Delving into the Iran-Pak dispute

Vivek Katju

Former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs

ON December 15, Pakistan-based Iranian Baloch group Jaish al-Adl attacked a police station in Rask, which is around 60 km from the Iran-Pakistan border and is located in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province. Eleven policemen were killed. On January 16, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards carried out a retaliatory attack with drones and missiles against a purportedly Jaish al-Adl base at Sabz Koh, some 45 km inside Pakistan. Pakistan said two children were killed and three injured. Denouncing Iran for violating its sovereignty, Islamabad recalled its ambassador from Tehran and warned that the ‘illegal’ Iranian action “would have serious consequences”.

Iran considers Pakistan as essentially a Sunni country which discriminates against Shias. It has employed mechanisms to mobilise Pakistani Shias and aided militant Shia organisations.

The Iranian attack illustrated facets of its complex political system and diplomacy. Even as the action took place, the navies of the two countries were conducting an exercise and a delegation of Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission was visiting Chabahar to discuss the possibility of jointly setting up a science and technology park. Besides, caretaker Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar had met Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Davos just two hours before the attack. The Jaish al-Adl had carried out attacks in Sistan-Baluchestan earlier as well. However, on those occasions, the Iranians did not respond the way they did this time. As the Revolutionary Guards forces take orders directly from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, it is impossible to believe that the January 16 attack would have been undertaken without his approval.

Iran had conducted missile attacks against Syrian and Iraqi targets around the same time as the attack on Sabz Koh. It claimed that it had acted against Israeli spy bases. But the Pakistani attack was qualitatively different because while Syria or Iraq could not really respond, the Pakistanis could and that is precisely what they did. On January 18, Pakistan announced that its forces had carried out specifically targeted intelligence-based precision military strikes against terrorist targets in Iran. Pakistan implied that the attacks were against the bases of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF). Like the Iranians, the Pakistanis also stressed that they had no intention of violating the other country’s sovereignty but had taken action in its security interests. Iran protested the action taken by its neighbour and said nine persons were killed.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry took pains to emphasise the brotherly relations between the two countries and warned that ‘enemies’ could not disrupt their bilateral ties. It was obvious that action and counter-action having been taken, both countries wanted tensions to de-escalate. The Foreign Ministers established telephonic contact to calm the situation. Indeed, the domestic conditions of the two countries and those in the region, including due to the continuing Israeli action in Gaza, did not permit them to go in for escalation. Besides, both have strong ties with China, which urged them to dial down tensions.

This noted, the reasons for the unprecedented Iranian action need an examination. This is especially because it had other and more traditional Iranian ways of showing its ire with the Jaish al-Adl action of December 15. Before the causes for the Iranian action are considered, it would be useful to go into some aspects of the position of the Baloch in Iran and Pakistan, for that has a bearing on this attack and counter-attack as a subset of a larger issue.

The Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni group, nurses grievances against Tehran for the discriminatory approach of the Shia Iranian state against non-Shias. Generally, while central Iran is Shia, the country’s periphery is inhabited by Sunnis, including the Balochis who live in the province of Sistan-Baluchestan. There is virtually nothing in common culturally between the sophisticated Shia Iranians and the Balochis. Urbane Iranian Shias do not permit the Balochis, or for that matter other Sunnis, any place in the Iranian power structures.

The Balochis also live in Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan. Over the decades, the Pakistani state has succeeded in reducing Balochis to a minority in their own province. Some of the Balochis have never reconciled to what they are convinced was an illegal merger of the Baloch Kalat state with Pakistan in 1947. They have carried out a national struggle against the Pakistan state for independence, including through the BLA and the BLF. The Pakistan army has employed the most brutal means to suppress Baloch national sentiment and especially the BLA and the BLF. The case of the missing Baloch men has reached Pakistan’s Supreme Court, but that has made no difference to the high-handedness of the Pakistani army against Baloch young men.

The Balochis in Pakistan have never been able to achieve unity to take on the Pakistan state. That being the case, there has never been any real endeavour or success among the Iranian and Pakistani Balochis to take united action to promote their interests. Conversely, there is a commonality of interests between Iran and Pakistan to suppress the Balochis, but instead of acting together, both countries have used Baloch groups against each other. Thus, the Pakistani agencies have given refuge to the Jaish al-Adl, while Iran has permitted the BLA and BLF to take shelter in their territory.

Iran considers Pakistan as essentially a Sunni country which discriminates against Shias. It has employed mechanisms to mobilise Pakistani Shias and promoted as well as aided militant Shia organisations that took violent action against sectarian Pakistani Sunni organisations. Now too, the Revolutionary Guards forces were in a position to adopt such traditional methods, but the fact that they chose to use drones and missiles against Jaish al-Adl was meant to show the Pakistani Generals that they were willing to take strong action, even if it raised the bilateral tensions and led to tit-for-tat strikes. The Iranians were also signalling that they knew of Pakistan’s current internal and external vulnerabilities. The latter includes Pakistan’s problems with the Afghan Taliban.

While Pakistan-Iran tensions may have been defused for now, the underlying causes persist.

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