A few days ago I introduced the PJAK and its under-reported war against the Iranian state. Now it’s time to discuss the group Jondollah.
Yesterday there was a terrorist attack inside of Iran that killed 18 people and injured 34 (click on link for photo). Oddly enough, it has received little attention in the western media.
Zahedan is the provincial capital of Iran’s “Sistan va Baluchistan” Province. It’s in some fairly rugged terrain and it’s one of the lesser-populated regions of Iran. However it is home to nearly all of Iran’s ethnic Baloch minority.
To understand the context, you have to know who the Baloch people are. Similar to the Kurds, they are a distinct people or ethnic group whose traditional homeland is now spread across three countries in a contiguous zone – Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan (map here). There are at least 8 million Baloch people (some say as many as 15 million). 70% of them live in Pakistan, 20% in Iran and 10% in Afghanistan.
The Balochs are ethnically related to “Persians” or Iranians and speak an Iranian-related language (as do Pashtuns). It should be noted however that both Balochs and Pashtun are generally followers of the Sunni branch of Islam and of course the majority of people in Iran are followers of the Shia branch. Therefore Balochs are not just an ethnic minority in Iran but also a religious minority.
Basically the key to understanding all of this begins with the infamous Durand Line. Back in 1893, when the British were the colonial “masters” of this region the British drew a line to separate the regions they had a firmer grip on (later to be India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) and those they didn’t (Afghanistan). The Durand line divided two different ethnic groups (the Pashtun and Baloch) so that they would be less able to effectively oppose the British administration.
Fast forward to 1947 and India and Pakistan’s independence and the newly formed Pakistani government used force to try to unite the Muslim-majority areas under one administration. One region, Kashmir, refused to take part with either side (India or Pakistan) and has been an area of contest ever since. Another region, (Pakistani) Balochistan was more or less annexed by force.
During the 1980’s, the United States and Pakistan (as well as the wealthy foreign Sunni financiers like Saudi Arabia) supported the Pashtun resistance in Afghanistan. India on the other hand has always played a role (that’s less well known) in Afghanistan and has traditionally backed the Tajik/Uzbek warlords. After the Soviets were ejected, India held the upper hand briefly but then by 1994 the Pakistani-backed Pashtun Taliban took control.
Fast forward to 2001 and the United States launches a war in Afghanistan and push the Taliban (and therefore the Pashtun) out of power. The Tajik/Uzbek warlords from the Panjshir Valley, known as the “Northern Alliance”, step into the power vacuum. Besides the titular head of Afghanistan (Hamid Karzai), most of the government of Afghanistan is run by those who are allied a lot more heavily with India than with Pakistan.
Therefore India has always sought to support anyone who could weaken Pakistan’s influence in the region. One of Pakistan’s sources of wealth are its natural gas deposits and a large segment of those lie in the southwestern region of Pakistan: Balochistan province.
In the last 10 years, but especially accelerated since 2001, the Pakistani government has been using foreign investment (mostly from China) to try and develop these gas deposits. The “problem” is that the Baloch people feel they are not getting much of the revenue from these resources and that their lands are being exploited by the (ethnic) Punjab administration.
The Pakistani government also has an ambitious project underway to develop the port at Gwadar in Balochistan into a major commercial center. This too has largely been financed by China. There are several reasons why this is of utmost strategic interest to Pakistan. In brief: Pakistan only has one major naval port (Karachi) and in the past India has been able to blockade this, roads under construction to link Gwadar to other major cities in Pakistan would make Gwadar a booming commercial hub, oil tankers can offload at Gwadar and the oil can be shipped overland to China much more quickly than current methods, and last but not least Gwadar is located just south of the Strait of Hormuz, meaning that if the Strait is ever blocked off or disabled (such as in a war), Gwadar would remain open for business.
Therefore India especially has all the motive it needs to destabilize Pakistan’s plans for development of gas fields and the port of Gwadar in Balochistan. There is pretty substantial evidence that India has been financing or otherwise supporting the native (and authentic) Balochi resistance to the Pakistani central government.
Although it’s difficult to realize just how strange a place Pakistan is, the Pak central government really only has limited control over its outlying provinces (Balochistan as well as NWFP). A lot of people don’t even know that Pakistan has an outright ban on anyone traveling in Balochistan outside the one town of Quetta. Any outsider literally has to get a special permit to go to Balochistan.
