- NOVEMBER 23, 2009
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Iran's Enemy Is Not America's Friend
Why supporting the terrorists who are trying to take down the Revolutionary Guard will only come back to haunt us.
BY JAMSHEED K. CHOKSY | OCTOBER 20, 2009
On Oct. 18, a suicide bomber in southeastern Iran killed at least 42 people and wounded scores of others in a lethal attack on senior commanders of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
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The Shiite IRGC doesn't make an especially sympathetic victim -- it has quashed dissent in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and is now helping spearhead an autocracy there. The group taking credit for the attack, Jundallah (God's Soldiers), also known as the People's Resistance Movement of Iran, is a Sunni organization. It seeks full rights for Baluch tribesfolk specifically and Sunni Muslims generally either within a majority Shiite Iran or as a separate state. Hence it battles the Shiite clerics, secular autocrats, military, and paramilitary forces who rule Iran with an iron fist, styling itself a coalition of freedom fighters.
But that does not make Iran's Sunni insurgents the good guys, not by a long shot. Their tactics are reminiscent of Hezbollah, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, al Qaeda, and the Taliban plus its local allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In fact, they derive inspiration and knowledge from that wider network of terrorist organizations.
Jundallah emerged in 2003, spawned by the Baluchi Autonomist Movement of the 1980s and 1990s. The movement's militants attempted to assassinate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 at Zabol along Iran's eastern border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three months later, the group killed civilians at nearby Tasuki just before the Iranian New Year. The group took responsibility for fatal car bomb attacks on the IRGC at Zahedan and Saravan in 2007, 2008, and earlier this year. The Jundallah also has attacked Shiite mosques and kidnapped civilians. The Iranian government has retaliated by executing captured militants.
BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images
Jamsheed K. Choksy is a professor of Central Eurasian, Indian, Iranian, Islamic, and international studies and the former director of the Middle Eastern studies program at Indiana University, Bloomington. He also is a member of the National Council on the Humanities at the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities. The views expressed are his own.
While I certainly find it credible that the U.S has considered backing those groups, I find it more than a bit unlikely that the U.S, Pakistan, or Britain would have had anything to do with the attacks. The U.S at the moment really can't afford that kind of bad press, there are Baluchi insurgents in Pakistan trying to break up the nation, and the only reason I can find for why Britain is on the list is because it is convenient for Iran to blame anything on Britain.
On another note the following quote confuses me.
"The United States and its partners once supported the Taliban materially because they were battling the Soviets and Russians."
To start the Taliban didn't actually come into existence until the early 90s, well after the Soviet Union had pulled out of Afghanistan. I'm not even certain if the original Taliban group was that heavily involved in the fighting during the 1980s. Aside from that is the mention of "Soviets and Russians". I honestly don't know why you separated the two, Russia was the leading nation in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
maybe the word taliban and mujahadeen are being mixed up. it would be better to say, the Fighters A, who were muslim, and "mostly" afgani natives (with fighters B, the people from overseas), were supported materially and with intelligence from the US. this was done via the cia, who in turn outsourced alot of its actions to the ISI (pakistan, who was a rival of india, who was friendly to the USSR).
confusing?
basically, fighters A were supported by the US. later the USSR left and so did USA. then A grew to be a threat to the US, and A is now fighting the US.
Osama bin Laden was a recipient of US aid during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In fact, after the Soviets left, the US was flirting with the TALIBAN too, with thoughts of using them to back an oil pipeline from Central Asia.
In fact, the CIA was key in the Baathist coup d'etat and Saddam's eventual rise to power as well as backing him during the Iran-Iraq war. When Saddam gassed the Kurds in Halabja, the US tried to pin the blame on the Iranians.
In 1959, there was a CIA-backed failed assassination attempt on Iraq's former president. The failed assassin was none other than a young Saddam Hussein.
The CIA and Iraq have absolutely nothing to do with the Taliban. Iraq didn't even recognize their government in the 90s.
Iranian's aspiration for nuclear weapons and their leader with extremist religeous ideology is threat to the world peace and freedoms in the world and it needs to be eradicated using all means and ways.
Follow that motto:
The only positive that can come from this is Iran's realization that terrorism cannot be supported and that they must join in an international effort to eliminate or deter terrorism attacks. Our supporting this terrorist group in any way would be a long-term disaster. Don't forget our support of the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. Thanks Charlie Wilson!!!!
I wish it were this simple. But the US history of overseas interventions and support shows that we are quite capable of supporting one group of terrorists, calling them freedom fighters (e.g., the Contras), while decrying them elsewhere.
Remember that terrorism is a technique, not a movement or ideology. Our grenades are good; your grenades are bad.
Trying to mess with countries from the inside is the source of most of the terrorism we have now.
We tried it in 1953 in Iran and now again?
The founding fathers of our nation must be rolling in their graves.
Mr Jam: which tooth fairy told you Iran is making nuclear weapons. Have you read the news today?
Don't believe the pro-zionist spin inside the beltway think-tanks.
US finances Jundollah to the tune of $400 K
The US has provided $400 million dollars to Jundollah
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
In an interview with NPR on his latest New Yorker Article, titled ‘Preparing the battlefield’, the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals more striking details of his findings on the aim of the $400 million budgeted US covert operations inside Iran. He provides valuable information on US military preparations to strike the country, on the total expansion of the Bush Administration’s executive power, about the US recognition of Iran’s overall positive role in Iraq and on the US support for the anti-Iran terrorist organisations Jondollah, PJAK and MEK.
Iranian people are members of Aryan family of people which includes Scythian and Sarmatian, Parthian. Present Aryan Iranian family of people mainly live in Iran, Iraq (Kurds, non-Kurd Iranian), Turkey (Kurds), Georgian, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and many other countries. But Iran also has Turkish (Azeri), Semitic (Arabs and Jews) and Armenian population. Iranian family members speak different dialects of family of Indo-European languages. Spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, is a member of Azeri’s population of Iran. Iran, a name extracted from Aria (Arya means "noble" ) the land of Aryan. Persian (from Iranian State of Pars) is members of Iranian family, like Texans are members of the United States family.
Germany (the Goths, Vandals, Buglers, Alans, Suebi, Frisians, and Franks, among other Germanic and Slavic tribes, Teutanonics) and England (Anglo, Saxon, Norman, Irish, and Scottish) are populated with different ethnic groups.
The efforts to create internal conflict in Iran using the diverse Iranian population would be analogues to creating conflict among the British or German population using their original ethnic populations. My experience with Iranian people has been that they are very nationalistic irrespective to their internal differences in their politics. In USA, we all supported our government post September 11 attack irrespective of our internal political differences.
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