The recent upsurge of ethnic unrest in Iran highlights serious vulnerabilities
in the country's security system, and there is widespread consensus among
security circles in Tehran that the whole intelligence apparatus needs to be
radically restructured to combat this new generation of threats.
Without such serious and wide-ranging intelligence reform, Iran risks facing a
generation of ethnic unrest on its periphery and possibly disintegration
further down the road.
This comes at the worst time possible, when Western intelligence services are
aggressively targeting the country in general and its civilian nuclear
establishment in particular.
While ethnic separatism is not - in the short term at least - a serious threat
to Iran's cohesion and territorial integrity, it is
widely feared that ethnic tensions could be exploited by Western powers, some
of which are already active in intelligence-gathering and sabotage operations
in some provinces.
This seriously weakens Iran's position in negotiations with Western powers to
head off the crisis over the country's controversial
nuclear program.
Yet while the elites in Tehran recognize the urgent need for intelligence
reform, there is no agreement (as yet) on how to go about this.
Ethnic troubles
In Iran it is often taken for granted that the country has no real ethnic
problem. Iranians point out their country's millennia-old history and are at
pains to explain how the concept of "Iran" acts as a super-narrative, thus
effectively suppressing any serious separatist impulse.
While this argument has many merits, it is ultimately a half-truth. By and
large Iran's various ethnic minorities (who together make up 40% of the
country's population) see themselves as part of the Iranian nation and are
relatively well integrated, especially in comparison with neighboring
countries' ethnic minorities. Significant ethnic unrest in Iran dates to the
emergence of the modern Iranian state and its irrepressible drive to
centralize, at the expense of local autonomy.
The center-periphery divide has been one of the most prominent (and
troublesome) features of the modern Iranian nation-state forged by Reza Shah in
the 1920s and 1930s. This divide usually comes to the fore when the periphery
senses the center's weakness.
The immediate aftermath of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 is the best case in
point as the collapse of the shah's regime temporarily weakened the legal and
administrative structures of the country. This in turn led to serious ethnic
unrest in Iranian Kurdistan, Khuzestan, the Torkaman areas in the northeast,
Balochistan, and to a lesser extent Azerbaijan.
The troubles were very short-lived (save for Kurdistan) as the Iranian state
quickly recovered from the shock of revolution. From 1980 onward Iran was free
from ethnic tensions (save for a very low-intensity conflict with an assortment
of small Kurdish organizations backed by Saddam Hussein), leading some elites
in Tehran to conclude that the Islamic Republic (by virtue of promoting
"authentic" Iranian culture, as opposed to the Persian nationalism of the shah)
had overcome the center-periphery divide.
Events in the past two years have proved this to be a delusion.
Resurgence of ethnic unrest
The disturbances in Iranian Azerbaijan (which comprises the four provinces
of East and West Azerbaijan, Zanjan and Ardebil) sparked by a provocative
cartoon in one of the Tehran dailies is indicative of the ethnic unrest that
has surfaced throughout the country's periphery over the past 24 months.
Iranian Azeris are by far the country's largest ethnic minority (making up
perhaps a quarter of the country's population). But Azeris have been the
traditional ruling classes in Iran since the Safavid period of the 16th
century. Even the Islamic Republic (which is significantly more "Persian" than
the shah's regime was) is dominated by ethnic Azeris.
The spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; the commander of the powerful
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Rahim Safavi; former premier Mir
Hossein Mousavi; and a host of other leading figures in the regime are Azeris.
While there are no separatist movements in Iranian Azerbaijan, any volatility
in that strategic region unsettles the entire country. The Islamic Republic is
also mindful of Turkish intelligence activity in this area. There are real
fears that elements in Turkish intelligence (working with pan-Turkist
nationalists in the Republic of Azerbaijan) are actively seeking to foment
unrest among Iranian Azeris.
However, sources on the ground contend that these fears are mostly "perceptual"
in nature and Turkish intelligence lacks the sophistication to operate
effectively in Iran. Their job is made harder still by the fact that the
majority of Iranian Azeris live in the capital Tehran and have very little
interest in seeking greater autonomy for the Azeri-speaking provinces.
Kurdish unrest
The Kurdish-speaking regions present an altogether different problem. There
have been robust separatist groups in the region for decades. The main threats
in the 1980s were the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK) led by the
charismatic Abdulrahman Qasemlou and the communist "Komala".
The DPIK was fatally undermined in April 1989 with the assassination of
Qasemlou in Vienna. The coup de grace was delivered in September 1992
when Iranian intelligence assassinated Sadegh Sharafkandi, Qasemlou's
successor, in Berlin. These assassinations were complemented with aggressive
counter-insurgency tactics and a determined effort to isolate the extremist
separatists from the mass of Iranian Kurds (who make up about 5% of the
country's population).
