Ethnic spat heats up Pakistan-Iran border

Balochistan rebels may damage Iran's relations with neighboring Pakistan.

from the April 18, 2007 edition

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"This is sectarian," says Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political science professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences. "Sunni organizations content on challenging Iranian influence in Pakistan would like to open up another front in Iran, which has been untouched by the sectarianism that is affecting Pakistan.

"The regional implications are going to be very serious for Pakistan," Mr. Rais adds. "Pakistan-Iranian relations are likely to deteriorate. Iran is likely to encourage the sectarian aspect in Pakistan."

It's an alarm bell that Islamabad denies hearing. "This cannot cause tension. [Iran and Pakistan] are on the same page about it. We are working together," says Tasneem Aslam, the Foreign Ministry's spokesperson. The problems on the border are not due to clashes with militants based in Pakistan, she says, but are an issue of armed gangs operating on the border.

Tehran certainly doesn't see it that way. After its Revolutionary Guards were killed, Iran immediately pointed a finger across the border at Pakistan.

"Though Pakistan is our neighbor, little by little it is losing its neighborly manners. Pakistan has become a haven of terrorists who kill people in Zahedan," influential Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Ahmed Khatami said on Iranian state radio, referring to the province where the attack took place.

Finger-pointing across the border is nothing new. Tehran has long held Pakistan responsible for the incubation of the Taliban, which killed nine Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan in 1998. Tehran has also blamed Washington for the violence, drawing upon ABC and other media reports that have suggested secret US backing. Whether the reports are true or not, American analysts have long advised that Baloch separatists are a viable option to be used for exerting diplomatic pressure on Tehran.

But the long-term regional implications of such a strategy, critics argue, are likely to outweigh short-term benefits.

"It could unleash much darker forces of nationalism and religious zealotry that could plunge the entire region into years if not decades of bloody crises," wrote Amir Taheri, an Iranian-born journalist, in a January editorial in the Arab News.

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