When Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold contracted a long-awaited deal in 2022 with the government of Pakistan to revive the Reko Diq copper and gold project in Pakistan’s conflict-ridden Balochistan province, it was hailed as a major success for a country long shunned by foreign investors over security concerns. Reko Diq, located in Chagai District, is among the world’s largest untapped copper and gold reserves. Chagai, home to roughly 270,000 people, is also where Pakistan conducted its nuclear tests in 1998.
Under the 2022 agreement between Barrick and the government of Pakistan, signed after Pakistan’s long legal battle with the Canadian mining firm Tethyan Copper Company (TCC), Barrick holds a 50 percent stake, while the remaining half is split among Pakistan’s federal government, state-owned enterprises, and the provincial government of Balochistan. Officials claim the project will generate thousands of jobs and bring development in a province where nearly 70 percent of residents live in poverty.
Balochistan has heard similar promises before. In the 1990s, the Chinese state-owned Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) began operating the Saindak copper-gold mine in Chagai. Between 2002 and 2012, MCC generated more than $2 billion in sales revenue from crude copper, reportedly without ever posting a loss. Yet, for all its profitability, Saindak did little to improve the lives of ordinary Baloch. Many fear that Reko Diq could repeat the same pattern: immense profits for foreign companies, Islamabad and Punjab, but minimal benefits for locals, who claim their resources are being extracted without their consent.
Global interest in Reko Diq is already converging. The Asian Development Bank has stepped in to fund urgent upgrades to Pakistan’s aging railway network, replacing China as financier after prolonged delays, so copper ore can be transported from Reko Diq to Karachi. According to a Financial Times report, Barrick Mining is seeking to raise up to $3.5 billion in financing from the United States and other international lenders to build the giant copper mine in Pakistan, after long-discussed funding from Saudi Arabia failed to materialize.
Barrick’s Chief Executive Mark Bristow told the Financial Times that the Canadian company was working on a “G-7-country financing package” for the project in Balochistan. This would involve the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the Development Finance Corporation, the Asian Development Bank, and lenders in Germany, Canada, and Japan. Pakistani authorities say this will transform Balochistan’s future.
But these promises meet a harsh reality on the ground: a worsening insurgency and continued political instability. The coalition of Baloch armed groups, the Baloch Raaji Aajoi Sangar (BRAS), specifically warned Barrick Gold to stay away from Reko Diq, calling mega-development projects like Reko Diq as exploitative.
In 2024, violent attacks by Baloch insurgents rose by 119 percent rise from the previous year, according to Islamabad-based think tank Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS). In February 2025 alone, terrorism-related deaths jumped by 73 percent, according to PIPS, with nearly two-thirds of fatalities occurring in Balochistan.
For Barrick, the question is no longer whether Reko Diq can generate billions in revenue, but whether a global mining giant can operate safely in a province on the brink of a deadlier insurgency.
Baloch Insurgency Enters a New Phase
The U.S. Department of State designated the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and its suicide unit, the Majeed Brigade, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) in August, citing continued attacks, including suicide bombings by the BLA near the airport in Karachi and the Gwadar Port Authority Complex where China is investing. While the designation is a diplomatic victory for Islamabad, its practical impact on the ground is likely to be symbolic.
The BLA does not rely on U.S. or Western financial channels; its funding is rooted in illicit networks and regional dynamics beyond the reach of sanctions. Its recruitment base is expanding, not shrinking, and it has no political presence in the West. In recent years, the group has drawn in educated youth and women to carry out suicide bombings.
The group has also demonstrated its ability to stage high-profile and high-impact attacks. In March, militants hijacked the Jaffar Express train in a dramatic 28-hour siege, with 400 passengers trapped in Balochistan’s rugged terrain. This incident occurred less than a year after the BLA’s coordinated “Operation Herof” in August 2024, when it claimed responsibility for attacks across 11 districts in a single night. BLA commander Bashir Zaib, a student-turned-guerrilla, in a new video message released on August 26, warned of Herof II and declared that it would mark the beginning of “Baloch sovereignty.”
For Barrick Gold, appeasing the Baloch in a disillusioned province remains a challenge. Insurgents view high-profile economic projects like Reko Diq as legitimate targets, branding them as economic exploitation.
Part of the insurgents’ appeal lies in a widespread perception of plunder and looting of Baloch resources without any financial benefits to locals. A decade after the launch of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), ordinary Baloch have seen little benefit. Roads, ports, and energy projects may dot the landscape, but unemployment, poverty, and alienation remain a reality.
The story is no different with Saindak. And with Reko Diq, the economic benefits for the population remain uncertain. While the company has pledged billions in investment and insists it will benefit locals, the community sees a familiar pattern: minerals and wealth extracted, with little or nothing reinvested in the marginalized population living on top of those resources.
