ISLAMABAD (AP) — This week’s airstrikes between Iran and Pakistan that killed at least 11 people marks a significant escalation in fraught relations between the…
This week’s airstrikes between Iran and Pakistan that killed at least 11 people marks a significant escalation in fraught relations between the neighbors.
Long-running, low-level insurgencies on either side of the border have frustrated both countries, and the apparent targets of the strikes — Iran’s on Tuesday and Pakistan’s response on Thursday — were insurgent groups whose goal is an independent Baluchistan for ethnic Baluch areas in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The question is why Iran and Pakistan would choose to strike insurgents in each other’s territories rather than their own, considering the risk of a wider conflagration.
Iran and Pakistan share a 900-kilometre (560-mile), largely lawless border where smugglers and militants roam freely. Both countries have suspected each other of supporting, or at least behaving leniently toward some of the groups operating on the other side of the border.
Jaish al-Adl, the Sunni separatist group that Iran targeted on Tuesday, is believed to operate out of Pakistan, launching attacks on Iranian security forces. The Baluch Liberation Army, which was formed in 2000 and has launched attacks against Pakistani security forces and Chinese infrastructure projects, is suspected of hiding out in Iran.
