The ISPR says terrorists have access to a massive cache of US weapons left in Afghanistan
Army soldiers gather at the site after militant attacks in Quetta on January 31. Photo: Reuters
Wearing military fatigues with rifles slung over their shoulders, Yasma Baloch and her husband Waseem smile into the camera for a photo released by Pakistani insurgents after their latest mission: detonating suicide bombs.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) shared the heavily edited photograph sent to journalists and distributed it on social media.
It was among half a dozen pictures and biographies there Reuters was unable to immediately verify, but which analysts see as part of a propaganda effort by terrorists in the resource-rich southwestern province to showcase their movement’s appeal.
Terrorist attacks in Balochistan hit a record high last year, creating risks for huge investments planned in the region, including Chinese and American interests.
Broader recruitment
The growing number of women is helping to boost recruitment, Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry said. “It gives them popularity and reach, and it impresses their community that the fight has come into their homes,” Chaudhry said Reuters. Pakistan has taken up the issue of recruitment of terrorists online with several social media platforms, he added.
Three suicide bombers were among six women who took part in the group’s biggest wave of attacks in January that killed 58 and nearly brought the province to a standstill, said Hamza Shafaat, a top government official.
Prior to these attacks, records show a total of five female BLA suicide bombers, including the first such attack in 2022, while three more would-be bombers were caught in counter-terrorism operations in the past few months.
“The wider appeal of the insurgency … has now gone beyond male-dominated tribal and feudal chiefs to include a wider cross-section of society,” said Pearl Pandya, senior South Asia analyst at conflict monitor ACLED.
Read: 37 terrorists killed, 10 security personnel martyred as attack foiled in Balochistan
Arms
The women’s participation bolsters a move Pakistan’s military says has boosted its firepower with access to a massive cache of US weapons left behind in Afghanistan after Washington pulled out of the neighboring country in 2021.
Abdul Basit, a researcher on insurgency and militancy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, cited the group’s use of drones to identify troop deployments and vulnerabilities, adding that it used satellite communications during a February 2025 hijacking of a train with more than 400 on board.
Pakistan recovered 272 US-made rifles and 33 night-vision devices last June, the military says, apart from the weapons seized in recent Balochistan attacks.
The armed forces “continue to see these weapons in the hands of the terrorists operating inside Pakistan,” said military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry. Reuters before the January attack.
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
In response to a request for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, “As President Trump has said, Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was the most embarrassing day in our country’s history, tragically resulting in the deaths of 13 American service members and the loss of equipment to the Taliban.”
Read more: The specter of terror in Balochistan
She added: “We do not discuss private conversations with foreign governments.”
In more than a dozen coordinated attacks in January, the terrorists stormed hospitals, government buildings and markets, set off bombs and fired into crowds, killing 58 civilians and security officials.
Dangerous development in tactics
Afterwards, they seized from the 216 terrorists that security forces killed in nearly a week of fighting, items ranging from grenade launchers to more than a dozen M16 and M4 rifles.
Reuters was unable to verify whether the sophisticated weapons used in the BLA attacks were made in the United States or came from elsewhere.
Among the $7 billion worth of equipment left in Afghanistan, the US Defense Department said Afghan forces had received more than 300,000 of a total of 427,300 weapons. That was in addition to more than 42,000 items such as night vision goggles and surveillance equipment, it said.
And the terrorists hope that propaganda about female recruits will increase their impact.
Read also: Security forces end operations after terror attacks in Balochistan
“They use women strategically in high-profile attacks for visibility,” Basit added.
The women come from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, some of whom have university degrees, Pakistan’s counter-terrorism department said in a December report seen by Reuters.
“The shift represents a dangerous evolution in terrorist tactics,” it said of women’s growing participation.
The change was driven by psychological manipulation, online radicalization and strategic exploitation of vulnerable individuals, it added. “The foot soldiers and leaders of the insurgency now both come from the middle class,” said Pandya, the ACLED analyst.
