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And this was the very same Aziz who shared Pakistan’s charge-sheet against Kulbhushan Jadhav and a timeline of his trial in a media briefing on April 14, 2017. Aziz also asked why Jadhav, who was handed the death sentence on April by an in-camera Field General Court Martial (FGCM) for his involvement in espionage and sabotage activities inside Pakistan, had been carrying official documents under an alias at the time of his arrest. “I would like to ask India why he Jadhav was using a fake identity and masquerading as a Muslim. Why would an innocent man possess two Passports—one with a Hindu name, and one with a Muslim name? Since India has no credible explanation about why their serving naval commander was in Balochistan, it has unleashed a flimsy propaganda campaign,” he said. Aziz also condemned India’s “baseless allegations”, adding that India’s lack of cooperation and refusal to provide Pakistan legal assistance were the reasons Jadhav had not been granted consular access. “Inflammatory statements and rhetoric about pre-meditated murder and unrest in Balochistan will only result in escalation, serving no useful purpose,” he added. Aziz further said that steps had been taken to ensure transparency during the trial of Kulbhushan Jadhav under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act 1923’s Section 3 and the Pakistan Army Act 1952’s Section 59. Elaborating on these steps, Aziz revealed that Jadhav’s confessional statement had been recorded before a Judicial Magistrate under Section 164 of Pakistan’s Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), whereas the proceedings had been conducted under the Law of Evidence. Jadhav was also appointed a qualified legal officer to defend him in court proceedings. Witnesses recorded their statements under oath in front of the accused, who was allowed to question them. It should be clear from these details that Kulbhushan Jadhav was tried under the law of the land in a fully transparent manner,” Aziz said. “His sentence is based on credible, specific evidence proving his involvement in espionage and terrorist activities in Pakistan. A Letter of Assistance requesting specific information and access to certain key witnesses was shared with the Government of India on January 23, 2017. There has been no response from the Indian side so far. Kulbhushan Jadhav still has the right to appeal within 40 days to an appellate court. He may also lodge a mercy petition to the PA’s Chief of the Army Staff within 60 days of the decision by the appellate court and may file a mercy petition to the President of Pakistan within 90 days after the decision of the COAS on the mercy petition”, Aziz added.
Aziz revealed that Jadhav had been held responsible for the following terrorist activities in Pakistan:
· Sponsored and directed Improvised Explosive Device (IED) and grenade attacks in Gwadar and Turbat.
· Directed attacks on a radar station and civilian boats in the sea opposite Jiwani Port.
· Funded subversive secessionist and terrorist elements through hawala/hundi for subverting the Pakistani youth against the country, especially in Balochistan.
· Sponsored explosions of gas pipelines and electric pylons in Sibi and Sui areas in Balochistan.
· Sponsored IED explosions in Quetta in 2015, causing massive damage to life and property.
· Sponsored sectarian attacks on Hazaras in Quetta and Shias en route to and back from Iran.
· Abetted attacks through anti-state elements against law enforcement agencies, the Frontier Corps (FC) and Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) in areas of Turbat, Punjgur, Gwadar, Pasni and Jiwani during 2014-2015, killing and injuring many civilians and soldiers.
