As Andrew Korybko explains, there’s some 5D chess going on here. From Korybko at korybko.substack.com:
Why’d The US Raise The Terrorist Designation For A Group Of Anti-Chinese Militants In Pakistan?
Aug 17, 2025
One would think that the US would consider such a group to be an ally in its New Cold War with China.
The US’ systemic rivalry with China over the contours of the emerging world order has made many assume that it backs all opponents of the People’s Republic, from neighboring states with whom Beijing has territorial disputes to terrorist groups, yet a recent move just shattered this perception. The State Department abruptly raised the “Balochistan Liberation Army’s” (BLA) 2019 “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” designation to a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” amidst the US-Pakistani rapprochement.
The BLA is veritably a terrorist group whose last well-known attack was its deadly hijacking of the Jaffar Express earlier this spring, which followed an upsurge of other terrorist attacks over the past three years, including against projects connected to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). CPEC is the flagship project of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) and was envisaged as giving it direct access to the Indian Ocean for preemptively mitigating the effects of any future US blockade of the Malacca Strait.
This series of megaprojects has stalled in recent years for a variety of reasons ranging from corruption to Pakistan’s political dysfunction since April 2022’s post-modern coup and especially the BLA’s spree of terrorist attacks afterwards which exploited the state’s new focus on crushing the opposition. Given the outsized role that the BLA has played in subverting CPEC, which the US hitherto turned a blind eye to for reasons of strategic convenience despite its existing terrorist designation, it should be a de facto US ally.
One former member of the list is now the leader of Syria.
NO one cries about Pakistan/India having nukes.
Bomb bomb Iran?