The Dangerous Drug-Funded Secret War

Between Iran and PakistanUmar Farooq

In the largely forgotten deserts of Baluchistan that straddle the Iran-Pakistan
border, covert wars are underway that could have far reaching
consequences.
TURBAT, PakistanSomething fell out of the sky near Arif Saleems home at
5:20 a.m. on Nov. 25, 2013. He scrambled outside to find a 25-foot-wide
crater just beyond the mud wall surrounding his family compound. The strike
was one of three, in quick succession, that morning in the village of Kulahu, in
Pakistani Baluchistan, 45 miles east of the Iran border. One of the blasts
damaged the local mosque. Pages from the Quran fluttered in the air before
landing gently on the rubble.

The next day, Saleem made the 30-mile trip east to Turbat, the administrative
center of his small district in southwestern Pakistan. They refused to register
a case, saying the matter is out of their hands, he told me.

With few legitimate industries or development assistance from the central

government, Turbat is a derelict city prickling with militants. Most of the
areas inhabitants grind out a living as subsistence farmers or cross-border
smugglers, shuttling everything from cement and diesel to Afghan opium
between Pakistan and Iran. There are few paved roads, and at the airport,
soldiers outnumber travelers.

It is also the epicenter of a war being waged by the Shiite regime in Iran
against a shadowy group of Sunni Baluch jihadis.

Already involved in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and
neighboring Iraq, Iran is now increasingly worried about the threat from Sunni
militants on its eastern border with Pakistan, who get backing, it claims, from
the United States and Saudi Arabia. Although rarely mentioned in public,
persuading Iran to budge on issues like its nuclear program may well depend
on addressing what it now sees as a multi-faceted, global attack on it by

Sunni jihadis.

On Sept. 9, those jihadists detonated a massive car bomb at an Iranian

military base near the border, clearing a path for 70 fighters to stream in.
According to a statement from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,
reinforcements had to be helicoptered to the scene to end a three-and-a-halfhour gun battle, and the fighters fled across the border into Pakistan. A few
weeks later, the militants carried out a series of raids on border posts, killing
five Iranian policemen. The attacks were the latest in a long campaign of
roadside explosions, suicide bombings at mosques, and gun attacks on
security posts that have killed more than 600 Iranians, mostly civilians, since
2005.

Across the entrance to the only functioning hotel in Turbat, the proprietor has
strung a thick rope to slow down gunmen who may want to attack his
patrons. The carpeting is worn, the furniture is falling apart, and the
electricity is out for most of the day. Here, in a dilapidated room, Saleem
recounts the November blast. Some buildings collapsed. Luckily, none of the
kids were inside those.

Clean-shaven and balding, Saleem is in his forties and walks with a limp. He
speaks in a whisper, flanked by the two locals who set up the meeting. They
eye the door anxiously, convinced that at any moment, a Pakistani or Iranian
intelligence officer will come barging in.

The blast was so strong, he said, we thought the world was ending.
Saleem believes that the strike came from a nearby airbase across the
Iranian border. Others, he recalls, heard the buzzing of Iranian drones.

He hesitates when I ask him about the target of the other missiles. I dont
even want to name him, he's not even from our areabut the missiles hit his
homes.

The man whose name Saleem is reluctant to utter is Mullah Omar (not to
be confused with the Afghan Taliban leader of the same name). A senior
Iranian official in Pakistan later confirmed the strike took place, declining to

elaborate.

An ethnic Baluch from Iran, this Mullah Omar helps lead a shadowy outfit
called Jaish ul Adl, or the Army of Justice, whose fighters number fewer than
500. He wasnt on the premises when the strike hit, but it killed his 3-year-old
grandniece, and injured other family members. Just a month earlier, Mullah
Omars fighters had crossed into Iran and killed 16 Iranian soldiers.

