China is developing Gwadar Port in Balochistan as a key link in its Belt and Road Initiative. The China Pakistan Economic Corridor, that begins at Khunjerab Pass in Gilgit-Baltistan ends at Gwadar. It is envisioned as China’s superhighway to the oilfields of the middle-east.
Hyrbyair Marri, who is said to lead the BLA, is the son of Khair Baksh Marri, the late head of the Marri, the largest Baloch tribe, and seen by the Pakistan security establishment as part of an axis of anti-Pakistan tribal chieftains, along with Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and Sardar Ataullah Mengal. Marri, who died in 2014, was a Baloch nationalist, and spent years in exile in Afghanistan.
Militant Baloch secessionism is low-intensity guerrilla warfare that has never gained critical mass except for a brief period in the 1970s, primarily because Balochistan is a thinly populated province. Some seccessionists speak of Greater Balochistan, which also includes Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province.
PICSS says in its brief that BLA is funded by Afghanistan and India, as well as by wealthy Baloch businessmen living abroad, and that Hyrbyair Marri “enjoys the patronage of anti-Pakistan forces”.