LAHORE: Islamabad has informed Tehran that Jundullah (or Soldiers of God), the Pakistan-based anti-Shia militant outfit, which has claimed responsibility for the October 18 deadly suicide attack in Tehran, targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, is carrying out coordinated terrorist operations with the help of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), to undermine the Pak-Iran ties.
According to well-placed interior ministry sources in Islamabad, the explanation has been conveyed to Tehran after the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alleged that the Sunday mayhem in Tehran had been plotted from neighbouring Pakistan. Ahmadinejad had further alleged that Abdolmalek Rigi, the chief of the Jundullah, who has claimed responsibility for the attack, operates from Pakistan. The sources said during his Monday telephonic conversation with President Asif Ali Zardari, his Iranian counterpart expressed deep concern over the failure of the Pakistani authorities to proceed against the Jundullah network in Balochistan and elsewhere despite having been provided specific intelligence information by Tehran. He said the Tehran attack could have been averted had Islamabad acted in time on the Iranian intelligence information.
While responding to the Iranian allegations, the Pakistani ministry of interior has informed the concerned authorities in Tehran through the Pakistani ambassador that the October 10 fidayeen attack on the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army was also a coordinated operation which was carried out jointly by a select group of highly trained militants belonging to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan with the help of at least two Punjab-based Sunni sectarian and militant organisations – the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Jaish-e-Mohammad. The authorities in Islamabad have conveyed in their post Sunday attack talks with their Iranian counterparts that the enemies of Iran and Pakistan are common and are trying to sabotage the recently signed Pak-Iran gas pipeline project. The Iranian authorities were also apprised of the intelligence reports regarding a recent meeting between Abdul Malik Rigi and some top notches of the TTP.
The October 18 suicide attack was not the first such incident blamed on Pakistan.
On May 28, 2009, Jundullah had carried out a deadly suicide bombing inside the Ameerul Momenin Mosque in Zahedan, in Sistan-Balochistan province of Iran, killing 25 people. Pakistani ambassador to Tehran M B Abbasi was subsequently summoned by the Iranian foreign ministry and told that three Pakistanis – Haji Noti Zehi, Gholam Rasoul Zehi and Zabihollah Naroui have already confessed to smuggling explosives into Iran from Balochistan and passing them over to the suicide bomber. The trio was subsequently hanged in public in Zahedan on May 30. Almost a week after the hanging, hundreds of Baloch women and children took out a protest rally in Quetta on June 9, 2009 and threatened to target the Iranian nationals in Pakistan, as a reaction to the execution of the five Baloch nationals by the Iranian government.
Jundullah, also known in Iran as the Rigi group (after its ringleader, Abdul Malik Rigi), is a rebel Sunni militant group of Iranian Balochis, who are anti-Shia and claim to represent their minority’s rights in Iran’s southeast province of Sistan-Balochistan. Their hideout is cross-border, in Pakistani Balochistan. Iran directly blames Jundullah for a series of cross-border guerrilla operations that have been going on since 2003, killing mostly Iranian soldiers and border guards. In the wake of the October 18 suicide bombing in Tehran, Islamabad faces tremendous pressure to arrest and extradite Jundallah chief Rigi, who is believed to be based in Balochistan. While asserting that the Pakistani law enforcement agencies were making all out efforts to dismantle the Jundullah network from Balochistan’s soil, authoritative sources in the ministry of interior pointed out that the militant organization in question has actually stepped up its anti-Iran activities following the June 15, 2008 extradition of Abdul Hamid Rigi, the brother of Jundullah chief, Abdul Malek Rigi, from Pakistan to Iran. Rigi is now being tried by an Iranian court on terrorism charges.
Initially patronised by late Taliban commander Nek Mohammad, the Pakistan chapter of Jundullah usually draws its cadre from anti-Shia jehadi and sectarian groups like the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Lt Gen Ahsan Saleem Hayat, the former Corps Commander of Karachi was one of those high profile personalities to have been targeted by the Pakistan chapter of Jundullah on June 10, 2004, killing 11 people including seven army personnel when his convoy was ambushed near the Clifton Bridge. Interestingly, there are those in the Pakistani establishment who insist that Jundullah was actually created by the mastermind of 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. He was arrested in March 2003 from Rawalpindi and handed over to the Americans, after which Jundullah went wild. Soon after the Karachi attempt on the corps commander, the police were able to apprehend a group of Jundullah terrorists headed by an Arab, Musab Aruchi, who turned out to be a nephew of Khalid Sheikh with a million dollars on his head.
Jundullah was not without its support system in the port city of Karachi as it proceeded to avenge the arrest and handover of its mastermind after 2003. The support system included two MBBS doctors. Dr Akmal Waheed, an orthopedic surgeon, and his younger brother Dr Arshad Waheed, a heart specialist, were convicted in 2005 by an anti-terrorism court which sent them behind bars for 18 years on charges of “causing disappearance of evidence by harbouring and providing medical treatment to activists of banned Jundullah group”. There were protest marches in Karachi and Lahore by pious doctors when the two doctors were sentenced. As Dr. Arshad Waheed was bailed out almost a year later, he got killed in a US missile attack in the Wana area of Waziristan on March 16, 2009. According to recent intelligence information passed on to the ministry of interior, the Jundullah network is still active in Karachi and intends to carry out a hostage taking operation for the release of its leader Sheikh Ataur Rehman alias Zubair, who is currently imprisoned in Karachi Central Jail after the Anti-Violent Crime Unit arrested him in 2003 from his hideout in Model Colony, Karachi.
amir.mir1969@gmail.com