A passage through Iran was the simplest and most convenient way
for Al-Qaeda to move from Pakistan to the Middle East after 9/11.
Under an arrangement, the Iranian government turned a blind eye
to its activists’ travels through Iran. Abu Hafs Al-Mauritani was
Al-Qaeda’s coordination officer with Iran. However, the sudden
emergence of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq proved to be bad news
for Al-Qaeda–Iranian relations.
Born in 1966 in Jordan, al-Zarqawi ran a militant training
camp in Afghanistan. He became known after he went to Iraq, and
was responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks
during the Iraq War. Dr Muhammad Bashar al-Faithi, a leading
light in the Muslim Scholars’ Association and a member of the Iraqi resistance to the United States, told me in Amman (Jordan) in 2007
that though the Iraqi resistance did not require foreign assistance
after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, they tolerated foreign fighters
like al-Zarqawi who carried out operations which gave both himself
and the Iraqi resistance a boost. But al-Zarqawi turned to killing
Shiites, which was totally unacceptable to both the Iraqi Sunni
resistance movement and Al-Qaeda. He thought this was strictly in
line with the Al-Qaeda thinking, but it was not. Al-Qaeda sought to
discard him as fast as they could, but were not able to do so before
both Iraq and Iran had been alienated.
According to a document published by USA Today (on June 15,
2006), the purpose of al-Zarqawi launching anti-Shiite strife was to
drag Iran into the war. The upshot was a bitterly antagonized Iran
turning completely against the Al-Qaeda leaders and their grand
designs of resistance to the Western presence in the Middle East. Iran
then went on to guard all its entry and exit points to stop the flow
of Al-Qaeda operatives through its territory. In fact Iran’s security
services arrested several Al-Qaeda members and handed them over
to the Saudi Arabian and Egyptian authorities. So much damage
was done by al-Zarqawi that even after his death, Al-Qaeda did not
find it safe to travel through Iran. However, a solution to Al-Qaeda’s
problems on this count appeared in 2009 in the form of the Iranian
Jundullah leader, Abdul Malik Rigi.
Rigi was a Baloch nationalist and drug smuggler. He moved
around in off-road vehicles and kept a gang of 20 to 25 youths
with him at all times. In 2008 he was in Mehmoodabad, a slum
in Karachi close to the upscale Defense Housing Authority. Here,
he had a quarrel with a rival gang and gunshots were exchanged,
during the course of which he was injured. A former member
of the Rigi gang said that he had initially been involved in the
Baloch Liberation Organization (BLO) and moved freely from his
Lyari base to Turkey, carrying heroin. Rigi was never apprehended
because of his close connections with corrupt security personnel in
both Pakistan and Iran, who turned a blind eye to drug smugglers
in exchange for money. As a BLO stalwart Rigi had been hostile to
Iran, and he used a wide range of disguises to evade capture. Rigi
had links with a number of regional and international sensitive
agencies, but was unsuccessful in stirring up a rebellion in Iranian
Balochistan. A few years ago, Rigi changed colors after interac-
tions with the banned Pakistani group, Sepah-e-Sahaba, in Lyari.
His anti-Iranian stance as a Balochi shifted to one of being anti-
Shi’ite. Not too long afterwards, he joined with Sepah’s breakaway faction, the Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, the anti-Shiite Al-Qaeda-linked
militant outfit. Through this connection, Rigi went to the Afghan
province of Zabul, but the Taliban refused him entry into their
ranks because of their suspicion that he had forged links with
US intelligence. He was then driven out of Afghanistan. However,
in 2009, his LJ connections arranged a meeting with Al-Qaeda
in the Pakistani area of Turbat, and took responsibility for his
loyalty. Al-Qaeda agreed to support Rigi’s insurgency in Iranian
Balochistan, and in return urged him to facilitate its members’
movements back and forth to Turkey and Iraq from Pakistan’s
side of Balochistan through Iran on his smuggling routes. Rigi
agreed. This rejuvenation of the Iranian Jundullah through Rigi in
2009 turned out to be the deadliest year for the Iranian govern-
ment. Several high-profile attacks were carried out in Iranian
Balochistan, and during one of them a top commander of the Iran
Revolutionary Guard was killed.
Al-Qaeda operatives found safe passage on Rigi’s smuggling
routes. However, on February 2010, Rigi was arrested by the Iranian
authorities after a tip-off provided by Pakistan. But Rigi’s arrest did
not prove to be the end of the world for Al-Qaeda. A few more
events took place that normalized Al-Qaeda relations with Iran. Of
these, the abduction of Iranian diplomat Heshmatollah Attarzadeh
from Peshawar in November 2008 was perhaps the pivotal event.
Tehran set about trying to get its emissary home, starting with
official Pakistani channels. This included appeals to the Foreign
Office and Pakistan’s powerful ISI. Nothing happened. The Iranians
then turned to their Afghan contacts in Zabul province, who in
turn used their tribal connections to make contact with the top
Taliban commander Sirajuddin Haqqani (the son of veteran mujahid
Jalaluddin Haqqani). Through Sirajuddin, Tehran negotiated the
release of its diplomat and swapped him with several high-profile
figures who had been held in Iran, including Abu Hafs al-Mauritani
and Sulaiman Abu Gaith, as well as two frontline figures: Iman
bin Laden, the daughter of Osama bin Laden, and the Egyptian
Al-Qaeda leader Saif al-Adil. The process of negotiation ran several
months, and in the course of that time, Al-Qaeda and Iran grew to
be on reasonable terms. Iran once again allowed Al-Qaeda members
safe passage through the country into Turkey, Central Asia, and
Iraq.
Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda zeroed in on the South Asian theater in
its war against the US military machine. It had opened new travel
routes through Iran to various destinations on the one side, and planned to cut NATO’s supply line going through Pakistan into
Afghanistan on the other.