Posted on 02/02/2007 11:31:07 PM PST by FARS
From Jamestown.org/terrorism: "This extreme southeastern Iranian province is awash with lethal arms and illicit drugs. The more extreme eastern fringes of Iranian Baluchistan are effectively lawless land, and thus attractive to both religious militants and Baluch nationalists. The illicit trade of “drugs for arms” between Iranian and Pakistani Baluchistan goes on with impunity. The Pakistani government is now raising a 16,000-man paramilitary force to choke off the trading routes for drugs and arms shipments." From our government via RFE:"WASHINGTON, November 13, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), announced a $22 million contribution to Iran during his November 7-9 visit to that country." and: "Costa arrived in the southeastern Sistan va Baluchistan Province that borders Pakistan on November 8. After meeting with the Iranian Drug Control Headquarters secretary-general, Fada Hussein Maliki, Costa announced the UN's $22 million contribution to help Iran combat drugs, IRNA reported." From an Australian State Department travel advisory: Border areas near Pakistan and Afghanistan: We strongly advise you not to travel to the regions bordering Pakistan in Sistan and Baluchistan province and the border with Afghanistan in Khorasan province. Violent clashes between security forces and drug traffickers often occur in these eastern border regions, in particular the regions of Khorasan and Sistan va Baluchestan. Foreigners have been kidnapped by drug traffickers in the area..." From the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: "While many in Iranian Baluchistan may feel dispossessed, drugs and criminality rather than ethnic separatism may be the greatest threat to domestic stability emanating from Baluchistan. Drug-smuggling across the Afghan and Pakistani frontiers into Iranian Baluchistan is rife. The border is poorly patrolled. Terrain is rough. Recent political tension between Tehran and Islamabad over Iranian support for a Baluchi insurgency in Pakistan has also undercut security and border cooperation.17 The Iranian drug problem is huge. While Iranian opium interdiction accounts for almost a quarter of opiate seizures worldwide, United Nations officials say that Iranian authorities seize only 10 to 15 percent of the drug shipments.18 Iran is not only a transit country for opium and heroin, but also a consumer. Drug addiction is rife and the trade lucrative. Shoot-outs between drug dealers and Iranian police are frequent, as are kidnappings. In recent years, tribal groups or drug smuggling gangs have kidnapped a series of European tourists in order both to embarrass the Tehran regime and to leverage the hostages in prisoner swaps or ransom schemes." My sources? The US government, the Australian Government, an Israeli think tank, a US based anti-terror think tank. Now tell me please; which of these represents the mullahs? Your sole source? Your own website. Drugs, not revolution.
All you are proving in your lengthy referal to UN and other sources is that there are drugs being smuggled in Iran - in general - and then doing a huge leap of faith that the recent clashes, which went into Isfahan city itself are just that. Why? Because the Islamic regime said so? Since when have they been truthful?
As for the comments you make about the Shah and again for "nth" time go back to your blocked time warp of the 1950's CIA comments, you are so out of date and so far off the real facts that it is almost pitiful.
And in my opinion reflects on your ability to evaluate events like the tribal revolt in 2007 as opposed to where you are stuck in the 1950s. You really ought to stop hiding behind a CIA report of about SIXTY years ago. Take a look at the WMDs the CIA said "in this century" were there and all the leaks and wrong information they have been putting out.
Your ancient CIA source information was not and is not something that is written in stone nor is it gospel, so please stop ducking behind it to make weird comments using them (from 60-years ago) as cover for comments you make today.
I am no longer going to address your opinions as it is beyond logic to try to deal with comments that have their roots in the 1950s and ignore anything that happened after that, since your mind appears to be unable to let go and move on to anything that happened after that long, long time ago report you cite. Which was incorrect overall.
Good analogy. A Dr. does not remove part of a cancer growth and hope the other part of it "assimilates" with the body.
IMHO, neither was smart.
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See, you lie again. My sources are the US Government, the Australian Government, a DC based, non-partisan anti-terror think tank and an Israeli think tank.
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Then you wrote; "Your ancient CIA source information was not and is not something that is written in stone nor is it gospel, so please stop ducking behind it to make weird comments using them (from 60-years ago) as cover for comments you make today."
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Well, the CIA after action report was written by the Americans who orchestrated the coup that put the bogus shah in power. It was true then, it is true now and it will be true 100 years from now. See, that's the fun part about truth...guys like you can't change it.
QEII was crowned, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary conquered Everest, Watson and Crick discovered DNA, uncle Joe Stalin died and Eisenhower became president in 1953.
