By Abu Moussa Zafrani
Ignorance of the Ahwazi Arabs has prompted some journalists, governments and international human rights organisations to portray their struggle as a sectarian conflict between Sunni Arabs and the Shi'ite state.
In an appeal to set the record straight, the British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS) points out that 80-90 per cent of the Ahwazi Arab population in the southwest of Iran (Khuzestan) are Shi'ite. Ahwazi Arab culture is devoid of religious sectarianism and is instead based around tribal associations that are often mixed Sunni and Shia.
The Sunni Arab population is traditionally concentrated around the Shatt al-Arab (Arvand Rood), particularly Mohammareh (Khorammshahr). A small number of Ahwazi Arabs have converted to Sunnism and Christianity as part of a rejection of the regime's ideology and an extreme fringe minority have been influenced by radical doctrines such as Wahabbism. Most Arabs continue to follow Shi'ite beliefs, while rejecting Khomeinism as a heresy created to justify political oppression and ethnic persecution.
The Ahwazi Arab struggle has nothing to do with religion, it is a fight against social, economic and cultural marginalisation and persecution. The misunderstanding is the result of a campaign of disinformation by both the Iranian regime and some opposition groups who want to deny the problem of ethnic persecution in Iran in order to advance their political agendas.
The regime has vilified and dismissed the Ahwazi struggle as a Wahabbist insurgency. This is intended to demonise Ahwazi resistance as akin to Al-Qaeda, even though it is devoid of any religious ideology. Meanwhile, certain opposition groups and individuals are keen to play down cultural activism - particularly among Arabs - to control the political agenda. These wealthy opposition groups, controlled by middle-class chauvinist nationalists, have unfortunately had high-level access to the media and government, thereby distorting the real cause of the Ahwazi Arab uprising.
An example is the recent US State Department report on religious freedom, which states that Sunnis complain of under-representation "in government-appointed positions in the provinces where they form a majority, such as Kurdistan and Khuzestan Provinces."
In reality, the complaints are overwhelmingly about ethnic not religious representation. In some cases, notably Kurds and Balochis, ethnic groups are overwhelmingly Sunni, but their demands are based on collective rights, such as political devolution and self-determination, economic development, human rights and linguistic equality. While there is no doubt that non-Shi'ite groups such as the Baha'is, Christians, Sufis, Jews, Mandeans and others suffer violent persecution, there must also be recognition of the importance of ethnic persecution in Iran.
At an international level, Kurds and Balochis have worked closely with Shi'ite-majority ethnic groups such as Ahwazi Arabs and Azeri Turks to highlight the problem of ethnic persecution in Iran. Religion has not been a barrier to mutual co-operation and solidarity since few want to live under theocratic rule, either Shi'ite or Sunni. Ethnic rights activists seek to work with Iranians of all religions, ethnicities and ideologies to create a free society with fair elections and a political system in which they can live without intimidation and with respect. Misinformation can only create division.
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24 June, 2009
Ayatollah Khamenei's Uncle Napoleonism
By Nasser Bani Assad, British Ahwazi Friendship Society
The Iranian government has expelled two British diplomats after it accused the British government and the BBC of stirring up opposition rioting and ethnic unrest.
In recent days, Ayatollah Khamenei has used the 1953 British-American-backed coup against the government of Mohammad Mosaddeq to arouse anti-British sentiment and suggest that those opposing his puppet president Ahmadinejad are part of a London-based conspiracy to destroy Iran itself.
For many outside Iran, the claims appear deranged. But this is the paranoid psychology, amusingly described in Iraj Pezeshkzad's novel "My Uncle Napoleon", that has been sustained in Iran long after the demise of the British Empire. The only section of Iranian society that has ever had a problem with Pezeshkzad's "My Uncle Napoleon" is the religious establishment. After seizing power, the mullahs banned the book, ironically claiming it was the work of British intelligence intended to destroy Shi'ism and the Iranian nation. They failed to get the joke. This immature reaction is rooted in a deep lack of self-confidence.
In his attempt to appeal to the suspicious minds of the Iranian public, Khamenei is using the last resort of the despot: blame all Iran's internal problems on the British. While the British Empire did historically intervene in Persia/Iran as it did in most parts of the world, its current influence over events in Iran is, at best, about as strong as its influence in former colonies such as India, Kenya or South Africa. That is, it has little influence beyond the normal cultural, diplomatic and economic intercourse between two different countries/
The Iranian regime blames BBC Persian service for its ills. As a global media corporation, the BBC broadcasts in many languages across the world providing objective commentary on a range of countries. Yet, only Iran says that the BBC is seeking regime-change by broadcasting videos of brutality by its security services. It is as if the British are wielding the batons themselves or using some form of mind control over the Bassij fanatics to shoot dead Neda Soltani and the countless, nameless others murdered by this cruel government.
Unsurprisingly, the Iranian regime has not voiced anything about the useless and amateurish yet expensive American anti-regime propaganda exercises, VOA Persian and Radio Farda. Perhaps this is because they are afraid that the BBC is regarded by Iranians as trustworthy and without a party line to pursue, while the US efforts are run by a small band of ageing and embittered exiles who barely have a grasp on reality. The regime fears truth more than it fears any ideology.
It is a sign of extreme political backwardness that a regime has to invent conspiracies involving "Satanic" foreign governments in order to protest itself from the truth. Moreover, it demonstrates how little faith the regime has in its own people that it believes they will behave like sheep by betraying their country and obeying the dictates of foreign governments.
The youth of Iran, a country where 70 per cent of the population is under 30, have no interest in these fantasies about British imperialism and are disinterested in what happened more than half a century ago. They want decent jobs and education, they want equitable economic development, they want to express their opinions, they want freedom to enjoy themselves without religious sanctions and, for minorities, they want freedom of worship, freedom to learn and speak in their mother tongue and the devolution of power from the centre. The youth of Iran want to look forward, not backward.
Khamenei's conspiracy theories could very well backfire. It evident to Iranian youth that the hidden hand of British imperialism is not behind everything that goes on, nor do they feel brainwashed by dark forces emanating from London. The portrayal of the British as the regime's greatest enemy could very well embolden them and many now see the British as their best friend.
The mullahs know that without invented conspiracies and extreme state terror, their rule would crumble. Now the conspiracies and terror are no longer working and the truth is chipping away at the regime's feet of clay. It is not a matter of 'if' but 'when' the edifice of the Islamic Republic will topple and a new generation gets power.
The role of the international community should be simple: let the people tell their truth and let them be heard.
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By Nasser Bani Assad, British Ahwazi Friendship Society
The Iranian government has expelled two British diplomats after it accused the British government and the BBC of stirring up opposition rioting and ethnic unrest.
In recent days, Ayatollah Khamenei has used the 1953 British-American-backed coup against the government of Mohammad Mosaddeq to arouse anti-British sentiment and suggest that those opposing his puppet president Ahmadinejad are part of a London-based conspiracy to destroy Iran itself.
For many outside Iran, the claims appear deranged. But this is the paranoid psychology, amusingly described in Iraj Pezeshkzad's novel "My Uncle Napoleon", that has been sustained in Iran long after the demise of the British Empire. The only section of Iranian society that has ever had a problem with Pezeshkzad's "My Uncle Napoleon" is the religious establishment. After seizing power, the mullahs banned the book, ironically claiming it was the work of British intelligence intended to destroy Shi'ism and the Iranian nation. They failed to get the joke. This immature reaction is rooted in a deep lack of self-confidence.
In his attempt to appeal to the suspicious minds of the Iranian public, Khamenei is using the last resort of the despot: blame all Iran's internal problems on the British. While the British Empire did historically intervene in Persia/Iran as it did in most parts of the world, its current influence over events in Iran is, at best, about as strong as its influence in former colonies such as India, Kenya or South Africa. That is, it has little influence beyond the normal cultural, diplomatic and economic intercourse between two different countries/
The Iranian regime blames BBC Persian service for its ills. As a global media corporation, the BBC broadcasts in many languages across the world providing objective commentary on a range of countries. Yet, only Iran says that the BBC is seeking regime-change by broadcasting videos of brutality by its security services. It is as if the British are wielding the batons themselves or using some form of mind control over the Bassij fanatics to shoot dead Neda Soltani and the countless, nameless others murdered by this cruel government.
Unsurprisingly, the Iranian regime has not voiced anything about the useless and amateurish yet expensive American anti-regime propaganda exercises, VOA Persian and Radio Farda. Perhaps this is because they are afraid that the BBC is regarded by Iranians as trustworthy and without a party line to pursue, while the US efforts are run by a small band of ageing and embittered exiles who barely have a grasp on reality. The regime fears truth more than it fears any ideology.
It is a sign of extreme political backwardness that a regime has to invent conspiracies involving "Satanic" foreign governments in order to protest itself from the truth. Moreover, it demonstrates how little faith the regime has in its own people that it believes they will behave like sheep by betraying their country and obeying the dictates of foreign governments.
The youth of Iran, a country where 70 per cent of the population is under 30, have no interest in these fantasies about British imperialism and are disinterested in what happened more than half a century ago. They want decent jobs and education, they want equitable economic development, they want to express their opinions, they want freedom to enjoy themselves without religious sanctions and, for minorities, they want freedom of worship, freedom to learn and speak in their mother tongue and the devolution of power from the centre. The youth of Iran want to look forward, not backward.
Khamenei's conspiracy theories could very well backfire. It evident to Iranian youth that the hidden hand of British imperialism is not behind everything that goes on, nor do they feel brainwashed by dark forces emanating from London. The portrayal of the British as the regime's greatest enemy could very well embolden them and many now see the British as their best friend.