Aziz also provided a timeline of the trial and proceedings against Jadhav:
· Kulbhushan Jadhav was arrested on March 3, 2016, 21 days before his arrest was officially announced by Balochistan’s provincial Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti on March 24, 2016
· Confessional video statement recording of Kulbushan Jhadav—March 25, 2016
· Initial FIR filed with the Counter-Terrorism Department in Quetta—April 8, 2016
· Conduct of initial interrogation—May 2, 2016
· Conduct of detailed interrogation—May 22, 2016
· Joint Investigation Team constituted—July 12, 2016
· Confessional statement under Section 164 of the CrPC—July 22, 2016
· Recording of summary of evidence—September 24, 2016
· 1st proceeding of FGCM—September 21, 2016
· 2nd proceeding of FGCM—October 19, 2016
· 3rd proceeding of FGCM —November 29, 2016
· 4th proceeding if FGCM—February 12, 2017
· Death sentence endorsed by FGCM—April 10, 2017
Aziz’s press-briefing 24 hours ago raises several questions about the veracity of his revelations due to the changing Pakistani narratives on L’Affair Kulbhushan Jadhav over the past 13 months. For instance, Pakistani says that when Jadhav was apprehended inside Balochistan, he was in possession of an Indian Passport, E6934766, identifying him by the pseudonym of Hussein Mubarak Patel, born in Sangli, Maharashtra. This Passport had been issued on May 12, 2014 from the Thane Regional Passport Office (RPO) and was valid until May 11, 2024. Pakistan also alleges that Jadhav is concurrently serving with both the Indian Navy (IN) and the Indian Union Cabinet Secretariat’s R & AW, and that he will be retiring from the IN only in 2022. While Aziz also disclosed on April 14 that Jadhav was nabbed while trying to cross the border from Saravan city (the capital of Saravan County in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province) into Mashkail in Balochistan, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director had on March 29, 2016 claimed that Jadhav was picked up by Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies in Balochistan’s Chaman Border Crossing Point near the shared border with Afghanistan, and that Jadhav had entered Balochistan from Afghanistan a total of 12 times, and that he had been in Balochistan for 15 days distributing millions in cash of different denominations among Baloch insurgents, and that he was carrying Pakistani and Afghani SIM cards and navigational maps. In a crowded hour-long military-civil press conference held in Islamabad on March 29, the ISPR released a ‘confession’ video of what it alleged was an Indian spy in Pakistan’s custody. In the 6-minute video, Kulbhushan Jadhav, 46, ‘confessed’ to launching covert operations against Balochistan province while operating from Chah Bahar port in southeastern Iran.
Earlier, on March 25, the then Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary summoned the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad, Gautam Bambawale, and handed over a Démarche over the arrest of Jadhav, describing Jadhav as someone who was indulging in “subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi”. On March 26, a day after the start of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s first official two-day visit to Islamabad, the then Director General of ISPR, Lt Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa, had tweeted that when the PA’s then COAS Gen Raheel Sharif met President Rouhani, he had raised the issue of R & AW’s involvement in Pakistan’s internal affairs, especially Balochistan. A subsequent statement issued by the ISPR said: “There is one concern that R & AW is involved in Pakistan, especially in Balochistan, and sometimes it also uses the soil of our brother country Iran.” On March 27, the very next day, the President Rouhani at a press-conference in Islamabad denied having discussed any matter with Gen Sharif, saying that “there was no discussion about Indian spy during my meeting with Gen Raheel”, and adding that “whenever Iran comes close to Pakistan, such rumours are spread”. Iran’s Ambassador to Pakistan, Mehdi Honardoost had then slammed the leaking of the details of Jadhav’s arrest instead of the issue being discussed between the security agencies of both countries.
When news of Jadhav’s arrest broke, the well-connected Afghan journalist Malik Achakzai tweeted to report that Jadhav had been abducted. On the same day, in Karachi, a former and very knowledgeable German ambassador to Pakistan Dr Gunter Mulack, said “that the Indian spy recently arrested in Balochistan was actually caught by Taliban and sold to Pakistani intelligence.”
Questions that arise from the above-mentioned Pakistani narratives are:
1) If Sartaj Aziz on April 14 stated that when Jadhav was apprehended inside Balochistan, he was in possession of an Indian Passport, E6934766, identifying him by the pseudonym of Hussein Mubarak Patel, why did he contradict himself in that very same press-conference by asking: Why would an innocent man possess two Passports—one with a Hindu name, and one with a Muslim name? Where is the second Passport and why has it not yet been shown by Pakistan?
