[Peace-discuss] Our terrorists

[C. G. Estabrook]

	FRI 29 MAY 2009
	Convergence and Continuity:
	The American-Backed Terror Campaign in Iran			
	WRITTEN BY CHRIS FLOYD	

On Thursday, a suicide bomber walked into a mosque, detonated his explosives and 
killed and wounded almost 140 people. In the wreckage and confusion afterward, a 
final death count has not yet been established, but the latest available 
information puts it at 23.

It is unlikely that you heard about this terrorist attack -- because it took 
place in Iran. For years, Iran has endured a series of terrorist actions -- 
suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, open assaults by fanatical gunmen, 
sabotage, and "targeted assassinations" of government officials, scientists and 
others. Multitudes have been slaughtered in these operations, whose ferocity and 
frequency are surpassed only by the atrocities that have been unleashed in the 
four countries that have been on the forefront of America's Terror War: Iraq, 
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. One shudders to think what Washington's 
response would be to such a sustained campaign on American soil.

Of course, it is no mystery why the attack on the mosque in Zahedan -- a city 
situated at the strategic point where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and 
Afghanistan converge -- attracted so little attention in the Western press. 
Every day, we are schooled relentlessly by our political and media classes to 
regard the Iranians -- heirs to one of the world's oldest and most sophisticated 
civilizations -- as demons and subhumans, whose lives are of little account. 
This can be seen in the long-running debate over an attack on Iran, which 
focuses almost entirely on the advantages or disadvantages such an assault would 
pose for American and Israeli interests -- and not at all on the thousands of 
human beings living in Iran who would be killed in the operation.

But there is another reason why the terrorist attack in Zahedan has not been 
greeted with commiserations from the White House or excited coverage from our 
government-spoonfed media: because it is highly likely that the United States 
played a role in fomenting the attack, either by direct or by collateral hand.

As AFP notes, Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, with "a 
large ethnic Sunni Baluch minority," which is often at odds with the 
Shiite-dominated central government. The region -- which is also a prime conduit 
for arms and drug trafficking across the volatile borders -- has been roiled for 
years by the militant Sunni extremist group, Jundullah (Soldiers of God). This 
group, aligned philosophically if not operationally with al Qaeda, has openly 
boasted of killing hundreds of people in its campaigns, and, as Chris Hedges 
notes, "has a habit of beheading Iranians it captures, including a recent group 
of 16 Iranian police officials, and filming and distributing the executions."

You would think that such violent, frenzied zealots -- fellow travellers of 
Osama bin Laden! -- would be taken up by our Terror Warriors as poster boys for 
the evils of "Islamofascism." But as we noted here a few months ago, "bombings 
and beheadings and deathporn videos are not inherently evil; they can also be a 
force for good -- as long as they put to the service of America's ever-noble, 
ever-lofty foreign policy ideals."

For Jundullah is one of the several armed insurgent groups inside Iran being 
supported by the United States. As Andrew Cockburn reported last year:

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert 
offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its 
contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush's secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from 
Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions 
permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of 
targeted officials.  This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full 
support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian 
opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list 
of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army 
of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the 
Afghan border -- whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports 
cutting his brother-in-law's throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian 
Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi Arabs of south west Iran.  Further 
afield, operations against Iran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped 
up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

Thus the attack this week in Zahedan is an integral part of a wide-ranging 
campaign of American-supported terrorism inside Iran -- even if the "darksiders" 
in the U.S. security organs had no direct involvement or knowledge of this 
particular attack. When you are in the business of fomenting terror (see here 
and here), there's no need for micro-management. You co-opt the armed extremists 
who best serve your political agenda of the moment; you slip them guns, money, 
intelligence, guidance -- and then you turn them loose on the local populace.

We have seen this over and over; in Iraq, for example, where American death 
squads -- such as the ones led by Stanley McChrystal, recently appointed by 
Barack Obama to work his "dirty war" magic in Afghanistan -- joined with mostly 
Shiite militias to carry out massive "ethnic cleansing" campaigns and individual 
assassinations. We saw it years ago, in the American-led construction of an 
international army of mostly Sunni extremists raised to hot-foot the Soviets in 
Afghanistan -- then turned loose upon the world. And of course this lineage of 
terror-breeding as an instrument of American foreign policy goes back for many 
decades. with one of the earliest, most spectacular successes being the use of 
religious extremists to help bring down the secular republic in Iran in 1953...

[Much more in this article and others from the excellent Chris Floyd at
<http://www.chris-floyd.com/>.]