The Kulahu strike was part of a widening covert war being waged by Iran
inside Pakistan. In the weeks following the Sept. 9, car bombing at the Iranian
base, Iran raided a village in the Pakistani district of Chagai. According to
Pakistani officials, Iranian soldiers, sometimes in helicopters and convoys,
have chased militants deep into Pakistan on an almost weekly basis over the
last year, sparking firefights and occasionally killing Pakistani soldiers.

Iran says the jihadis enjoy support not only from Saudi Arabia and the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency, but also from the Inter-Services Intelligence
branch of the Pakistani military.

Pakistani officials say they are overwhelmed by internal security problems,

and securing the border with Iran is not a top priority.

Perhaps most importantly, the Sunni jihadists attacking Iran have deep ties
with politically connected opium smugglers, men flush with billions of dollars
who despise the Iranians for their own reasons.

Before it was split between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Baluchistan

spread over an area slightly larger than California. The 650-mile Iran-Pakistan
border drawn by the British in 1871 starts at the Arabian Sea, cutting through
rugged mountains and dry riverbeds, into open desert at a point where the
frontiers of Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan touch.

The Baluch in Iran do not speak Farsi but Baluchi, just like the Baluch in
Pakistan, and in Iran they are a Sunni minority. Instead of the Western-style

mens apparel popular in Tehran, the Baluch in Irans Sistan-Baluchistan

province dress in shalwar kameez like their counterparts in Pakistan. Many
still have family on both sides of the border, and culture is not the only thing
they have in common: The Baluch in Iran and Pakistan share a troubled, often
violent, relationship with their rulers.

Iran says the jihadis enjoy support not only from Saudi Arabia and the CIA,
but from Pakistans ISI.
Pakistans province of Baluchistan, which accounts for nearly half of the
country by area, is its poorest, least educated, and least developed region.
Sistan-Baluchistan, where most of Irans Baluch live, lags behind the rest of
Iran in almost every measure. Around half the Baluch in the province are
unemployed, a result, say rights groups, of longstanding marginalization by
Tehran.

Under the shah, Iranian Baluch children were banned from wearing shalwar
kameez to school, and Baluchi language publications were blacklisted. After
the Iranian Revolution, discrimination took on a sectarian flavor. Riots broke
out in 1994, after Iranian authorities replaced a Sunni mosque in Mashad with
a development project. Within a few years, Iran had jailed or driven from the
country more than 60 Sunni clerics. Many of those clerics were welcomed into
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, where some now regularly appear on Arabic
television networks, blasting the Shiite regime in Tehran. By the late 1990s,
some Iranian Baluch had turned to militancy, couching their insurgency in a
narrative of Sunnis fighting religious and ethnic discrimination at the hands of
a Shiite theocracy.

In the midst of this religious and political turmoil, drug trafficking thrives.
More than 70 percent of the worlds opium flows across the same border the
jihadis do, and from the start, the traffickers and Baluch jihadis targeting Iran
have cultivated a cozy relationship.

The Iranian strike in Kulahu in November 2013, which is one of the best
documented in this secretive war, was partly aimed at a compound in the
village that has hosted jihadis since the 1990s, when an Iranian banker
named Maula Bux Darakhshan formed Sipah-e-Rasul (or the Army of the
Prophet). Maula Bux (as he is called) mixed with the Afghan Taliban, and
financed most of his work by trafficking poppy, according to a Salafi cleric

who knew him personally. Local journalists recall watching his fighters parade
blindfolded Iranian soldiers through the streets of Kulahu in the back of
Toyota Hilux pickup trucks.

Mullah Omar, the Jaish ul Adl leader, got his start with Sipah-e-Rasul, where
he and other fighters doubled as muscle for the trafficker, breaking
associates out of Turbats fortress-like prison.

Maula Bux himself was killed in 2006, after being lured across the border by
Iranian forces on the pretext of a drug deal. But another, more powerful jihadi
group already was emerging in Iran.

On Dec. 14, 2005, gunmen ambushed the lead car in a motorcade carrying
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a tour of Sistan-Baluchistan,
killing the driver and a bodyguard. Ahmadinejad escaped alive, but Tehran
was rattled.

