An attack in the depths of Balochistan, one of the most depopulated areas of Pakistan, managed to kill at least 52 people this Friday and injure around seventy, with a global impact. To achieve this, the suicide bomber had to detonate his charge at the beginning of a procession for the birth of Muhammad, in Mastung.
According to some witnesses, the detonation occurred next to a police car, at the entrance to the Medina mosque, when hundreds of people were leaving it. The nature of the attack would in principle point to a Wahhabi or Salafist terrorist organization, which in its desire to observe the alleged Islam of early times, condemns innovations such as the celebration of the birth of its prophet. This profile is brought together in the country by the Pakistani Taliban Movement, which has denied its responsibility, and the ghostly Islamic State in Khorasan.
Although political violence is inherent to Balochistan, the nature of this attack, against a profession of Sunni faith - the Shiites celebrate Muhammad's birthday five days later - intrigues the authorities. However, five years ago, the leader of a Sunni Islamist party survived an attack in the same Mustang district, which was attributed to the Islamic State.
Although Mastung is barely 50 kilometers from Quetta, where the Pashto language dominates, it is a nationalist district, with an overwhelming Brahui majority (who speak Brahui and Baluchi) and a Baluchi minority.
It should be said that Beluchi secessionism has a long history of murders - also commissioned - but these are secular nationalist militants, without religious objectives. Punjabi police and officials are its most frequent victims, to which must be added, in recent years, Chinese interests, in a key province for the corridor promoted by Beijing, between Xinjian and the port of Gwadar, in the Arabian Sea.
During the US occupation of Afghanistan, Pakistan routinely accused the Indian consulates in that country of being behind any Baluchi attacks. In the Taliban's Afghanistan, this type of accusation is even more implausible, but the Pakistani authorities will undoubtedly resort to it.
Especially in the current context in which India finds itself pointing the finger from Canada for the murder of an extremist Sikh militant and India, in turn, counterattacks by accusing Ottawa of being "a haven for terrorists" and Pakistan - with more evidence - to be their training ground.
Pakistan, with serious solvency problems, will have to hold elections in January, three months later than planned. Until then, a provisional executive will govern the country, whose main mission is to organize elections with a view to impartiality. This particularity of Pakistan was also that of Bangladesh, until a few years ago.
The political provisional nature and the pre-campaign tensions - without it yet being known how former prime ministers Imran Jan and Nawaz Sharif are going to resolve their legal problems - portend more attempts at destabilization. Its ethnic seams, even more than its religious ones, are always one step away from breaking.
Today's victims, the Brahui, nomadic until recently, have delighted ethnologists and linguists, who have long speculated about their origin. It is not in vain that these dark-skinned people speak a Dravidian language related to those of southern India, thousands of kilometers away. However, its integration in Balochistan (where Iranian languages are spoken) is so old that no one dares to date it.