2) Why should anyone carry two Passports at all when it is a well-known rule that any person found in possession of two Passports—even showing identical identities but of different nationalities or differing identities with the same nationality—is a criminal offence?
3) Why is Pakistan not disclosing the material evidence which shows that Jadhav is still employed with the IN and R & AW? Does Pakistan possess Jadhav’s naval service records which say that Jadhav will retire in 2022?
4) If indeed Jadhav was apprehended while trying to cross the border from Iran’s Saravan city into Mashkail in Balochistan, why did the ISPR on March 29, 2016 claim that Jadhav was picked up by Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies in Balochistan’s Chaman Border Crossing Point near the shared border with Afghanistan?
5) If Jadhav had indeed been ‘entrapped’ by Pakistan inside Balochistan, then why is it that the ‘Kaminda’—3,500-tonne Dhow that he owned, had also disappeared at the same time as Jadhav and remains untraceable? Is it possible for this Dhow to be operated by a single person, or did it have an on-board crew complement? If the answer is yes, where is it now?
6) Is is really possible for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate and its proxies to pull off a successful ‘enforced abduction’ and smuggle the entrapped target over land from Iran’s restive Sistan-Baluchestan provinceinto Balochistan when that entire Iranian province is crawling with covert operatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (Pasdaran), the Basij Mostazafan, and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (Vezarat-e-Ettela’at Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran)?
7) If Jadhav’s ‘confessions’ have enabled Pakistan to destroy the underground networks of several Pakistan-based separatist and terrorist networks, then why is there no news about any such Pakistani citizen or citizens being tried along with him as co-accused/co-conspirators via the FGCM route?
8) Was it possible for the ISI to monitor Jadhav’s cellphone conversations between Chah Bahar and any other place in India? If not, then what was the most probable area-location for the ISI to use its COMINT capabilities for listening to Jadhav’s cellphone-based communications?
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The above-mentioned questions can only be answered AFTER one examines in detail 1) the business activities of Kulbhushan Jadhav; and 2) the operating environment in and around Chah Bahar FTIZ. Born on April 16, 1971, Jadhav is the son of Sudhir Jadhav, and a resident of B-502 Silver Oak Point, Hiranandani Garden, Powai, Mumbai, in Maharashtra. He secured admittance into the Khadakwasla-based National Defence Academy in 1987 (Charlie Squadron, 77th Course), following which he was commissioned into the engineering branch of the Indian Navy in 1991 (Commissioning Number 41558Z). According to the Govt of India’s statement made on March 27, 2016, Lt Cmdr Jadhav took premature retirement from the Navy in 2003 and thyereafter went into business as a merchant marine entrepreneur. Jadhav sank his life’s savings into his company, named Kaminda Trading Pvt Ltd and struggled to make ends meet, stumping up only meagre business ferrying scrap-metal, gypsum, tractor parts, bitumen, rice and wheat between the ports of Kandla and Porbandar in India, and Bandar Abbas and the Chah Bahar FTIZ in Iran. These were all transported by the‘Kaminda’—a 3,500-tonne Dhow that Jadhav’s company owned. All this while, Jadhav was apparently using a Passport registered in his true name. Jadhav’s maritime freight business picked up steam from 2012 onwards after Iran was slapped with crippling UN-mandated trade sanctions by the US and EU member-states. In fact, Iran during this very period dramatically increased its exports of commodities and crude oil-related downstream byproducts to India, while at the same time proportionally increased its imports of finished agricultural and chemicals-related products from India, which led to an annual bilateral trade of US$4 billion by 2014. In 2014, following the expiry of validity of his Passport, Jadhav decided not to renew the validity and instead chose to obtain a new Passport, this time giving his name as Hussain Mubarak Patel (born on August 30, 1968 in Sangli, Maharashtra), whose certified address was that of a flat in Thane owned by his mother, Avanti Jadhav. He also succeeded in obtaining an Iranian business residency permit (valid till June 2016) for entering and residing in Chah Bahar FTIZ, located just 75km west of the Pakistani deep-sea port of Gwadar in Balochistan province.
