AFTER the execution of its dreaded leader Abdul Malik Rigi last year, Jundallah has intensified its violent campaign against Iran. Rigi was believed to have fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan and run a drug cartel across the Golden Crescent before establishing Jundallah.

According to media reports, Rigi was arrested on Feb 23 on flight QH454, flying from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan, after the plane was forced to land by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards. The Revolutionary Guards are now bearing the brunt of sporadic Jundallah-led attacks. So far, dozens of guards have been killed, including Gen Noor Ali Shooshtari, the deputy commander of the corps’ ground forces, in 2009 in Pishin near the Pakistan-Iran border.

However, statements by Iranian and Pakistani authorities were contradictory, with some claims that Rigi was picked up from a hospital somewhere in Pakistan.

A Sunni insurgent outfit, Jundallah attacks Iranian government and civilian targets in order, it claims, to defend the nationalist and religious rights of the minority Sunni Baloch people in Sistan-Baluchestan. The group has a complex ideological background and mixed ethno-religiousinterpretations that make it a natural ally of other ethnic and religious militant groups active in the region.

This is the reason that the regional intelligence apparatus largely believes Jundallah to have established close ties with both Baloch separatists and Sunni sectarian extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Interior Minister Rehman Malik recently said that Jundallah had established close ties with the proscribed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ). All these groups are based in Pakistan and target government installations as well as ethnic and sectarian communities.

All these groups have differences in their ideological manifestations but are brought together by common foes. These include the Pakistani government and the Shia-majority Hazara community in Quetta. These factors provide Jundallah, LJ, BLA and TTP common grounds. The recent suicide attack on Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani is seen as a venture of this nexus.

Jundallah was earlier not interested in targeting the Pakistani government but the situation deteriorated after the latter handed over to the Iranian authorities some key Jundallah figures who were then executed.

However, the Shia-majority Hazara community has always been Jundallah’s ultimate target. The Hazaras constitute the third-largest ethnic group in Quetta. They have lived there for nearly a century, after having been driven out of Afghanistan as a result of tribal feuds.

The community has never assimilated with the ultra-conservative Baloch society and always been considered as an outsider exploiting Baloch resources. Jundallah, in cooperation with Pakistan-based militant groups, is believed to have orchestrated some of the deadliest attacks against the Hazara community in Quetta.

If not contained, the nexus has the potential of wreaking havoc in the region. Iranian authorities have persistently accused the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia and, surprisingly, Pakistan for harbouring Jundallah members in order to destabilise Iran. This is despite the fact that Pakistan has played a pivotal role in extraditing key Jundallah figures to Iran. The US State Department has recently designated Jundallah as a terrorist organisation.

Ironically, a growing trust deficit among nation states on the issue of terrorism is stimulating terrorist networks to pursue their murderous agendas.

In fact, the US-led ‘war on terror’ serves Iranian interests. For this country, it has been a win-win situation since the very declaration of war. The consequences worked in two ways: rooting out extreme anti-Shia Taliban fanatics from Iran’s eastern border while ousting Iraq’s Ba’ath Party, which was for decades a thorn in Iran’s side.

Consequently, circumstances gave Iran a free hand to consolidate its position in regional politics and pursue its nuclear programme. America’s two-front protracted engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq led it to strategically, economically and politically open another front against Iran, the leading member of the so-called axis of evil.

A number of analysts suggest that Iran has played a quiet but critical role in the US-led war on terror. Mansoor Ijaz, a renowned analyst and commentator on terrorism, claims that Tehran had for years been rendering backchannel assistance to the US in its invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq. It relied on sharing crucial intelligence on Al Qaeda and the Taliban through American allies in Europe.

“The Iranians have been very helpful in confirming the location and identification of Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives throughout the group’s framework, including information about Ayman al-Zawahiri’s visit to Indonesia shortly before the attacks of 9/11,” Ijaz told CNSNews in 2002.

Iran has so far executed dozens of Jundallah members, including Abdul Malik Rigi and his brother Abdul Hamid Rigi. But the peculiarity of terror networks is that every man killed is replaced by someone worse. It was widely believed that the death of Abdul Malik Rigi would put an end to the Jundallah-led insurgency, but it didn’t. In fact, it has become more violent.

The group has carried out three major attacks since the death of its chief. Just recently, Ashura mourners were attacked by suicide bombers outside the Imam Hussein mosque in the south-eastern city of Chabahar.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani media reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked President Zardari to immediately and unconditionally apprehend suspected Jundallah militants sheltering in Pakistan.

Time and again, Iran’s military authorities have accused Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence of harbouring Jundallah militants, despite the fact that Pakistan has for the past seven years faced an escalating insurgency which has paralysed the state’s functioning.

The only feasible way to eradicate the militant menace is for the three major stakeholders — Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan — to adopt a coordinated regional approach by sharing intelligence and enhancing border security.

Yet such steps will be futile unless the rights of the people living in the insurgency-hit areas are not safeguarded. Frustration always leads to aggression; militants exploit the local people’s sense of deprivation and alienation for their own agendas.

The writer works for Asiadespatch.com.

ihsantipu@yahoo.com