Two key strongholds of the “Jaysh Al-Adl” terrorist group in Pakistan have been obliterated through precision missile and drone strikes.
Significant bases belonging to the Jaysh Al-Adl terrorist group on Pakistani soil were destroyed on Tuesday.
According to reports obtained by the Tasnim news agency, these bases were specifically targeted and successfully demolished by a combination of missile and drone attacks.
The focal point of this operation was the region known as Kouh-Sabz (green mountain) in the Balochistan province of Pakistan, recognized as one of the largest hubs for the Jaysh al-Dhulm militants.
Additional information will be released in forthcoming updates.
In mid-December, the notorious Jaish al-Adl (known in Iran as Jaish al-Dhulm) terrorist group stormed a police station in Sistan and Balouchestan province’s city of Rask, southeast of Iran, which resulted in the martyrdom of 11 Iranian Police forces.
Following the incident, Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amirabdollahian and his Pakistani counterpart Jalil Abbas Jilani discussed ways to strengthen security cooperation between the two neighbors.
Jilani also condemned the terrorist attack, describing terrorism as a common threat to Iran, Pakistan and the wider region.
IRGC discloses details about anti-terror missile strikes
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has disclosed more information about its latest missile strikes targeting an Israeli espionage center in Iraq and terrorist positions in Syria.
In a statement on Tuesday, the IRGC said all the intended targets were precisely hit and destroyed using 24 ballistic missiles.
The elite force said that four Kheibar ballistic missiles were launched from Khuzestan Province in southwest Iran towards ISIL terrorist positions in the Idlib region of Syria.
ISIL claimed responsibility for two bomb blasts that killed nearly 100 people at a memorial for Iran’s top anti-terror commander General Qassem Suleimani in southeastern Iran early this month.
Four more missiles were launched from western Iran, along with seven others from the northwest of the country, targeting a Mossad center in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Nine missiles of various types also struck the positions of other terrorist groups in different areas of the occupied territories in Syria.
The IRGC reassured the Iranian nation that the retaliatory operations by will continue until “the last drop of blood of our beloved nation’s martyrs is avenged.”
In an earlier statement, the IRGC had said that the missile strike against the Mossad center in the Iraqi Kurdistan region was in retaliation for the recent assassinations of IRGC and other regional resistance commanders by the Israeli regime.
IRGC
Source: Tasnim News Agency
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Despite defying US sanctions on Russian fuel imports, Islamabad has shied away from doing the same with Tehran, hindering potential lucrative bilateral trade between the two neighboring states.
Pakistan appears willing to import Russian crude oil despite US sanctions, but is wary of importing Iranian gasoline for fear of annoying Washington and the EU. The fact that Islamabad has different rules for dealing with Moscow and Tehran reveals fundamental inconsistencies and dependencies in Pakistan’s foreign policy.
Pakistani authorities maintained that their deal to acquire Russian crude oil did not violate any laws or limits. In a late January interview with Russian satellite network RT, Pakistan’s Petroleum and Energy Minister Musadik Malik downplayed potential US retaliatory measures, stating, “I do not see any complications; we are not violating or doing anything the world has never seen before.”
Malik rightly pointed out that Europe continues to import energy from Russia, while Pakistan only purchases a small fraction of Europe’s amount.
Price cap on Russian oil
Malik’s confidence conceivably stems from the G7 and EU countries’ $60 per barrel cap on Russian oil to prevent Moscow from using the proceeds to fund its war against Ukraine. The US also, quite unexpectedly, supported Islamabad’s position last week.
During a question-and-answer session with journalists, US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said that Pakistan and other nations that have not formally committed to the price cap may also benefit from the discounts on Russian oil.
However, it remains to be seen if Moscow is willing to sell oil at the capped price. Russia, which is the world’s second-largest oil exporter, has already declared that it will not accept the restriction and will continue to sell oil, even if it has to cut production.
In December 2022, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak argued that the western price cap measure was a flagrant violation of free trade laws which disrupted the global energy markets by causing a supply crisis.
Alternative consumers
China, India, Turkiye, and several other countries are not adhering to the G7 price formula, and despite the price cap on Russia’s seaborne oil supply, its oil exports did not see any meaningful cut, despite fierce western efforts.
In 2021, around 3 million barrels per day (mb/d), or 45 percent of Russian crude oil exports were imported by the EU. The price cap may reduce that amount to a little more than 0.25 mb/d, but Russian oil will still flow into the EU. This is largely because Germany and Poland have agreed to stop importing oil through the northern Druzhba pipeline by 2023, while Bulgaria has been permitted to keep importing oil from Russia by sea.
