Expect Iranian govt/media to heavily overplay Rigi’s ties to USG

State-run television in Iran showed what it said was a televised confession on Thursday by Abdolmalek Rigi, the recently captured leader of Jundallah, a militant group that claims to be defending Sunni Muslims in Iran’s southeast and has killed hundreds of Iranian soldiers and civilians since 2003.

According to Press TV, Iran’s state-controlled, English-language broadcaster, Iranian officials said that Mr. Rigi had been detained after his flight from the United Arab Emirates to Kyrgyzstan was ordered to land as it passed through Iranian air space. But Al Jazeera, the satellite TV channel based in Qatar, reported that Mr. Rigi was arrested in Pakistan last week and handed over to Iran.

Mr. Rigi’s group says it is fighting on behalf of Sunni Muslims from the Baluchi ethnic group, which is found on both sides of the border between Iran and Pakistan. Jundallah has taken responsibility for a string of bombings in Iran, including one last October that killed 15 members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and 25 civilians.

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Bold “Need to Know!” prediction: Iraq will come unglued, as we continue to draw down.  We are the glue, at least for now.  The ethnic and religious divides will take much more than a couple of election cycles to break.  The Sunnis see the writing on the wall.  I see a strange alliance between al-Qaeda and the Sunnis of the Awakening movement that fought against them just a couple of years ago… such is life in the Middle East.  The Sunnis, though the clear minority in Iraq, will not be dominated by the Shi’a, even if the latter feel that they deserve their day in the sun.

Oh, and then there’s the matter of the Kurds.  Standby…

February 26, 2010, MARC SANTORA, New York Times.  BAQUBA, Iraq – Here in Diyala, a quarter of provincial council members, all Sunnis, have warrants against them. Most don’t show up for votes, fearing they will be jailed. The leading Sunni candidate was arrested this month on what supporters call trumped-up terrorism charges. Crushing poverty is the norm. So is mistrust of a central government and the Shiite-dominated security forces…

… Interviews in this once restive area make clear that Sunni expectations from these elections are high, and that renewed violence may not be far behind electoral disappointment.

“If the government does not change, there will be a problem between the Sunni and the Shia, and it will not be good,” said Sami Dawoud Salman, a local leader of a branch of the Sunni militia that allied with the Americans to do battle with Al Qaeda.

Without a change, he said, “I think the government will hunt down every Sunni person, and the Sunnis will have no choice but to hold their own weapons and defend themselves.”

Read more.

Every place we find friends, stalwarts, allies, we find the menace of jihad, which will necessarily result in violence to counter the position of a large Muslim population living under “other-than-Muslim” rule.  Muslim enclaves in the UK and Canada, ahead of themselves on laboring to establish Shari’ah law for themselves, are only now beginning to experience what successive Philippine governments have faced for over a century.

While perfectly happy to subjugate and humiliate non-Muslim members of their societies (just ask Christians in Egypt or Indonesia how easy life is), Muslim populations by-and-large will become enclave societies that, first, resist assimilation and then, will make every effort to establish independent rule for their enclaves under Shari’ah law, using violence to secure what they believe to be their divinely revealed right; the eventual subsuming of all that lies outside the dar al-Islam (house of Islam), until all is within it; until all is consumed by Islam in preparation for God’s final judgement of man.

Those who have made the obligation to this commitment are shockingly large in number; they have just begun; and, they believe they are active participants in God’s final prescription for the salvation of all humanity.  Not sure the lights inside the Beltway are on, on this one.

By OLIVER TEVES, The Associated Press, Saturday, February 27, 2010; 5:48 AM.  MANILA, Philippines — Suspected al-Qaida-linked militants raided a village in the southern Philippines early Saturday, killing 11 people in the country’s worst militant attack on civilians in nine years.

Gunmen from the extremist Abu Sayyaf group backed by renegade Muslim separatist rebels fired grenade launchers and automatic rifles on houses while residents were asleep, killing one government-armed militiaman and 10 civilians in the village of Tubigan on Basilan Island, said deputy regional police commander Sonny David.

“The villagers were sleeping when the Abu Sayyaf came with their guns blazing. They spared no one, not even the children,” David said.

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Now the “holding” phase of the operation begins.  Again, this war is far from over.  Our boys did a fantastic job clearing out their sector of Helmand Province, centered in the town of Marjah.  As Taliban squirt to the west and flow in from Pakistan to the east, they have no intention of waving the white flag.  If scooting out of the area is what they must do to fight another day, then that’s what they’ll do, especially when they know we’re going to start withdrawing in a little more than a year… if the President keeps that promise.  Note: GITMO’s still open and KSM’s not being tried in NYC.  We may be in Afghanistan long after Mr. Obama’s term expires, even if he wins a second one.  No President wants to leave this mess undone.

Saturday, February 27, 2010; 6:32 AM,  AMALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, AP, Marjah, Aghanistan – Marines and Afghan troops who fought through the center of Marjah linked up Saturday with American soldiers on the northern edge of the former Taliban stronghold, clearing the town’s last major pocket of resistance.

The joint force encountered almost no hostile fire, indicating that the militants have either fled or blended in with the local population – perhaps to stage attacks later if the Afghan government fails to hold the town. Some Taliban operatives are believed to remain west of Marjah.

Read more.

Straight from the “this war ain’t over yet, folks; not even close” Department.  Pay very close attention to the Indian angle in this report.  Pakistan is eternally convinced that the underpinning to everything in the region is Indian encirclement.  This is why I believe that Islamabad will always stop just short of fully engaging Islamic militant groups in their country, to include the Taliban and the increasingly menacing and deadly Lashkar e-Tayyiba.  If Pakistan had its druthers, it’d druther be growing these groups to even greater strength to eventually set their faithful little mujahideen against their inevitable Indian foe.  Really must be beyond aggravating to Pakistan to finally realize they are stuck between their natural Indian enemy and the mujahideen monster that they have created.  Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

Meanwhile, the Taliban are still a force to be reckoned with in Afghanistan and are showing that they can attack, almost with will in Kabul, and will continue to do so with deadly and frustrating effect until U.S. forces ask Afghan National Security Forces and NATO to step aside until we can properly secure the capitol.  Ask the Taliban in Marjah what it’s like facing U.S. fighters.  Problem is, they can always run back to Pakistan where the odds of survival, protection, recruitment, and growth remain very much in their favor.

I know it’s been almost ten years, but we’re still in for one long fight ahead…

Feb 26, 2010, Wall Street Journal, Alan Cullison and Matthew Rosenberg, Reporting from KABUL—Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers attacked a major hotel and two guesthouses in the Afghan capital, killing at least 17 people and showing the group remains a potent force despite a string of recent setbacks.

The dead included Indian Army officers, a noted French filmmaker and an Italian diplomat who was slain in his room after phoning information about the assailants to officials.

India’s foreign ministry said it was trying to determine whether its nationals were deliberately targeted, a conclusion reached by Afghan police but denied by a Taliban spokesman.

Read more.