Those who live far in the past are doomed to irrelevancy.
As for current issues (the tribal drug wars not being a revolution), every one of my sources is listed, they are the US government, the Australian State Department, The Jamestown Foundation (check them out yourself to see what they think of the mullahs) and an Israeli FP think tank...which one of those would you say is pro-mullahs?
Fars' 'sources' are all anonymous phone calls or unsubstantiated stories pulled from his own website....the one he keeps hyping.
Thanks for injecting some logic into this.
I have decided not to enter into any further direct discussion with wtc911, who as you so correctly state, judges the Shah on one event of sixty years ago, totally ignores (as you indicate) all that happened in Iran (or the rest of the world) since then - which casts a very different light on both the Shah and the country.
He then hides behind some somewhat spurious, outdated CIA flimsies. I know what he is talking about and it was very slanted by operatives who........(no matter, too outdated).
As for the Tribal revolt, which was breaking news from my highly reliable sources inside Iran (and they cannot be listed or revealed if they are to be kept alive, so yes they are very anonymous to anyone but me) and phone calls to Isfahan to people in place - all of these are still far better than slow moving think tanks or similar sources he claims immediately jumped into the fray and TOLD HIM right away the revolt was just drugs.
That was the Regime's cover up story, so they must have all fallen for it? Makes them out to be very stupid sources, which I doubt they are. In reality they did studies on drug movements in and through Iran and accurately concluded there's lots of it. What does this have to do with tea in China or the revolt?
Wow! Even some on the mark intel friends of mine don't move that fast. In this case I had it before they did.
I doubt those think tanks or sources that TOLD him so fast it was all drugs, even know about it, even right now, since it did not hit the MSM and think tanks do not evaluate every single eruption that takes place.
In reality this was a smallish eruption, which did not achieve much other than killing perhaps some 50 people all round. And now is in a stand-off status, where the Regime does not want to escalate matters - during the three day mourning period the tribal populace of the region has declared for their dead. (Not for the Regime men they loathe).
Exact statistics arise slowly and a long time after the fact as a tally seeps up from those who lost relatives. Or from Regime sources, which curently admit to 10 dead and always reduce casualties, specially when most of the dead are Regime forces.
BTW, the Regime itself has now ADMITTED there was a revolt when giving the stats, as they could not explain that many dead in a "four smuggler" clash as they originally stated.
You might wish to go to http://www.antimullah.com and check the short update at the top of the Tribal Revolt article.
There are some new posts and the NEWS VIEWS link there has an interesting article which went up today. Alan will post longer articles to that sub-blog page.
Once again, thanks for trying to introduce some grey matter into wtc's thinking process. I have not copied him as in my opinion it would be a weste of time.
The ravine in which he has chosen to sit and believe it's the whole world is so deep, I don't think there is a rope of logic long enough to extract him up into reality.
Feel free send him to this response.
cheers
Maybe. Ostensibly the Reagan is headed for the far east/7th fleet area,, having departed San Diego last Tuesday (Kinda hard to hide The Gipper) But if she were to proceed to the Gulf area, she would take 18+ days at 25 knots. I suppose she could pile on a few more knots, leaving any non nuclear escorts behind. Maybe she could rendezvous with the escorts from the Kitty Hawk group, leaving her escorts to replace the as soon as they could get there, in which case she might be able to reach that area in another week or so.
Considering that Putin is sending all sort of weapons, late model SAMs for example, to the regime in Iran, I sort of doubt it.
bin Laden was not synonymous with the Afghan Mujahadeen. He was very much a late coming, his early efforts being mostly in financing. When the more important groups fighting the Soviets and their Communist puppet government had a falling out, bin Laden, the Taliban (also not very important during the fight against the Soviets), and bin Laden's "Arab Afghans", stepped into the vacuum. Our support had gone mostly to the group we later called the Northern Alliance, whose leader bin Laden had killed by a suicide team on 9-10-2001.
He already has, although not strictly aid as we think of it. The Iranians have oil money, and the Russians, Ukrainians, and others were more than happy to take some of it for high tech (by their standards) weapons.
So close those routes by air bombardment, before the Chinese "volunteers" get to them. In the interest of keeping terrorists from using them to flee to China of course. :)
Thanks, any break down of our allocation of funds to various groups?
Thanks for the ping. Interesting news indeed.
So is there a civil war in Iran?
All true. The left loves to say we made Bin Laden in Afghanistan but it is not so.
Note to self, decline the spy job in the Bakhtiari and Ghashghai tribal areas when it's offered...damn, that's brutal!
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