Sistan attack: Attempt to disrupt Iran-Pakistan ties
World Saturday, October 24th, 2009The Pakistani Foreign Minister has categorically stated that Pakistan has no issue with Iran and will cooperate fully with the brotherly government of Iran to halt this nonsense in Sistan-Balochistan. It is obvious that the same forces that are working in Pakistani Balochistan are also working in Iranian Sistan
Pakistan, which has dismissed allegations of supporting Jondollah, said that the attack was aimed at spoiling ties with Tehran.
“There are forces which are out to spoil our relations with Iran. But our ties are strong enough to counter these machinations,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Abdul Basit, told media The News
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said that the suicide attack in Iran’s Sistan was a conspiracy against brotherly relations between Pakistan and Iran. Addressing a press conference Qureshi said Pakistan will provide full assistance to Iran in the Sistan attack probe. “An Iranian delegation will visit Pakistan for the probe,” he said. Sistan attack conspiracy against Pak-Iran ties: Qureshi. The Nation
Shireen Mazari in a hard hitting editorial in The Nation says the following about the Iranian situation and the Tel Aviv based Jundullah group which has established a “Government of Balochistan” in exile in Israel.
Perhaps most dangerously, the US has once again activated the terrorist group it sponsors against Iran, Jundullah, into launching suicide attacks of terrorism against Iran’s security forces – and using Pakistan’s sensitive province of Balochistan for these terrorist activities. The latest attack against the Revolutionary Guards which killed seven commanders and 42 other soldiers has snapped Iran’s patience with Pakistan and brought direct accusations from the Iranian President against Pakistan. This is a terrible state of affairs and one that Pakistan cannot allow to persist. Allowing the US territory from which it can plan terrorism in our friendly Muslim neighbour Iran is unacceptable and mere words of condemnation will have little impact. It is time for the Pakistani state to show by deeds that it is not party to the US terrorist policies against Iran. We have too many historical, cultural and religious ties to destroy just to appease the US and its murderous regional agenda.
Perhaps most important, though, our leadership really needs to re-examine, in the light of what the US has been doing to our external environment while pushing us to launch the SWA operation, whose interests it is serving. In other words, is the US really an ally or a covert enemy, determined to cut nuclear Pakistan down to size?
There are some wider issues too. There are serious questions on why NATO and US forces were removed from the Pakistani-Afghan border on the eve of the operation in South Waziristan Agency (SWA). Did the ISAF forces protecting any of the insurgents who had crept into SWA from Afghanistan. It is a matter of record that many of the insurgents are using US issued and Indian arms in SWA etc.
Najam Sethi of the The Daily Times elucidates the Iranian quagmire.
Iran has a complex code of interpretation when it comes to explaining to its people certain developments on its eastern border. At the higher level of statesmanship, it is engaged with Pakistan on what can be called the biggest energy project of South Asia, called the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline project. At the domestic political level, it looks at Pakistan as a state that favours the Taliban — at the top of the list of enemies in Tehran — and aligns with Iran’s arch-enemy, the United States. This in itself gives rise to a complex imagined network of intrigue and double-dealing.
Hanging from this is the accusation that the US is funding Jundallah to create trouble in Sistan to “balance” the trouble Iran is supposedly making in Iraq. Many Pakistanis buy into this. But at the same time, Iran becomes unhappy when the US and Pakistan start thinking of “talking” to their separate Talibans. It cannot help thinking that both will somehow bring the Taliban back to power in Kabul and thus endanger the non-Pashtun population of Afghanistan as well as endanger Iran’s security on its eastern border.
Iran played a strange role in 2001. It openly supported the US invasion of Pakistan. All through the 90s, it supported the Northern Alliance in conjunction with India and Russia. This enabled the US to invade Afghansstan. Now it is accusing the US of aiding Jundullah
TEHRAN: Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Tuesday that the Sunni rebel group which carried out a deadly bombing in the country is based in Pakistan, Geo news reported Tuesday. Mottaki said members of the group, Jondollah, regularly violate the Iran-Pakistan border and launch attacks inside Iran. “This terrorist grouplet has links with intelligence services which are based in the region, including in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he was quoted by the official news agency as saying….
Iran’s Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi also stepped up pressure on Pakistan over the deadly attack, saying that Jondollah had links with Pakistan’s intelligence service. Moslehi demanded that Islamabad “clarify” its position regarding the group, reports agency. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday urged his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, to confront the rebels. During a telephone call with the Pakistani president, Ahmadinejad said that the presence of terrorist elements in Pakistan is not justifiable.” The News
Pakistan has jumped in for some high level damage control. Mr. Zardari did the right thing in calling the Iranian leader to assure him of Pakistan’s full cooperation.
ISLAMABAD: President Asif Zardari called his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday and assured him that Pakistan would continue to cooperate with Iran in the fight against militancy and extremism. According to a statement issued by the Presidency, Zardari condemned Monday’s suicide attack on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards meeting, which killed 42 people in the province of Sistan. He said the incident was “gruesome and barbaric” and bore the “signatures of a cowardly enemy on the run”. The president said both countries had deep historical ties. Zardari also prayed for those who lost their lives in the incident. staff report. Daily Times
Najam Sethi of The Daily Times describes Iran acting in its own interests to the detriment of Pakistan interests.
There is a clear break here between what the world thinks and what Iran thinks. The world thinks that the US unwittingly strengthened Iran’s regional position by destroying two regimes: Saddam Hussein’s in the west and the Taliban’s in the east. But Tehran continues to think that the US and its allies are trying to get Iran into a challenging regional pincers movement. Unfortunately, Pakistan can hardly reassure Iran in this regard because of its declining writ of the state in Balochistan and elsewhere.
Within this extremely murky strategic thinking, Iran has acted in its own national interest. It has given shelter to “actors” from Pakistan who promised to create difficulties for the US. It has provided safe haven to runaway warlords from Afghanistan it thought could at least temporarily damage the unity of the Taliban. It is known to have “facilitated” the passage of Al Qaeda terrorists from Pakistan to Iraq in 2003, which then actually led to the massacre of the Shia there.
But in many ways, Iran promises to become as important an ally of Pakistan as China, mainly because of its role as a supplier of energy. At the same time, however, Pakistan has to retain the option of international support, including that of the Arabs — something for which Iran’s current government doesn’t care much. Hence a measure of tolerable bilateral tension. The Daily Times
Shireen Mazari, who was earlier fired from an Islamabad think tank and recently fired from the The News has written a critical article in the The Nation, which questions American motives in Balochistan and SWA.
THE South Waziristan operation in itself has already begun to have a fallout on the country, in terms of a raised threat level with schools being closed and security being heightened all around. In addition, we are seeing another tide of displaced persons, numbering 10,000 already, and there seems to be little preparation to receive them. Then there is the weather factor also. For all these reasons, the question that continues to haunt us in terms of the domestic environment is whether this operation may have been premature, given that the fallout of the Swat operation had yet to be brought under control in terms of the spread of terrorism across the country – especially the targeting of those who are meant to protect the nation.
But it is the adverse external environment that is being created deliberately to coincide with the SWA operation, which raises larger questions of whether we are falling into a trap created by the US to destabilise the country to such an extent that the nuclear assets can be taken under US control and Pakistan’s map redrawn? Is it simply a coincidence that the moment the SWA operation begins, the US and NATO vacate their critical check posts on the Afghan border with Pakistan, when everyone knows that the TTP is being supplied weapons from Afghanistan? Is the real US intent to allow enough supplies to continue flowing to the TTP so that the Pakistan army gets bogged
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on Oct 24 2009. Filed under