Most of the international media is referring to Saturday’s attack on the Pearl Continental hotel in Gwadar as being committed by either “gunmen” or “militants” instead of the actual terrorists that the perpetrators are after the BBC reported that they chose their target in order to kill Chinese and other foreign investors, therefore exposing a common double standard whereby “politically convenient” terrorist attacks are simply reframed as “shootings” or “militancy” while “politically inconvenient” acts of resistance are smeared as “terrorism”.

Several terrorists tried storming into the Pearl Continental hotel in CPEC’s terminal port of Gwadar Saturday afternoon, but a large-scale tragedy was thankfully averted after the security services managed to evacuate most of the guests. The BBC reported that the “Balochistan Liberation Army” (BLA) claimed responsibility for the attack and quoted the terrorist organization as “saying it had targeted Chinese and other foreign investors”. This incident is a blatant act of terrorism just like the much more devastating ones that were carried out against several hotels and churches in Sri Lanka last month, but the international media is resorting to its tried-and-tested double standards after most of them described the perpetrators as “gunmen” or “militants” instead of the actual terrorists that they are.

This is because the terrorist attacks are “politically convenient” for the US and India, with these two allies collectively commanding impressive influence across the world’s media space, because it targeted Chinese civilians and infrastructure as part of the ongoing Hybrid War on CPEC. The evident purpose was to deter further investments and visits by foreign businessmen to this strategically significant port in the global pivot state of Pakistan, as well as to trigger an overreaction by the security services against local Baloch which could then be basis upon upon which a Xinjiang-like fake news campaign alleging “concentration camps” and “cultural cleansing” can be carried out prior to the possible imposition of sanctions for “humanitarian reasons”. Of course, this would also be executed in parallel with the Hybrid War on Hybrid War in Pakistan pretending that the country has no terrorist threats whatsoever and that all forms of opposition to the state — including taking up arms and targeting civilians — are “legitimate”, especially if they’re being led by minority Pashtuns or Baloch.

On the opposite side of the coin, “politically inconvenient” acts of resistance such as what the Kashmiris and Palestinians are doing against their Indian and “Israeli” occupiers (who not coincidentally have recently become military-strategic partners and are both allied with the US) are smeared as “terrorism” even if they only target soldiers and paramilitary units. Another double standard is that international media is usually pleading for the world’s leading economies to invest in underdeveloped “Global South” regions, yet these same information outlets are now lending “legitimacy” to the BLA’s terrorist crusade against China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) investments in Pakistani Balochistan because it serves the US’ grand strategic purposes. Having said that, even the most casual information consumer must sense that they’re being manipulated after the world condemned last month’s terrorist attacks on Sri Lankan hotels but is now silent about the latest one Pakistan’s PC Gwadar.