In 2010, Pakistan's political parties refused to give their support to a military operation in North Waziristan, the headquarters of the militancy and a sanctuary for insurgents fighting U.S. and NATO troops next door in Afghanistan, according to militant expert Zahid Hussain, whose books plot the rise of militancy in Pakistan.
In the murky world of militancy, Jundullah is a particularly difficult organization to fathom.
There are three separate groups in Pakistan named Jundullah, Arabic for “army of God.”
One Jundullah group is mostly Iranian Sunnis, mainly from the ethnic Baluchi community, operating from Pakistan's Baluchistan province and trying to overthrow the Shiite dominated government in neighboring Iran. A second is headquartered in Pakistan's southern Arabian Sea port city of Karachi and has no affiliation to the Iranian Jundullah. It has taken responsibility for target killings, often of military officials as well as minority Shiites.
The third Jundullah, which took responsibility for the church attack, has some members who—while not Iranian—were initially in the Iranian group.
While united in their loathing for Shiites, all three groups are unconnected and operate independently, say analysts who have been following the organizations.
Ahmed Marwat, the spokesman and senior commander of the Jundullah group that claimed responsibility for the church bombing, offered some insights into the group's origins.
His hatred of Shiites originally drew him to the Iranian group of Sunni militants hiding out in Baluchistan province. He ended up in an Iranian jail. In 2009, two years after his release, he cobbled together his own anti-Shiite Jundullah group and lined up beside Pakistan's Tehrik-e-Taliban.
Marwat's Jundullah is believed to count among its members some foreign, al- Qaida linked fighters. Marwat claims that the head of his organization is a 35-year-old American, Ahmad Marwan. U.S. officials, contacted by the AP, did not respond to requests for information about Marwan.
Despite differences among the militants, a former military point-man for the tribal regions, retired Brigadier Mahmood Shah, said their propensity for violence knows no bounds.
“For them nothing is sacred. They have attacked a funeral, a marriage party. They have attacked mosques,” he said. “The Christian community in Peshawar is the poorest. It was a horrific incident.”