The mullahs know that without invented conspiracies and extreme state terror, their rule would crumble. Now the conspiracies and terror are no longer working and the truth is chipping away at the regime's feet of clay. It is not a matter of 'if' but 'when' the edifice of the Islamic Republic will topple and a new generation gets power.
The role of the international community should be simple: let the people tell their truth and let them be heard.
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01 October, 2007
BAFS Member Speaks to Arab News Network on Iran
The following are excerpts from a debate on the Arabs of Iran's Al-Ahwaz province, which aired on ANB TV on September 7, 2007. To view the clip visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1567.htm
Musa Al-Sharifi of the Al-Ahwaz Democratic Solidarity Party: "With regard to our Arab region of Al-Ahwaz, the [Iranian] government's policy is to expropriate lands, to deport the indigenous Arab inhabitants to other regions, and to replace them with people from the Persian provinces of central Iran."
Interviewer: "How is this done? The Arabs own the lands, which are expropriated by government decree, or what?"
Musa Al-Sharifi: "Yes, this process began in the days of the Shah with the sugar cane projects and so on. They would take the lands from the Arab farmers and establish on them camps for the army or the security agencies, or fictitious economic projects and so on. This process began in the time of the Shah, and intensified in the Islamic Republic."
[...]
Mansour Al-Ahwazi, political activist and treasurer of the British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS): "Various methods are used in the ethnic cleansing. We did not claim that there were killings... There are killings, indiscriminate executions, and all that, but not like what happened in Yugoslavia and other places. They are trying to finish off our existence.
[...]
"The first city of Persian settlers is called Shirinshah. You can find it on the map, or you can open Google Earth and see this Persian city in the heart of the Arab region. Lands in this region were expropriated under the pretext of the sugar cane project and were used to build the city of Shirinshah.
"The first settlement in the time of the Shah was called New Yazd, but after the revolution, the Iranians who were brought there fled from New Yazd. When the Iranian regime believes that the Arab or international situation allows it to get away with these things, it intensifies its actions. After the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967, they carried out the first settlement plan of New Yazd. They brought people from Yazd, and settled them in Al-Ahwaz. They did this when they saw that the condition of the Arabs deteriorated, even though the Arabs completely ignore our cause.
"Now that Iraq is no longer competing with Iran, and now that Iran has gained a monopoly over the strategic situation in the region, they have stepped up the expropriation of lands in Al-Ahwaz. The Iranian regime - despite all its claims to support the Arab causes and so on... Whenever it identifies some weakness in the [Arab] nation, it escalates its ethnic cleansing policies in Al-Ahwaz.
[...]
"The Al-Ahwaz issue highlights the contradictions of the Iranian government. The Iranian government professes to call for unity, to avoid sectarianism, and to defend the Shiites. It tries to use the Shiite bargaining chip in some Arab countries in order to promote its plans and in order to extract some concessions from the U.S. or from some of the other Western powers. If Iran really defends the Shiites, why does it oppress the [Arab] Shiites of Al-Ahwaz? The majority [of the Arabs] there are Shiite. If it really defends the [Arab] peoples in Lebanon and Palestine, why does it oppress its own Arab people? This is the greatest contradiction in the policy of the Iranian government.
"This issue highlights the contradictions of the Iranian government on all levels - on the sectarian level, as well as the Islamic level. The Iranian government is, in fact, coming to a dead-end, not only in terms of its foreign policy, but domestically as well.
"For example, some time ago they closed the Al-Ashraq cultural institute, which was the only Arab cultural institute in Al-Ahwaz. It was closed two days ago, as you can read on the Internet. This was done for no reason whatsoever. It did not support violence or any political organization. All it did was distribute Arab and Islamic books. It was attacked and was closed down.
"This is part of the faltering policy of the Ahmadinejad government - just like it chose to run ahead with its nuclear program, it failed to start a dialogue with its [non-Persian] peoples, and to find a formula of compromise in this regard. It has now begun to escalate its indiscriminate arrests and its attacks.
"There have been many more executions in recent years, since the rise of Ahmadinejad, and many cultural institutes have been closed down. [The Iranian government] has begun to push matters towards a dead end, and to encourage people to rise up and create unrest. What is happening now in Baluchistan... I am sure that you have heard about the kidnappings. In Kurdistan, two helicopters were attacked. They blame the West for all this unrest, and try to say this is the result of conspiracies, but it is the result of their own policy.
[...]
"Iran rules Al-Ahwaz by virtue of the status quo alone. It enjoys no historical, political, or even popular legitimacy in Al-Ahwaz.
[...]
"As the international situation deteriorates for the Iranian government, its control will weaken. Their fear of this leads them to escalate the oppression in Al-Ahwaz.
[...]
"The unity of Iran has begun to face very grave dangers, because the broadest common denominator - the religious or Shiite element - has weakened greatly."
Interviewer: "In what sense has it weakened? They derive strength from this."
Mansour Al-Ahwazi: "No, this element has weakened greatly, because the government's policy. Take, for example, the issue of the veil. They impose the veil, but in the early days of the revolution, it was worn out of personal conviction, and no one imposed it. Iranian women seek any opportunity to express their rage at the policies of the Iranian government, which imposes the veil.
"In the past, Iranian women wore the veil out of personal conviction. Now, it has become a matter of oppression, and you can see how they mobilize armies in order to attack and humiliate women and to force them to wear the veil."
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.......................................................................................
The following are excerpts from a debate on the Arabs of Iran's Al-Ahwaz province, which aired on ANB TV on September 7, 2007. To view the clip visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1567.htmMusa Al-Sharifi of the Al-Ahwaz Democratic Solidarity Party: "With regard to our Arab region of Al-Ahwaz, the [Iranian] government's policy is to expropriate lands, to deport the indigenous Arab inhabitants to other regions, and to replace them with people from the Persian provinces of central Iran."
Interviewer: "How is this done? The Arabs own the lands, which are expropriated by government decree, or what?"
Musa Al-Sharifi: "Yes, this process began in the days of the Shah with the sugar cane projects and so on. They would take the lands from the Arab farmers and establish on them camps for the army or the security agencies, or fictitious economic projects and so on. This process began in the time of the Shah, and intensified in the Islamic Republic."
[...]
Mansour Al-Ahwazi, political activist and treasurer of the British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS): "Various methods are used in the ethnic cleansing. We did not claim that there were killings... There are killings, indiscriminate executions, and all that, but not like what happened in Yugoslavia and other places. They are trying to finish off our existence.
[...]
"The first city of Persian settlers is called Shirinshah. You can find it on the map, or you can open Google Earth and see this Persian city in the heart of the Arab region. Lands in this region were expropriated under the pretext of the sugar cane project and were used to build the city of Shirinshah.
"The first settlement in the time of the Shah was called New Yazd, but after the revolution, the Iranians who were brought there fled from New Yazd. When the Iranian regime believes that the Arab or international situation allows it to get away with these things, it intensifies its actions. After the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967, they carried out the first settlement plan of New Yazd. They brought people from Yazd, and settled them in Al-Ahwaz. They did this when they saw that the condition of the Arabs deteriorated, even though the Arabs completely ignore our cause.
"Now that Iraq is no longer competing with Iran, and now that Iran has gained a monopoly over the strategic situation in the region, they have stepped up the expropriation of lands in Al-Ahwaz. The Iranian regime - despite all its claims to support the Arab causes and so on... Whenever it identifies some weakness in the [Arab] nation, it escalates its ethnic cleansing policies in Al-Ahwaz.
[...]
"The Al-Ahwaz issue highlights the contradictions of the Iranian government. The Iranian government professes to call for unity, to avoid sectarianism, and to defend the Shiites. It tries to use the Shiite bargaining chip in some Arab countries in order to promote its plans and in order to extract some concessions from the U.S. or from some of the other Western powers. If Iran really defends the Shiites, why does it oppress the [Arab] Shiites of Al-Ahwaz? The majority [of the Arabs] there are Shiite. If it really defends the [Arab] peoples in Lebanon and Palestine, why does it oppress its own Arab people? This is the greatest contradiction in the policy of the Iranian government.
"This issue highlights the contradictions of the Iranian government on all levels - on the sectarian level, as well as the Islamic level. The Iranian government is, in fact, coming to a dead-end, not only in terms of its foreign policy, but domestically as well.
"For example, some time ago they closed the Al-Ashraq cultural institute, which was the only Arab cultural institute in Al-Ahwaz. It was closed two days ago, as you can read on the Internet. This was done for no reason whatsoever. It did not support violence or any political organization. All it did was distribute Arab and Islamic books. It was attacked and was closed down.
"This is part of the faltering policy of the Ahmadinejad government - just like it chose to run ahead with its nuclear program, it failed to start a dialogue with its [non-Persian] peoples, and to find a formula of compromise in this regard. It has now begun to escalate its indiscriminate arrests and its attacks.
"There have been many more executions in recent years, since the rise of Ahmadinejad, and many cultural institutes have been closed down. [The Iranian government] has begun to push matters towards a dead end, and to encourage people to rise up and create unrest. What is happening now in Baluchistan... I am sure that you have heard about the kidnappings. In Kurdistan, two helicopters were attacked. They blame the West for all this unrest, and try to say this is the result of conspiracies, but it is the result of their own policy.
[...]
"Iran rules Al-Ahwaz by virtue of the status quo alone. It enjoys no historical, political, or even popular legitimacy in Al-Ahwaz.
[...]
"As the international situation deteriorates for the Iranian government, its control will weaken. Their fear of this leads them to escalate the oppression in Al-Ahwaz.
[...]
"The unity of Iran has begun to face very grave dangers, because the broadest common denominator - the religious or Shiite element - has weakened greatly."
Interviewer: "In what sense has it weakened? They derive strength from this."
