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An Indian businessman was carrying out his cargo business from Bandar Abbas and Chabahar ports near Iran when he was allegedly abducted by a relatively unheard of terrorist group based in Pakistan in March 2016.

The abduction of the businessman, Kulbhushan Jadhav, by Jaish al-Adl put the terror group on the radar of Indian intelligence agencies. Intel agencies said Jadhav was allegedly traded by Jaish al-Adl to Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) for a monetary transaction.

The issue led to fresh tension between India and Pakistan after Pakistani authorities claimed Jadhav was a former Indian Navy officer and accused him of being a spy.

Jaish al-Adl or Jaysh al-Adl is in the news again after Iran launched unprecedented missile and drone strikes in Pakistab’s Balochistan province, targeting bases of the Sunni terror group.

Pakistan claimed two children died in the attack, calling it an “unprovoked violation of its airspace” and warned Iran of “serious consequences”.

The attack came amid a deepening of the crisis in the Middle East where Israel is locked in an intense war with Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

WHAT IS THE JAISH-AL-ADL TERROR GROUP?

Jaish al-Adl, which means ‘Army of Justice’, operates in the Sistan-Baluchistan region of Pakistan. The region falls near the shared border, which runs for about 900km, between Iran and Pakistan and has been a long-running concern for both governments.

Jaish al-Adl, which has been designated as a terrorist group by the United States and Iran, functions on both sides of the border and has been previously involved in attacking Iranian facilities.

The Sunni terrorist group is reported to have around 500–600 fighters.

While it is not known exactly why Iran targeted the group, it claimed last month that Jaish al-Adl terrorists attacked a police station in Sistan, killing 11 Iranian officers, CNN quoted Tasnim news agency as saying.

JAISH-AL-ADL: EARLY YEARS

Jaish al-Adl was born out of the Sunni militant group Jundallah, which translates to ‘soldiers of God’. For a decade, from 2000-2010, Jundallah was involved in a violent insurgency against Iran.

However, the group suffered a massive setback when Iran captured Jundallah’s leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, and executed him in 2010.

Two years later, Jaish al-Adl was formed by Salahoodin Farooqi and his deputy Mullah Omar with support from al-Qaida. After its formation, Jaish al-Adl has made independence of Sistan and Baluchestan province in southeast Iran as its stated goal.

The group wields influence among the ethnic Baloch tribes in a region that is populated by minority Sunni Muslims who are disenchanted by the discrimination of Shia-dominated Iran.

The United States labelled Jundallah as a terrorist organisation in 2010. The name of the terror group was changed in 2019 to ‘Jaish al-Adl’.

SPATE OF BOMBINGS IN IRAN SINCE 2013

According to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) of the United States, the Jaish al-Adl group has carried out a spate of attacks against Iranian border police and military personnel since 2013.

It has also been involved in “ambushes, assassinations, assaults, hit-and-run raids, kidnappings” of civilians and government officials.

The group first grabbed headlines after it killed 14 Iranian border guards in Saravan in October 2013. The offensive came after Iran announced the death penalty for some Baloch prisoners. The next day after the attack, Iran reportedly hanged the prisoners, a report in The Times of India said.

The following month, Jaish al-Adl terrorists killed a prosecutor and his driver in the city of Zabol.

In 2019, the group attacked Iran’s paramilitary group, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), killing 27 personnel in a suicide bombing near the city of Zahedan.

The same year, 14 Iranian security personnel were abducted by the group near the Pakistan border. Five of them were reportedly released after Pakistan’s intervention.