The reason why Jadhav had to give the Thane address of his residence was for the sake of identity verification by the Thane Police’s Special Branch and the District Intelligence Bureau (DIB), which is a mandatory process whenever any Indian citizen applies for a Passport for the very first time. In Jadhav’s case, since he was assuming a new identity then, the earlier security authentication carried out by the Mumbai Police’s Special Branch and the DIB when Jadhav had acquired his first Passport in his original identity was now no longer valid.
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The question that arises here, and which has not yet been explained either by Jadhav’s next-of-kith-and-kin or by the Govt of India, is what made Jadhav assume a new identity and that too at a time when his marine freighter business was doing quite well? Was it because it was brought to his attention by some authorities of either India or Iran that there was a high possibility of him being kidnapped in the high seas in an act of piracy—this probability being based on certain SIGINT/COMINT chatter of Pakistani origin that had been picked up by either Iran or India? After all, the waters between Balochistan province and Oman are the favourite operating areas of Baluchi smugglers like the notorious Baloch drug smuggler Haji Wali Mehmood Baloch, who operate in these waters and have close links with the ISI as they are always used to ferry consignments of compressed heroin (that are produced in Pakistan from the raw opium originating from Afghanistan) to various Arabian ports in the Persian Gulf. In fact, it is this drug trafficking business that sustains the Afghan Taliban’s Pakistan-supported guerrilla warfare inside Afghanistan. It is perhaps this possibility that prompted India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to state on March 29, 2016 that Jadhav was most likely kidnapped. However, for obvious reasons, The MEA stopped short of identifying the most likely location where the kidnapping took place.
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But this much is sure: Jadhav WAS NOT kidnapped from Chah Bahar or anywhere else inside Irannian territory. His last cellphone conversation was on February 29, 2016 in Chah Bahar, following which it was left unanswered. It is therefore highly probable that as he along with the Kaminda was heading back eastwards toward India, his vessel was stealthily boarded by some highly skilled Pakistanis (who had definitely rehearsed this act of piracy a few times in advance, probably between July 2015 and January 2016) at nighttime in international waters just outside Iran’s territorial waters in such a manner that neither Jadhav nor any of his crew-mates had absolutely no time to respond by transmitting an SOS distress signal from the vessel’s bridge. After forcibly commandeering the Kaminda and taking its crew complement hostage, the sea-assaulters then set sail for the nearest Pakistani coastal belt of Jiwani (34km east of the Iran-Pakistan maritime boundary) where Jadhav and his crew complement were offloaded. Thereafter, either the Kaminda was scuttled, or was repainted for assuming a new identity. This is the only plausible explanation for the continued disappearance of the Kaminda. So what became of the Kaminda’s crew complement? Have they too been tried by the Pakistan Army’s FGCM as co-conspirators or facilitators? If yes, then is Pakistan waiting for a suitable opportunity to reveal their fate?
There is some reason to infer that this could well happen since Balochistan’s Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri had subsequently claimed in 2016 that at least 15 more ‘operatives’ of R & AW had been arrested from his province, based on the leads provided by Jadhav.
In addition, the mere fact that despite specific provisions in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, India has been denied access to Jadhav 14 successive times only confirms beyond any doubt that Pakistan does not want the truth to be revealed about the place and manner of Jadhav’s forced abduction. Consequently, the prospect of Jadhav securing his release from captivity and returning back to India too has now become an impossibility.