Mansour Al-Ahwazi: "No, this element has weakened greatly, because the government's policy. Take, for example, the issue of the veil. They impose the veil, but in the early days of the revolution, it was worn out of personal conviction, and no one imposed it. Iranian women seek any opportunity to express their rage at the policies of the Iranian government, which imposes the veil.
"In the past, Iranian women wore the veil out of personal conviction. Now, it has become a matter of oppression, and you can see how they mobilize armies in order to attack and humiliate women and to force them to wear the veil."
Labels: activism, features, media
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13 June, 2007
US Finds Karbala PJCC Mockup Inside Iran
By Bill Roggio, The Weekly Standard
The January 20 attack on the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center by the Iranian backed Qazali Network, which resulted in the kidnapping and murder of five U.S. soldiers, was long known to be an Iranian planned and sponsored strike. While Iran has insulated itself with its cutouts in the Qazali Network, Multinational Forces Iraq has captured members of the network who implicated the Iranian regime, as well as documents that substantiate the allegations. And now U.S. forces have satellite imagery that proves Iranian involvement. In the June 4 edition of Aviation Week and Space Technology, the magazine reports that Iran had built inside its borders a mockup of the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center, which was used to train the attackers. The "training center" was discovered by a U.S. spy satellite surveying Iran.
"U.S. reconnaissance spacecraft have spotted a training center in Iran that duplicates the layout of the governor's compound in Karbala, Iraq, that was attacked in January by a specialized unit that killed American and Iraqi soldiers," Michael Mecham reported in the "In Orbit" section of the magazine. "The U.S. believes the discovery indicates Iran was heavily involved in the attack, which relied on a fake motorcade to gain entrance to the compound. The duplicate layout in Iran allowed attackers to practice procedures to use at the Iraqi compound, the Defense Dept. believes."
An American military officer confirmed to us that the report is accurate, but did not disclose the location of the training camp. In early January, Strategic Policy Consulting confirmed a two year old report by the British Ahwazi Friendship Society that Iran was using the "Arab populated city of Ahwaz, southwestern Iran, as a base of operations." The city of Ahwaz is in Khuzestan province, which borders the southern Iraqi province of Basra. It is not publicly known if Ahwaz is the location of the Karbala mockup.
"The Al-Qods Force trains militants in manufacturing improved explosive devices and finances and organises pro-Iranian militias in Iraq," noted the the British Ahwazi Friendship Society report. "According to SPC, the Iraq network is under the command of Jamal Jaafar Mohammad Ali Ebrahimi, who is also known as Mehdi Mohandes."
We were the first to note, on January 26, that Iran's Qods Force, which is responsible for planning and conducting foreign operations, intelligence gathering, and terrorist activities, was likely behind the attack due to the complexity of the strike. General David Petraeus briefed on the Karbala attack on April 26 and noted the Qazali network was responsible for the strike.
On May 19, Coalition forces killed Azhar al-Dulaimi during a raid in Baghdad's Sadr City. Dulaimi was described as the "mastermind" and "tactical commander" of the Karbala attack, In March, U.S. forces captured Qais Qazali, the network's leader, his brother Laith Qazali, and several other members.
Multinational Forces Iraq has been targeting the Qazali Network's "secret terror cells" as well as those of the Sheibani Network. Coalition and Iraqi forces have killed 26 members of this network and captured 71 more since April 27, 2007. Three more members of the "secret cell" were captured and another killed today.
The Sheibani Network is the overarching organization that receives support, weapons, advice, and targeting from Iran's Qods Force. Senior members of the Qazali and Sheibani Networks are members of Iran's Qods Force.
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By Bill Roggio, The Weekly Standard
The January 20 attack on the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center by the Iranian backed Qazali Network, which resulted in the kidnapping and murder of five U.S. soldiers, was long known to be an Iranian planned and sponsored strike. While Iran has insulated itself with its cutouts in the Qazali Network, Multinational Forces Iraq has captured members of the network who implicated the Iranian regime, as well as documents that substantiate the allegations. And now U.S. forces have satellite imagery that proves Iranian involvement. In the June 4 edition of Aviation Week and Space Technology, the magazine reports that Iran had built inside its borders a mockup of the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center, which was used to train the attackers. The "training center" was discovered by a U.S. spy satellite surveying Iran.
"U.S. reconnaissance spacecraft have spotted a training center in Iran that duplicates the layout of the governor's compound in Karbala, Iraq, that was attacked in January by a specialized unit that killed American and Iraqi soldiers," Michael Mecham reported in the "In Orbit" section of the magazine. "The U.S. believes the discovery indicates Iran was heavily involved in the attack, which relied on a fake motorcade to gain entrance to the compound. The duplicate layout in Iran allowed attackers to practice procedures to use at the Iraqi compound, the Defense Dept. believes."
An American military officer confirmed to us that the report is accurate, but did not disclose the location of the training camp. In early January, Strategic Policy Consulting confirmed a two year old report by the British Ahwazi Friendship Society that Iran was using the "Arab populated city of Ahwaz, southwestern Iran, as a base of operations." The city of Ahwaz is in Khuzestan province, which borders the southern Iraqi province of Basra. It is not publicly known if Ahwaz is the location of the Karbala mockup.
"The Al-Qods Force trains militants in manufacturing improved explosive devices and finances and organises pro-Iranian militias in Iraq," noted the the British Ahwazi Friendship Society report. "According to SPC, the Iraq network is under the command of Jamal Jaafar Mohammad Ali Ebrahimi, who is also known as Mehdi Mohandes."
We were the first to note, on January 26, that Iran's Qods Force, which is responsible for planning and conducting foreign operations, intelligence gathering, and terrorist activities, was likely behind the attack due to the complexity of the strike. General David Petraeus briefed on the Karbala attack on April 26 and noted the Qazali network was responsible for the strike.
On May 19, Coalition forces killed Azhar al-Dulaimi during a raid in Baghdad's Sadr City. Dulaimi was described as the "mastermind" and "tactical commander" of the Karbala attack, In March, U.S. forces captured Qais Qazali, the network's leader, his brother Laith Qazali, and several other members.
Multinational Forces Iraq has been targeting the Qazali Network's "secret terror cells" as well as those of the Sheibani Network. Coalition and Iraqi forces have killed 26 members of this network and captured 71 more since April 27, 2007. Three more members of the "secret cell" were captured and another killed today.
The Sheibani Network is the overarching organization that receives support, weapons, advice, and targeting from Iran's Qods Force. Senior members of the Qazali and Sheibani Networks are members of Iran's Qods Force.
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12 June, 2007
The Iranian Democrats in Iraq
By Richard Miniter, PJM Washington editor, reporting from Sulaimaniya, Iraq
From his secret base Abdullah Mohtadi commands a small armed force inside Iraq and a vast clandestine network inside Iran.
"I didn't believe in the so-called critical dialogue with Iran. We are for regime change, no matter what the Europeans or even the United States says," Mohtadi tells me.
It is not an ambition for the faint-hearted. Mohtadi, who is Secretary General of the Democratic Komala party, an Iranian Kurdish political party banned by the Islamic Republic, has survived several attempts on his life.
This charming former communist wants to topple the mullahs of Tehran and replace their dictatorial rule with a federal democracy.
"In a sense we have some things in common with the neocons. We believe in the democratization of the whole Middle East and recognize the danger of political Islam."
Still the former communist does not call himself a neo-conservative. He prefers the term "revolutionary liberal." He is one of the "free rangers" of Iran.
The day I first met him, he was trying to stay in the background. I had come to visit his older brother, a famous Kurdish novelist, and the younger Mohtadi was serving as a translator. He didn't even let on that he was related to the novelist, let alone venture a detail about his history, until I asked him about himself.
He was traveling incognito; dressed in a striped shirt and trousers.
Today he is dressed in an olive-drab kawapatour, a traditional Kurdish man's pants suit that flares from waist to knee; it makes him look like both a 1940s military commander and Kurdish nationalist. It looks like a suit for a special occasion.
His words are measured and soft. He drinks his tea without sugar.
Iran's Kurds
There are 12 million Kurds spread across four provinces in Northwestern Iran and another one million Kurds in a far-eastern province. Iran's total population is estimated at more than 60 million.
As with Kurds in neighboring states, the Iranian Kurds have a series of discrimination complaints. He ticks them off. Kurds are deprived of education in their mother tongue and denied money for schools and roads, even though they pay heavy taxes to the central government, according to Mohtadi. Generally, Iran's Kurdistan is run not by Kurds, but by people appointed by Tehran. Not a single police chief is a Kurd, he said. Indeed, none of the top jobs in the four Kurdish provinces are held by a Kurd. "It is a cultural occupation, a case of clear discrimination."
Congress of Nationalities
Mohtadi, with a wide array of allies, is building consensus among the democratic opposition among ethnic minorities inside Iran. It is a minority within a string of minorities. The five main ethnic minorities inside Iran are the Azerbaijanis, the Azeris, the Beluch (in southeast Iran), the Arabs of Ahwaz (in southwest Iran) and the Kurds (in northwest Iran and northeast Iran). These minorities call themselves "nationalities," because they are peoples without a nation. Nonetheless, Mohtadi (and presumably his allies) acknowledge that seceding from Iran is not a realistic option.
Instead, Mohtadi and others have united the democratic elements with the "nationalities" to form the Congress of Nationalities for Federal Iran. They do not seek breakaway republics or ethnic fiefdoms, but regional autonomy within a federal, democratic Iran. They envision that this new Iran will be like the Federal Republic of Germany or the United States before the civil war extinguished the autonomy of states.
Iraq serves as a model for what is possible in Iran. "The Iranian Kurds are celebrating the presidency of Talabani in Iraq," he said. The new Iraq is a viable democracy, with regional autonomy for the Kurds, that can elect an ethnic minority (a Kurd even!) to the presidency to a large, united nation.
