On 24 August 2026, four labourers working on an under-construction road in Saranan, Pishin, were killed by Baloch Liberation Army terrorists. The victims were ordinary workers who had come to earn an honest livelihood and contribute their labour to a project intended to improve connectivity and development. They were neither combatants nor political figures.Yet they were deliberately targeted. Their killing exposes a fundamental contradiction in the BLA’s claim of fighting for Balochistan: those who contribute to the province’s development continue to become targets of the violence carried out in its name.
The Saranan attack is part of a wider pattern. For years, workers and other civilians have been attacked while performing the ordinary tasks that keep communities functioning. In April 2015, around 20 construction workers were killed when terrorists attacked a labour camp in Gogdan near Turbat. In April 2017, four Sindhi labourers working on a road project in Kharan were shot dead, followed a month later by the killing of ten construction workers from Sindh near Gwadar. Their purpose was simply to work and earn a livelihood.
The violence has repeatedly extended beyond construction workers. In April 2024, nine passengers from Punjab were abducted after armed terrorists stopped their bus, checked their identity cards and later executed them. The following month, seven Punjabi barbershop workers were killed in Surbandar, Gwadar. In August 2024, 23 people, primarily labourers from Punjab, were killed in Musakhail after being removed from vehicles. Such incidents demonstrate that terrorism does not discriminate according to a person’s contribution to society; it creates victims among those simply trying to live and work.
The pattern has continued in 2026. Five workers from Punjab were killed in Mashkail in July, while other civilians and workers have been targeted in different parts of the province. The killing of Bibi Hanifa and her 17-year-old daughter Hafsa in Noshki further illustrates how violence reaches beyond those directly involved in any conflict. Now, four more workers have lost their lives in Saranan.
Taken together, these incidents reveal something larger than a series of individual attacks. The recurring targets are people who form the human infrastructure of society: labourers building roads, drivers connecting towns and markets, teachers educating children, doctors and nurses serving patients, civil servants running institutions and police personnel protecting communities. Their work may appear routine, but it is precisely this daily effort that allows a society to function and develop.
This is why terrorism’s consequences extend far beyond the immediate loss of life. When a labourer is killed, a development project is disrupted and other workers are left fearful. When teachers or healthcare professionals are threatened, qualified people may hesitate to serve in remote areas. When police personnel are attacked, the institutions responsible for maintaining public safety come under additional pressure. Terrorism therefore seeks not only to take lives but also to weaken the social and institutional foundations required for long-term progress.
The contradiction is difficult to ignore. Killing a labourer does not create employment. Attacking a road project does not improve connectivity. Threatening teachers cannot strengthen education, and targeting healthcare workers cannot improve public health. Destroying institutions cannot empower the communities that depend on them. Violence may generate fear, but fear cannot build schools, hospitals, roads, businesses or functioning public institutions.
Balochistan’s development ultimately depends on people being able to work without becoming targets. The province needs engineers and labourers to build infrastructure, teachers to educate its children, doctors and nurses to provide healthcare, professionals to operate public institutions and security personnel to protect communities. Their contribution is not peripheral to Balochistan’s future; it is central to it.
There is also a broader principle that must remain clear: human rights cannot have an ethnic filter. The murder of an innocent civilian deserves condemnation whether the victim is Baloch, Pashtun, Punjabi or Sindhi. A labourer’s life does not become less valuable because he comes from another province, nor can the killing of civilians be justified by invoking a political cause. Any movement claiming to represent a people while repeatedly killing ordinary members of society exposes the gap between its rhetoric and its actions.
The four workers killed in Saranan therefore represent a much larger reality. Across Balochistan, ordinary people continue to build roads, teach children, provide healthcare, administer justice, run public institutions and protect communities despite insecurity and hardship. Their protection is essential not only for their own lives but for the province’s future.
Balochistan’s future will be shaped by those who contribute to its stability and development, not by those who make ordinary citizens pay the price for their violence. The workers killed in Saranan were building a road; the terrorists who killed them were only deepening the insecurity that holds the province back.
