, and generational trauma.
Such representation shifts the context of the struggle from ideology to grievance. Militancy is framed not as ethnic extremism or foreign manipulation, but as the natural culmination of accumulated loss, political closure, and generational trauma.
The inclusion of women and family units is especially significant. Their visibility signals that the conflict has penetrated domestic and social spaces, collapsing the boundary between combatant and civilian life.
Unlike many militant movements that rely on shock and ambiguity, Baloch groups painstakingly explain their violence. Statements accompanying attacks often justify targets by alleging involvement in intelligence operations, demographic change or counterinsurgency measures. Their intended function is to impose a moral dimension on violence.
In classical just war theory, jus ad bellum refers to the conditions under which the use of force is considered legitimate. Violence against the state (represented mostly by the military, paramilitary forces or business entities) is presented as defensive, reactive, and restrained, aimed at sustaining internal legitimacy rather than appealing to international audiences.
This is a risky move because the more violence is explained, the more it becomes subject to ethical scrutiny. Yet it also signals an awareness that the conflict endurance depends on gaining and sustaining the moral high ground as much as building operational capacity.
The recent decision by the BLA leaders to appear openly represents another departure from earlier phases. In a conflict where leadership decapitation by the Pakistani state has been the norm, such visibility appears counterintuitive. Yet it serves a very important informational purpose, i.e., projecting confidence, continuity, and ownership of the struggle.
Similarly, the circulation of numerous attack videos that are often low-resolution footage documenting engagements functions as proof. These visuals counter official denials, establish operational credibility and create an alternative version of the conflict that Pakistan finds very difficult to counter.
The layered nature of such communiques suggests that while the immediate messaging appears directed at Baloch constituencies and diaspora networks, the more formalised video statements and leadership appearances signal an attempt to engage broader regional and international observers.
In environments of highly regulated state-controlled reporting, as in Pakistan, this type of framing itself becomes a form of resistance.
When considered together, the biographies, farewell messages, leader statements, attack footage and coordinated dissemination across platforms create a crescendo effect in the cognitive domain. Each incident reinforces previous narratives, building a dense informational environment in which the conflict is continuously interpreted rather than episodically reported. The layered nature of such communiques suggests that while the immediate messaging appears directed at Baloch constituencies and diaspora networks, the more formalised video statements and leadership appearances signal an attempt to engage broader regional and international observers.
Pakistan’s response has been to frame the Baloch struggle almost exclusively as externally-sponsored terrorism, employing labels that externalise causality and delegitimise their internal grievance. From a military standpoint, this simplifies threat perception and justifies the ruthless use of force that is constantly seen and enacted in Balochistan.
However, from an information warfare perspective, this approach has diminishing returns. Absence of moral and politically justifiable narratives from the state leaves a void that the Baloch narratives easily fill. The result is competing parallel realities where one is asserting existential resistance while the other is denying its domestic roots.
Pakistan’s response has been to frame the Baloch struggle almost exclusively as externally-sponsored terrorism, employing labels that externalise causality and delegitimise their internal grievance.
This strategy is not without danger. Recent instances of ethnic profiling and attacks by Baloch militants on non-Baloch civilians strain the moral architecture that the militants seek to construct. While the use of information warfare can contextualise violence, it cannot indefinitely reconcile claims of moral legitimacy, especially in instances of repeated indiscriminate actions. When such contradictions deepen, narrative credibility erodes even among sympathetic audiences.
Ultimately, the evolution of Baloch information warfare reflects a conflict increasingly fought over meaning rather than territory. In the absence of negotiation,
internationalisation or resolution, documentation becomes a substitute for victory.
A broader lesson emerges: conflicts that may appear contained on the ground may be far more dynamic in the information domain. Understanding these shifts will not only shape understanding of how such struggles persist, but also how they continue to adapt long after they were expected to fade.
Ashish Upreti is a serving Indian Army officer with over 25 years of experience in operations, crisis management and strategic communications.
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Ashish Upreti is a serving Indian Army officer with over 25 years of experience in operations, crisis management and strategic communications. He has represented India ...
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