Can Iran really evolve in this direction? Yes, it is a faraway dream, Mohtadi admits. But progress to the promised land is quietly being made.
When Iranian police arrested a Kurdish teenaged boy, named Shwana Kadini, and tortured and killed him, in July 2005, it was not hard to stoke public outrage. Across Iran's Kurdish region, the public fury was overwhelming.
Democracy activists were quick to capitalize on public sentiment. Komala and others in their coalition mounted demonstrations in nine cities. The carried signs saying "Bring the killers to justice." Read one way, the signs seem to be about bringing the rogue cops to trial. Read another, it is a call for regime change in Tehran.
Komala and its supporters put some 100,000 people on the streets to demonstrate against the regime in July 2005, he said.
The Iranian writer's union supported Kurds, as did many other Iranian groups.
"For the first time since 1979, all of Iranian Kurdistan erupted with demonstrations," he said.
Tehran's reaction was instructive. "The government became cautious," he said. It made some attempts to placate the public. It suggests that the mullahs realize how tenuous their hold on power really is.
A Secret Network
Still, support is growing among Kurds in Iran, he said. "A decade ago, it is very difficult to get cooperation. Now people complain that you don't give them missions. Why am I not a member? they ask me." You have to earn the right to be a voting party member, he explains.
"We have had 4,000 martyrs in past 28 years, now new recruits are strengthening the party."
Azerbaijanis came late to liberation movement but their democratic management is growing fast. "This is one of the biggest political changes is that we have managed to win over the Shi'ite Kurds of southern [Iranian] Kurdistan," he said.
The internal organization for leading and organizing clandestine staff has doubled twice in the past year, according to Abu Baker Modarrisi, who is a member of the collective that runs the clandestine service.
"We send people into Iran every day," he tells me. "We sent an organizer yesterday to a Kurdish city to set up a cell."
Komala reaches Iranian Kurds through phones, e-mails and satellite television.
"Our satellite broadcasts station both Kurdish and Farsi, using an uplink in Sudan and a studio in Iraq. Rojhelat TV - sunrise and east, broadcast from Sweden, studio here. Iranian Kurd is eastern Kurdistan."
But the jamming backfires. "People are angry about health effects of Iranian jammers," he said. Many Iranians believe they are being poisoned by the intense electro-magnetic fields generated by jamming devices, he said. When I tell him that I can see the moral outrage of being denied free speech, but that the health effects of the jamming are probably nil (the electro-magnetic fields fall off by the square of the distance), he looks nonplussed. He does not want to surrender such an effective propaganda point. But he is an educated man and knows, as a matter of science, that I am right. So he moves back on the better terrain: the regime's use of torture.
Armed Struggle?
For now, Komala will confine itself to mass protests and civil disobedience. "When the time is right," the former communist said, "armed struggle will resume."
Mohtadi strongly denies that Komala coordinates with Pjak, a Kurdish terror group known to attack Iranian police stations and other targets inside Iran. He believes that violence at this stage would alienate supporters inside Iran and is morally opposed to senseless taking of life.
But Komala does have its international affiliations. It is affiliated with Socialist International through the Kurdish branch. The party recently applied for full membership on its own.
It would seem to be the perfect group for the Left to embrace: it is democratic, represents an ethnic minority, fights an evil regime run by Islamist fanatics, uses non-violent techniques to demand social justice and is a bona fide member of the global socialist movement.
And yet it has shockingly few friends on the Left. A few Europeans will listen, he said. But most in Europe and North America ignore Komala. They have moved on. Some seek to accommodate or understand the Iranian regime. Many more are consumed by Bush hatred. Komala is a oxbow lake, left behind by a Mississippi that has changed course.
Little Help from Washington
The Bush Administration seems to have little interest in Komala or the other members of the Congress of Nationalities.
Has he met with representatives of the State department or the CIA? He only nods.
He is grateful that the State Department and the European Union have condemned Iran's use of torture, censorship, false imprisonment, police brutality and sharia law. But he said he does not understand America's goals vis-a-vis Iran.
"We don't know what strategy U.S. is following. They show sympathy [for us], they condemn violations of human rights, nationalities, women. This is said. But there is no strategy. We still don't know what the U.S. want to do with this regime."
"It is better for the strategy to be publicly announced. There is no shame in it."
I ask him if he would favor a "No-fly zone" over the Kurdish region of Iran, similar to the umbrella that once shielded the Kurds in Iraq?
He seems surprised and delighted by the suggestion. But he responds cautiously. "That would greatly help," he said.
He receives no aid from America or any Western government. Sometimes, the local Kurdish government will give the party a little money "for water, electricity and so on. It isn't much."
Komala's support comes solely from supporters inside Iran and among the Kurdish diaspora - desperately poor people providing what they can.
"We are surprised why the Americans are so sensitive. The Iranian regime is confronting the U.S. very openly and still the U.S. is doing nothing to help the Kurds and other nationalities."
The regime is weak, he believes. "It is corrupt, has no self-belief, just self-interest. In the ruling circles, there is no solidarity." With a hard shove, the regime would crumble, he said. "I am optimistic."
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By Richard Miniter, PJM Washington editor, reporting from Sulaimaniya, Iraq
From his secret base Abdullah Mohtadi commands a small armed force inside Iraq and a vast clandestine network inside Iran.
"I didn't believe in the so-called critical dialogue with Iran. We are for regime change, no matter what the Europeans or even the United States says," Mohtadi tells me.
It is not an ambition for the faint-hearted. Mohtadi, who is Secretary General of the Democratic Komala party, an Iranian Kurdish political party banned by the Islamic Republic, has survived several attempts on his life.
This charming former communist wants to topple the mullahs of Tehran and replace their dictatorial rule with a federal democracy.
"In a sense we have some things in common with the neocons. We believe in the democratization of the whole Middle East and recognize the danger of political Islam."
Still the former communist does not call himself a neo-conservative. He prefers the term "revolutionary liberal." He is one of the "free rangers" of Iran.
The day I first met him, he was trying to stay in the background. I had come to visit his older brother, a famous Kurdish novelist, and the younger Mohtadi was serving as a translator. He didn't even let on that he was related to the novelist, let alone venture a detail about his history, until I asked him about himself.
He was traveling incognito; dressed in a striped shirt and trousers.
Today he is dressed in an olive-drab kawapatour, a traditional Kurdish man's pants suit that flares from waist to knee; it makes him look like both a 1940s military commander and Kurdish nationalist. It looks like a suit for a special occasion.
His words are measured and soft. He drinks his tea without sugar.
Iran's Kurds
There are 12 million Kurds spread across four provinces in Northwestern Iran and another one million Kurds in a far-eastern province. Iran's total population is estimated at more than 60 million.
As with Kurds in neighboring states, the Iranian Kurds have a series of discrimination complaints. He ticks them off. Kurds are deprived of education in their mother tongue and denied money for schools and roads, even though they pay heavy taxes to the central government, according to Mohtadi. Generally, Iran's Kurdistan is run not by Kurds, but by people appointed by Tehran. Not a single police chief is a Kurd, he said. Indeed, none of the top jobs in the four Kurdish provinces are held by a Kurd. "It is a cultural occupation, a case of clear discrimination."
Congress of Nationalities
Mohtadi, with a wide array of allies, is building consensus among the democratic opposition among ethnic minorities inside Iran. It is a minority within a string of minorities. The five main ethnic minorities inside Iran are the Azerbaijanis, the Azeris, the Beluch (in southeast Iran), the Arabs of Ahwaz (in southwest Iran) and the Kurds (in northwest Iran and northeast Iran). These minorities call themselves "nationalities," because they are peoples without a nation. Nonetheless, Mohtadi (and presumably his allies) acknowledge that seceding from Iran is not a realistic option.
Instead, Mohtadi and others have united the democratic elements with the "nationalities" to form the Congress of Nationalities for Federal Iran. They do not seek breakaway republics or ethnic fiefdoms, but regional autonomy within a federal, democratic Iran. They envision that this new Iran will be like the Federal Republic of Germany or the United States before the civil war extinguished the autonomy of states.
Iraq serves as a model for what is possible in Iran. "The Iranian Kurds are celebrating the presidency of Talabani in Iraq," he said. The new Iraq is a viable democracy, with regional autonomy for the Kurds, that can elect an ethnic minority (a Kurd even!) to the presidency to a large, united nation.
Can Iran really evolve in this direction? Yes, it is a faraway dream, Mohtadi admits. But progress to the promised land is quietly being made.
When Iranian police arrested a Kurdish teenaged boy, named Shwana Kadini, and tortured and killed him, in July 2005, it was not hard to stoke public outrage. Across Iran's Kurdish region, the public fury was overwhelming.
Democracy activists were quick to capitalize on public sentiment. Komala and others in their coalition mounted demonstrations in nine cities. The carried signs saying "Bring the killers to justice." Read one way, the signs seem to be about bringing the rogue cops to trial. Read another, it is a call for regime change in Tehran.
Komala and its supporters put some 100,000 people on the streets to demonstrate against the regime in July 2005, he said.
The Iranian writer's union supported Kurds, as did many other Iranian groups.
"For the first time since 1979, all of Iranian Kurdistan erupted with demonstrations," he said.
Tehran's reaction was instructive. "The government became cautious," he said. It made some attempts to placate the public. It suggests that the mullahs realize how tenuous their hold on power really is.
A Secret Network
Still, support is growing among Kurds in Iran, he said. "A decade ago, it is very difficult to get cooperation. Now people complain that you don't give them missions. Why am I not a member? they ask me." You have to earn the right to be a voting party member, he explains.