Victory over the DPIK and Komala has not eradicated separatist instincts, as
evidenced by the rise of PEJAK - the Party of Free Life in Kurdistan. There is
very little information about this organization in the public domain. It has
emerged over the past three years, partly inspired by the "liberation" of Iraqi
Kurds as a result of the collapse of the Iraqi state.
Informed sources in Tehran contend that the group maintains two large mobile
camps in Iraqi Kurdistan and is supported by elements in the local Kurdish
administration. Apparently, support for PEJAK straddles the divide between the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) in
Iraqi Kurdistan - lending credence to Iranian allegations that PEJAK is
ultimately sustained by US support. The Iranians argue (with some
justification) that only the United States has the clout to bring the KDP and
PUK together.
Possible US support notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to ignore the local
roots of PEJAK. According to informed sources in Tehran, the organization is
made up of about 450 amateurish fighters and support staff. A sizable minority
are graduates of Tehran and other leading Iranian universities. The average age
in the organization's leadership council is 28; the average age in the
organization as a whole is 24. This makes PEJAK markedly different from the
DPIK and the previous generation of Iranian Kurdish separatists, which were
composed of much older fighters and political activists.
While the Iranian government is scrambling to collect intelligence on PEJAK
(with sources on the ground adamant that the organization's camps in Iraq have
been lightly penetrated), there is little appreciation of the local, national
and international factors that are driving the emergence and consolidation of
the new generation of Kurdish separatists.
The political elites in Tehran pin most of the blame on the US intervention in
Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent unprecedented empowerment of Iraqi Kurds (to
the extent that they now wield decisive influence in the national government).
While this is undeniably a major inspirational factor, it ignores more complex
and intractable variables.
At the grassroots level, the splintering of the Turkish PKK (Kurdistan Workers
Party) has massively boosted Iranian separatist Kurds, as many former PKK
fighters have transferred their skills, experience and in some cases their
direct services.
Moreover the steady erosion of Iranian military and intelligence activity in
the extremity of the Kurdish regions in the 1990s has inevitably made it easier
for such groups as PEJAK to operate. That said, PEJAK is now almost entirely
based in Iraq and occasionally stages cross-border attacks.
The threat it poses is minimal, but the new generation of Kurdish separatists
in Iran (who are far more educated and worldly than their predecessors) are
bound to create larger and more effective organizations in the foreseeable
future.
Separate ideas in Balochistan
There is a similar situation in Balochistan. Although Balochistan is markedly
different from Kurdistan insofar as it has never produced serious separatist
movements, a new generation of Baloch separatists is changing that.
They are aided by serious instability (bordering on low-intensity civil war) in
Pakistani Balochistan and the general rise in Sunni Islamic militancy in that
region. Indeed, separatist Iranian Balochis are wholly distinct (in the Iranian
context) insofar as they employ Islamist rhetoric.
The emergence of Jundallah (like the emergence of PEJAK) took the Iranian
security establishment by surprise. Jundallah took responsibility for an attack
on a government motorcade in March that killed 20 people. Later that month, the
nascent organization seized a number of hostages, later executing one of them,
who it claimed was a member of the IRGC.
Jundallah killed another 12 people in an attack in May, thus marking its
emergence with an orgy of violence that has seriously unsettled the local
administration in impoverished Balochistan, which is home to about 1.4 million
Balochis.
Jundallah is led by Abdulmalak Rigi, a 23-year-old Iranian Baloch. Jundallah is
believed to be overwhelmingly dominated by young men from the eastern fringes
of Balochistan, mostly ranging in age from 16 to 30. The average age in the
organization is 22, thus conforming to other patterns of nascent separatisms in
Iran.
Jundallah also operates under different names. For instance, the attack last
month was claimed in the name of "Fadayeean-e-Eslam" and strongly condemned by
Jundallah itself. But according to a report in Baztab (a website close to the
IRGC), the public messages of both entities hail from the same spot in Pakistan
- thus lending credence to suspicions that Fadayeean-e-Eslam is a front for
Jundallah.
The Iranian government does not seem to have a coherent strategy for dealing
with Jundallah. This is partly rooted in a lack of intelligence, but also
because of a fundamental refusal on the part of the political elites in Tehran
to accept that the country now faces credible new security threats.
Instead, the political elites dismiss such organizations as Jundallah as
foreign-funded mercenaries with no roots in local communities. In Balochistan,
this is a gross mischaracterization as (unlike in Kurdistan and the
southwestern province of Khuzestan) there is no evidence of Western backing for
the militants.
Even in the strategic province of Khuzestan (where Arabs and Persians each make
up 50% of the population), strong local factors drive the instability. While
there is undoubtedly US and British covert activity in Khuzestan, these are not
(yet) directly related to the ethnic unrest.
The political elites in Tehran have a short-term vested interest in conflating
the two, at the expense of the country's long-term stability.
