More unrest in SE Iran

There's been another curious incident of violence in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan. Bandits apparently from Afghanistan came over the border and killed a couple of dozen people. (See here for a map of the Iranian provinces.)

Gunmen posing as security forces killed 21 people on a highway in southeastern Iran near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, the national chief of police said Friday.

Iranian police called the assailants "rebels." But there are no well-known political opposition groups operating in southeastern Iran, a region known for gangs of drug traffickers who have frequently clashed with security forces and occasionally kidnapped people.

An account in Forbes further describes this region.

Sistan-Baluchistan, a mostly Sunni Muslim province in predominantly Shiite Iran, is notoriously lawless and is a key transit route for opium and other drugs from Afghanistan and Pakistan headed for Europe and the Gulf.

Among those attacked were some provincial government officials.

The southeastern province's deputy governor general for security, Mohsen Sadeghi, later raised the death toll to 22 and said that, 'according to the reports we got, one of the seven injured people is in a critical condition.'

A source in the interior ministry said: 'Hossein Ali Nouri, the governor of Zahedan, and his deputy have been critically wounded and both are in intensive care in hospital.'
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The officials were returning to Zahedan after attending a ceremony of war commanders in Zabol, the reports added.

There have been other incidents in or related to this region in the past.

February 2003 - A plane operated by the Revolutionary Guards crashed, killing 300. Senior Guards officers were said to be on board. The plane had departed from Zahedan, in this province.

June 2005 - Bombs exploded in Zahedan, the provincial capital.

December 2005 - Nine Iranian soldiers are kidnapped in this region. Seven of them were released in late January.

December 2005 - Three Turkish tourists were kidnapped in the region, and later released.

December 2005 - A motorcade of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's security guards was attacked in this province, just before Ahmadinejad arrived for a visit.

Iran has accused the US and Britain of aiding those behind some of these attacks, like the one this week, and Iran may very well be right. Just as it is certainly possible the US and/or Britain are aiding the Arab insurgents in southwestern Iran.

This is exactly the game Iran likes to play. Find a proxy, and let them be a thorn their enemy's side. The US and Britain certainly could be playing Iran's own game and using these groups as a way to cause problems for the Iranian regime. Through these groups, intelligence can be gathered as well.

This whole area is rife with lawlessness. On the Pakistani side of the border, the Pakistani Balichistan province is also a pit of violence.

An article from the Jamestown Foundation last month describes the situation. It is easy to see how the lawlessness bleeds over from Pakistan to Iran to Afghanistan to Pakistan, and so on.

On the other hand, the Afghan province of Helmand has a substantial Baluch population. Although there is no evidence that Afghan Baluchs are helping al-Qaeda or the Taliban, Baluch residents of Helmand have long supported the nationalist Baluch armed struggle against Islamabad. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, however, draw on the religious affiliation of Baluchs, who happen to be predominantly Sunni. What fires up this mutuality, however, is the alleged persecution of Sunni Baluchs by the Iranian government. Iranian Baluchs are spread across southern Khorasan and Sistan-Baluchistan provinces in southeastern Iran and have long nursed grievances against Iran's Shiite majority. Such grievances find ready resonance with their nationalist co-ethnics in Afghanistan's provinces of Helmand, Farah, Nimroz and Herat, as well as in Pakistani Baluchistan. To avenge the "persecution" of Iranian Sunni Baluchs, al-Qaeda and its allied group Jandallah are reported to have established a presence in southeastern Iran. Recently, Jandallah's fighters kidnapped nine Iranian soldiers from Saravan along the Iran-Pakistan border. Iranians asked Islamabad to intervene, but nothing happened. On January 29, Jandallah, on its own terms, released the soldiers after two months of captivity (Dawn, January 29). Lawlessness in southeastern Iran, on the border of southwestern Baluchistan, is so widespread that on December 15, 2005, a motorcade of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came under heavy fire on Zabul-Saravan Highway, in which one of his bodyguards was killed (Jomhouri Islami, December 17, 2005).

Although southwestern (Pakistani) Baluchistan is predominantly Baluch, it also, however, represents a demographic twist. In the 1970s-1980s, the Pakistani government settled hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees of Pashtun descent as a buffer between Iranian and Pakistani Baluchs. The major brunt of this resettlement was borne by the all-Baluch border town of Chaghi, which made its name as Pakistan's nuclear-test site in May 1998, turning its native Baluch population into a minority. Afghan Pashtuns of this restive border area provide much-needed cover to the fleeing operatives of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as to the gangs of gunrunners and drug traffickers, who saturate the place.

In addition, Pakistani Baluchistan has been gripped by an active Baluch insurgency before and after the fall of the Taliban, which Pakistan blames on Afghanistan and India. This insurgency is so fierce that on December 14, 2005, Baluch rebels fired scores of rockets at Musharraf while he was present in the heavily guarded Quetta Garrison. Earlier reports indicated that rockets were fired at Musharraf when he was addressing a public meeting in the troubled district of Kohlu in southwestern Baluchistan. Although Pakistani intelligence agencies set off rumors of al-Qaeda's presence in Kohlu, there is no evidence that Baluch nationalists have any link with al-Qaeda. The Baluch insurgency and Pakistan's restive western borders with Afghanistan are, however, absorbing almost one-third of Pakistan's military resources, which relieve some pressure from al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Do read all of that article.

This war against terrorism is a war, and Iran is the chief state supporter of terrorism. We may already be fighting against Iran, using these gangs and bandits and drug lords to prick at Iran, in anticipation for if and when large scale attacks on Iran may become necessary.

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Atlas Shrugs highlights Iranian efforts to use media and other means to influence opinion in Afghanistan against the US. I'd suggest again that perhaps the US is not just sitting and taking it.