The attack was orchestrated by Abdelmalek Rigi, then age 22. Rigis boyish,
grinning face became the defining image of Baluch jihad in Iran. As a
teenager, the Iranian-born Rigi had come across one of Irans notorious public
executionseight young Baluch men strung up by cranes in public viewand
he dated his militancy, in part, from that moment. In 2007, he told Western
media (PDF) that his group aimed not to topple the Iranian regime, but to
increase autonomy for Sistan-Baluchistan and shield minorities from Tehrans
despotic religious rule like Fascism, [or] like Nazism. Within six months of
the attempt on Ahmadinejad, Rigis group, Jundullah, pulled off several more
brazen attacks on highways near the border, killing dozens of non-Baluch and
taking Iranian Republican Guard officers hostage.

By the end of 2009, Jundullah suicide bombings had killed scores of Shiite
worshippers at mosques in southeastern Iran and 42 people in Pishin,
including the deputy commander of Irans Revolutionary Guard ground forces.
Fuming Iranian officials blamed the United States and United Kingdom for
backing the militants, and Pakistan for inaction. A dozen Revolutionary
Guards were caught deep inside Pakistan, tracking Rigi. In public, Pakistan
denied Rigi was on its soil, but in private, authorities quickly moved to help
the Iranians find him, focusing on the border near Turbat.

A 2008 Pakistani raid near Turbat turned up Abdolhamid Rigi, the brother of
Abdelmalek Rigi. Whatever used to happen in Iran, they would say it was
because of Pakistan. But we did a lot, and the proof of that is that we handed
over Abdolhamid Rigi, said the then-Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman
Malik. During two years in Iranian custody, Abdolhamid provided crucial
details of how Jundullah operated. On Feb. 23, 2010, when Abdelmalek Rigi
boarded a Kyrgyzstani passenger plane from Dubai to Bishkek, Iran had the
flight diverted to Sharjahs airport, where the head of Jundullah was arrested.
Before executing Rigi in June 2010, Iranian television aired his confession,
detailing how the West and Pakistan had supported Jundullah. In his
statement, Rigi named Naser Boledi as a main mediator between him and
representatives of NATO. Rigi said he met American handlers at bases in
Afghanistan on trips arranged by Boledi and Yasin Ahwazi, an Iranian-Arab
who lives in Europe. Both Boledi and Ahwazi have been prominent critics of
Tehran for decades. Boledi, who lives in Sweden, laughs heartily when I call
him to ask about his connections to Jundullah. He denies any link.

Outside of Iran, Rigi's confession seemed like another in the long tradition
of statements extracted from prisoners there. There was, however, some
evidence the American intelligence community had sources inside Rigis
group, and some knew of Jundullahs intention to carry out attacks in Iran.

Part of a $400 million budget request for the CIA in 2007 included a
recommendation to build ties with armed anti-Tehran groups like Jundullah.
Some in the intelligence community seem to have followed through on that
plan. According to an investigation by The New York Times, Thomas McHale, a
detective with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, cultivated
extensive contacts with Jundullah, starting in 2007. McHale was assigned to
the Newark, New Jersey, Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes several
state and federal agencies and is supervised by the FBI. McHale passed his
intelligence on to the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon, and his reports
suggested he had known of Jundullahs intention to carry out attacks in Iran
in advance, but it is unclear if he knew the details. When the CIA began to
suspect he was too close to Jundullah, it cut ties with McHale, but the FBI, and
later the Pentagon, still sponsored half a dozen trips to Pakistan and
Afghanistan where he met Jundullah members. The relationship continued
until late 2013, long after Jundullah was declared a terrorist organization by
the State Department in 2010.

Shrubs and small trees dot a parched landscape along the road from Turbat to
the border. Dust devils as tall as skyscrapers appear in the distance.
Occasionally, green orchards of date palms emerge from the bleak horizon, a
reminder of the regions once famous export.

