ABC : US Sponsors Terror Group in Pakistan

An Update on the "So-called War on Terror"^TM

According to a report from ABC News, the US is aiding, advising, and -- through a network of Iranian exiles throughout Europe and the Gulf states -- funding a group that is crossing the border into Iran and kidnapping and executing Iranians.

The Jundullah is led by Abd el Malik Regi who has maintained close ties with the CIA since 2005. ABC News terrorism consultant and senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Centre Alexis Debat describes Regi:

He is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera. He used to fight with the Taliban. He’s part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist.

This is the latest in a number of suspicious circumstances involving our "new best friend," Pakistan, led by despotic tyrant and dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Those circumstances center on Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, the CIA, Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban, once allies in the jihad against Soviet occuption of Afghanistan, all living quite comfortably now in Pakistan.

The situation mirrors the circumstances of Latin America in the 1980s. Proxy wars against left wing governments and guerilla armies were funded through back-channels contacts (Saudi Arabia for one) and drug smuggling (via our friends in Colombia). The same thing seems to be happening today, with the CIA using its back-channel contacts, and the likelihood of profits from the sale and processing of Afghanistan's record opium-poppy harvests going to groups like the Jundullah.

Winning the hearts and minds of the east to "freedom and democracy?" It doesn't seem so. The word on the Afghan street is "We want the Taliban back."