Oct 18 terror strike in Iran: Whodunit?

21 October, 2009 12:08:00 editor

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After the strike: a man being brought to the hospital at Pishin

The twin suicide bombings at Pishin in the South-eastern Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan on Oct 18 are one of the largest attacks against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. It left 42 dead, five of them commanders of the elite force. The area is home to ethnic Baluchis. It borders Balochistan province of Pakistan.

The intensity of the blasts shows that there was much careful planning; the militants, who ever they be, coordinated their moves perfectly.

Initial suspect for the gruesome act is Jundallah, the Baluchi insurgent group led by Abdolmalek Rigi. It is a Baluchistan based Sunni outfit. It has been targeting the Shia Iranians.

Expectedly, Iranian officials have given an earful to the Pak envoy in Tehran even as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked Pakistan ‘to set a time table’ to deal with terrorists. On its part, Pakistan has denied any involvement.

President Asif Ali Zardari has held Jundallah, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) responsible for the attacks. The three groups want to undermine Pak-Iran ties, he told the Iranian leader, who had telephoned him.

Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, however, sees the imprint of the US and Britain on Pishin attack. ‘We consider the recent terrorist acts the outcome of the U.S. measures,’ he said but both Washington and London have denied their involvement.

It is not for the first time that Iran is pointing an accusing finger at the Americans and the British. In the past also, the Iranian officials regularly held the United States guilty of financing and arming Jundallah. According to them, CIA created Jundallah with the avowed objective of ‘regime change in Iran’.

Notwithstanding, these charges and the denials, who could have engineered the Oct 18 attacks and for what purpose?

Significantly, the attacks on Iranian targets came just when Pakistan army mounted ‘Operation Rah-i-Nijat’ in Waziristan. It can be a mere coincidence. It may not be also.

PAKISTAN DENIAL

Pakistan denies the existence of Abdolmalek Rigi and his Jundallah on its soil. At the same time it charges that TTP, LeJ and Jundallah are working together to a plan. This charge may appear outlandish at the outset but undeniably the three outfits have close links and draw their cadres from the same stock.

Each one of them do a little bit of freelancing and outsourcing, like for instance, TTP turned to LeJ and JeM (Jaish-e-Muhammad) for its Oct 10 attack on Pakistan Army’s GHQ in Rawalpindi. How they forged bonds is unclear. It could be a result of common handlers or common point’s men in the Pakistan establishment.
Taliban commander Nek Mohammad had brought Rigi into prominence. And he himself shot into lime light with his ‘deals’ with the Pakistani army. Like many of his ilk, Tek is remembered today as one of the ‘government’ militants. Such commanders often run the risk of being 'eliminated’ as happened to Baitullah Meshud, the TTP chief in August.

Rigi has been mounting attacks on Sistan-Baluchistan with unfailing regularity since 2003. This year, on May 28, his group carried out a suicide bombing inside the Amirul Momenin Mosque in Zahedan. Three Pakistanis had confessed to their involvement in the attack and were hanged in public two days later (May 30). Quetta witnessed protest demonstrations in return.

Reports in the media, which Teheran views as its adversary, said Iranian government had alerted Pakistan to the possibility of an attack a few days back, and asked for a crackdown as a preventive step.

Ahmadinejad did not mince his words when he spoke to Zardari. ‘Oct 18 attack could have been averted had you acted in time on our specific intelligence’, he reportedly told his Pak counterpart.

He also told a local TV: ‘We have heard that certain officials in Pakistan cooperate with the main agents of these terrorist attacks in eastern parts of the country. It is our right to ask (for the extradition) of criminals’.

There can be no more harsher indictment than this. Put differently, Pakistan has no alibi to cover its tracks.

Pakistan foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit said ‘Pakistan is not involved in terrorist activities... We are striving to eradicate this menace’. But his denial is neither here nor there. Only recently, Jundallah leader gave an interview from his Baluchistan hide out about his broad plans to bleed Iran.

US-UK DENIAL

Jundallah, Taliban and al Qaeda are uncomfortable with the regime in Iran and its ‘’fraternal’ ties with a section of Afghan leadership. Common factor binding them is hatred towards Shia Muslims. A manifestation of this hatred was the massacre of nine Iranian diplomats at Mazar-i-Sharif in September 1998. (Mazar –i-Sharif literally means Tomb of The Chosen One. It is home to the great Blue Mosque, Tomb of Hazrat Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam).

This October attack at Pishin took place when the Islamic Revolutionary Guards were on mission to bridge the Shia-Sunni divide.

For the past four years, the CIA has been sending ‘covert missions’ to Iran with the help of ‘exiles’. The hit and run missions are mounted from Azerbaijan and Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Going by the results, these attacks don’t appear to have achieved much beyond needling Iran.

It is possible that this phase of continued ‘unease’ has prompted the Americans to go a little bit more daring and made them nudge Jundallah. The Pakistanis could not be unaware of the mission. In fact, it is possible that they were active players in the operation as a part of trade off with the CIA.

Washington has perfected the art of what it sees as arm-twisting Islamabad to meet foreign policy goals in South Asia. The outcry against Quetta Shura falls into this known pattern. From the White House to the State Department and from the NATO commanders to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton every one of them has publicly voiced concern over the Quetta Shura – a grand council of senior Taliban leaders led by Mullah Omar.

It is not that the Americans were unaware of the presence of Shura thus far. They knew it but chose not to acknowledge it publicly.

Baluchistan is also the base for CIA’s drones which regularly raid the Pakistani Taliban hideouts in the tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan. Pakistan government knows this. So does its army led by Gen Kayani. Yet, both the Zardari government and Kayani’s army are in a state of denial over the CIA drone base.

The US and Pakistani government have been saying that they want to talk to the ‘good’ Taliban. Such dialogue is the first step towards establishing peace in the war ravaged Afghanistan with or without President Hamid Karzai or his challenger Abdullah Abdullah or both.

Jundallah is a member of the extended Taliban family. He has been serving a ‘good’ cause.

The observations of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Commander Major General Mohammad-Ali Jafari lend credibility to the theory that Pak-US trade off resulted in Jundullah’s latest adventure The Iranian security officials had presented documents indicating Jundullah has direct ties with U.S., British, and “unfortunately” Pakistani intelligence organizations, he said after the Oct 18 attack.

Jafari has said that the U.S. and British intelligence apparatus were behind the scenes and warned ‘there will have to be retaliatory measures to punish them’.

One question still remains unanswered. It is about the timing.

Why now?

Why Pakistan should allow itself to be an adversity to Iran?

The answer to these twin questions lies in Pakistan’s security philosophy and its resolve to exploit every situation to its advantage.

In the instant case, it needs some breathing space in Waziristan. To preserve, to reform and to relocate an edifice that has served the Jihadi interests and the interests of modern day strategists.

That means some easing off American pressure which is assured only if Islamabad goes along with Washington’s plans to put more pressure on Teheran on the eve of another round of nuclear dilemma in Vienna.

At least in the short term, Pakistan can afford to take in its stride an angry Iran. Because it has a carrot to offer to the cash strapped Tehran- the gas pipeline.

Denials are a regime of economy on truth.

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