Rugged, unmarked roads branch off, leading northwest through the Zamuran
Hills to the Iranian frontier district of Sarawan, where Jaish ul Adl attacked the
army base in September 2014. Nestled in the hills are small market towns like
Buleda, dominated by Baluch who make a living smuggling diesel and drugs.
Three years ago, Republican Guard soldiers came into the hills and killed a
cleric accused of hosting Jundullah fighters.

Iranian forces have long-term grievances with the people in the Pakistani
border areas, said Zahoor Buledi, a former provincial minister. They are
always blaming us for abetting Jundullah, because Jundullah usually does its
operations near these areas... Bombing and shelling are routine matters.

Hundreds of families have left Zamuran because of the shelling, settling in

places like Turbat, only to have the war follow them there too.

Iran knows who lives in each and every house here, one man in a Turbat
mosque tells me. They could come here, even to Turbat city, and take any of
us and our government wouldnt do anything.

In a one-room home on the outskirts of town, a man named Abdullah speaks

in a hushed voice as he recounts the disappearance of his 26-year-old son,
Tanveer, in a Pakistani border town. On Jan. 11, 2013, four plainclothes
soldiers in two Iranian trucks posed as diesel merchants and lured the young
man into one of their vehicles. When Tanveer realized what was happening,
he jumped out of the truck, but the Iranians shot him, Abdullah says. We
got the body two weeks later. They said they had the wrong Tanveer.

At the Iranian consulate in Quetta, ringed by multiple layers of giant sand

bags to deter would-be suicide bombers, Syed Hasan Yehyavi offers tea,

Turkish delight, and diplomatic words. We have full confidence in the

goodwill of Pakistan, our brothers and neighbors, said the consul general,
but we expect more help from Pakistani officials. He follows up with the now
official line from Tehran, that Jaish ul Adl is being backed by the CIA, Saudi
Arabia and regional powersa nod to the ISI.

Mosques and madrassas run by Salafi Baluch, some of whom are financed
and have studied in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, have sprung up in
the region surrounding Turbat in the last decade, leading some to believe
funding might be channeled through them to groups like Jaish ul Adl.

Pakistani security officials offer a more nuanced explanation. Khan Wasey, the
spokesman for the Frontier Corps, a Pakistani paramilitary force tasked with
securing the border, claims there are no real Jaish ul Adl bases in Baluchistan.
He says his troops work to stop smugglers and jihadists, but there are other
forces at play.

Indeed, more than 55,000 Pakistani troops are in Baluchistan waging a war of
their own. For the last nine years, they have battled secular Baluch
nationalists who would like to see an independent Baluchistan. The Baluch
militants blame a Punjabi-dominated military for profiting from the extensive
natural gas, gold, and copper deposits that should have made the province
the wealthiest in the country. The fighting goes on along the same dusty back
roads used by Jaish ul Adl militants moving into Iran, but its apparent that
theyre not the main enemy for those Pakistani government troops, and they
exploit the disorder for their own ends.

The Jaish ul Adl compound in Kulahu sits on a route where three Baluch
separatist groups and at least one alleged government-backed death-squad
have set up their own checkpoints; bribes ease the flow of diesel and opium
here, even though Iran has constructed hundreds of kilometers of walls and
trenches along the border.

Local police officials like Bashir Brohi, Turbats soft-spoken, well-manicured

police chief, think Jaish ul Adl is probably able to fund its activities through
drug smuggling and conceded the governments writ basically ends at the
city lines of Turbat.

His latest target has been Hajji Hassan, a Baluch drug lord who fled Iran and
settled in Turbat in 2000. Hajji Hassan is legendary here. Back in Iran, he
once got word that the Iranians were going to raid a village where his men
were stationed. When the soldiers entered a valley, Hajji Hassans men
opened fire, killing more than 50 of them, one of the kingpins neighbors
tells me. After that, he had to leave Iran.

