ICRC suspends, resumes activities in Quetta owing to BLA threats

The Baloch Hal News

QUETTA: The International Committee of the Red Cross remained flustered throughout Friday by once announcing to cut back its activities in Balochistan and restrict its movement elsewhere in the country owing to threats issued by the Baloch Liberation Army but announced hours after the release of the news that it was not shutting its offices in Quetta.

Sources told the Baloch Hal that the underground Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) had threatened the organization via satellite phone to discontinue its operations from Balochistan which came as a source of constant concern for the organization. The organization took the decision to suspend its activities in Balochistan after a lot of in-house deliberations.

AFP quoted an ICRC spokesman who said: “We have curtailed the activities of our two offices (in provincial capital Quetta) after threats were received,”

“Foreign staffhave not been relocated, but asked to restrict travel and local staff have been asked the same,” he added.

Amanullah said ICRC operations in Baluchistan would continue on the ground with their partners, the local Red Crescent. While the AFP report said that the spokesman had declined to provide details about the threats but Baloch Hal learned from its own sources that the threats had been issued by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA).

The news of ICRC closure in Quetta spread like the proverbial fire of jungle. Hours after this, the regional head of ICRC Quetta office called a press conference and said the international group was not shutting its businesses in Quetta.

International organizations have become too concerned about their safety in Quetta since the kidnapping of John Solecki, an American head of the Quetta sub-office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Solecki had been abducted in Quetta in February 2009 by an organization calling itself the Baloch Liberation United Front (BLUF).