Word: pakistanis
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...Baluchistan, the cooperation of old has shifted to a more guarded mutual distrust. On Oct. 18, Jundullah, a Baluch militia based on Pakistani soil struck the Iranian border city of Pishin, killing 41, including a number of senior figures in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. A week later, Pakistani troops detained 11 Iranian agents who had infiltrated across the border, possibly in a mission aimed against Jundullah. They were eventually released, but the incidents spotlighted the uncomfortable place Baluchistan occupies in both Tehran and Islamabad's internal affairs - and their dealings with each other...
...Beneath their homeland's soil lies a treasure trove of natural gas and oil reserves, which, while largely untapped, yield revenues from which the Baluch feel excluded. Successive generations have waged armed rebellions against Pakistani rule - in 1948, 1953, through the 1960s and 70s, and now. According to analysts, continued abuses at the hands of security forces and Pakistan's shadowy intelligence agency, the ISI, have intensified separatist feeling to an unprecedented scale. "Baluch nationalism is more broad-based, is a more serious phenomenon than at any time in the past," says Selig Harrison, a leading authority on the Baluch...
...thousands - Iran lent Pakistan logistical support, including helicopters. At the time, the two countries were allied together under the U.S.-led CENTO Cold War pact, but following Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 relations changed, with Tehran's Shia establishment increasingly wary of their Sunni counterparts in the Pakistani military leadership. The Iranians loath the Afghan Taliban, who were created in part by elements within the Pakistani state. "There's an inherent set of tensions [between the two countries] based on their prior strategic choices," says Sameer Lalwani, a Pakistan watcher at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think...
...Baluch separatists claim that they never wanted to be part of Britain's partitioning of colonial India into the independent states of India and Pakistan and that they are the victims of an empire that barely ruled them. The border that splits Iranian and Pakistani Baluchistan was a line plotted in 1871 by a British colonial official, ceding territory to Iran's rulers in a bid to win Tehran's support against Czarist Russia. Now, the Baluch in Pakistan and Iran who fear independence may be out of reach campaign for expanded freedoms and guarantees to preserve their language...
...When trying to discredit Baluch separatism, Islamabad often blames its regional rival, India, for abetting and influencing the rebels. Pakistan's wariness of India's hand in its affairs has only grown after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan saw Indian engagement there bloom - Pakistani officials say Indian consulates in the Afghan cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad are behind the destabilizing acts of subversion in Baluchistan. Baluch attacks are frequently followed by Pakistani accusations of Indian involvement, though Islamabad, which has a noted record of being a breeding ground for terrorists who make their way to India, has yet to show...