Intelligence reform
The inability of the country's large and hitherto impressive
intelligence/security establishment to predict the emergence of a new
generation of separatists has come under sharp scrutiny.
The best-informed critique was provided by Foad Sadeghi of Baztab (which is
owned and managed by Mohsen Rezai, the former commander of the IRGC), who
lamented the lack of "strategic unity" inside Iran's vast intelligence
apparatus.
Referring to the disturbances in Balochistan (which Sadeghi blames on a bunch
of amateur young terrorists), the author concludes that Iranian intelligence is
now ill-prepared to meet the impending challenge of Western intelligence
organizations.
One reason for this state of affairs (the author argues) is that Iranian
intelligence has not faced any serious threats since the mid-1980s. Indeed, the
only organization it has had to contend with on a consistent basis is the
Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a largely defunct organization that is widely dismissed as
an extremist cult.
The thrust of Sadeghi's (and other Baztab authors') argument seems to be that a
proliferation of "parallel" intelligence organizations is undermining the
efficacy and professional integrity of the Ministry of Intelligence (which is
considered the "mother" organization of the Iranian intelligence
establishment).
There is very little discussion on the need for upgrading training and
improving recruitment in this new intelligence discourse. Another serious flaw
is a lack of discussion on the historical and constitutional context of
intelligence reform.
When the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security was formed in 1984, it
marked a revolution in the constitutional arrangement of intelligence
organization in Iran. During the shah's era, the SAVAK (Security and
Intelligence Service) operated as an organization outside the orbit of
conventional government scrutiny.
From 1979-84, the new intelligence organizations (mostly tied to the IRGC)
operated in the same fashion. However, the desire of Iranian revolutionaries to
prevent SAVAK-style abuses and fully subordinate the intelligence establishment
to proper oversight by the government and the majlis (parliament) led to the
creation of a "ministry" of intelligence that in effect positioned the bulk of
the intelligence apparatus inside the civil service.
This state of affairs worked well in the first decade of the ministry's
existence, but began to unravel from the mid-1990s onward. As the Intelligence
Ministry grew, its professional and ideological zeal steadily eroded. Moreover,
the very abuses that were never supposed to happen occurred in the late 1990s,
as rogue elements within the ministry murdered more than half a dozen dissident
activists and writers inside Iran.
Although the ministry owned up to the abuses, its reputation never recovered
from the shock of January 1999.
It was at this point that a proliferation of so-called "parallel" intelligence
organizations is supposed to have taken root. No writer or analyst in Iran (or
elsewhere) has looked at the evidence pointing to so-called parallel
intelligence organizations critically enough to form credible conclusions.
For instance, Foad Sadeghi of Baztab claims that 10 such "parallel"
organizations are in existence, without explaining who controls these
organizations and what motivates them.
Evidence on the ground suggests that the judiciary operates a small number of
intelligence outfits, but these are neither large nor sophisticated enough to
be considered intelligence organizations. They are mostly composed of elements
purged from the Intelligence Ministry and are specialists in surveillance,
kidnappings and tough interrogations. While they operate under the remit of the
judiciary, they have access to the technical resources of the Intelligence
Ministry.
While these small security outfits are a nuisance to student activists and
other forms of dissent in the Persian heartlands of Iran, they have neither the
resources nor the expertise to fight ethnic unrest on the country's periphery.
Responsibility for these highly specialized tasks is invested on the
Intelligence Ministry (and to a lesser extent IRGC intelligence, which has a
good working relationship with the Intelligence Ministry).
There is now mounting evidence that the Intelligence Ministry is failing to
meet the new security challenges, thus strengthening the position of those who
call for its dissolution.
According to informed sources in Tehran, pressure to dissolve the Intelligence
Ministry is coming from inside the ministry itself. The recent ethnic setbacks
coupled with the ministry's inability to combat British and US
intelligence-gathering and sabotage operations in Khuzestan have led to a
collapse in morale.
There is now broad consensus at the upper echelons of the ministry that four
different intelligence organizations could emerge from the carcass of the
ministry; a foreign-intelligence organization (similar to the United Kingdom's
MI6, or Secret Intelligence Service as it is now officially known), a domestic
security service (tasked with fighting ethnic separatisms and other forms of
serious dissent), a counter-intelligence service (tasked with combating the
activities of foreign intelligence services on Iranian soil), and a
financial-crimes intelligence unit.
It is highly unlikely that a division and reconfiguration of this kind will
ensue, but pressure for the dissolution of the Intelligence Ministry can only
grow in the foreseeable future. Without intelligence reform, Iran could face
growing ethnic unrest and even possible disintegration.
Mahan Abedin is director of research at the Center for the Study of
Terrorism, a London-based organization that studies Islamization,
democratization and extremism in the Muslim world.