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Coming now to the operating environment in and around Chah Bahar FTIZ, it needs to be noted that the Iranian province of restive Sistan-Baluchestan province is Iran’s most securitised area. This is because it is the favourite hunting ground for Pakistan-based extremist Baloch Sunni tanzeems like the Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), the Jundullah (Soldiers of God), the Sipah-e-Sahaba or Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (which was traditionally dominant in South Punjab but is now also ascendant in Parachinar, Kurram Agency) and of late the Jamaat-ud-Dawa headed by Hafiz Saeed. These rabidly anti-Shia tanzeems have since the late 1980s engaged in several barbaric sectarian massacres of Shias residing in both Pakistan and Sistan-Baluchestan, and are also known to be in cohorts with the Quetta Shura of the Afghan Taliban. Together, they all are active throughout the 936km-long Iran-Afghanistan border and the 909km-long Iran-Pakistan border. Consequently, these two today constitute of the world’s most heavily fortified land borders. The already-constructed Iran-Pakistan Barrier (built by Iran from 2007 till 2013) features a three-foot thick, ten-foot high concrete wall extending across 700km of forbidding desert terrain. The actual wall, however, is merely one part of an elaborate system of barriers that include several parallel structures running along much of the border, which evidently consist of deep canals, linked embankments and ditches. Fortress-like garrisoned observation towers too exist in several areas, as are extensive road and track networks. Since the barbed-wire fences, walls, berms, dry moats, and other fortifications are all built on the Iranian side of the border, Pakistan has voiced no objections to such projects.
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The official purpose of the Iran-Pakistan Barrier is two-fold: to stop illegal border-crossings and to curtail the flow of narcotics into Iran. The latter issue is certainly serious, since Iran has the world’s highest rate of opiate addiction by a substantial margin, with an estimated 4 million regular users in a population of roughly 73 million. Afghanistan is the ultimate source of narcotics entering Iran, but Afghan opium is often processed in, and exported from, Pakistan as compressed heroin. As there is only one legal crossing-point between the two countries—at the small oasis town of Taftan—Teheran has banked on hopes to gain control over the flow of narcotics and other smuggled commodities by hardening the Iran-Pakistan border.
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The issue of illegal border-crossings by Pakistanis is more complicated. Iran is a much more prosperous and less densely populated country than Pakistan—circumstances that often result in a large flow of surreptitious immigrants. And indeed, the westward movement of undocumented migrants is substantial. It is also apparently increasing, despite the Barrier stretching from Taftan to Mand. But most of the people illegally crossing the border evidently aim to pass through Iran on their way to either Europe—a region with substantially higher wages and benefits—or to Iraq, Syria or Turkey in order to join the ranks of ISIS. The illegal movement of drugs and people, however, is not the main reason for the construction of the extraordinarily expensive barriers by a cash-strapped Iran. More important is the desire to quell the Baloch rebellion. The boundary between Iran and Pakistan also divides the land of the Baloch people, a distinct ethno-linguistic group some 9 million-strong. The bulk of the Baloch, a Sunni Muslim people, live in Pakistan, but as many as 1.5 million reside in southeastern Iran, with another 500,000 or so in southwestern Afghanistan. The Baloch in Pakistan have been engaged in a low-intensity insurgency for decades, while those of Iran have become increasingly restive in recent years. In 2003, Iranian Baloch separatists along with their Pakistani counterparts formed a violent tanzeem called Jundullah (Soldiers of God), dedicated to fighting on behalf of Sunni Muslims against the Shi’ite regime of Iran. Pakistan, by the way, just does not bother about narcotics trafficking by the Afghan Taliban and their Baloch facilitators, but is highly concerned about smuggling from Iran, but of a different kind: alcohol.
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To curtail such activities, Pakistan’s FC has built the highly securitised ‘Pakistan Gate’ at Taftan in Balochistan’s Chagai district and it went operational on August 14, 2016). Iran has already constructed a parallel securitised gate inside its border at Mir Java in Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province.
In light of the above, it is therefore impossible for anyone to abduct/entrap/kidnap a person inside Iranian territory and then have him smuggled into Pakistan. Any such action that promises 100% success and 100% plausible deniability can only be conducted in international waters along the Pakistani coastline.
Why Is Iran Paranoiac About Sindh & Balochistan?
