Ex-Pakistan Army captain Rehman Gul takes charge of Baloch Liberation Army

Resumen detallado

Former Pakistan Army captain Rehman Gul's elevation comes amid continuing fighting and rising violence-related deaths in Balochistan.

Rehman Gul once fought the Pakistani Taliban as a Pakistan Army captain in Waziristan. Sixteen years after leaving the army, he is leading an insurgency against the state he served.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) named Gul, who goes by the nom de guerre Mureed, its new commander-in-chief on Saturday. He previously led the Majeed Brigade, the separatist group’s suicide bombing wing.

BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch said the group’s senior command council elected Gul unanimously after consulting its leaders and commanders. Gul succeeds Bashir Zeb, whose departure the BLA announced on November 3.

Gul takes over as fighting continues in Balochistan. On Friday, Pakistan’s military said it had killed 31 militants in operations across the province since November 3.

As per a Dawn report, Balochistan accounted for nearly 59 per cent of Pakistan’s violence-related deaths in the third quarter of 2026.

Gul joined the Pakistan Army in 2002 and served for about eight years in the Frontier Force Regiment, according to a 2025 profile by the US-based think tank Jamestown Foundation.

He was part of the Pakistan Military Academy’s 109th Long Course. Pakistan’s Chief of Defence Forces, General Asim Munir, also served in the regiment in a different battalion.

Gul took part in operations against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in North and South Waziristan. His last posting before leaving the army in 2010 was along the Line of Control in the Kotli area of Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Gul joined the BLA that year, having possibly been radicalised during his army service by what he saw as the repression of fellow Baloch, according to the US think tank's profile.

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