Posted on 08/08/2006 11:31:24 PM PDT by chichilarue
ISLAMABAD, Aug 8: Islamabad has alerted Tehran that runaway leaders and members of Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which has been declared a proscribed organisation in Pakistan, may try to sneak into Iran.
“Even though there is no proof of any BLA men having taken refuge in Iran, we have given them intimation in this regard so that they remain alert,” Secretary Interior Syed Kamal Shah told newsmen here on Tuesday.
Mr Shah had returned to the country two days ago after attending a Joint Working Group (JWG) meeting of Pakistan and Iran.
He said that Pakistan and Iran were worried about illegal cross-border movement between the two countries.
He disclosed that Pakistan had provided a list of 10 most-wanted terrorists likely to be hiding in Iran.
To a question, he said Iran had also sought arrest of one Abdul Rehman Regi, wanted in cases of killing and kidnapping of Iranians. He said they were showed a video-tape of Regi and his associates slaughtering an abducted Iranian near Pakistan-Iran border area in Balochistan.
To another question, the secretary interior said at least 94 Pakistanis were languishing in Iranian jails. Similarly, Iranians were also imprisoned in Pakistani jails, he added.
During the JWP meeting, it was decided to grant consular access to the prisoners on reciprocal basis, he said.
Mr Shah said the two-day JWG meeting between interior ministries of the two countries, held after a gap of three years, discussed wide ranging issues including border controls, terrorism, exchange of prisoners, human trafficking and drug smuggling.
He said the two sides underscored the need to further strengthen bilateral ties to combat terrorism, human smuggling and drug trafficking.
Recognizing that terrorism poses a big threat to both the countries, the meeting resolved to closely cooperate with each other in combating the menace through exchange of information and intelligence, he said.
The meeting appointed focal persons in Pakistan’s FIA and Iran’s Directorate General of Law Enforcement for exchange of information on human trafficking, he said, adding that it was also decided that the FIA director general and the concerned Iranian official would meet every six months for better coordination to combat human trafficking.
On drug-trafficking, the secretary interior said the two sides expressed satisfaction over the existing cooperation and agreed to boost it further.
The meeting appointed focal persons to ensure implementation of the decisions and agreement reached during the special security committee meetings, he said. Iran’s director general for Border Affairs and Smuggling and Pakistan’s additional secretary Ministry of Interior had been nominated in this regard, he added.
Support The BLA Insurgency.
So if BLA was to get control of a country like Iran do we continue to support the terrorist group? What makes them any better than the Iran government? All one needs to do is look back into history and see what our support of Afghanistan rebels against the Russians produced.
Supporting the Afghans was the lesser of two evils...the Russians could in no way be allowed to get Afghanistan. And let's not forget, Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, was one of the rebels we helped...and he helped us later overthrow the Taliban. The Taliban came to power in the late 90's...and not because we helped them in the early 80's, but because we stopped paying attention to Afghanistan later, just like we're not paying attention to Somalia now.
As for the BLA, they may be nutcases, but so what? They're a small ethnic group that will never control all of Iran anyway. The point is to give the mullahs something to worry about at home.
I hope you are right. But I don't feel too comfortable when the U.S. starts backing the lesser of two evils. Our record sure doesn't paint a pretty picture of those we backed.
The Baluchis overlap into Pakistan as well.
I believe that the delinquent states in the Middle East need to be dimembered.
Iraq into Shia, Sunni, Kurd; Iran into Kurd, Baluchi, Azeri, Sunni; and Pakistan itself into Baluchi, Pashtun, Sind etc.
In this way there would be a large number of smaller, ethnically and religiosly homogenous states, none of which would be large enough to be a threat to the region.
this is a good idea. or just seize the oil fields, let the savages duke it out on their own...but short of that, I like your plan.
Nitpicking, but no he didn't (Massoud)--he was dead (offed right before 9/11). And while we were right to use the Northern Alliance to drive out the Taliban, some of them are causing problems with the new government.
LeoWindhorse, not to be to much of an apologist for the Turks--especially in light of their increasingly islamist leaning, but I thought the whole reason they "stabbed us in the back" with our invasion plans was because of fear of the Kurds being able to operate with their Turkish brethren to increase the uprising. And I doubt many Iraqi bad guys escaped through the north--at the very least, they'd have to pass through those very same Kurds even if the Turks were sympathetic to them (for some reason). After all, they could have gone west or east a lot easier.
While I like the idea of the Kurds getting their own state (it'd be most natural if we'd split Iraq into three separate entities after we toppled Saddam), I don't think a country should be criticized for acting in its own interest (I sure wish our government would act in ours--i.e. the borders, Iran, NK, Venezuela, Somalia, etc.).
Ummm...actually he did. He was fighting them before he was assassinated on 9/9...that's why he was assassinated. Because he was fighting them there was a Northern Alliance around when we needed them, already holding some ground. His lieutenants were also funded and otherwise helped by us against the Soviets. Also, I don't need to remind you his photo was transported in front of all the Northern Alliance armies...
As for the Northern Alliance causing new problems? Guess what, _they're_ the ones who defeated the Taliban on the ground, not Karzai. They should be given more recognition. Even so, you can't have your cake and eat it too. The US chose not to go in on the ground because it might have casualties, so now it can't quite dictate everything to the people who did go on the ground. It's not a perfect world. The Northern Alliance is better than the Soviets and better than the Taliban. And the Taliban, like I said, wouldn't have come to power if we had helped Afghanistan in the 90's instead of abandoning it.
As for the Kurds...the creation of a Kurdistan is really not the point of this thread. It's whether the BLA should be helped to destabilize the Iranian regime. This does not mean that the BLA would "take over Iran," an impossibility, or even that they would have their own state afterwards.
But since you bring it up, I'm not a fan of breaking up Iraq. How would that solve any problems? Would you abandon the Sunnis to make their own Hamas state, the Shia essentially to merge with Iran, the Kurds to be in basically perpetual conflict with the Turks? As for the Turks...yes, it's _their_ interest, not ours. It's their problem, in other words. Our interest was going in through the north, and yes, we should be blaming the Turks for following their own self-interest when it conflicted with ours and with the terms of the NATO alliance. The Turks shouldn't be in this alliance.
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