In response to the alarming spread of Wahabism/Salafism throughout Pakistan during the civil war in Afghanistan between 1980 and 1988—when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) along with Pakistan’s then military dictator-cum-Army COAS Gen Mohd Zia-ul-Haq went on to create anti-Shia cults like the Sunni Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith inside Pakistan to counterbalance the threat of Shiism—the Islamic Republic of Iran, since the mid-1980s, has been engaged in waging proxy wars against the KSA-financed Pakistani Sunni adherents of Wahabism/Salafism throughout Pakistan.This in turn has, over the years, led to complex relationships of opposing extremist ideologies, cross-border smuggling networks, and alliances based on religio-ethnic faultlines and among several militant Pakistani tanzeems.
The Sunni-Shia sectarian divide is 1,400 years old worldwide, with adherents of Shi’a Islam in Pakistan making up 25% of the country’s population, while the remaining 75% practice Sunni Islam. This makes Pakistan the country with the second-largest Shia community after Iran by number of adherents (India hosts the world’s third-largest Shia community). Globally, Shia Islam constitutes 15% of the total Muslims, while the remaining 75% practice Sunni Islam. Sunni militant tanzeems inside Pakistan include the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-e-Sahaba (now known as the Ahle-Sunnat Wal Jama’at or ASWJ), Jundullah and its the Jaish al-Adl/Jaish al-Nasr offshoots, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (affiliates of Al-Qaeda and supporters of the Afghan Taliban), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and the Khorasan chapter of ISIS (Daesh). On the Shia side, Maulana Mureed Abbas Yazdani formed the Sipa-e-Muhammad Pakistan in the early 1990s. This is the armed wing of Tehreek-e-Jafria Pakistan and has been involved in the assassinations of Sunni Ulama and violence against Pakistan’s Sunni community in Shia-dominated areas of the country. It was banned in Pakistan by President Gen Pervez Musharraf in 2002. It is accused of killing the central leadership of the Sipa-e-Sahabah, starting from Haq Nawaz Jhangvi to the subsequent assassinations in Karachi and Rawalpindi. Its headquarters is in Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore, and its leader is Syyed Ghulam Raza Naqv,i who was imprisoned in 1996 and released in 2014. It is also alleged to be behind the massacre of students of a Sunni madrassa and the burning down of Madrassa Taleem-ul-Quran in Rawalpindi in 2013.
According to Pakistan’s Federal Ministry of Interior, Punjab province alone has 122 Saudi-funded madrassas and 25 Iran-backed ones. In Balochistan and Peshawar, funding is mostly flowing from KSA, while in the Shia-dominated northern territory of Gilgit-Baltistan inside PoK, money comes almost exclusively from Iran. Pakistani cities like Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi and Multan are also home to large Shia communities. The majority of Pakistan’s Shia community adheres to the Twelver cult, while other sub-sects/cults are the Ismailis, Khojas and Bohras. Most of these are not easily distinguishable by either name or identity. Among Twelver Shias, however, the most vulnerable is the Hazara community in Quetta region as its members are easily recognisable due to their ethnicity and language. Quetta is home to nearly 6,00,000 Shi’ite Hazaras, whohave been the victims whenever extremist Sunni tanzeems have gunned down buses packed with pilgrims heading to Iran via the Pakistan-Iran border at Taftan ever since Pakistani Sunni clerics since the mid-1980s began issuing fatwas that declared the Shias as heretics and apostates. In Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the Bangash, along with the Orakzai and the Turi, are the only Pashtun tribes with significant Shia population and they are concentrated around the Parrot’s Beak area of Parachinar in the Upper Kurram Agency, as well as in Hangu and Kohat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Opposing them is the Mehsud—a big Karlani Pashtun tribe based in South Waziristan Agency alongside the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe. The centre of Mehsud tribe’s population is the Makeen-Laddah-Tiarza-Sarwakai belt in South Waziristan. However, the Mehsuds also live in Dera Ismail Khan and Tank and it is they who have provided support for the Iranian Baloch cadres of the Jundullah, almost all of whom are from the Rigi tribe and are also graduates of madrasses located in Karachi and interior Sindh. Between 2003 and 2016, 2,558 Pakistani Shias were killed, while around 600 Shias were killed between 1999 and 2003 and approximately 500 Shia doctors fled the country as a result of the assassination of more than 50 of their colleagues in Karachi alone. In 2012, more than 400 Shias were killed in target killings and bombings, making it possibly the bloodiest year in living memory for the Shia population of Pakistan.
