TEHRAN — Sunni insurgents in Pakistan
increased attacks on Iranian border posts in the southeast of the
country this week, employing methods similar to those used by Islamic
State militants in Syria and Iraq.
In
one instance, a car bomber struck a fortified base near the city of
Saravan, killing a senior officer and prompting Iranian commanders and
politicians Thursday to call upon Pakistan to control its borders. On
Tuesday, three police officers were killed in an ambush after responding
to a distress call.
These
were only the latest in a series of attacks. Last month, insurgents
rammed a vehicle laden with more than 1,000 pounds of explosives into
one of the outer walls of a central base before launching a surprise
attack with a convoy of pickup trucks carrying 70 insurgents, a senior
military official told the Fars news agency this week.
The
official, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Pakpur of the Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corps, said the attackers had been repelled only after a long
firefight and the arrival of reinforcements, flown in by helicopter from
other bases.
The
Iranian-Pakistani border cuts straight through the Sunni tribal area of
Baluchistan, which has been volatile for the past 15 years. In the past
decade more than 3,000 Iranian border guards have been killed in gun
battles with drug-smuggling gangs, but in recent years the fighting has
grown more sectarian.
A
Sunni extremist group, Jaish ul-Adl, or the Army of Justice, has been
carrying out a program of harassment, derailing trains and conducting
assassinations and bombings. It demands independence, but Iran has accused its leaders of working for the United States and Saudi Arabia.
In
a statement on Edaalat News, a blog said to be run by Jaish ul-Adl
militants, the group took responsibility for the attack on the police
officers. “The Jaish ul-Adl organization hereby informs the public that
the fighters of Baluchistan have attacked Saravan’s Aspich base located
10 kilometers away from Saravan and killed two staff and a conscript,”
it said. “Details will be announced later.”
In recent months Iran
has directed a lot of its resources to protecting its western and
eastern borders. The attack on the border post in the south, basically a
well-defended fort in the middle of nowhere, is not the first. In 2013,
“bandits” killed 20 border guards, Iranian officials announced, saying
that in retaliation they executed 16 Sunni extremist prisoners on death
row.
Iranian
officials are now warning Pakistan that they are considering going into
its territory on hot-pursuit missions. “The Pakistani government has
practically no control over the border areas, and if they really cannot
control the common border, they should tell us so that we ourselves can
take action,” Esma’il Kowsari, a leading lawmaker, told the Tasmin news
agency on Thursday.
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