Hajji Hassan lives in Turbats Overseas Colony, a hamlet for the citys elite
whose imposing mansions covered in glazed tiles strike a jarring contrast with
the traditional mud-walled homes in the city. Many of the bosses living here,
who dominate a multibillion-dollar-a-year drug trafficking industry along the
border, are Iranian Baluch in exile, and thought to finance groups like Jaish ul
Adl. Locals close to Hajji Hassan say he has hosted Jundullahs leadership,
including Abdelmalek Rigi, in the past, and may be hosting Mullah Omars
fighters as well.

That sort of reputation seems to have tipped the Iranians to ask Police Chief
Brohi and the Frontier Corps to search in the Overseas Colony for five soldiers
Jaish ul Adl kidnapped in February 2013 in the Overseas Colony. A series of
raids this year turned up dozens of Tanzanians, Nigerians, and Yemenis, and
Iranians, too, kept as human collateral in global drug deals, but no soldiers.
Four of the five soldiers Jaish ul Adl kidnapped were eventually found in Iran,
near the Zamuran hills, and released after the mediation of an Iranian Baluch
cleric.

Pakistani officials point to that exchange as proof Jaish ul Adl has no presence
in their country, but some are still convinced the ISI is grooming the militants
indirectly, by supporting the drug kingpins who finance them.

For officials like Brohi, pursuing the drug traffickers in Turbat would mean
crossing a political minefield. One of the drug worlds most notorious
traffickers also hails from Turbat, and enjoys the support of the ruling
provincial party. Imam Bheel, as locals call him, was added to a list of
worldwide traffickers subject to U.S. sanctions in 2009. His son, Yaqoob
Bizenjo, served as a member of the National Assembly until 2013.

With all the internal security problems plaguing this corner of Baluchistan, it
seems unlikely Pakistan will crack down on groups like Jaish ul Adl, or the
drug kingpins funding them, any time soon.

Rigi used to couch Jundullahs aims in terms of an ethnic minority fighting for
autonomy within a federalized Iranian state. Mullah Omar and his other
successors, by contrast, have relied on the kind of polemical Shiite-Sunni
rhetoric used by the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS, in Syria and Iraq.

When Jaish ul Adl took five Iranian border guards hostage in February 2013,
its demand in exchange for their release included the freeing of 300 Sunni
prisoners, some of whom it claimed were being held in Syria. An attack last
year that killed 16 Iranian soldiers was publicized as a response to crimes of
the Revolutionary Guards in Syria.

The group puts out most of its statementson its Twitter feed, or its
numerous websitesin Arabic, as opposed to Baluchi or Farsi. The outlets
giving these pronouncements the most airtime are Arabic news stations in
the Gulf. The group also has admirers in Pakistan.

In Iran, Sunnis are not allowed to build mosques; their mosques are
destroyed, their rights are taken away, says Ramzan Mengal, provincial head
of the Ahle Sunnah Wa Al Jamah party, which has been accused of targeting
Shiites in Pakistan for decades. Two policemen guard the door to his rundown
madrassa on the outskirts of Quetta, protection provided to him, he says,
because Iranian agents have gunned down eleven Sunni clerics in the city.
Jundullah and Jaish ul Adl sprang up in reaction to that kind of oppression,
he said. They started as small groups that are big thorns in Iran's side now.

The Syrian war is having its effects here as well, said Yehyavi, the Iranian
consul general in Quetta. People want to paint this as a [global] sectarian
war. Yehyavi and other Iranian officials worry Jaish ul Adl might become a
globally-connected group, drawing support from the same forces backing the
Islamic State in Syria.

Rights activists like Boledi, the Iranian Baluch dissident living in Sweden,

harbor some of the same concerns. As a well-known advocate for Baluch

rights in Iran, young Iranians reach out to him for advice. I've had the same
cellphone number for 15 years, so occasionally I do get calls from these
militants, he said. I tell them, we are Muslims, but we are not looking for
some new Islamic government. I tell them you are not what the Baluch
want.