Solidarity to the Balochistan liberation movement
LANKA Network
August 4, 2026
On the 27th of July 2026, the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) released a statement regarding the escalated repression in the Balochistan province of Pakistan, in the form of an operation labeled “Operation Shaban”. In its statement, the CPP demands an end to the unconstitutional actions in the Balochistan region, including “disappearances” and collective punishment of civilians. The CPP also demands that all the political prisoners who have engaged in peaceful protests and who have used their democratic rights to talk about the situation in Balochistan, should be immediately released. The CPP also demands juridical action to be taken against the architects of the repression of the Balochistan nation within the Pakistani government.
Even Amnesty has previously released statements regarding the oppression faced by the Baloch people. The government of Pakistan has, as claimed by Amnesty, murdered peaceful protesters and regionally shut down the internet access in its attempt to silence the voices of the Balochistan movement, as happened on the 21st of March in 2025.
Al Jazeera states that Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province by land area but at the same time the country’s smallest province by population. The conflict in Balochistan is also connected to the conflicts of Pakistan’s government, Afghanistan’s Taliban and India’s government.
Ethnonationalistic destabilisation of Marxist liberation war?
The biggest player in Balochistan’s liberation movement is the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which according to Wikipedia comprises of around 3 000 guerrilla fighters. The BLA is part of the Baloch people’s liberation front (BRAS). Also, a more specifically socialist, at least historically Marxist-Leninist militant organisation, the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) fights together with the BLA.
Wikipedia defines the BLA as an ethnonationalistic and secular group. In a press conference held by the Pakistani government in 2025 a “former guerrilla soldier” of the BLA talks about the corruption within the organisation (while talking next to the ministers of Pakistan) and the role of the organisation as a puppet of foreign states in trying to destabilise Pakistan. The ex-guerrilla-soldier claims in the conference that the BLA engages in “Marxist brainwashing”, that “takes as a model Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh and Bhagat Shing”.
This absurd demonisation of Marxism is read by those familiar with Marxist philosophy as more of a Freudian slip from the Pakistani government propaganda than as actual evidence of systematic “brainwashing”. Why would an ethnonationalistic guerrilla army base its education on the principles of Marxism, the ideology that aims to expand the democratic rights of the people and is fundamentally against all forms of oppression and fascism? It is because the right of nations to self determination is an intrinsic quality of leftism and Marxism.
You could also hurl the same kind of accusations at Gaza for destabilising Israel: Why won’t the ethnonationalist Hamas guerilla fighters just stop fighting and accept political dialogue? In Ghassan Khanafani’s words “it would be a conversation between the sword and the neck”.
This is what Marxism teaches us: In order for just progress and dialogue to happen, the systems of oppression need to fall out of the way of people’s self determination. Colonialism, like the oppression on behalf of the Pakistani government and the relationship based on exploitation with the people of Balochistan, has to be cut before equal rights between the oppressed and the oppressor can be achieved – before one can begin to have “dialogue”
According to a British study, this is exactly the political fight the Baloch are trying to achieve: Most Baloch people do not support the separation of Balochistan from Pakistan but the end to oppression and exploitation. True peace in the region can only be achieved by cutting the exploitative relations so that Baloch people don’t have to resort to the only given option for freedom: separatism from Pakistan.
Pakistan’s communist party and the Pakistani working class movement
The CPP is a small unregistered Marxist-Leninist party in Pakistan. The party participates in political life in Pakistan through the united left front, a leftist coalition group that was formed in 2017 that shares a class based political line. As an example, the united left front protested against the worsening inflation in Pakistan in 2023 which was, for example, with food at 38% in August of that year.
We in LANKA Network support the demands of the CPP for the end of the Pakistani government’s oppression, especially acutely in Balochistan’s conflict zone and we condemn the Pakistani government’s undemocratic actions against the activists of Balochistan. We commit to use our political freedoms and privileges for speaking in support of the people of Balochistan and against Pakistan’s oppressive regime’s undemocratic elements, firstly through this public statement based in solidarity that invites everyone to educate themselves on the people’s war in Balochistan in order to reveal the Pakistani government’s oppressive actions.
LANKA Network, 30th of July 2026