THE crack of machinegun fire and ribbons of smoke over Kulao, a dusty Pakistan town close to the Iranian border, last week indicated that Wahid Baksh, a rebel commander known as Iran’s most wanted man, had a real war on his hands.

Eight armoured trucks carrying members of Pakistan’s elite AntiTerrorist Force sealed off roads and opened fire on Baksh’s heavily guarded compound moments before he was due to be interviewed by The Sunday Times.

Troops carrying rocket launchers and machineguns fought with Baksh’s guards, captured five of his men and ransacked his home. But Baksh had slipped away and called two hours later on his satellite phone to confirm he was unscathed.

The Pakistanis had moved in because the Iranian government was convinced his group had killed two soldiers and kidnapped four. “Somebody has killed their soldiers and they think I’ve done it. I also got a call from the Iranians and I told them it wasn’t my group,” he said.

Baksh, 47, is the leader of Sipah e Rasool allah (Army of the Prophet), the largest of three armed Iranian dissident groups waging a hidden war against Tehran’s Shi’ite government, which they accuse of persecuting the Sunni minority.

In the past three months the dissidents have stepped up their campaign of bombing, shooting and kidnapping against Iranian troops in Sist-an-Balochistan province, which borders Pakistan. Two weeks ago the insurgents killed 18 revolutionary guards and injured 30 with a car bomb. In December they kidnapped seven Iranian soldiers but later released them, apparently after a ransom had been paid.

The offensive has rattled Iran, already preoccupied with an American military build-up in the Gulf and United Nations sanctions over its uranium enrichment programme.

Tehran fears that the US may be behind the attacks and will use the dissidents in Sistan-Balochistan province as a base for any future incursion.

Last week Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander-in-chief of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, accused the US and Israel of funding the rebels. He warned that his troops were “prepared to chase and disband the enemies even beyond Iran’s borders”.

Dissident sources claim American interests are behind a recent increase in funding from Iranian exiles in London and Dubai and calls for rival insurgent groups to combine forces under a moderate leader.

Last month the Iranian authorities executed Nasrullah Shanbe Zehi, an alleged member of the Jundullah Sunni militant group, which claimed responsibility for the car bombing. He was hanged from a crane after he allegedly confessed that he had been trained in Pakistan and that the attacks were part of an American plot to destabilise Iran.

Pakistan responded to Iranian calls for a crackdown on the insurgents with the armed raid on Baksh’s fortified compound.

Ziaur Rehman, an Iranian religious student close to the dissident commanders, says the rebellion was sparked by attacks on Sunni clerics.

Baksh claims that the persecution of Iranian Sunnis is being ignored. “Nobody in the world, including the human rights groups, comes to our aid. We are alone. And we will continue our fight, even if we die because we are righteous,” he said.

“The world should listen to our grievances.” He claimed 200 Iranian Sunnis were hanged as “dissidents” this year, an allegation repeated by several opposition groups.

Tall, burly and heavily bearded, Baksh, 47, commands 70 full-time fighters but can call on reinforcements from up to 2,000 armed Iranian dissidents among 10,000 exiles living on the Pakistan side of the border. He is regarded as a relative moderate yet boasts of his group’s success at kidnapping, and of executions of Iranian soldiers outside his compound.

“We have killed a lot of them,” said Baksh. “We bring them here, interrogate them and bury them.”

Jundullah (Party of God), is a more militant group that has gained a reputation for savagery. Its leaders are said to have been trained by the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan and released a video last year of fighters questioning Iranian soldiers before decapitating them.

Iranian exile sources in Pakistan say Jundullah has recently received a large consignment of weapons and vehicles. “They are getting money from somewhere — we heard that it’s coming from America,” claimed one source.

The US dismisses the allegations and other western sources are sceptical of any official American involvement. But dissidents in the region claimed leading exiles from Iranian commu ities in Britain, Dubai and Norway had made regular visits to the area to deliver funds and to put pressure on the insurgents to unite.

The Iranians have summoned the Pakistani ambassador to register their complaints and closed border posts last week.

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