The immediate impact of this ban is a decrease in demand for Russian oil and, consequently, its relative price. But oil markets are interdependent and will themselves independently test the global appeal for Russian fuel. When the EU appealed to world markets to replace their purchases from Russia, new and alternative purchasers for Russian barrels came forward instead. The global oil trade is very likely to simply re-equilibrate itself with perfect market corrections.
As the EU increasingly spurned Russian oil, Russia found new consumers for approximately 1 mb/d of displaced crude oil, albeit with price discounts relative to the global market. Russia is now on the lookout for clients to take an additional 0.8 mb/d of exports through western ports.
On a four-week rolling average basis, the total volume of crude expected to wind up in Asia remained at 2.28 mb/d, including 89,000 barrels per day on tankers whose point of discharge is unknown. Fuel cargos bound for Asia were purchased at a price exceeding the $60 per barrel G7 price cap at the time of loading.
Media reports claim that Eastern Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) crude oil prices exceeded the cap in Asia. The reports say that China’s teapot refiners had placed orders at $67.11 per barrel with Russia in December last year. To bypass the price limit, Russia is using its own tankers and insurance coverage.
Pakistan’s oil imports from Iran
Pakistan has a hard time securing enough energy supplies, and the Iranian oil in its backyard is more affordable than its Russian counterpart. However, US and EU sanctions make it difficult for Islamabad to engage in official trade with Tehran.
Tehran is now seeking to establish a land route trading system with Islamabad, similar to the one Pakistan has enjoyed with Afghanistan through the Sistan-Balochistan province’s 1,000-kilometer common border, to curb the illegal trade in Iranian oil and consumer goods.
The informal border trade with Pakistan, according to Iranian officials, has risen to over $5 billion per annum and should ideally be moved into legal channels to improve state-to-state bilateral trade relations. Tehran has also suggested bartering trade in local currency with Pakistan to transfer the $5 billion worth of illegal commerce between the two countries at the Sistan border into the formal, official trade sector.
Iran’s Consul General in Karachi, Hassan Nourian, stated during a visit to the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry in December last year that if Pakistani authorities allowed legal trade across the Sistan border, trade volumes between the two countries could surpass $5 billion – up from the current $1.5 billion that flows within legal channels.
Nourian said this would address urgent, mutual, national needs, whereby Iran could transport natural gas, crude oil, and petrochemicals to Pakistan in exchange for Pakistani agricultural products.
Opposition to regulated trade with Iran
Majyd Aziz, president of the UN Global Compact and a former president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), told The Cradle that various Pakistani “interest groups” do not want Islamabad to regularize trade with Iran.
“Countries, organizations, and individuals with vested interests in the region oppose the development of bilateral trade between neighboring nations. These parties prevented the government from establishing seven border markets in Iran and five in Afghanistan,” he said, noting that the Saudi factor has also contributed to the deterioration of trade relations with Iran.
Despite repeated pledges, Aziz lamented, the Pakistani Ministry of Commerce has yet to execute the barter trade modalities necessary to restart regular trade with Iran. Similarly, he stated that there were no direct banking connections between the two nations to facilitate trade.
“By not directing the unlawful border trade to the legitimate sector, we deprived ourselves of a low-cost oil supply from Iran, which India, China, and Afghanistan already enjoy,” he explained.
In an exclusive interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) in August 2022, Miftah Ismail, a former Pakistani minister for finance and revenue, admitted that unregistered trade between the two countries was a burden on the economy. He stressed that trade should rightfully flourish between Iranian and Pakistani border communities.
“There is no downside to formalizing this trade, as nations often prefer to do business with their neighbors first. I look forward to the day when there is more trade between Iran and Pakistan,” Miftah added.
Lucrative cross-border smuggling
In the absence of a border trade mechanism, Iranian oil smuggling through the Balochistan border involving the illegal transfer of crude oil, fuel, and other petroleum products is rampant.
This illegal activity is usually perpetrated by mainly Pakistani organized crime networks and is facilitated by both local and international actors. The smuggling of Iranian oil through the Balochistan border is a major source of income for these criminal groups and helps to fund activities such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, and terrorism.
If the illicit oil trade is legalized and bilateral trade with the neighboring countries is restored, Pakistan’s civil and military bureaucracies stand to lose spectacular earnings from Iranian oil smuggling. According to credible business sources in Balochistan, the highest-ranking border forces and local government officials profit billions from the illegal oil traffic between the two neighboring countries.
