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28-07-2025
JERUSALEM/ QUETTA: As Israel loudly beat the drums of war one day before its unprovoked surprise attack on Iran, a small but significant piece of news slipped by almost unnoticed; the announcement of a new research project on the website of a Washington, DC think tank. On June 12, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) announced the launch of the Balochistan Studies Project (BSP). Significantly, in addition to mentioning Balochistan’s abundance of natural resources “such as oil, gas, uranium, copper, coal, rare earth elements and the two deep seaports of Gwadar and Chabahar”, MEMRI’s statement justifies the project’s necessity by identifying the region as “the perfect outpost to counter and keep under control Iran, its nuclear ambitions, and its dangerous relations with Pakistan, which may provide Tehran with tactical nukes”.
MEMRI is well known for its selective translation of snippets of Arabic, Persian and Turkish-language media, screenshots from which often end up being shared as memes on social media platforms. Originally founded in 1998, the think tank has consistently peddled a pro-Israel agenda, with its founder, Colonel Yigal Carmon, having served in the Israeli Military Intelligence Corps for more than 20 years. Additionally, MEMRI has been involved “unofficially” in intelligence gathering for the Israeli state since at least 2012.
Given this context, MEMRI’s creation of the BSP can be seen as an indication of an Israeli attempt to co-opt the Baloch national struggle against both Iran and Pakistan for Israel’s geopolitical objectives. Given the strategic advantages that a successful co-optation of the Baloch cause would grant Israel, and the potential ramifications it would bear upon the resistance of stateless peoples within the region, including Palestinians as well as the Baloch, themselves, there is a need to examine the limitations of geopolitical thinking within national liberation movements.
MEMRI’s announcement of the BSP is riddled with logical inconsistencies and misinformation regarding the reality of exploitation and resistance in Balochistan. For example, centring the fact that the states of both Iran and Pakistan are currently fighting counterinsurgency campaigns in Balochistan, MEMRI’s website calls for “the international community” to “understand that Balochistan is a natural ally of the West”, ignoring the fact that Western companies such as Barrick Gold and BHP Billiton have played key roles in enabling colonial resource extraction and ecological destruction in the region.
Another example relates to the personnel involved in the project. One article on the BSP on MEMRI’s website welcomes a “renowned Baloch writer, scholar, and political scientist” called Mir Yar Baloch, whose social media account “has been defined as one of the most influential in the Subcontinent”, as a “special adviser”. In May of this year, Baloch made headlines for unilaterally declaring the independence of Balochistan in a series of posts on social media, where he also announced to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India had “the backing of 60 million Baloch patriots” after it launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan.
More than for his grand proclamations, Mir Yar Baloch is interesting for the amount of mystery that surrounds him, given his supposed status as an important and influential Baloch intellectual. Despite being profiled by a variety of news outlets, notably all Indian, none have deviated from regurgitating a biography for him as limited as that published in the MEMRI article. Significantly, however, more well-known Baloch activists have been quick to distance themselves from him. Niaz Baloch of the Baloch National Movement, for example, posted on social media that there exists no consensus for a declaration of independence among Baloch leaders. Crucially, he also listed four “fake accounts”, including that of Mir Yar Baloch that he stated “should be reported and unfollowed immediately”. (Int’l News Desk)
