A Critical Perspective on Terrorism: Case Study of Jundallah and Jeish ul-Adl in Iran

ABSTRACT

An extensive body of traditional terrorism research exists where the focus is on Iran as a terrorist state and a terrorism sponsor. This article explores an alternative terrorism narrative by examining the non-state actors, Jundallah and Jeish ul-Adl. The deficiency of information in the literature is addressed by applying the first and second-order critique approach of Richard Jackson’s knowledge, power and politics theoretical framework in contrast with the traditional terrorism studies approach. A first-order critique seeks to destabilise the accepted knowledge that Iran is both a terrorist state and a terrorism sponsor. This provides the grounds to study other aspects of “knowing” in relation to the second-order critique, where a critical ground outside the discourse suggests that Iranian officials have declared that the non-state terrorist actors of Jundallah and Jeish ul-Adl constitute a threat to Iran’s political stability. The outcome of the analyses here bridges the gap between the new aspect of terrorism, the non-state actors, and critical terrorism studies in order to contest the traditional discussion of terrorism in Iran. The rationale behind new terrorism varies and necessitates that new meanings and strategies be adopted in relation to Iran.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical terrorism studies
• Iran
• Jundallah
• Jeish ul-Adl
• non-state actors
• south-eastern border
• first and second-order critiques

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Tasooki is a village close to Zabol town in the province of Sistan and Balochistan. This village is located 77 kilometres away from the south western Zabol (Ja’fari 2005).

2. The 2003 American invasion of Iraq led to significant security change in the Persian Gulf region too regarding societal issues. For a discussion of these issues, see Shayan 2017.

3. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) or Army of Jhangvi is a Sunni extremist and Jihadist militant organisation based in Afghanistan.

4. The Cyber Defence Command sub-organisation of IRGC is mandated to monitor and neutralise the electronic activities of terrorists, spies, and other enemies of the Iranian state; Basij Press 2013.

5. Translation of the Persian material into English is done by this author.

6. GTD provides comprehensive data on the domestic and international terrorism. The data were collected under eight broad categories such as incident data, region, country, target groups, types of weapons and tactics in attacks. Data for terrorist organisations were collected from the global intelligence services.

7. Basij is a paramilitary volunteer militia in Iran and receives its order from IRGC of Iran.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NO FUNDING.

Notes on contributors

Fatemeh Shayan

Fatemeh Shayan is an assistant professor at University of Isfahan, Iran. She is the winner of the 2019 Farabi International Award. Earlier, she was a post-doctoral scholar at University of Tampere (UTA), Finland. She completed her doctoral study, along with many academic publications in international journals, in the Faculty of Management at UTA, and defended her dissertation in December 2014. She was also a researcher at UTA during 2013-2014. Her latest book, Security in the Persian Gulf Region, was published by Palgrave McMillan. Her research areas include energy policy, natural gas, European Union energy issues, Russia, Iran and Qatar energy issues, and Persian Gulf security complex ([email protected]).