The Jundullah (the name in Arabic stands for ‘soldiers of God’) was created in 2003 by an Iranian Sunni Baloch named Abdol Malek Rigi in Sindh. This tanzeem was also known as the People’s Resistance Movement of Iran He had a Pakistani national identity card by the name of Saeed Ahmed, son of Ghulam Haider. He and his deputy Hamzawere arrested by Pakistan (with US help) on February 23, 2010 while on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan, and were subsequently extradited to Iran where they both were executed on June 20, 2010. Abdol Malek Rigi had been educated at Karachi’s Binori Town madrassa and all his murderous activities were focussed on Sestan-Baluchistan, which is Iran’s only Sunni-majority province. Since the previous decade, Jundullah has carried out a number of high-profile terrorist attacks in Iran. These include a 2005 attack on then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s motorcade in Sestan-Baluchistan (one of Ahmadinejad’s bodyguards was killed); a 2006 attack on a bus in Sestan-Baluchistan that killed 18 members of the IRGC (Pasdaran); the abduction and execution of 16 Iranian policemen in 2007; a car-bomb attack on a security installation in Sestan-Baluchistan in 2008 that killed at least four people; a 2009 ambush in Sestan-Baluchistan that killed 12 Iranian policeman; a 2009 bomb-attack on a mosque in Sestan-Baluchistan that killed 25 people and injured 125; and a suicide-bomb attack on October 18, 2009 in Sestan-Baluchistan that killed 42 people, including several senior IRGC officers. All in all, Jundullah since 2003 was responsible for the killing of 154 members of Iranian security forces and other innocent people and wounding of 320 people, Abdol Malek Rigi’s younger brother, Abdol Hamid Rigi, was captured in Pakistan in June 2008 and after being extradited to Iran, he was executed in May 2010 in Zahedan. Abdol Sattar Rigi, another brother of Abdol Malek Rigi, along withAbdol Salam Rigi (who is the cousin of Abdol Malek Rigi)bwas arrested by Pakistani authorities in March 2015 following a tip-off about his movements and consequently the bus they were travelling in was intercepted some 50km south of Quetta. While Abdol Salam Rigi used to head the Jaish al-Adl, Abdol Sattar Rigi headed the Jaish al-Nasr. In February 2014, Jaish al-Adl had abducted five Iranian border-guards outside Sarbaz, a town in Sestan-Baluchistan. The guards were taken to Pakistan and one of them was reportedly killed in captivity while the remaining four were released two months later. Although Iran has since March 2015 been demanding the extradition of both Abdol Salam Rigi and Abdol Sattar Rigi, Pakistan has yet to respond positively and has privately insisted that Teheran curb the activities of India’s Consulate in Zahedan, which it suspects is extending moral, financial and political support to separatist Pakistani Baloch movements like the Baluchistan Liberation Front.
