The Secret War Against Iran
By Brian Ross and Christopher Isham Report:
04/03/07 "ABC
News' -- -- A Pakistani tribal militant group
responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran
has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials
since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC
News.
The group, called
Jundullah,
is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of
the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border
from Iran.
It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of
more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.
U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah 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.
Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is
funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through
Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf
states.
Jundullah has produced its own videos showing Iranian soldiers
and border guards it says it has captured and brought back to
Pakistan.
The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the
Iranians.
"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler,
part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior
fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News
consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal
members.
"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred
guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into
Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence
officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat
said.
Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February
that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.
Last month, Iranian state television broadcast what it said were
confessions by those responsible for the bus attack.
They reportedly admitted to being members of Jundullah and said
they had been trained for the mission at a secret location in
Pakistan.
The Iranian TV broadcast is interspersed with the logo of the
CIA, which the broadcast blamed for the plot.
A CIA spokesperson said "the account of alleged CIA action is
false" and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the
Jundullah group.
Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against
Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick
Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in
February.
A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah
have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was
appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that
context.
Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of
how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other
countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government
of Nicaragua in the 1980s.
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