"We have had 4,000 martyrs in past 28 years, now new recruits are strengthening the party."
Azerbaijanis came late to liberation movement but their democratic management is growing fast. "This is one of the biggest political changes is that we have managed to win over the Shi'ite Kurds of southern [Iranian] Kurdistan," he said.
The internal organization for leading and organizing clandestine staff has doubled twice in the past year, according to Abu Baker Modarrisi, who is a member of the collective that runs the clandestine service.
"We send people into Iran every day," he tells me. "We sent an organizer yesterday to a Kurdish city to set up a cell."
Komala reaches Iranian Kurds through phones, e-mails and satellite television.
"Our satellite broadcasts station both Kurdish and Farsi, using an uplink in Sudan and a studio in Iraq. Rojhelat TV - sunrise and east, broadcast from Sweden, studio here. Iranian Kurd is eastern Kurdistan."
But the jamming backfires. "People are angry about health effects of Iranian jammers," he said. Many Iranians believe they are being poisoned by the intense electro-magnetic fields generated by jamming devices, he said. When I tell him that I can see the moral outrage of being denied free speech, but that the health effects of the jamming are probably nil (the electro-magnetic fields fall off by the square of the distance), he looks nonplussed. He does not want to surrender such an effective propaganda point. But he is an educated man and knows, as a matter of science, that I am right. So he moves back on the better terrain: the regime's use of torture.
Armed Struggle?
For now, Komala will confine itself to mass protests and civil disobedience. "When the time is right," the former communist said, "armed struggle will resume."
Mohtadi strongly denies that Komala coordinates with Pjak, a Kurdish terror group known to attack Iranian police stations and other targets inside Iran. He believes that violence at this stage would alienate supporters inside Iran and is morally opposed to senseless taking of life.
But Komala does have its international affiliations. It is affiliated with Socialist International through the Kurdish branch. The party recently applied for full membership on its own.
It would seem to be the perfect group for the Left to embrace: it is democratic, represents an ethnic minority, fights an evil regime run by Islamist fanatics, uses non-violent techniques to demand social justice and is a bona fide member of the global socialist movement.
And yet it has shockingly few friends on the Left. A few Europeans will listen, he said. But most in Europe and North America ignore Komala. They have moved on. Some seek to accommodate or understand the Iranian regime. Many more are consumed by Bush hatred. Komala is a oxbow lake, left behind by a Mississippi that has changed course.
Little Help from Washington
The Bush Administration seems to have little interest in Komala or the other members of the Congress of Nationalities.
Has he met with representatives of the State department or the CIA? He only nods.
He is grateful that the State Department and the European Union have condemned Iran's use of torture, censorship, false imprisonment, police brutality and sharia law. But he said he does not understand America's goals vis-a-vis Iran.
"We don't know what strategy U.S. is following. They show sympathy [for us], they condemn violations of human rights, nationalities, women. This is said. But there is no strategy. We still don't know what the U.S. want to do with this regime."
"It is better for the strategy to be publicly announced. There is no shame in it."
I ask him if he would favor a "No-fly zone" over the Kurdish region of Iran, similar to the umbrella that once shielded the Kurds in Iraq?
He seems surprised and delighted by the suggestion. But he responds cautiously. "That would greatly help," he said.
He receives no aid from America or any Western government. Sometimes, the local Kurdish government will give the party a little money "for water, electricity and so on. It isn't much."
Komala's support comes solely from supporters inside Iran and among the Kurdish diaspora - desperately poor people providing what they can.
"We are surprised why the Americans are so sensitive. The Iranian regime is confronting the U.S. very openly and still the U.S. is doing nothing to help the Kurds and other nationalities."
The regime is weak, he believes. "It is corrupt, has no self-belief, just self-interest. In the ruling circles, there is no solidarity." With a hard shove, the regime would crumble, he said. "I am optimistic."
Labels: features
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08 June, 2007
Iran Arabs denounce discrimination
By Ahmed Janabi, Al-Jazeera
Iranian Arabs in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan in southwest Iran have expressed a strong will to split from Iran and restore their own state, accusing Tehran of suppressing them racially, economically, and politically.
Ahwaz has been witnessing sporadic bombings and confrontations between residents and Iranian police.
In 2006, a bomb exploded in the city, causing tension between Britain and Iran after Manouchechr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, accused Britain of involvement in the unrest.
Arab activists have complained about Iranian indifference to their demands and calls for dialogue.
They have voiced concerns over the low living standards, and the lack of education and medical services in their community.
Tahir Aal Sayyed Nima, chairman of the Ahwaz National Liberation Movement (ANLM), told Al Jazeera.net that Iran was treating its Arab nationals as second-class citizens.
He said: "Arabic is banned in government departments and parliament. Arabic is not allowed to be taught at schools or learning centres. We see this as a bid to assassinate our Arab identity.
"Schools are not available in villages, peasants' children have to go to the city on daily basis to be able to study, which is very impractical of course. Hence, illiteracy in Ahwaz is estimated at 90 per cent, and as long as the Iranian government blocks education, it is unlikely that this percentage would ever go down."
Illiteracy in Iran in general is estimated at 33 per cent.
Federalism
Most of Ahwazi political movements demand full independence for their region, but the Democratic Solidarity Party of al-Ahwaz (DSPA) demands self-rule within a federal state.
Mansour al-Ahwazi, a spokesman for the DSPA, told Al Jazeera.net: "We think it is closer to logic for the time being if we ask for self-rule within a federal state, provided that we enjoy the right of self-determination.
"We have come to the conclusion that the current Iranian regime cannot be reformed, and that is why the reformists have failed to achieve something.
"Our party along with 15 Iranian opposition organisations, have formed the Congress of Iranian Nationalities for Federal Iran. It includes all ethnicities in Iran, and we hope that its outcome will be the appropriate replacement for current regime."
Discrimination
Despite the difference in their approaches, Nima and al-Ahwazi are united in their belief that Ahwazi Arabs are discriminated against by the Iranian government.
Nima said: "An Arab cannot have a job even in his own region. Government departments in our region are full of Persian Iranians. It is nearly impossible for an Arab to get a job at a government department in Ahwaz. How can we get jobs when the Persians call us Kwawla, meaning Gypsies?"
He continued: "Iranians have established agricultural settlements just like those in Israel. By doing this, they are filling the region with Persians and eventually they will achieve their strategic goal of changing the area's demography and make the Persians a majority."
Iran has launched several big projects in the Ahwaz region, such as the Sheeren Shah settlement and the Sheelat settlement, for the fishing industry.
Khuzestan is an oil-rich region
Abd Allah al-Nafisi, a Kuwaiti political analyst and author, told Al Jazeera that the Ahwaz region was vital to Iran's economy. But it is also inhabited by non-Persians, which makes it tricky for Tehran to strike a balance between economic interests and national security.
"Ahwaz is an oil-rich province, so it would be a fundamental region to the government, but at the same time it is inhabited by Arabs. Moreover, geographically it is adjacent to Iraq and Kuwait and stretches along the west shore of the Gulf.
"For the sake of argument, if this region is granted independence or even a self-rule, it would form with Iraq and the Arab states of the Gulf a huge Arab bloc at the gates of Iran," he said.
Constitution
The Iranian constitution states that non-Persian Iranian communities should enjoy the right to preserve their ethnic and religious identities, along with citizenship rights.
Persians constitute 51 per cent of Iran's population of 69 million people. Iran says its Arab population is about two million, but Ahwazis dispute that and say their community has at least five million.
Said Al-Ahwazi: "The Iranian constitution touches on non-Persians' rights, but not clearly and directly. However, we would stick to what we have now.
"We have a problem with the government which is still in a state of denial about its own constitution. If the constitution were implemented fairly, at least we would have been able to teach our language to our children and we would have been able to get jobs."
He said that the first to ask the government to abide by the constitution and give Arabs and other non-Persian Iranians their rights, was a former member of parliament, Jassim al-Tamimi, of the Ahwazi Accordance party.
But the Iranian parliament considered al-Tamimi's requests as a threat to Iranian national security, and banned him from running for the 2005 parliamentary elections.
He was also imprisoned for a week during the Ahwazi uprising in April 2005.
Al Jazeera contacted al-Tamimi at his house in Iran, but his family said he was out of Iran and refused to reveal his whereabouts or give any contact details.
Al Jazeera also contacted the Iranian government for its comments, but no Iranian official was forthcoming.
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
.......................................................................................
By Ahmed Janabi, Al-Jazeera
Iranian Arabs in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan in southwest Iran have expressed a strong will to split from Iran and restore their own state, accusing Tehran of suppressing them racially, economically, and politically.
Ahwaz has been witnessing sporadic bombings and confrontations between residents and Iranian police.
In 2006, a bomb exploded in the city, causing tension between Britain and Iran after Manouchechr Mottaki, the Iranian foreign minister, accused Britain of involvement in the unrest.
Arab activists have complained about Iranian indifference to their demands and calls for dialogue.
They have voiced concerns over the low living standards, and the lack of education and medical services in their community.
Tahir Aal Sayyed Nima, chairman of the Ahwaz National Liberation Movement (ANLM), told Al Jazeera.net that Iran was treating its Arab nationals as second-class citizens.
He said: "Arabic is banned in government departments and parliament. Arabic is not allowed to be taught at schools or learning centres. We see this as a bid to assassinate our Arab identity.
"Schools are not available in villages, peasants' children have to go to the city on daily basis to be able to study, which is very impractical of course. Hence, illiteracy in Ahwaz is estimated at 90 per cent, and as long as the Iranian government blocks education, it is unlikely that this percentage would ever go down."
Illiteracy in Iran in general is estimated at 33 per cent.
