Its blatant form preventing deniability on the part of the perpetrators and constitutes the gross and direct form of fifth generation hybrid warfare against the state of Pakistan currently in progress and presented to the world in all its obnoxious glory on June 12, 2025, via the so called Balochistan Studies Project unveiled by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington based think tank founded in 1998 by former Israeli intelligence officer Yigal Carmon. The fact that Mir Yar Baloch will be announced as one of the Special Advisor to this project has not been lost on the eyes of the watchers who see clearly in this move a rather thinly veiled bid to give a respectable scholarly mien to the long-standing policy, to exploit the internal divisions in Pakistan in the cause of foreign geopolitics.
Mir Yar Baloch is a radical Baloch, who internationally is infamous by his unhinged anti-Pakistan rhetoric and outright espousal of the proscribed terrorist group Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a group that has to its credit in numerous acts of violence against the civilian and military infrastructure of Pakistan. His appointment as an advisor to MEMRI project could not be put in different perspective, it fits well in an overall trend of information warfare where all means of subversion, misinformation and intellectual manipulation is used instead of conventional weapons to break the sovereignty of a state like Pakistan within itself.
Consequently, the Balochistan Studies Project is not a dispassionate academic venture geared towards appreciating socio-political and economic conditions on the ground in Balochistan; rather, it is a politically charged podium meant to heighten the woes of a highly exclusive and foreign funded minority mix, ethnic instrumentalization, and contribute towards degeneration of unity among the people of Pakistan.
The character of Mir Yar Baloch is questionable and troublesome on its own. According to most informed quarters, it is a belief that this identity might well not be that of an actual independent and genuine Baloch activist, but rather be made from digital ghosts, a synthetic creation, specifically run by the authority of foreign intelligence units like the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). This would hardly be an innovation, the RAW histories of fabricating grand narratives, staging human rights heroes and initiating undeclared influence campaigns aiming at splitting the Pakistani society on an ethnic and sectarian basis are lengthy and extensively tested.
What raises eyebrows is the fact that apparently in the space of some hours, Mir Yar Baloch has actually been accorded the status of an international outlet/platform like MEMRI and also the Baloch have been symbolically declared an independent people on social media platforms during times of national stress ,all clearly denoting that this is not about populace level Baloch interests, it is actually about political and psychological mayhem in Pakistan, serving bigger strategic interests in New Delhi.
It is a major slap on the amazing and patriotic Baloch national whose overwhelming majority is still a proud full-time citizen of Pakistan, who wants to overcome her socio-economic issues within the Pakistan constitution itself through development, dialogue, and democracy. Geopolitical manipulation of the Baloch identity by a foreign country is a disservice to those citizens in addition to the country of Pakistan itself, as well as to the very individuals the people posing as their advocates purport to represent.
The participation of MEMRI in this show even illustrates more the agenda of the project. MEMRI is not just another think tank, the fact that it was started by an ex-Israeli intelligence officer and has a history of publishing selective often biased reports that appear in the western and the Israeli interest puts doubt on whether it is a credible academic source.
Instead of providing objective research, MEMRI has in the past been alleged to be dealing with propaganda to fit the foreign policy interests of enemies of Muslim majority countries, Pakistan included. When such an organization launches a project towards a study of Balochistan then it becomes highly suspect and an attempt to perpetrate a reputation that Balochistan is a separatist place which a waits independence. This is a piece of narrative manipulation to fulfil the decades old ambition of Indian elites to break down Pakistan by fanning separatist sparks in Balochistan a practice as old as the confessions of an Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, who confessed to causing discontent and terrorism in Balochistan at the direct assignment of RAW.
The participation of a group such as MEMRI adds a threatening academic credibility to this campaign, which makes the misinformation much easier to swallow on the part of international observers who have little or no idea of what goes on the ground.
It is not a one-off thing but a well-orchestrated disinformation network that connects the Indian intelligence agencies, the rebels working on behalf of the BLA, and foreign research think tanks to run a psychological and political warfare inside the borders of Pakistan. This is as old as geopolitics itself: crippling a potential opponent with the inner contradictions of itself and transforming the formerly solvable socio-economic issues into unsolvable crises of existence. This time around, however, it is digital platforms, fake social media accounts, and various forms of what passes off as academic research projects to be doing this dirty work.
The name of this terrorist group that is banned in Pakistan, as well as in other countries across the world, is BLA, which has killed hundreds of innocent civilians and security workers. The fact that its ideological partners can now find their room on such websites as MEMRI is a clear indication that such think tanks are not just observers, but active subjects of a push to internationalize and legitimize the BLA terror program.
Moreover, the emergence of Mir Yar Baloch as the advisor to such projects, the intention is not to reconcile or solving Baloch grievances, but to exaggerate such grievances artificially by transforming them into a reason to why other countries as well as the world should intervene into Balochistan in some form of economic sanctions, and perhaps even than encouraging the Baloch separatist insurgency.