“They do not want to formalize the transaction and risk losing a substantial amount of money due to the massive smuggling of Iranian oil,” a reliable business source told The Cradle.
“The Pakistani government is dragging its feet on establishing formal border trade with Iran primarily because Islamabad is concerned that trading with Iran, which is already subject to US and EU sanctions, would send the west the wrong message,” the source added.
Pakistan, which is susceptible to US influence, fears a backlash from Washington if it pursues bilateral trade expansion with Iran. The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, also known as the “Peace Pipeline,” has been shut down for the past ten years because of western sanctions against Iran.
This further showcases Washington’s dogged efforts to isolate Iran, at least economically. Numerous factors motivate the US to oppose this pipeline project, whose completion would represent a symbolic win for Iran in the realm of oil exports. It also raises the possibility of a deeper relationship between China and Iran, particularly in light of Iran’s ambition to participate in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
It is believed that the world is changing rapidly, technology has been improving at an accelerated speed, geopolitics is also changing, new alliances are emerging, and trade pattern has been transformed, and so on. But, one thing is not changed – the suffering of humankind. Human beings are still killed and forced to flee from their homes, and countries and poverty have grown. In addition to natural disasters, human-made disasters are even geared up.
Economic sanctions, narrative war, media war, etc., all are modes of hybrid war. The cold war may have been replaced by the Hybrid war, but, the mentality remained the same. Any country on the left side of the US is facing a hybrid war. Either, it is Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, or any other country, is facing similar challenges of hybrid war.
It is a matter of highly significant that we must understand the concept of hybrid war. Many scholars, researchers, and intellectuals are studying it around the globe, many conferences and seminars are being conducted worldwide and plenty of literature is available.
Pakistan is a typical case of hybrid war and facing it for a couple of decades. On the economic front coercion at the hands of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to the war of narratives by the arch-rival: India, as revealed by the European watchdog DisInfoLab through the Indian Chronicles, to the physical penetration of the agents to create sabotage and terrorism in Balochistan and Karachi; Pakistan has faced it all. Media is in full swing to spread fake news, fabricate stories and distort Pakistan’s narrative. Unfortunately, the media is controlled by the West and over-engaged against Pakistan. Social media is also playing its dirty role too. The worst phenomenon is that many writers used Western literature as a source of information, which is totally wrong and biased against Pakistan. Pakistan could not develop its own authentic source of information yet.
The Chinese sage, Sun Tzu is also gets quoted extensively in the context of the hybrid mannerism of warfare in contemporary wars. Some 2500 years ago, he had prophesied that the supreme acme of skill is to win the war without fighting. Breaking the will of the people of the target state would be the real victory instead of destroying them. Sun Tzu insisted that capturing the enemy forces intact so that those could be used later on. What Chinese wisdom since ancient times!
Pakistan has immensely suffered at the hands of IFIs by accepting unacceptable demands of raising the interest rates, devaluation of the currency, removal of subsidies, increasing the cost of living, inflation, and price hike, which pushed the nation into severe poverty.
A New Instrument of Hybrid War dilated upon the impact of economic stress on Pakistan due to the hybrid war imposed by India. India’s External Affairs Minister Jai Shankar (Hindustan Times), admitted that the “BJP Government led by Narendra Modi ensured that Pakistan remained on the Grey List of the FATF is due to us, Pakistan is under the lens of FATF, and it was kept in the Grey List. We have been successful in Pressurizing Pakistan and the fact Pakistan’s behavior has changed because of the pressure put by India.”
Further, at least four aspects were deployed against Pakistan to hurt its economy under the ambit of hybrid warfare: International Monetary Fund (IMF), FATF, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and Karachi turmoil. It is viewed that “the best strategy of the enemy is to erode the economic strength of the targeted country.” Karachi, the economic hub and lifeline was systematically destroyed to choke Pakistan’s economy and make it dependent on international institutions. It is extremely worried about the present economic situation of the country and attributed the same to a concerted effort by the enemy under the umbrella of hybrid warfare.
On the Narratives Warfare front, in the evolved environment where social media plays a dominant role in shaping opinion, the most important thing is to construct a narrative that is appealing and attractive enough to bring change in people’s thinking. The significance of a workable narrative that is proactive in its essence and based on sound footing aimed at unsettling the opponent’s objectives. Understanding narrative warfare is a necessary precondition for both comprehensive state policy and an informed public debate on issues, particularly security.