Federalism
Most of Ahwazi political movements demand full independence for their region, but the Democratic Solidarity Party of al-Ahwaz (DSPA) demands self-rule within a federal state.
Mansour al-Ahwazi, a spokesman for the DSPA, told Al Jazeera.net: "We think it is closer to logic for the time being if we ask for self-rule within a federal state, provided that we enjoy the right of self-determination.
"We have come to the conclusion that the current Iranian regime cannot be reformed, and that is why the reformists have failed to achieve something.
"Our party along with 15 Iranian opposition organisations, have formed the Congress of Iranian Nationalities for Federal Iran. It includes all ethnicities in Iran, and we hope that its outcome will be the appropriate replacement for current regime."
Discrimination
Despite the difference in their approaches, Nima and al-Ahwazi are united in their belief that Ahwazi Arabs are discriminated against by the Iranian government.
Nima said: "An Arab cannot have a job even in his own region. Government departments in our region are full of Persian Iranians. It is nearly impossible for an Arab to get a job at a government department in Ahwaz. How can we get jobs when the Persians call us Kwawla, meaning Gypsies?"
He continued: "Iranians have established agricultural settlements just like those in Israel. By doing this, they are filling the region with Persians and eventually they will achieve their strategic goal of changing the area's demography and make the Persians a majority."
Iran has launched several big projects in the Ahwaz region, such as the Sheeren Shah settlement and the Sheelat settlement, for the fishing industry.
Khuzestan is an oil-rich region
Abd Allah al-Nafisi, a Kuwaiti political analyst and author, told Al Jazeera that the Ahwaz region was vital to Iran's economy. But it is also inhabited by non-Persians, which makes it tricky for Tehran to strike a balance between economic interests and national security.
"Ahwaz is an oil-rich province, so it would be a fundamental region to the government, but at the same time it is inhabited by Arabs. Moreover, geographically it is adjacent to Iraq and Kuwait and stretches along the west shore of the Gulf.
"For the sake of argument, if this region is granted independence or even a self-rule, it would form with Iraq and the Arab states of the Gulf a huge Arab bloc at the gates of Iran," he said.
Constitution
The Iranian constitution states that non-Persian Iranian communities should enjoy the right to preserve their ethnic and religious identities, along with citizenship rights.
Persians constitute 51 per cent of Iran's population of 69 million people. Iran says its Arab population is about two million, but Ahwazis dispute that and say their community has at least five million.
Said Al-Ahwazi: "The Iranian constitution touches on non-Persians' rights, but not clearly and directly. However, we would stick to what we have now.
"We have a problem with the government which is still in a state of denial about its own constitution. If the constitution were implemented fairly, at least we would have been able to teach our language to our children and we would have been able to get jobs."
He said that the first to ask the government to abide by the constitution and give Arabs and other non-Persian Iranians their rights, was a former member of parliament, Jassim al-Tamimi, of the Ahwazi Accordance party.
But the Iranian parliament considered al-Tamimi's requests as a threat to Iranian national security, and banned him from running for the 2005 parliamentary elections.
He was also imprisoned for a week during the Ahwazi uprising in April 2005.
Al Jazeera contacted al-Tamimi at his house in Iran, but his family said he was out of Iran and refused to reveal his whereabouts or give any contact details.
Al Jazeera also contacted the Iranian government for its comments, but no Iranian official was forthcoming.
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
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19 April, 2007
A progressive perspective: Sheikh al-Khaqani
An article by Peter Tatchell, which appeared on The Guardian's website. Click here for the original article.
Throughout much of the world, Shia Islam is synonymous with the terrorist violence of the Badr and Sadr death squads in Iraq, and with the murderous tyranny of the Iranian ayatollahs.
Since 1979, tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims, journalists, women, students, gay people, leftwingers, trade unionists and ethnic minorities have been murdered in the name of Shia Islam by the despots in Tehran.
We remember the barbaric fate of Iran's esteemed Sunni Muslim leader, Dr Ali Mozafarian. He was executed in 1992, on charges of espionage, adultery and sodomy. Widely assumed to have been framed, his real crime appears to have been that he preached the wrong kind of Islam - Sunni, not Shia.
Given that Iran and Shi'ism have such negative connotations for so many people, it is encouraging to hear the brave, confident voice of a liberal Shia cleric from Iran, Sheikh Mohammed Kazem al-Khaqani.
In a far-sighted but unreported speech at the House of Commons last month, Sheikh al-Khaqani spoke out in defence of democracy, human rights and secularism; advocating a secular state as the best way to safeguard freedom of belief and expression. Denouncing insurgent jihadism, suicide bombing and Iranian theocracy, he argued that Islam has to be rescued from fundamentalist misinterpretations and that oppressive Muslim regimes need to be challenged.
There are, no doubt, aspects of Sheikh al-Khaqani's teachings that I disagree with. But on several key issues he offers a progressive perspective; confounding those who want to portray Islam as a wholly negative, reactionary religion.
Wouldn't it be great if Sheikh al-Khaqani's voice of compassion, wisdom and humanity could be given a wider platform by the Muslim Council of Britain, the London Central Mosque and the mayor of London?
Sheikh al-Khaqani is the son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taher al-Khaqani, a leading Iranian Ahwazi Arab Shia cleric who was imprisoned after the 1979 Islamic revolution for opposing the theocratic dictatorship and for advocating the separation of religion and the state. The Grand Ayatollah died in suspicious circumstances while under house arrest in Qom.
Sheikh al-Khaqani has dedicated his life to continuing his father's advocacy of a humane understanding of Shia doctrine, with tolerance, human rights and secularism central to his teachings. Such views are heresy in Tehran. Fearful of imprisonment and execution, Sheikh al-Khaqani fled into exile and now lives in Kuwait.
Invited by the British Ahwazi Friendship Society, and supported by the Henry Jackson Society, Sheikh al-Khaqani told his House of Commons audience that Islam was based on the love of God and the right to justice, with the right to life as the first and most important human right of all.
Terrorism, whether against individuals or states, is therefore contrary to Islamic teaching: "Justice and faith necessarily dictate that no one should snatch any right from others ... Terrorists who don explosive belts that kill innocents ... have no connection with the three celestial faiths [Judaism, Christianity and Islam] ... It is one of the particular doctrines of the Shia that jihad in the sense of conquering a country is not permitted - that it is not the right of Muslims, but on the contrary is utterly forbidden," he said.
Sheikh al-Khaqani added that Shia Muslims should not use the flag of religion to topple states or political systems, suggesting that Iran's Islamic revolution violated this Shia tradition. The use of religion to overthrow governments - as was the case in Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamist coup in Iran - is "is an erroneous banner, allied with a tyranny worshipping principals inferior to God Almighty."
Instead, he asserted: "The choice of political systems follows the peoples' choice. Indeed God Almighty has given an indication of how Islamic society should be when He said in the Qur'an: 'He ordered them to take counsel among themselves'; namely that Muslims should act by mutual consultation, in all matters relating to their social lives and their system of governance."
Absolute theocracy, as seen in Iran, cannot therefore be considered as Islamic. If the prophet Muhammad was required to consult with the people at every point, so too must all systems of government, including in the Muslim world.
Sheikh al-Khaqani added "the man of faith must be only a guide and a spiritual father, who refrains from intervening in affairs of governance. So it is also incumbent on the state not to intervene in matters of the faith and its institutions."
The rule of Imam Ali, who is considered the first Islamic caliph among Shia Muslims and the fourth among Sunni Muslims, offers a lesson on the values of mercy, tolerance and justice to Muslims in the modern world. Sheikh al-Khaqani pointed to Ali's forgiveness of his political adversaries. Even when he was victorious over them in war he did not confiscate their wealth.
Emphasising the Qur'an's assertion that "there is no compulsion in religion", Sheikh al-Khaqani said that people were free to choose whatever belief they wanted and had the right to abandon Islam if they wish. This contradicts the Iranian regime's policy of executing anyone considered heretical or an apostate.
Contradicting militant Islamist teaching, he also stressed that justice should be applied equally to all, regardless of whether they are Muslim or non-Muslim.
Sheikh al-Khaqani concluded his speech by stating that social inequality and human rights violations in Muslim countries were "inconsistent with the humanitarian message of Islam or other faiths".
He also reminded the House of Commons audience that "some of the despotism with which we live in eastern countries and a generation tolerating the violence and terrorism that it brings forth" may have its roots in the "past and present errors by western states". He called on westerners to take responsibility for these errors and help put them right in order to combat Islamist despotism and terrorism.
The key points of Sheikh al-Khaqani's House of Commons speech were:
* The right to life is the first right of all human beings. This principle applies to everyone - Muslim and non-Muslim. Justice and faith dictate that this right may not be abrogated. Terrorists and suicide bombers are therefore anti-Islam and apostates.
* There is no compulsion in religion. Religious belief is a choice. The call to Islam is not a religious obligation. Attempts to achieve conversions by threats or force are unIslamic.
* Jihad as a way of conquering a country and subduing people is forbidden. Muslims should lead by example. Consultation among the people is the most appropriate way to determine how society should be run.
* People should be free to choose the political system that they live under. Exhortations to topple secular governments and replace them with a religious state are erroneous interpretations of Islam.
* Absolute theocracy, as practised under the Iranian model of Shi'ism, is unacceptable. Separation of religion and state, with neither interfering in the other's domain, is the ideal.
* Religious tolerance and the promulgation of justice among all people, without consideration for whether the citizen is Muslim or non-Muslim, is an essential tenet of true Islamic thought.
* Violations of human rights in Muslim countries are unacceptable and incompatible with Islam.
* The west must pursue justice in the world. It should seek to acknowledge and correct its errors in the east, which have helped create despotic Islamic states.