Starting about two years ago but really increasing over the last year, the Baloch “resistance” has been waging a war against Pakistani central governmental facilities in the region. According to a recent report I saw, this has severely impacted the local tourism industry in Quetta. I know just about every other day I read a report where Baloch rebels have blown up a section of gas pipeline or attacked a Pakistani army base (Pak gov’t soldiers serving in the provinces are known as the “Frontier Corps”).
Quite simply put, the Pakistani government is in a desperate situation as it is caught between a number of seemingly irreconcilable dilemmas. Click on the link for an excellent rundown but the key here to understand is that many ethnic Pashtun strongly resent Pak President Pervez Musharraf’s pro-American and pro-Western stance and since the “enemy of my enemy is my friend”, a lot of Balochi-Pashtun cooperation has been going on. Quetta is now virtually the “home away from home” for a lot of exiled Taliban.
In August 2006, Pakistani government forces were battling the most powerful Baloch tribe (known as the Bugti clan) and killed their leader, Akbar Khan Bugti. A lot of Baloch people refer to this as their “9/11” incident and it has radicalized a lot of Balochs who may have been less zealous in the past.
If you want to know how Baloch people feel, then read this essay on a pro-Baloch website. Essentially other Baloch leaders have been “rendered” and tortured, some 86,000 Baloch people are refugees inside their own country (Pakistan) and the government is using the travel ban to keep journalists from reporting on the situation.
On February 4, 2007, a number of Balochs living in Britain marched outside the American embassy in London. They also published an open letter to George Bush. A brief snippet:
The speakers mentioned the grave crimes against humanity being committed Baloch and Sindhi people by Pakistan army. The speakers demanded from the international community to press upon the Pakistan military to stop the atrocities and human rights violations. The speakers in their speeches demanded from US Government. to immediately stop military, economic and moral support to the brutal and terrorist regime in Pakistan.
Now my point here is that pro-Musharraf policies combined with anti-Pashtun policies by the American government (as well as the perception there is an overall war on Islam being fought by the Bush administration) are seriously inciting the Baloch people, who have already fought four “hot” wars for independence and are now conducting a full-scale insurgency against the Pakistani government.
But what about Balochs and Iran? Well I had to first explain where these people are coming from before I could get to that.
The Balochi people already feel oppressed and under attack from Pakistan’s government. Their growing alliance with the Pashtun/Taliban also mean they are increasingly making ties with the worldwide Sunni “insurgency”. And the “tip of the spear” of the Balochi resistance/insurgency and its ties to the worldwide Sunni insurgency is a group known as Jundallah (sometimes spelled Jondollah). Its name means “Soldiers of God”.
Jondollah is listed as first appearing in 2003 and seems to be part of that gift that keeps on giving, blowback from the war in Iraq. You can find more out about Jondollah here. A website that supports Jondollah but is not officially linked to them is here (and is in English).
Since that time, Jondollah has been waging outright war against Iranian security forces. Especially in 2005, Jondollah has either kidnapped or killed several members of Iran’s “Revolutionary Guards” (who are more or less the Interior Ministry troops). Iran has responded by further crackdowns and according to some reports has “stepped up executions” against reported Baloch rebels.
On December 14, 2006 two bombs blew up in Zahedan which apparently were targeted at the provincial governor although no one was killed. From the report at the time:
One source which is close to the Jondollah of Baluchistan said that the objective of these explosions was to disrupt the process of fraudulent ongoing elections and deter the government from further oppressing Baluch people. Some reports indicate that 240 Baluch people have been hanged in public or shot dead in the streets in the last six months. Not even one single official has been arrested for these killing. Consequently the Jondollah organization of Iran decided to take some preventative measures to stop further killing of the Baloch people.
It looks like those “measures” were put into effect yesterday when Jondollah (which claimed responsibility for the attack) blew up a bus full of Revolutionary Guards, killing 11 (and 7 other people). Jondollah has also stated it has several “huge military operations” that they are planning in the province.
Quite simply put, this entire region is tottering on the edge of a complete meltdown and I fear for the worst.
Pax