At the moment, Pakistan is not only facing the risks of a possible default but also going through the highest inflation within the region as compared to Afghanistan, India, and Bangladesh. Obviously, it appears as if Pakistan has not been able to convince the donor agencies and the friendly countries to assist them at this difficult time, perhaps due to a weak narrative about its efforts toward peace and progress in Afghanistan. This is certainly very alarming because no country has suffered more than Pakistan in its efforts to promote peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, by design, Pakistan is being pushed to a stage where we may be asked to choose between food and nukes. It seems the evil designs worked very well. It happened with Ukraine too, at the time of getting independence from the former USSR, it was a nuke state with an abundance of nuking weapons, nuke capabilities, nuke laboratories, nuke factories, and an abundance of nuke scientists. But was pushed into an economic crisis and then offered financial assistance in return for denuclearization. Its nukes were shifted, factories closed, research abandoned, nuke human resources dismantled, and turned into a state where they could not gain nukes in the future.
Recently, IMF has asked Sri Lanka to cut the size of its military up to half, and Egypt to cut its Army by one-third. It is not sure, what will be IMF conditions to Pakistan in the next stage. God for bid, if Pakistan is asked to cut its Army, its security may be compromised as India is an aggressive and traditional rival of Pakistan. Since independence, India has not accepted Pakistan from the core of its heart and always trying to damage and destroy it. Especially, since PM Narendra Modi has hijacked power in India his extremist policies are more aggressive and a permanent security threat not only t Pakistan but to its all neighbors. India has disputes with all its neighbors, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
The US is supporting India to counter China and wanted all its neighbors to accept Indian supremacy. Pakistan is facing huge pressure from the US to accept Indian hegemony.
Current political and economic instability is dangerous and may lead to disasters. There might be internal or external conspiracies, but, it is the people of Pakistan, who should stand up and take the right decisions. Our fate cannot be in the hands of a few internal or external conspirators. It is time, for the whole nation to unite and think smartly, formulate a comprehensive policy to confront the challenges being faced. Early elections and a government with a heavy mandate can take bold measures. The current PDM is more engaged in politics of power and taking steps to counter PTI only. Their energies are wasted on non-productive issues and less effort is on national issues. The new government, backed by the public may rescue the nation.
Author: Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan, Founding Chair GSRRA, Sinologist (ex-Diplomat), Editor, Analyst, and Non-Resident Fellow of CCG (Center for China and Globalization). (E-mail: awanzamir@yahoo.com).
Ahmed Shah had always dreamed of bigger things. Though just 17, the high school pupil had taken a job in the coalmines of Balochistan, Pakistan’s south-western province, one of the harshest, most dangerous working environments in the world. Shah was determined to earn enough to educate himself, so he could escape the tough life of the Hazara Shia community, the most persecuted minority in Pakistan.
But Shah never saw a brighter future. He was among 10 miners who were resting in their mud hut near the mines in the small Balochistan town of Mach when armed militants burst in. A gruesome video from the scene shows the young men blindfolded, with their hands tied behind their backs. A security official said their throats had been slit. Daesh [the Arabic acronym for terrorist ‘ISIS/ISIL’ group] claimed responsibility for the massacre.
The prime minister, Imran Khan, called it an “inhumane act of terrorism”, but for the Hazara, minority Shia Muslims who have been targeted for three decades in Pakistan by extremists among the majority Sunni Muslims who view them as heretics, this was not enough.
Shah’s mother, Amina, was on her rounds as a healthcare worker in the nearby provincial capital of Quetta when she heard about the massacre.
“I wanted to see my son one last time, but I was told that I would not be able to bear that,” says Amina. “The killers were not humans. They killed them so brutally.”
The Hazara community, after decades of injustice and neglect by the state, were driven to act, and in a protest unlike anything seen before in Pakistan, the families of the 10 men brought the dead bodies out on to the streets, and sat beside them, in the freezing cold, to demand protection and justice.
For a full week, they did not move, stating they would not bury the bodies until the prime minister listened to their demands.
In response, Khan accused them of trying to “blackmail” him, and said he would not visit until the bodies were buried.
Ahmed Shah was one of four from his family to die in the Mach massacre. So too did his cousin Sadiq, the sole breadwinner for his wife, children and six sisters.
Sadiq, a father of two daughters, had had breakfast with his wife before dawn at his home in Quetta before leaving for Mach. One sister, Masooma Yaqoob Ali, saw the news of the Hazara miners on Facebook and stumbled upon the picture of her brother’s blindfolded body.
“These monsters have not only killed 10 people, they have killed 10 families,” she says. “It has been two decades that we are being mercilessly killed but no one has been arrested yet.”
