Word: jundallah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Tehran immediately blamed outsiders - the U.S., Great Britain and Pakistan - for Sunday's suicide bombing because it cannot admit that it has its own homegrown Taliban. Whatever Iran says about Jundallah, the ethnic Baluch group that claimed responsibility for the attack, it's an indigenous movement. The body of its financing comes from Baluch expatriates, many in the Gulf, and Islamic charities. Its weapons and explosives are readily available in the mountains that span the border between Iran and Pakistan. (Read "Pakistan: Behind the Waziristan Offensive...
...July 14 highlights a central theme of the regime's response to the protests that followed the disputed result of the June 12 election. Those executed were not street protesters, but instead were accused by authorities in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan of being members of Jundallah - a Sunni Muslim terrorist group, which may have links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The group, composed mainly of Iranians of ethnic Baluchi origin and based in the Baluchistan province of neighboring Pakistan, has been charged with a string of attacks across Iran. It also claimed responsibility for the bombing...
Iranian authorities claim that those executed were responsible for killing civilians and policemen in several different attacks, and made no specific link between their crimes and the current postelection political crisis. But because Iran sees Jundallah as having U.S. backing, the timing of the execution reinforces Tehran's narrative that foreigners are to blame for the postelection unrest. The executions are also a message to Iran's restive minority groups to stay out of the confrontation between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his opponents. (See pictures of violence to intimidate Iranians...
...News alleged that Jundullah had secretly received advice and encouragement from U.S. intelligence officials on their efforts to destabilize the Iranian regime. That same year, the U.S. government-funded Voice of America radio network broadcast an interview with Jundallah's leader Abdul Malik Rigi, identifying him as "the leader of a popular Iranian resistance movement" - rather than as a militant extremist. The U.S. government denies sponsoring terrorism in Iran, and was reported in May to be considering adding Jundullah to its list of international terrorist organizations...