TEHRAN - As a Shi'ite-majority country
with several large ethnic groups such as the
Kurds, Arabs and Balochs that follow the Sunni
faith, Iran has for years been vulnerable to
unrest, riots and terrorist attacks that officials
routinely attribute to foreign powers.
"Iranian intelligence services have
acquired information that shows the United States,
Britain and Israel have been behind the unrest in
various parts of Iran, including Khuzestan,
Kordestan and West Azarbaijan, in the past few
years," Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, Iran's
intelligence minister, was quoted as saying by the Aftab
News
Agency.
A car-bomb attack last month by
the separatist Jundullah (also called Popular
Iranian Resistance Movement) in the southeastern
city of Zahedan, which killed 13 members of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, triggered
clashes between security forces and guerrillas of
the PJAK, a separatist Kurdish party, around the
city of Khoy in northwestern Iran.
"In the
past one and a half years and following air raids
on PJAK bases in northern Iraq, clashes with the
Iranian military have increased. The clashes used
to occur at border points mostly, but the recent
encounter was more intense and occurred inside
Iranian soil," the Aftab News Agency quoted Abed
Fattahi, representative of Oroumiyeh in
Parliament, as saying.
A Revolutionary
Guard helicopter crashed last Friday 17 kilometers
inside the Iranian border, killing its two
high-ranking commanders and seven other military
staff. The guerrilla group that claimed
responsibility has connections with the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) that has bases in Turkey and
northern Iraq. The same group blew up the
Iran-Turkey gas pipeline last September.
Guard statements said technical problems
forced the helicopter to make an emergency landing
after which it exploded, but in a statement
released after the crash, PJAK claimed to have
downed the helicopter using SA-7 missiles. Both
sides also claimed to have inflicted heavy
casualties on the other.
"Enemies,
particularly the US, Britain and the Zionist
regime [Israel], seek to create insecurity along
Iran's southeastern and northwestern borders
through their mercenaries," Brigadier-General
Rahim Safavi, chief Revolutionary Guard commander,
was quoted by Fars news agency as saying. "But the
Iranian armed forces are fully prepared to
suppress any move by the anti-revolutionaries and
alien-affiliated bandits and gangs with maximum
power."
In spite of the public hanging of
a Jundullah terrorist responsible for the Zahedan
bombing only a few days after the incident, calm
has not returned to the southeastern region. An
attack on law-enforcement forces in Sistan and
Balochistan on Tuesday by "armed bandits" left one
dead and another wounded, a military commander
told Mehr news agency. Four others were
transferred back over the border to Pakistan, he
said.
Ethnic conflict in Kordestan and in
the Kurdish-populated cities of West Azarbaijan
province in northwestern Iran date back to the
days following the Islamic Revolution of 1978. In
July 2005, pictures of the tortured body of a
young Kurdish activist shot dead by government
agents in Mahabad in northwestern Iran set off
riots that quickly spread to other Kurdish cities
in Kordestan and Oroumiyeh provinces. But these
were quickly suppressed and more than a hundred
Kurdish activists arrested.
"Kurds, many
of them Sunnis, have been fighting for many years
for their civil rights," a Kurdish journalist in
Tehran said, asking not to be quoted by name.
"Their ways are now becoming more civil-oriented
rather than being a continuation of armed
encounter with the central government as in the
past. PJAK and Komele, both rather small leftist
parties, still carry on with armed struggle,
something that many other Kurdish rights activists
now find irrelevant and useless.
"Freedom
of expression and freedom to use our mother
language in education are among the demands of the
Kurdish people," he said. "There are several
million Kurds in this country, but there is not
one high-ranking Kurdish government official. It
is next to impossible for a Kurd, especially a
Sunni Kurd, to rise in rank to high positions.
"And elections are never free. There is a
screening procedure, not only for Kurds or other
minorities but for all citizens, that serves as a
powerful tool to bar the opposition from entering
elected bodies like the Parliament or city and
village councils."
Shi'ite Azeris, Iran's
largest ethnic minority, have their own issues
too. Last May, a cartoon allegedly insulting to
Azeri speakers that appeared in the official
government gazette sparked demonstrations and
riots in Tabriz, East Azarbaijan province, that
quickly spread to other cities and towns and left
several dead.
Khuzestan in southwestern
Iran is another problem zone. Home to 2 million
Arabs, the province has a huge share of Iran's
oilfields. Badly damaged by the war between Iran
and Iraq (1980-88), the province is one of the
less developed regions of the country, and there
have been several incidents of popular riots as
well as terrorist bombings by Arab separatist
groups in the past two years. The attacks, on oil
pipelines and in urban areas, have brought about
death and destruction, particularly in Ahwaz, the
provincial capital.
"A total of 40 people
were jailed in connection with bombings and 22
were sentenced to death," said Emadeddin Baghi,
founder of Iran's first death-penalty abolition
society. "Some of these men had no role in any of
the actual bombing operations but had possessed
bombs. One was a minor at the time of his arrest
and another man had been in jail two months before
the alleged bombing took place," said Baghi,
chairman of the Society for Defending Prisoners'
Rights.
Of the 22 Arabs sentenced to death
for involvement in the Khuzestan bombings, 12 have
been hanged, three of them on the day of the
bombing in Zahedan.
"Even according to
Iranian laws, those who possessed bombs but never
used them couldn't be executed," Baghi said. "The
men had no access to legal counseling, so we found
volunteer lawyers to represent them. The lawyers
themselves were then charged with acting against
national security and prosecuted. They were
acquitted later, but the atmosphere of trepidation
took its toll and the lawyers lost their initial
impetus. Our lobbying failed, too. We couldn't
stop the executions."
On one of his famous
nationwide tours, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad
disclosed a secret highly guarded until then.
There existed a Supreme National Security Council
decree in effect for many years, Ahmadinejad told
his audience, not to make any major government
investments in western and southwestern Khuzestan.
The decree had now been annulled, he said.
Arab separatists, accused of being
supported by foreign powers, the British in
particular, have long claimed that the government
is intentionally neglecting development of their
native province. The Ahmadinejad disclosure is
considered a proof of their allegations.
"Extremist Wahhabis and groups like
al-Qaeda definitely play a role in unrest and
terrorist attacks in Sunni-populated provinces," a
political analyst in Tehran said, asking not to be
quoted by name. "In spite of lack of solid
evidence, it is quite possible that countries like
the US are also keen on enflaming unrest in these
areas to weaken the central government.
"Historic ethnic, religious and economic
discrimination against the people of these regions
also provide the fuel for the foreign flintstone."
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