Local populations have little buy-in for mega-projects because they are completely disconnected from Islamabad, where decisions are made. As one Baloch analyst put it, the “weak bridge” between the province and Islamabad collapsed in 2018 when elections were widely rigged to install an artificial leadership in the provincial assembly. In 2024, the cycle repeated. With no credible local representation and governance dominated by security agencies and handpicked politicians, the sense of disenfranchisement has only deepened.
The danger for Barrick is that its billion-dollar project will be seen not as a development opportunity by locals, but as yet another symbol of exploitation.
Regional Winds Fanning the Flames
The root cause of Balochistan’s suffering is exclusion and marginalization, which has persisted for 77 years. Both insurgencies and peaceful rights movements are a result of political and economic neglect. But today, the Baloch insurgency is not only fueled by local grievances. It is tied to shifting regional geopolitical trends.
The Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in 2021 allowed Baloch rebels to access modern American weaponry left behind in Afghanistan. In January 2024, when Pakistan and Iran exchanged missile strikes, Tehran accused Islamabad of harboring anti-Iran Sunni Baloch militants of Jaish ul-Adl (Army of Justice). At the same time, whispers of Iranian ties to Baloch insurgents seeking independence from Pakistan grew louder, which reflects a broader regional proxy contest.
Pakistan’s tense relations with India, along with the resurgence of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), further provide moral support to the Baloch insurgency, which has allowed Baloch groups to find space and sympathy among Islamabad’s enemies.
For Baloch insurgents, deterring foreign investors, whether Chinese, Canadian, or Saudi, is a national responsibility, and locals support it as they are excluded from all these projects with little to no economic benefits.
For Barrick Gold, security threats are likely to escalate if the company does not take the local population on board for everything it signs with Islamabad or if artificial leadership is installed in Balochistan. What starts as harassment through press statements or social media posts by Baloch insurgents could turn into kidnappings, attacks on infrastructure, assaults on trucks carrying minerals, or direct attacks on the mining sites in the future.
Crackdowns Without Solutions
Pakistan’s attempt to counter the Baloch insurgency has been predictable: more force, more crackdowns, more arrests, more enforced disappearances, and more internet blackouts. After the train hijacking in March 2025, the government launched an intensive crackdown on peaceful rights activists, shut down internet services for much of August, and ramped up military deployments across the province.
But as the PIPS February 2025 report shows, security-first policies are not containing the insurgency.
Barrick Gold must bear this in mind: the more the Pakistani state militarizes Balochistan to protect economic projects like Reko Diq, the more insurgents gain local legitimacy as defenders against exploitation and militarization. The cycle risks turning the company into both a symbol of exploitation and a casualty of Islamabad’s coercive governance model.
The Limits of U.S. Designations
Washington’s decision to blacklist the BLA and its Majeed Brigade may appear to bolster Barrick’s position and pave the way for other international investors. After all, foreign investors prefer to see alignment between host states and global powers in confronting security threats.
However, history suggests such designations are more symbolic than substantive. The United States once offered multimillion-dollar bounties for senior leaders of the Haqqani Network in neighboring Afghanistan and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, only to later quietly lift them when geopolitical priorities shifted.
For Barrick, the implication is clear: support from Washington is unlikely to materialize in a way that ensures security. The company’s security will depend not on sanctions lists but on the ground realities of a province where mistrust is entrenched and armed groups receive localized support.
The momentum of the insurgency suggests that the window for political reconciliation is narrowing. Each disputed election, internet blackout, legal action against activists, or enforced disappearance further erodes the legitimacy of political institutions. If Islamabad continues to treat Balochistan primarily through a security lens, it will create more trouble for foreign investors.
For Barrick Gold, this means that security contracts and military escorts can only go so far in ensuring safety. Unless the company can genuinely convince the local population that its presence improves the lives of Baloch through transparent revenue sharing, local hiring, infrastructure development, and environmental safeguards, it risks being associated with the very state policies that insurgents are fighting against.
Gold in the Shadow of Insurgency
Barrick Gold entered Balochistan without the consent of locals and their representatives, with dreams of a billion-dollar mining renaissance. But the company’s greatest challenge will not be geological, financial, or technical. It will be a security and political challenge, operating in a province where alienation has curdled into rebellion, where governance is hollow, and where insurgents are more organized than at any point in the past two decades.
The Saindak mine in Chagai, despite generating billions in revenue, left locals feeling excluded. CPEC’s projects, although huge on paper, failed to reduce poverty. Now, Saudi or ADB-backed stakes in Reko Diq risk being painted with the same brush. Unless these projects are built with the consent, will, and opportunities of the local population, they stand little chance of long-term success.
For now, the gold buried under Balochistan’s mountains remains as elusive as peace in the province itself.