Iran-Pakistan cooperation against Baluch rebels
Pakistani agents recovered three Iranian policemen who were kidnapped by Baluch militants and handed them back to authorities in Iran, while a fourth is believed to have been killed. The four police were abducted Feb. 27 by the Jundallah militant group after a deadly clash in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, and taken across the Pakistani border. (AFP, March 26)
There have long been accusations that Iran and Pakistan were cultivating rival Baluch factions to mkae trouble across each others' borders. This latest development is another indication that the Baluch are now acting independently of their erstwhile clients—causing Tehran and Islamabad to close ranks to crush them...
See our last posts on Iran, Pakistan and Baluchistan.
AlJazeera interviews Baluch rebel leader
AlJazeera sent a crew into Pakistan's Baluchistan province to interview rebel leader Balach Marri, an elected member of the provincial assembly who is now in hiding. The June 10 account made much of the danger and inaccessibility of the territory, as well as the fact that Marri had never before spoken to an international TV network. But he only spoke to the crew via satellite phone from an undisclosed location, and all he said was: "In my opinion, the situation for the struggle of an independent Baluchistan is going ahead very well. People are depending upon their own strength and vision for an independent state."
Nothing to shed light on their ideology or who is backing them. AlJazeera does note that while Marri's followers say he is in Pakistan's Baluch mountains, the government intelligence services say he is in Afghanistan.