| A brief shooting war between Pakistan and Iran was probably not on your 2024 bingo card.
But, as a sprawling set of conflicts roil the Middle East, tensions are
flaring on myriad fronts. And that includes the arid wastes of
Baluchistan, a region which straddles the Iranian-Pakistani border and
has long been a source of friction between the two heavily armed
neighbors. On Tuesday, Iranian missiles allegedly struck targets
belonging to Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni fundamentalist militant group that
has historically found sanctuary in Pakistan and which Iran says is
linked to an Islamic State terrorist strike on a high-profile gathering
in the city of Kerman that killed at least 91 people earlier this month. Tehran said it hit “strongholds”
belonging to the militant group, but Pakistani authorities reported
civilian casualties, including the deaths of two minors. Then, amid
howls of outrage among the Pakistani public and political class,
Pakistan struck back Thursday. It said it hit targets on Iranian soil
ascribed to the separatist Baluchistan Liberation Army and Baluchistan
Liberation Front “using drones, rockets, loitering munitions and
standoff weapons.” Iranian state media reported the deaths of at least
nine people, including three women and four children. Hostilities
between the two countries periodically flare over the perceived
presence of rogue actors on either side of the dusty border. But the
current round is striking — Pakistan’s attack on Iranian territory is
the first major declared strike on the country’s soil by a foreign power
since the bloody Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Iran’s earlier missile
bombardment saw Pakistan withdraw its ambassador from Tehran. A full-blown crisis may not be in the cards.
Given the many geopolitical headaches facing both countries, neither is
in the mood for an intensifying dispute. Pakistan’s statement that
followed its retaliatory measures closely mimicked Iran’s own language
earlier in the week — a sign, some analysts reckoned, of Islamabad’s
eagerness to draw a line underneath the spat. Other regional actors are
already working behind the scenes to calm tensions. “Neither side
wants further escalation and China, Saudi Arabia and United Arab
Emirates who have stakes in the stability of southwest Asia have been
busy mediating,” Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies, told me. “The crisis will not likely
escalate but it has damaged Iran-Pakistan relations.” Mohammad
Taqi, a Pakistani columnist and commentator, noted the careful
choreography that surrounded the incident. “Impeccably curated
statements from both Iran and Pakistan,” Taqi wrote on social media. “Neither one seems interested in anything more except killing the Baloch on the opposite sides.” Smoldering in the background is this shared conundrum. For both Iran and Pakistan, Baluchistan — whose unforgiving terrain and temperatures nearly wiped out the returning armies
of Alexander the Great more than 2,000 years ago — presents a thorny
security challenge. The parallel Baluchistan provinces on either side of
the borders are vast and sparsely populated. Pakistan’s Baluchistan
province comprises more than a third of the nation’s landmass but just 5
percent of its overall population. Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan
province is the second largest in the country, but is home to just 3
percent of Iran’s population. In either province, local
communities live with a long, complex history of rebellion and grievance
against the central state. “Both Iran and Pakistan have for years
portrayed the insurgencies in the border region as at least in part
rooted abroad,” my colleagues reported.
“While Pakistan accused Tehran of turning a blind eye on militants
operating from Iran, Iranian officials have in the past said that Jaish
al-Adl was hiding out in Pakistan and receiving Israeli support.” Both
Tehran and Islamabad see the borderlands on the other side as potential
hotbeds of anti-state activity, pulling in the clandestine assets of
various hostile powers — from Israel to India to the United States.
Jaish al-Adl and its predecessor, al-Qaeda-linked Jundullah, harp on
Shiite Iran’s supposed repression of minority Sunnis to rally locals to
its militant cause. “The only thing we ask of the Iranian
government is to be citizens. We want to have the same rights as the
Iranian Shiite people. That’s it. We do not want discrimination between
Sunnis and Shiites in this country,” Jundullah founder Abdolmalek Rigi
said in an interview with al-Arabiya in 2008. He was captured and executed two years later. None of the groups targeted by Iran and Pakistan can claim to represent a majority groundswell of Baluch public opinion.
In the early 20th century, the Iranian monarchy crushed multiple
uprisings from various Baluch tribes and sought to undermine their
political identity by redrawing provincial borders and forcibly
resettling certain Baluch communities. The modern Pakistani state also
grappled with waves of Baluch rebellions, starting just a year after Pakistani independence in 1947. Cash-strapped Pakistan, meanwhile, is
desperate to establish some stability and calm in its restive
Baluchistan province, which is the site of major Chinese-backed
infrastructure projects, including a landmark port and imagined trade
corridor which could help jump-start Pakistan’s sluggish economy. The
initiatives have been dogged by delays, some of which are thanks to the
impact of a long-running separatist insurgency. For Iran, the
strikes on Pakistan were a matter of saving face. The blasts at the
beginning of the year in Kerman targeted a gathering involving thousands
of people mourning the fourth anniversary of the assassination of
influential Revolutionary Guard commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. The
powerful paramilitary institution within the theocratic state had to
respond. The attacks were “an embarrassment for the leadership,” an insider source close to the Iranian government told Reuters. |