In light of the above, it is not surprising at all that Iran has a multitude of field operatives operating throughout Pakistan, and especially inside Sindh and Balochistan, on various information-gathering and counter-intelligence missions. One such example is a 39 year-old Pakistani Baloch national called Uzair Baloch. On December 28, 2014 Uzair was detained by INTERPOL in Dubai as he was travelling by road to the United Arab Emirates from Muscat, Oman. He was later deported back to Pakistan (prior to this Iran was demanding his return since Uzair was travelling on a genuine Iranian Passport but another an assumed identity) within 30 days where arrest-warrants had earlier been issued for his involvement with targetted killings and extortion. Uzair was formally arrested by Pakistan’s Sindh Rangers on January 30, 2016 on the outskirts of Karachi and was subsequently charged with spying and anti-state activities. On April 12, 2017 he was taken into military custody under the Pakistan Army [and] Official Secrets Act.
The gangster was born on October 10, 1977, to an Iranian Baloch family in a neighborhood of Lyari, outside Karachi. During judicial investigations in 2016, Uzair disclosed that one of his aunts was permanently settled in Iran and was a dual-nationality holder of Iran and Pakistan. In 1987, she had obtained photographs of her nephew (Uzair) in order to make his fake birth certificate under the name of her deceased son, Abdul Ghani, who had died seven years ago at the age of 14. This was a time when it was not mandatory for Iranian birth certificates to have a picture; therefore, forged documents could be easily made by a simple cut-and-paste. In 2006, during on-going operations by the Sindh Police against the criminal gangs of Lyari, Uzair along with his cousin Jalil fled from Pakistan to Iran via Oman. There he applied for and acquired an Iranian National Identity Card and Passport, which was again managed by his aunt. It was in 2011 when the validity of Uzair’s Iranian Passport expired, he along with his associate Abdul Samad, Baloch returned to Iran via road and was able to renew his Passport’s validity through the help of an Iranian friend, Sabir alias Sabri. By 2012 Uzair had been declared a proclaimed offender and a Pakistani court had ruled that proceedings against the offender would be conducted in absentia under Section 19 (10) of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997. In 2014, after the Sindh Rangers initiated full-fledged anti-crime operations in Karachi, Uzair was living with his friend Malik Baloch near Chah Bahar, Iran. There he reportedly came into contact with an individual named Haji Nasir. Uzair has allegedly revealed that Nasir was a resident of Tehsil Mand of Balochistan’s Kech district and was a dual-national of Pakistan and Iran. He was settled in Teheran and owned business and property there. Haji Nasir offered Uzair to relocate to Teheran where he would be provided with a bungalow to reside in. He also told Uzair about his close ties with Iranian intelligence officers and offered to make an introduction. With Uzair’s consent, Haji Nasir arranged a meeting with the Iranian intelligence officials, who asked him for information about Pakistan’s armed forces. He was also asked to brief them about the general security environment of Balochistan and Sindh. Haji Nasir’s name popped up again in a multi-agency joint investigation team (JIT) report of Ahmad Saeed alias Saeed Bharam, an MQM political activist arrested by the UAE’s in March 2016. During investigations after his arrest, Bharam confessed to his connections with Nasir and of interactions with Iranian intelligence officials.
The JIT report, signed by representatives of the Sindh Police, Sindh Rangers, ISI and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), was sent to the Federal Ministry of Interior’s Home Department on April 29, 2016 for “perusal and necessary action”. According to the JIT report, Uzair was involved in “espionage activities by providing secret information regarding army installations and officials to foreign agents (Iranian intelligence officers) which is a violation of the Official Secret Act of 1923”. It was only after nearly 15 months of his detention-without-trial with different Pakistani law enforcement agencies that he was formally arrested and chargesheeted on January 30, 2016.
So, is there a connection between Iran’s on-going proxy wars inside Pakistan and its still undisclosed policy standpoint regarding L’Affaire Kulbhushan Jadhav? Is it in Iran’s and Afghanistan’s interests to keep Pakistan’s Balochistan province on the boil? If yes, will either Afghanistan or Iran even consider allowing anyone from India to use their soil for engaging in subversive activities inside Balochistan and Sindh? If not, then what were Pakistan’s intentions/motivations behind/for kidnapping Kulbhushan Jadhav? And what did it hope to achieve through this incident?
(to be concluded)
