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.

FROM WAZIRISTAN TO BALOCH REBEL

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.

ONE BROTHER IN ARMY, ANOTHER LINKED TO BLA

Born in August 1984, Gul comes from a prominent Mengal family in Nushki. The Jamestown profile, drawing on accounts in Pakistan’s Urdu media, traces the family’s ties to local politics and tribal leadership.

On his mother’s side, Gul is related to Lawang Khan Mengal, who fought the Pakistani state in the 1970s, and Gul Khan Naseer, a poet and politician who served as Balochistan’s education minister, according to The Balochistan Post.

Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency says Gul’s brother Sarab Khan Baloch is a serving army officer. Another brother, Meeran Baloch, was believed to have fought alongside the BLA, The Balochistan Post reported.

Gul also expressed his opposition to the Pakistani state through poetry. According to the Jamestown Foundation, he wrote two books of poetry and articles praising fellow fighters.

Within the BLA, he held command roles in Kharan and Kalat before taking charge of the Majeed Brigade and joining the council that ultimately made him chief.