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An article by Peter Tatchell, which appeared on The Guardian's website. Click here for the original article.Throughout much of the world, Shia Islam is synonymous with the terrorist violence of the Badr and Sadr death squads in Iraq, and with the murderous tyranny of the Iranian ayatollahs.
Since 1979, tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims, journalists, women, students, gay people, leftwingers, trade unionists and ethnic minorities have been murdered in the name of Shia Islam by the despots in Tehran.
We remember the barbaric fate of Iran's esteemed Sunni Muslim leader, Dr Ali Mozafarian. He was executed in 1992, on charges of espionage, adultery and sodomy. Widely assumed to have been framed, his real crime appears to have been that he preached the wrong kind of Islam - Sunni, not Shia.
Given that Iran and Shi'ism have such negative connotations for so many people, it is encouraging to hear the brave, confident voice of a liberal Shia cleric from Iran, Sheikh Mohammed Kazem al-Khaqani.
In a far-sighted but unreported speech at the House of Commons last month, Sheikh al-Khaqani spoke out in defence of democracy, human rights and secularism; advocating a secular state as the best way to safeguard freedom of belief and expression. Denouncing insurgent jihadism, suicide bombing and Iranian theocracy, he argued that Islam has to be rescued from fundamentalist misinterpretations and that oppressive Muslim regimes need to be challenged.
There are, no doubt, aspects of Sheikh al-Khaqani's teachings that I disagree with. But on several key issues he offers a progressive perspective; confounding those who want to portray Islam as a wholly negative, reactionary religion.
Wouldn't it be great if Sheikh al-Khaqani's voice of compassion, wisdom and humanity could be given a wider platform by the Muslim Council of Britain, the London Central Mosque and the mayor of London?
Sheikh al-Khaqani is the son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taher al-Khaqani, a leading Iranian Ahwazi Arab Shia cleric who was imprisoned after the 1979 Islamic revolution for opposing the theocratic dictatorship and for advocating the separation of religion and the state. The Grand Ayatollah died in suspicious circumstances while under house arrest in Qom.
Sheikh al-Khaqani has dedicated his life to continuing his father's advocacy of a humane understanding of Shia doctrine, with tolerance, human rights and secularism central to his teachings. Such views are heresy in Tehran. Fearful of imprisonment and execution, Sheikh al-Khaqani fled into exile and now lives in Kuwait.
Invited by the British Ahwazi Friendship Society, and supported by the Henry Jackson Society, Sheikh al-Khaqani told his House of Commons audience that Islam was based on the love of God and the right to justice, with the right to life as the first and most important human right of all.
Terrorism, whether against individuals or states, is therefore contrary to Islamic teaching: "Justice and faith necessarily dictate that no one should snatch any right from others ... Terrorists who don explosive belts that kill innocents ... have no connection with the three celestial faiths [Judaism, Christianity and Islam] ... It is one of the particular doctrines of the Shia that jihad in the sense of conquering a country is not permitted - that it is not the right of Muslims, but on the contrary is utterly forbidden," he said.
Sheikh al-Khaqani added that Shia Muslims should not use the flag of religion to topple states or political systems, suggesting that Iran's Islamic revolution violated this Shia tradition. The use of religion to overthrow governments - as was the case in Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamist coup in Iran - is "is an erroneous banner, allied with a tyranny worshipping principals inferior to God Almighty."
Instead, he asserted: "The choice of political systems follows the peoples' choice. Indeed God Almighty has given an indication of how Islamic society should be when He said in the Qur'an: 'He ordered them to take counsel among themselves'; namely that Muslims should act by mutual consultation, in all matters relating to their social lives and their system of governance."
Absolute theocracy, as seen in Iran, cannot therefore be considered as Islamic. If the prophet Muhammad was required to consult with the people at every point, so too must all systems of government, including in the Muslim world.
Sheikh al-Khaqani added "the man of faith must be only a guide and a spiritual father, who refrains from intervening in affairs of governance. So it is also incumbent on the state not to intervene in matters of the faith and its institutions."
The rule of Imam Ali, who is considered the first Islamic caliph among Shia Muslims and the fourth among Sunni Muslims, offers a lesson on the values of mercy, tolerance and justice to Muslims in the modern world. Sheikh al-Khaqani pointed to Ali's forgiveness of his political adversaries. Even when he was victorious over them in war he did not confiscate their wealth.
Emphasising the Qur'an's assertion that "there is no compulsion in religion", Sheikh al-Khaqani said that people were free to choose whatever belief they wanted and had the right to abandon Islam if they wish. This contradicts the Iranian regime's policy of executing anyone considered heretical or an apostate.
Contradicting militant Islamist teaching, he also stressed that justice should be applied equally to all, regardless of whether they are Muslim or non-Muslim.
Sheikh al-Khaqani concluded his speech by stating that social inequality and human rights violations in Muslim countries were "inconsistent with the humanitarian message of Islam or other faiths".
He also reminded the House of Commons audience that "some of the despotism with which we live in eastern countries and a generation tolerating the violence and terrorism that it brings forth" may have its roots in the "past and present errors by western states". He called on westerners to take responsibility for these errors and help put them right in order to combat Islamist despotism and terrorism.
The key points of Sheikh al-Khaqani's House of Commons speech were:
* The right to life is the first right of all human beings. This principle applies to everyone - Muslim and non-Muslim. Justice and faith dictate that this right may not be abrogated. Terrorists and suicide bombers are therefore anti-Islam and apostates.
* There is no compulsion in religion. Religious belief is a choice. The call to Islam is not a religious obligation. Attempts to achieve conversions by threats or force are unIslamic.
* Jihad as a way of conquering a country and subduing people is forbidden. Muslims should lead by example. Consultation among the people is the most appropriate way to determine how society should be run.
* People should be free to choose the political system that they live under. Exhortations to topple secular governments and replace them with a religious state are erroneous interpretations of Islam.
* Absolute theocracy, as practised under the Iranian model of Shi'ism, is unacceptable. Separation of religion and state, with neither interfering in the other's domain, is the ideal.
* Religious tolerance and the promulgation of justice among all people, without consideration for whether the citizen is Muslim or non-Muslim, is an essential tenet of true Islamic thought.
* Violations of human rights in Muslim countries are unacceptable and incompatible with Islam.
* The west must pursue justice in the world. It should seek to acknowledge and correct its errors in the east, which have helped create despotic Islamic states.
Labels: features
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25 March, 2007
Kidnapping and Iran's militarisation of the Shatt al-Arab
Iran's capture of 15 British navy personnel at gunpoint on the Shatt al-Arab, purportedly in Iraqi waters, is inextricably linked to the regime's long-term ambition to impose its territorial control over the strategic waterway and hold Baghdad hostage to its interests.
The left bank of the Shatt al-Arab is witnessing a large-scale militarisation programme which is being conducted under the auspices of the Arvand Free Zone Organisation (AFZO), a state-run group that aims to extend the regime's economic, political and military influence over the Shatt al-Arab and ultimately Iraq. The AFZO's plans for the military-industrial zone were outlined in a letter issued to indigenous Ahwazi Arab residents living within the zone instructing them that their land would be confiscated (click here to download the BAFS report). The confiscation programme is nothing short of ethnic cleansing for the sake of Iran's neo-imperialism.
Arab Shia tribes have populated regions on both sides of the Shatt al-Arab for centuries if not millennia. The leaders of the Bani Kaab tribe owned land on both banks of the waterway, giving them considerable influence and political autonomy. Any foreign power wishing to gain influence over trade along the Shatt al-Arab had to deal with the Bani Kaab leadership, which controlled the Sheikhdom of Mohammara. The Ottomans confiscated the land belonging to the Bani Kaab in the 19th century and Reza Pahlavi deposed Sheikh Kazal, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich Arabistan region, following his military coup in 1925. Arabistan was renamed Khuzestan and Mohammara was renamed Khorramshahr. The area came to prominence in 1980, when Iraq invaded Khuzestan ostensibly to “liberate” the Ahwazi Arabs, although Saddam was no doubt taking advantage of Iran’s post-revolutionary turmoil to seize the region’s massive oilfields. The narrowness of the Shatt Al-Arab also enabled Iran and Iraq to stage large-scale amphibious assaults during the war. In February 1986, 30,000 Iranian troops crossed the Shatt Al-Arab in a surprise attack to invade and occupy Iraq's Al-Faw peninsula and create a bridgehead for further advances into Iraq.
The Marsh Arabs of Iraq's Basra province suffered ethnic cleansing and repression under Saddam's regime while in Iran the Ahwazi Arabs have endured violent persecution under the Pahlavi dynasty and the Islamic Republic. On both sides of the waterway, the governments of Iran and Iraq have viewed the indigenous population as disloyal and a threat to their territorial claims. They were perceived as a threat by Saddam because they are predominantly Shia, while the Iranian regime sees them as having innate pan-Arab sympathies. Ethnic cleansing has been used by both countries as a method of securing control and territorial claims over the Shatt al-Arab.
The AFZ is the latest development in the Iranian regime's campaign to rid the left bank of Ahwazi Arabs and impose Iranian control over the Shatt al-Arab. The latest seizure of British personnel is a symptom of this quiet militarisation programme. Land acquisition and ethnic cleansing are intimately bound up with militarisation. Over recent years, the Iranian regime has confiscated large tracts of land from local Arabs and transferred ownership to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and state-owned enterprises. Around 47,000 hectares of Ahwazi Arab farmland in the Jofir area near the Ahwazi city of Abadan has been transferred members of the security forces and government enterprises. More than 6,000 hectares of Ahwazi farmland north of Shush (Susa) has been taken to "resettle" the faithful non-indigenous Persians, following directives issued by the Ministry of Agricultures and the Revolutionary Guards Corp Command. These policies have forced Ahwazi Arabs into poor shanty towns.
