Taliban eyes new allies

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan | Pakistani Taliban and allied members of al Qaeda, under new pressure from a U.S. and Pakistani offensive, may join forces with a militant Sunni Muslim group called Jundallah, which has staged attacks on Iran and strained Iranian-Pakistani relations, military specialists say.

Ashraf Ali, a Peshawar-based specialist on the Taliban, told The Washington Times that given Jundallah’s historical connections with al Qaeda and the Taliban, Taliban militants led by Baitullah Mehsud and his al Qaeda allies might seek refuge in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province or join the ranks of Jundallah.

Pakistan and the United States are mounting an offensive against Mehsud in the tribal regions north of Baluchistan along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

“This would give a totally new dimension to the dynamics of Taliban/al Qaeda militancy in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region and may shift some of the problem to the Pakistan-Iran border region,” Mr. Ali said. “This is very much possible, as apparently there seems to be no [Pakistani] troops deployment on the south of the conflict zone towards Baluchistan.”

Pakistan’s Baluchistan province is situated next to Mehsud’s tribal territory in South Waziristan, the renewed theater of Pakistan’s anti-Taliban offensive.

Last week, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a hotel in Baluchistan’s Kalat district, killing four people and wounding 11. The attack appeared aimed at disrupting supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan, since drivers of NATO supply vehicles were eating at the hotel.

Analysts said the incident is a sign of rising Taliban/al Qaeda militancy in Baluchistan, as well as a possible indication of growing contacts between Waziristan-based militant groups and Jundallah.

Malik Siraj Akbar, an analyst based in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, told The Washington Times that Abdul Malik Rigi, the leader of Jundullah, studied at madrassas in Karachi, where Taliban leaders also got their schooling.

Mr. Rigi frequents the Pakistani border towns of Taftan, Turbat and Pajgoor and is always accompanied by 15 to 20 armed guards, Mr. Akbar said.

Jundallah, which means “Army of God” or “God’s Brigade,” has been active since 2003 and is made up of Baluchis — a Sunni Muslim group that straddles the Iran-Pakistan border.

The group “has been demanding that Iranian Baluchis, mostly Sunnis, should be given equal rights like Shi’ites … and should be appointed to key government positions,” Mr. Akbar said. He said Mr. Rigi contends that his organization has no links to Pakistani Baluchi separatist groups seeking an independent Greater Baluchistan, encompassing Baluch areas in both Iran and Pakistan.

Although Mr. Rigi also denies any link with al Qaeda, specialists say Jundallah was founded by a Pakistan Taliban commander, Nek Mohammed Wazir, who had links to al Qaeda. In 2004, two other Jundallah members were arrested in Karachi in connection with an unsuccessful attack on the Pakistan army’s Karachi corps commander.

The possibility of a new alliance among the Taliban, al Qaeda and Jundallah could provide common ground among the United States, Pakistan and Iran against the militant threat.

On May 28, a bomb attack on a Shi’ite mosque in the Iranian city of Zahedan, on the border with Pakistan, killed 20 people and wounded 50. The following day, gunmen attacked an election campaign office in Zahedan of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. No one was killed in the incident.

Abdel Raouf Rigi, a Jundallah spokesman, told the Arabic television channel Al Arabiya that a suicide bomber had targeted a secret meeting of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards inside the Amir al-Mohmenin mosque.

Story Continues →