On Oct. 18, a suicide bomber in southeastern Iran killed at least 42 people and wounded scores of others in a lethal attack on senior commanders of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The Shiite IRGC doesn't make an especially sympathetic victim -- it has quashed dissent in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and is now helping spearhead an autocracy there. The group taking credit for the attack, Jundallah (God's Soldiers), also known as the People's Resistance Movement of Iran, is a Sunni organization. It seeks full rights for Baluch tribesfolk specifically and Sunni Muslims generally either within a majority Shiite Iran or as a separate state. Hence it battles the Shiite clerics, secular autocrats, military, and paramilitary forces who rule Iran with an iron fist, styling itself a coalition of freedom fighters.
But that does not make Iran's Sunni insurgents the good guys, not by a long shot. Their tactics are reminiscent of Hezbollah, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, al Qaeda, and the Taliban plus its local allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In fact, they derive inspiration and knowledge from that wider network of terrorist organizations.
Jundallah emerged in 2003, spawned by the Baluchi Autonomist Movement of the 1980s and 1990s. The movement's militants attempted to assassinate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 at Zabol along Iran's eastern border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three months later, the group killed civilians at nearby Tasuki just before the Iranian New Year. The group took responsibility for fatal car bomb attacks on the IRGC at Zahedan and Saravan in 2007, 2008, and earlier this year. The Jundallah also has attacked Shiite mosques and kidnapped civilians. The Iranian government has retaliated by executing captured militants.
BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images
Jamsheed K. Choksy is a professor of Central Eurasian, Indian, Iranian, Islamic, and international studies and the former director of the Middle Eastern studies program at Indiana University, Bloomington. He also is a member of the National Council on the Humanities at the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities. The views expressed are his own.
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GRANT
8:28 PM ET
October 20, 2009
While I certainly find it
While I certainly find it credible that the U.S has considered backing those groups, I find it more than a bit unlikely that the U.S, Pakistan, or Britain would have had anything to do with the attacks. The U.S at the moment really can't afford that kind of bad press, there are Baluchi insurgents in Pakistan trying to break up the nation, and the only reason I can find for why Britain is on the list is because it is convenient for Iran to blame anything on Britain.
On another note the following quote confuses me. "The United States and its partners once supported the Taliban materially because they were battling the Soviets and Russians." To start the Taliban didn't actually come into existence until the early 90s, well after the Soviet Union had pulled out of Afghanistan. I'm not even certain if the original Taliban group was that heavily involved in the fighting during the 1980s. Aside from that is the mention of "Soviets and Russians". I honestly don't know why you separated the two, Russia was the leading nation in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
FREEDA2
11:34 PM ET
October 20, 2009
im happy to provide info
maybe the word taliban and mujahadeen are being mixed up. it would be better to say, the Fighters A, who were muslim, and "mostly" afgani natives (with fighters B, the people from overseas), were supported materially and with intelligence from the US. this was done via the cia, who in turn outsourced alot of its actions to the ISI (pakistan, who was a rival of india, who was friendly to the USSR).
confusing? basically, fighters A were supported by the US. later the USSR left and so did USA. then A grew to be a threat to the US, and A is now fighting the US.
MR JAM
2:31 AM ET
October 21, 2009
MY ENEMY'S ENEMY IS MY FRIEND
Iranian's aspiration for nuclear weapons and their leader with extremist religeous ideology is threat to the world peace and freedoms in the world and it needs to be eradicated using all means and ways. Follow that motto:
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