The Hazara Shia have been targeted over many years by Sunni extremists, such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Sipah-e-Sahaba and now Daesh. According to a 2019 report by Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights, an independent watchdog, at least 509 Hazara have been murdered for their faith since 2013. The non-profit Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that from 2009 to 2014, nearly 1,000 Hazaras died in sectarian violence. Thousands have been injured.
To curb attacks on the 600,000 Hazaras living in the towns of Mariabad and Hazara Town in Quetta, authorities have built military checkpoints, roadblocks and walls around the areas.
In 2014, the international organization Human Rights Watch published a 62-page report on the persecution of Hazara Shia in Balochistan entitled “We are the walking dead.”
“We are living in two prisons. Our men and young can’t go outside. If they go, they will be killed. Our graveyards are full of young men with barely any space left,” says Ali. “We are tired of carrying their coffins. Every year we dig mass graves. Yet Prime Minister Imran Khan says we are blackmailers. Khan is heartless.”
The majority of Hazara in Quetta originally came from Afghanistan and Iran to seek work in Pakistan, with many ending up in the mines of Balochistan.
For 15 years, Chaman Ali, another of the Mach victims, would travel from Afghanistan to Quetta every winter to work in the coalmines.
“I would be worried for his life when he was here and when he went to Afghanistan. I would think ‘what if he gets into the hands of the Taliban?’ I thought he was safe here, but this is where he got killed,” his sister Zara says.
Chaman Ali is survived by his wife and eight children, the youngest just three months old. Aziz and Nasim, from the Daykundi province of Afghanistan, came with Chaman Ali to work in the mines for the first time. They were also murdered.
Nasim, 22, started work to fund his education and had arrived in Pakistan just a week before he was killed. “Afghanistan is in a very bad situation and we think that something is better than nothing, which is why we come to Pakistan just to make a living,” says Abdul Rahim, Nasim’s father. Along with other members of his family, he could not get to his son’s funeral from Afghanistan, when the security forces closed routes out of the villages across Pakistan’s porous border.
Victims of the Mach massacre were all eventually buried in a mass grave at Hazara Town, on the outskirts of Quetta. The Hazara community is running out of space to bury their dead. The graveyard is full of photographs of Hazara Shia men, women and children, many of them murdered.
Having Mongolian ancestors, many Hazara are identifiable by their distinctive appearance, and it is along the single road that leads to Mari Abad and Hazara Town that thousands have been attacked by extremist groups.
“Our generation has grown up in a cage. We make houses on the mountain and are afraid of going out to see other parts of Quetta,” says Arif Hussain Nasry, 21, founder of the Future is Young campaign. “We are even afraid to gather with Hazara from other nations and communities. We have to live to survive in these two ghettoes.”
But for Naseem Javed, an author and political activist, the attacks on the Hazara are not just about sectarianism. “I don’t think Hazara are being targeted just because of their faith,” he says. “They also are being targeted to divert the attention from the Baloch separatist movement.”
Balochistan, the most impoverished province of Pakistan and wedged between Iran and Afghanistan, has a separatist movement that has been active in the province for the past 20 years. “The region also has become a hub for international proxies, including the Taliban,” Javed adds.
Javed shows the pistol he keeps close to him in his shop, where he sells prayer mats and prayer beads. “We live under shadows of weapons and fear. None of us has a normal life. We are being slaughtered. If the security establishment has no role in this genocide, why have they not arrested any attacker?”
For many Hazara people the solution is simply to leave. Amjad Ali, 21, has made three attempts to leave Balochistan for a new life in Europe. He was first deported from Turkey and handed over to Iran, from where he was sent back to Pakistan. The second time he was deported from Iran.
During his third attempt to reach Europe, with 25 other Hazara Shia, Ali was caught a few miles from the border by Jaish ul-Adl, another Sunni militant group that operates mainly in south-eastern Iran. Pretending to be Iranian security forces, the jihadist group took Ali and others to a mountain camp in Pakistan, close to the Iranian border.
“They were very well updated and informed. As soon as we reached their camp they shot four Hazaras with Kalashnikovs. Two of them used to work in the Pakistan army. Two, as Jaish ul-Adl claimed, were going to be part of the Zainebiyoun brigade, an Iranian-backed militant force [fighting in Syria],” Ali told the Guardian.
The rest were held and their families sent random demands. Ali spent 55 days in the camp before his family members managed to raise thousands of dollars in ransom money for his release.
“If I get a chance now to go to Europe, I will try again,” says Ali. “There is no life for Hazara Shia in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 