Day: April 4, 2007

The United States has been orchestrating raids on Iran by a covert Pakistani group since 2005, according to ABC. The Bush administration makes sure its private war flies below the public radar by keeping funding a secret from Congress.

And Dick Cheney’s recent trip to Afghanistan to meet with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf — when he was finally on the business end of a weapon — was part of it.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or “finding” as well as congressional oversight.

Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states.

Official disavowals focus on whether we bankroll, not control, the group. But laundering money is nothing new for rightwing American paramilitary and intelligence operations. Can you say, “Iran-Contra?”

Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s…

Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan.

Last month, Iranian state television broadcast what it said were confessions by those responsible for the bus attack…

The Iranian TV broadcast is interspersed with the logo of the CIA, which the broadcast blamed for the plot.

A CIA spokesperson said “the account of alleged CIA action is false” and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the Jundullah group.

The book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, can tell you how little correlation there is between the United States not leaving a money trail and not being behind something.

Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.