Claim: The Balochistan Liberation Army exploits women and forces them to carry out terrorist activities, according to the Wilson Center’s report.
Fact: The Wilson Center has not published such a report. The accompanying image of “The Women of Balochistan’s Shadow War” actually shows an article published by an independent news platform More to Her Story, which is not associated with The Wilson Center. The report itself also appears biased.
On 24 January, ARY News published a news clip (archive) about a report purportedly released by Washington-based think tank the Wilson Center. This video was also shared widely across social media. One X user Dukhtar-e-Balochistan [translation: daughter of Balochistan], posted the clip with a caption that says this report claims the proscribed group BLA uses various despicable hiring practices, including sexual psychological exploitation, to lure Baloch women into conducting terrorist activities.
The user shared a similar claim here (archive). The second image in the post purportedly shows the Wilson Center’s report, titled “The Women of Balochistan’s Shadow War” which appears under the think tank’s logo.
While it is true that there have been at least three reported cases of BLA female suicide bombers carrying out terrorist attacks, the nature and extent of exploitation remain a mystery.
Soch Fact Check has previously debunked claims by user “Dukhtar-e-Balochistan” here and here.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check first noted a logo of the Wilson Center in the second image from the second post shared by the user. The web interface appears above the article by More to Her Story. However, no such logo appears in the article published independently by MTHS (archive).
More To Her Story is a publication focusing on women, founded by Sarah Little, a British journalist.
We then searched Wilson Center’s website and found no report published by this think tank.
Suspecting that the logo of the Wilson Center was edited into the image, we analysed it through Image Verification Assistant, a forensic tool for detecting manipulations in pictures. Two results, from OMGFuser and TruFor, combine various forensic filters and provide an overall probability for manipulated images.
OMGFuser’s total probability for this image is 48%, whereas TruFor returned a 73% probability, which shows the image was likely manipulated to make it look like the Wilson Center published this report.
While MTHS collaborated with the Wilson Center’s Middle East Women’s Initiative (MEWI) in 2024, this article is not a report released by the Wilson Center. According to Michael Kugelman, the Director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, “The piece was published by More to Her Story. In the past, the Wilson Center worked with MTHS on some pieces on the Middle East and North Africa. But we had no role in this article,” he wrote on X (archive).
He further added that the claim saying the Wilson Center published this report is fake: “Multiple Pakistani media outlets have reported on a recent article about women being recruited to the Balochistan Liberation Army, and the article is being attributed to the Wilson Center. This is false. The Wilson Center had no involvement in the article.”
Finally, the report relies heavily on statements from military and government officials, providing a one-sided and understated version of the complex insurgency that has gripped Balochistan since the 1950s. Soch Fact Check, therefore, rates the claim as false.
Virality
This X post was viewed 11,800 times, and the second similar post from the same user was shared here.
Mainstream Pakistani media also falsely linked the report to the Wilson Center. Samaa TV posted a video report based on this false claim here (archive)
ARY News published a report and posted a video report here (archive). A Facebook version appeared here (archive).
Radio Pakistan’s Instagram account shared the claim here (archive) and published a report here.
24 News published it here. Pakaffairs published it here.
The Nation published an article about this false claim here.
Aaj News’ report based on this false image of Wilson Center’s report appeared here (archive).
Another publication carried this claim in their reports here.
A post linking Wilson Center to this report also appeared on Facebook here, here, and here.
Conclusion: Wilson Center did not publish a report about the BLA exploiting Baloch women.
Background image in cover photo: Al Jazeera
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