Word: jundallah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Iranian officials accused the U.S., Britain and Pakistan of helping to orchestrate a suicide bombing in Sistan-Baluchestan province Oct. 18 that killed 42 people, including commanders of the Revolutionary Guard, the nation's élite military unit. Though the Sunni rebel group Jundallah claimed responsibility for the attack--Iran's deadliest in nearly two decades--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the foreign powers for funding the majority-Shi'ite country's insurgency in order to destabilize its borders. All three nations denied involvement...
...have been susceptible to outside influences, but rarely have they felt strong enough to take on Tehran - which fears that that could change with the chaos at its borders. If, for instance, the U.S. were to suddenly pick up and leave Afghanistan, would the new Taliban government resist backing Jundallah? Or if Pakistan fails to subdue the tribal areas and its own Taliban, would this encourage Jundallah...
Pakistani intelligence has indeed had contact with Jundallah over the years, but there's no good evidence that Pakistan created Jundallah from scratch. And there's certainly no evidence that Pakistan ordered the attack. In fact, Pakistani intelligence over the past few years has been arresting Jundallah members and turning them over to Iran...
American intelligence has also had contact with Jundallah. But that contact, as Iran almost certainly knows, was confined to intelligence-gathering on the country; a relationship with Jundallah was never formalized, and contact was sporadic. I've been told that the Bush Administration at one point considered Jundallah as a piece in a covert-action campaign against Iran, but the idea was quickly dropped because Jundallah was judged uncontrollable and too close to al-Qaeda. There was no way to be certain that Jundallah would not throw the bombs we paid for back at us. (See TIME's photo-essay...
...without a failure in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The five senior Revolutionary Guards officers killed on Sunday were on their way to a meeting with local tribal chiefs to talk about containing Shi'ite-Sunni violence in their province, and the agenda no doubt included what to do about Jundallah...