superearther
17-07-2010, 01:17 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccih66RLjNc
But regardless of Iran's internal political situation, there is ample evidence that the George W. Bush administration was deeply involved in funding Jundallah. While it is not clear what the policy of the Obama administration is regarding Jundallah (the State Department flatly rejected Iran's accusations), it is unlikely that the CIA's direct or indirect support for Jundallah has ended.
In February 2007, Dick Cheney traveled to Pakistan and met with then-president Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Pakistani government sources said that the secret campaign against Iran by Jundallah was on the agenda when the two met. In an interview later that month, Cheney referred to the Jundallah terrorists as "guerrillas" in order to give them legitimacy.
But despite its claims, Jundallah is a sectarian, not liberation, movement. It is made of Sunni extremists who hate the Shi'ites, and its goal is to foment conflict between the two sects.
There is a movement in Pakistani Balochistan against the discrimination that the Baloch people suffer at the hands of the central government. The Baloch minority (totaling about 1 million) in Iran has also been discriminated against, although the Iranian government has been trying to improve the economy there. But Jundallah is not part of either struggle. Jundallah is simply a Sunni Salafi group of the Taliban or al-Qaeda variety, believed by many to have links to both groups and to be involved in drug trafficking as well. Since 1979, at least 3,000 Iranian policemen have been killed by the drug traffickers in the region.
On Feb. 25, 2007, the London Telegraph reported, "America is secretly funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear program. ... Such incidents [of violence] have been carried out by the Kurds in the west, the Azeris in the northwest, the Ahwazi Arabs in the southwest, and the Baluchis in the southeast. ... Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA's classified budget but is now 'no great secret,' according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington."
According to the Telegraph, Fred Burton, a former U.S. State department counterterrorism agent, supported the assertion, saying, "The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with U.S. efforts to supply and train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilize the Iranian regime."
In April 2007, ABC News reported that according to Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials, the Jundallah group "has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005." According to the report, the "U.S. relationship with Jundallah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or 'finding' as well as congressional oversight." The money for Jundallah was funneled to its leader, Abdel Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.
In an interview with National Public Radio on June 30, 2008, Seymour Hersh explained how the Bush administration's policy of "my enemy's enemy is my friend" led the U.S. to support Jundallah and the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, or MEK, an Iranian exile group listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department, both of which have clear records of terrorist activities.
In a July 2008 article in The New Yorker, Hersh quoted Robert Baer, a former CIA clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East as saying, "The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as al-Qaeda. These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers -- in this case, it's Shi'ite Iranians. The irony is that we're once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the 1980s."
In a symposium on U.S.-Iran relations that the author helped organized in October 2008 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Baer made the same statements.
But regardless of Iran's internal political situation, there is ample evidence that the George W. Bush administration was deeply involved in funding Jundallah. While it is not clear what the policy of the Obama administration is regarding Jundallah (the State Department flatly rejected Iran's accusations), it is unlikely that the CIA's direct or indirect support for Jundallah has ended.
In February 2007, Dick Cheney traveled to Pakistan and met with then-president Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Pakistani government sources said that the secret campaign against Iran by Jundallah was on the agenda when the two met. In an interview later that month, Cheney referred to the Jundallah terrorists as "guerrillas" in order to give them legitimacy.
But despite its claims, Jundallah is a sectarian, not liberation, movement. It is made of Sunni extremists who hate the Shi'ites, and its goal is to foment conflict between the two sects.
There is a movement in Pakistani Balochistan against the discrimination that the Baloch people suffer at the hands of the central government. The Baloch minority (totaling about 1 million) in Iran has also been discriminated against, although the Iranian government has been trying to improve the economy there. But Jundallah is not part of either struggle. Jundallah is simply a Sunni Salafi group of the Taliban or al-Qaeda variety, believed by many to have links to both groups and to be involved in drug trafficking as well. Since 1979, at least 3,000 Iranian policemen have been killed by the drug traffickers in the region.
On Feb. 25, 2007, the London Telegraph reported, "America is secretly funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear program. ... Such incidents [of violence] have been carried out by the Kurds in the west, the Azeris in the northwest, the Ahwazi Arabs in the southwest, and the Baluchis in the southeast. ... Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA's classified budget but is now 'no great secret,' according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington."
According to the Telegraph, Fred Burton, a former U.S. State department counterterrorism agent, supported the assertion, saying, "The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with U.S. efforts to supply and train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilize the Iranian regime."
In April 2007, ABC News reported that according to Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials, the Jundallah group "has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005." According to the report, the "U.S. relationship with Jundallah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or 'finding' as well as congressional oversight." The money for Jundallah was funneled to its leader, Abdel Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.
In an interview with National Public Radio on June 30, 2008, Seymour Hersh explained how the Bush administration's policy of "my enemy's enemy is my friend" led the U.S. to support Jundallah and the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, or MEK, an Iranian exile group listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department, both of which have clear records of terrorist activities.
In a July 2008 article in The New Yorker, Hersh quoted Robert Baer, a former CIA clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East as saying, "The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as al-Qaeda. These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers -- in this case, it's Shi'ite Iranians. The irony is that we're once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the 1980s."
In a symposium on U.S.-Iran relations that the author helped organized in October 2008 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Baer made the same statements.