US designates anti-China militants in Pakistan as terrorist group

ISLAMABAD — The U.S. government has designated an anti-China militant group in Pakistan as a terrorist organization in a rare move that analysts say is likely to support Beijing and Islamabad’s diplomatic efforts in protecting Belt and Road Initiative-related projects in the South Asian country.

The U.S. State Department last week announced it would designate the Majeed Brigade as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The militant group is the suicide bombing faction of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) — a separatist group based in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.

The Majeed Brigade has been behind several deadly attacks on Chinese nationals, including ones targeting the Chinese Consulate in Karachi in 2018, a van carrying Chinese teachers in Karachi in 2022, and engineers working on projects in Gwadar and Karachi in 2021 and 2024, respectively.

At least 20 Chinese nationals have been killed and 34 injured across more than a dozen attacks since 2021, according to Pakistan’s National Counter Terrorism Authority.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement, welcomed the U.S. designation, saying, “[Pakistan’s] sacrifices have secured critical counterterrorism successes, not only for the country, but for regional stability and global security.”

The broader BLA was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2019. Since then, China has been lobbying for the terror designation of the Majeed Brigade.

Khuram Iqbal, an Islamabad-based counterterrorism expert, believes that the interests of China and the U.S. — both vying to strengthen their global clout — converge in the arena of global terrorism. “[The] designation of Majeed Brigade reflects that the [counterterrorism] cooperation between both the countries continues to grow,” he told Nikkei Asia.

Volunteers carry the casket of a Chinese national killed in a suicide bombing, at a hospital in in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on March 26, 2024.   © AP

On condition of anonymity and without going into specifics, a Pakistani security official told Nikkei that the recent diplomatic thaw between Islamabad and Washington and the June meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir paved the way for the terror designation of the Majeed Brigade.

Experts echo the same assertion.

“This designation was largely a reward by the Trump administration in response to Pakistan nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, publicly praising him for de-escalating tensions between India and Pakistan in May and for Pakistan-U.S. agreements on trade, mining and oil in Balochistan,” Kiyya Baloch, an independent security analyst based in Pakistan, told Nikkei.

Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador and currently a scholar at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, agrees. “For the Trump administration, it is one of several steps that it hopes to use to consolidate ties with Pakistan,” he said.

However, experts also point out that the terror designation will not practically affect the militant operations by the Majeed Brigade.

Baloch said that the U.S. move primarily aims to disrupt funding and operations by freezing assets, imposing financial restrictions and imposing travel bans on members. “These measures have little impact on the [Majeed Brigade], whose funds flow through illicit channels,” he said.

With the U.S. terrorist designation of the Majeed Brigade, Islamabad and Beijing are now lobbying to have the group listed by the UN Security Council’s 1267 Sanctions Committee. The committee maintains a global sanctions list aimed at countering terrorism, and all UN member states are required to enforce these measures within their own jurisdictions.

The Pakistani security official acknowledged the move, saying, “We are working with China to sanction the terror group Majeed Brigade at the UN.”

Experts said that the U.S. designation adds legitimacy to Pakistan and China’s narrative about the Majeed Brigade in the international diplomatic arena.

Haqqani, who is also a scholar at Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi, said that China has long wanted the Majeed Brigade declared as an FTO under the UN framework in order to protect Chinese-built projects and Chinese personnel in Pakistan, many of which are involved in Belt and Road projects.

“An American designation will make it easier to have the UN and other entities like FATF to designate this group as a terrorist organization,” Haqqani said, referring to the global anti-money laundering watchdog the Financial Action Task Force framework.

Baloch agrees. “While the UN process is multilateral and requires consensus, having the United States, a key Security Council member, already recognize these groups as terrorist actors, adds greater weight to China’s push,” he said.

The article appeared in asia.nikkei