Iran carries out series of executions as ethnic Baloch group raises ante

Beirut: Iran, plunged in post-election turmoil, is also grappling with ethnic and religious tensions in a volatile southeastern province where the authorities have responded to attacks by Sunni rebels with a spate of hangings.

The executions last week of 13 men accused of membership of Jundollah (God's soldiers), an obscure ethnic Baloch Sunni group, followed the bombing of a Shiite mosque on May 28 that killed 25 people and wounded over 120 in Zah-edan, capital of Sistan-Balochistan.

Three more Jundollah fighters, including a brother of the group's leader, Abdul Malek Rigi, will be executed soon, Iran's ISNA student news agency said on Sunday.

Jundollah, whose precise ideology and affiliations are uncertain, is intensifying its struggle and take it beyond its remote, impoverished desert heartland near the Pakistan border, according to a forthcoming report by CTC Sentinel, a publication of the US-based Combating Terrorism Centre.

"Given the group's steady escalation in terms of its execution of tactics and choice of targets in recent months, the next step in Jundollah's evolution may result in attacks outside of Iranian Balochistan," Chris Zambelis wrote in the article for the organisation.

"Indeed, the international focus on Iran during the run-up to the recent election and the attention paid to minority issues during the campaign may have also emboldened the group to escalate its fight," Zambelis wrote.

Three people were hanged in public on May 30 for involvement in the Zahedan mosque bombing, claimed by Jundollah. Two more were hanged on June 2. A few days after the bombing, at least five people were killed and dozens wounded in clashes sparked by rumours of an attack on a Sunni cleric, Iranian media said.

Sectarian violence is relatively rare in Iran, whose leaders reject allegations by Western human rights groups that the Islamic Republic, dominated by its Shiite majority, discriminates against ethnic and religious minorities.

Ethnic Baloch, many with tribal links to their kin in neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan, make up an estimated one to three per cent of Iran's 70 million people.

Rigi, Jundollah's chief, said in a 2007 interview quoted by CTC Sentinel that his group was fighting for the rights of the Baloch people facing 'genocide' in Iran, but denied that it harboured any separatist or radical sectarian agenda.

Until recently, Jundollah fighters had mainly relied on ambushes, abductions and bombings to target Iranian security forces, who also combat drugs and arms smugglers in the lawless border province.

"Jundollah's decision to target a prominent Shi'ite mosque in Zahedan signifies a new and more dangerous phase in [its] war against the Iranian government," wrote Zambelis, noting that the attack on a civilian target coincided with a Shiite holy day.

Iran says Jundollah is part of the Islamist Al Qaida network - which has spread the use of suicide bombings in other insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tehran also accuses the United States and its allies of backing the group.

Washington has rejected charges by an Iranian official that it was involved in the Zahedan mosque blast.

Zambelis argued there was no evidence linking Jundollah to Al Qaida or other Sunni militant movements with a global agenda.

Its links with the Taliban in Pakistan's Balochistan province were less clear, but more likely to be based on collaboration in opium smuggling than on ideology, he added.

Jundollah has evolved through shifting alliances with various parties, including the Taliban and Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, who saw the group as a tool against Iran, according to Lahore-based Pakistani analyst Ahmad Rashid.

Rashid, author of a book on the Taliban, said that while Jundollah had sprung from a milieu of ethnic Baloch nationalism, this had never been a strong core of their beliefs.

"They seem to be more mercenaries. Nobody quite knows what they believe," he said.

"No secular Baloch group would have sought sanctuary with the Taliban before 9/11, but they did. No Baloch group would have worked with the ISI, but they did."

Rashid did not discount Tehran's accusation that Jundollah had received US backing as part of clandestine efforts during President George W. Bush's administration to subvert Iran.

"It's a very confusing picture. I think these guys have been used by everyone at some stage or another," Rashid added.