Women suicide bombers, new weapons give boost to insurgents in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Wearing military fatigues with rifles slung over their shoulders, Yasma Baloch and her husband Waseem smile into the camera for a picture released by Pakistani insurgents after their final mission: detonating suicide bombs.

"They shared a marriage before they shared a final stand," the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) said in a statement accompanying the heavily-edited photograph sent to journalists and distributed on social media.

It was among half-a-dozen pictures and biographies that Reuters was unable to immediately verify, but which analysts see as part of a propaganda effort by insurgents in the resource-rich southwestern province to showcase their movement's appeal.

Insurgent attacks in Pakistan's largest yet poorest province hit a record last year, fanning risks to huge investments planned in the region, including Chinese and U.S. interests.

The growing numbers of women help to boost recruitment, said junior interior minister Talal Chaudhry, in the insurgents' decades-long battle for greater autonomy and a bigger share of regional resources and critical minerals.
"It gives them popularity and reach, and it impresses on their community that the fight has entered their homes," Chaudhry told Reuters.

Pakistan has taken up the issue of insurgent recruitment online with numerous social media platforms, he added.
A spokesperson for the BLA did not respond to a request for comment.

Three suicide bombers were among six women who participated in the group's largest wave of attacks in January that killed 58 and nearly brought the province to a standstill, said Hamza Shafaat, a top government official.

Before those attacks, records show a total of five women BLA suicide bombers, including the first such attack in 2022, opens new tab, while three more would-be bombers were captured in counter-terrorism operations in the last some months.

While authorities know of only a small number of women who have joined the ranks of the BLA, analysts say the recruitments point to the group's widening appeal among ethnic Baloch residents.

"The ... insurgency's broader appeal ... has now gone beyond male-dominated tribal and feudal chiefs to include a wider cross-section of society," said Pearl Pandya, a senior South Asia analyst at conflict monitor ACLED.

The participation of women amplifies a movement that Pakistan's military says has boosted its firepower with access to a massive cache of U.S. weapons left behind in Afghanistan after Washington pulled out of the neighbouring country in 2021.

"In South Asia today, the BLA is the most organised and lethal insurgent group," said Abdul Basit, a researcher in insurgencies and militancy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

He cited the group's use of drones to identify troop deployments and vulnerabilities, adding that it used satellite communication during a February 2025 hijack of a train with more than 400 aboard.