by Maria Morigi (archaeologist, essayist, scholar of Islam and fundamentalist movements)
In December 2023, airstrikes and border incursions by Tehran’s frontier guards occurred in the border area between Iran and Pakistan. However, tensions were quickly eased. On December 16, at the Davos Economic Forum, Iran’s Foreign Minister, H. Amir-Abdollahian, stated, “We have only faced Iranian terrorists on Pakistani territory… no civilians from Pakistan, a friendly and fraternal country, have been hit by Iranian missiles and drones. The Jaish al-Adl group, an Iranian terrorist group that takes refuge in areas of the Pakistani province of Balochistan, was targeted.”
In January 2024, former Pakistani ambassador and foreign minister Shamshad Ahmad Khan, in a Pakistani TV broadcast, acknowledged the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s concerns about the terrorist threat at the borders and criticized Pakistan for inadequate measures in preventing terrorist attacks near Iranian borders. Ahmad Khan also asserted that the United States and the Zionist regime deliberately support and finance the Jaish al-Adl group with the aim of damaging Iran-Pakistan relations and regional security.
Jaish al-Adl, “Army of Justice,” designated as a terrorist organization by Iran, Japan, New Zealand, and the USA, has collaborated with Kurdish separatist groups and denounced Iranian intervention in the Syrian civil war. For years, the terrorist group, founded in 2012 and fighting for the independence of Iranian Sistan and Balochistan, has carried out terrorist actions against Iran from Pakistani territory.
Therefore, a deeper understanding of Balochistan is necessary. It is a geographic region, arid and mountainous, bordering the Arabian Sea and spanning three borders (Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan). It is inhabited by the Baloch ethnic community, mostly nomadic, which considers itself marginalized—despite the territory’s wealth in natural gas, coal, and minerals—and excluded from the economic and commercial benefits offered by the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, the endpoint of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a branch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Independence movements in Pakistani Balochistan began in 1948 with the transfer of the former British domain, the Khanate of Kalat, to Pakistan. While the transfer treaty guaranteed the Khanate’s independence, it vested all governing functions in Pakistan. Thus, the region experienced a series of separatist/irredentist insurgencies aimed at realizing the “Greater Balochistan.”
In Pakistan, it is the largest province (with Quetta as its capital) and most at risk of terrorism: revolts erupted in this region in 1948, 1958–59, 1962–63, and 1973–1977, involving the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), a group founded by Jumma Khan in 1964 in Damascus, which also played a significant role in the 1968-1973 insurgency in the Iranian provinces of Sistan and Balochistan. The BLF insurgency was defeated both in Pakistan and Iran but seemed to re-emerge in 2004 under the leadership of Allah Nazar Baloch, conducting attacks against civilians, journalists, government officials, and the military (such as the BLF’s claim of responsibility for the Turbat fish market bombing in January 2023). This new low-intensity insurgency since 2003 has posed significant security challenges to both Pakistan and Iran, both grappling with local Sunni jihadist groups. Ethno-nationalist demands for greater autonomy from Pakistan have merged with protests regarding resource distribution, which the Pakistani government is accused of favoring the Punjabi ethnic majority. In the area, in addition to Sunni jihadist extremism, anti-Indian irredentism is also gaining strength.
Today, the most significant militant group in the border area is the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the largest in the galaxy of independence movements. The BLA movement, born in 2000, inherits the legacy of movements from the 1970s (especially the BLF); its leader is Khair Bakhsh Marri, belonging to one of the two powerful tribes (Marri and Bugti) that occupy vast areas in the north (Marri) in major mining areas and in the south (Bugti) near the strategic port of Gwadar. In addition to the Sunni separatists and nationalists of the BLA for about a decade, groups like the aforementioned Jaish al-Adl and Ansar Al-Furqan, another Sunni Baloch armed group also operating in Iran, have joined. Since 2013, the year of the first attack by Jaish al-Adl militants, Iran and Pakistan have viewed each other with suspicion. Each side blames the other for turning a blind eye to militants. Pakistan claims to have shared evidence with Iran of the presence of Baloch separatists in Iran launching cross-border attacks against Pakistani troops and claims to have arrested Jaish al-Adl members responsible for attacks in Iran.
All of this is concerning due to the “fracture” that could develop within the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Indeed, since January 1, 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates—and notably Iran—have officially joined BRICS, and Pakistan has also requested to participate. China, for its part, recommends moderation to all, working to mitigate tensions. Therefore, it is understandable why Western media denounce this escalation of conflicts in an area close to Israel-Palestine-Lebanon-Yemen-Red Sea. In fact, the terrorism hotspots are largely a consequence of Western neo-colonial policy, which armed anti-Shiite groups everywhere and conducted a devastating war of sanctions. The recent acts of hetero-directed terrorism in Iran are evidence of this: on January 3, 2024, in the city of Kerman near the tomb of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani (87 dead and hundreds injured) claimed by IS and the killing of 11 policemen in the city of Rask, in eastern Iran.