The AFZ is located along the narrowest and most strategically sensitive part of the Shatt al-Arab and includes a large number of Revolutionary Guards naval posts, which are used to patrol the waterway and protect Iranian arms smugglers entering Iraq. It stretches 30km from Abadan along the Shatt Al-Arab to the land border between Basra and Khuzestan. The zone is in three segments: an island and adjacent land measuring 30 square km, a strip of land north of Khorramshahr measuring 25 square km and an in-land eastern segment measuring around 100 square km in area. The total land area of the Arvand Free Zone is around 155 square km and includes Arab towns and villages. At certain points, the zone is literally within a stone's throw of Basra.
The Shatt al-Arab is the most politically sensitive area of the Middle East. Whoever controls the waterway controls movements from Iraq to the Gulf, including oil shipments, as well as serving as an important trade route for the entire west of Iran. Control over the disputed waterway led to wars between the Persian and Ottoman empires in the 17th and 19th centuries and more recently Iraq and Iran.
The AFZ has seen the mass expulsion of Arabs, the destruction of their villages and the creation of an exclusive military-industrial zone. The expulsion campaign began with the Arab farmers located on Minoo Island, near Abadan (click here for information). The islanders were bullied by AFZO officials into giving up their land before the official deadline, indicating an increasing sense of urgency associated with establishing the zone. In all, up to 500,000 indigenous Ahwazi Arabs are being displaced by the creation of a 5,000 square km security zone, of which the AFZ is just a part, along the Shatt al-Arab.
The zone's security element has strengthened covert operations inside Iraq, with the objective of securing an early exit of Coalition troops, influencing Iraq's political system and using patronage to control local authorities in Basra. The zone is also being used to train, fund and organise militias loyal to Tehran. Mahdi Army leader Moqtada al-Sadr and several Iranian-backed politicians belonging to the ruling United Iraqi Alliance have recently visited the area.
Documents from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Fajr Garrison in Khuzestan, which serves as the organisation's main headquarters for southern Iran, show that Tehran is employing up to 40,000 agents in Iraq. The information was first revealed in March 2005 by former Iranian agents who defected due to pay cuts and subsequently confirmed by Coalition troops in Iraq. Fajr Garrison hosts the IRGC's Qods Force, which runs the vast underground network in Iraq. Agents are paid by middle-men, who carry out regular visits to Ahwaz City to obtain payments and be debriefed by Qods commanders.
The regime's activities in Khuzestan and the left bank of the Shatt al-Arab are related to the rise of militias in Basra and the British government's discovery that weapons used by insurgents were likely to have originated from the IRGC via the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah. It is no coincidence that attacks on British troops, a sudden upsurge in militia activity in Basra province and the seizing of British naval personnel on the Shatt al-Arab have occurred at the same time as Ahwazi Arabs are being removed from the area to make way for the AFZ. Greater international attention to the plight of the Ahwazi Arabs would hinder the pace of militarisation along the Shatt al-Arab and stymie Iranian efforts to control Iraq.
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
.......................................................................................
Iran's capture of 15 British navy personnel at gunpoint on the Shatt al-Arab, purportedly in Iraqi waters, is inextricably linked to the regime's long-term ambition to impose its territorial control over the strategic waterway and hold Baghdad hostage to its interests.The left bank of the Shatt al-Arab is witnessing a large-scale militarisation programme which is being conducted under the auspices of the Arvand Free Zone Organisation (AFZO), a state-run group that aims to extend the regime's economic, political and military influence over the Shatt al-Arab and ultimately Iraq. The AFZO's plans for the military-industrial zone were outlined in a letter issued to indigenous Ahwazi Arab residents living within the zone instructing them that their land would be confiscated (click here to download the BAFS report). The confiscation programme is nothing short of ethnic cleansing for the sake of Iran's neo-imperialism.
Arab Shia tribes have populated regions on both sides of the Shatt al-Arab for centuries if not millennia. The leaders of the Bani Kaab tribe owned land on both banks of the waterway, giving them considerable influence and political autonomy. Any foreign power wishing to gain influence over trade along the Shatt al-Arab had to deal with the Bani Kaab leadership, which controlled the Sheikhdom of Mohammara. The Ottomans confiscated the land belonging to the Bani Kaab in the 19th century and Reza Pahlavi deposed Sheikh Kazal, the de facto ruler of the oil-rich Arabistan region, following his military coup in 1925. Arabistan was renamed Khuzestan and Mohammara was renamed Khorramshahr. The area came to prominence in 1980, when Iraq invaded Khuzestan ostensibly to “liberate” the Ahwazi Arabs, although Saddam was no doubt taking advantage of Iran’s post-revolutionary turmoil to seize the region’s massive oilfields. The narrowness of the Shatt Al-Arab also enabled Iran and Iraq to stage large-scale amphibious assaults during the war. In February 1986, 30,000 Iranian troops crossed the Shatt Al-Arab in a surprise attack to invade and occupy Iraq's Al-Faw peninsula and create a bridgehead for further advances into Iraq.
The Marsh Arabs of Iraq's Basra province suffered ethnic cleansing and repression under Saddam's regime while in Iran the Ahwazi Arabs have endured violent persecution under the Pahlavi dynasty and the Islamic Republic. On both sides of the waterway, the governments of Iran and Iraq have viewed the indigenous population as disloyal and a threat to their territorial claims. They were perceived as a threat by Saddam because they are predominantly Shia, while the Iranian regime sees them as having innate pan-Arab sympathies. Ethnic cleansing has been used by both countries as a method of securing control and territorial claims over the Shatt al-Arab.
The AFZ is the latest development in the Iranian regime's campaign to rid the left bank of Ahwazi Arabs and impose Iranian control over the Shatt al-Arab. The latest seizure of British personnel is a symptom of this quiet militarisation programme. Land acquisition and ethnic cleansing are intimately bound up with militarisation. Over recent years, the Iranian regime has confiscated large tracts of land from local Arabs and transferred ownership to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and state-owned enterprises. Around 47,000 hectares of Ahwazi Arab farmland in the Jofir area near the Ahwazi city of Abadan has been transferred members of the security forces and government enterprises. More than 6,000 hectares of Ahwazi farmland north of Shush (Susa) has been taken to "resettle" the faithful non-indigenous Persians, following directives issued by the Ministry of Agricultures and the Revolutionary Guards Corp Command. These policies have forced Ahwazi Arabs into poor shanty towns.
The AFZ is located along the narrowest and most strategically sensitive part of the Shatt al-Arab and includes a large number of Revolutionary Guards naval posts, which are used to patrol the waterway and protect Iranian arms smugglers entering Iraq. It stretches 30km from Abadan along the Shatt Al-Arab to the land border between Basra and Khuzestan. The zone is in three segments: an island and adjacent land measuring 30 square km, a strip of land north of Khorramshahr measuring 25 square km and an in-land eastern segment measuring around 100 square km in area. The total land area of the Arvand Free Zone is around 155 square km and includes Arab towns and villages. At certain points, the zone is literally within a stone's throw of Basra.
The Shatt al-Arab is the most politically sensitive area of the Middle East. Whoever controls the waterway controls movements from Iraq to the Gulf, including oil shipments, as well as serving as an important trade route for the entire west of Iran. Control over the disputed waterway led to wars between the Persian and Ottoman empires in the 17th and 19th centuries and more recently Iraq and Iran.
The AFZ has seen the mass expulsion of Arabs, the destruction of their villages and the creation of an exclusive military-industrial zone. The expulsion campaign began with the Arab farmers located on Minoo Island, near Abadan (click here for information). The islanders were bullied by AFZO officials into giving up their land before the official deadline, indicating an increasing sense of urgency associated with establishing the zone. In all, up to 500,000 indigenous Ahwazi Arabs are being displaced by the creation of a 5,000 square km security zone, of which the AFZ is just a part, along the Shatt al-Arab.
The zone's security element has strengthened covert operations inside Iraq, with the objective of securing an early exit of Coalition troops, influencing Iraq's political system and using patronage to control local authorities in Basra. The zone is also being used to train, fund and organise militias loyal to Tehran. Mahdi Army leader Moqtada al-Sadr and several Iranian-backed politicians belonging to the ruling United Iraqi Alliance have recently visited the area.
Documents from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Fajr Garrison in Khuzestan, which serves as the organisation's main headquarters for southern Iran, show that Tehran is employing up to 40,000 agents in Iraq. The information was first revealed in March 2005 by former Iranian agents who defected due to pay cuts and subsequently confirmed by Coalition troops in Iraq. Fajr Garrison hosts the IRGC's Qods Force, which runs the vast underground network in Iraq. Agents are paid by middle-men, who carry out regular visits to Ahwaz City to obtain payments and be debriefed by Qods commanders.
The regime's activities in Khuzestan and the left bank of the Shatt al-Arab are related to the rise of militias in Basra and the British government's discovery that weapons used by insurgents were likely to have originated from the IRGC via the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah. It is no coincidence that attacks on British troops, a sudden upsurge in militia activity in Basra province and the seizing of British naval personnel on the Shatt al-Arab have occurred at the same time as Ahwazi Arabs are being removed from the area to make way for the AFZ. Greater international attention to the plight of the Ahwazi Arabs would hinder the pace of militarisation along the Shatt al-Arab and stymie Iranian efforts to control Iraq.
Labels: features, land, terrorism
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23 March, 2007
Ahwazi cleric denounces jihadism and theocracy in Westminster conference
In a speech to a conference on Shi'ism and democracy held at the Palace of Westminister on Tuesday, Ahwazi Arab Shia cleric Sheikh Mohammed Kazem al-Khaqani described jihadist suicide bombing and Iranian theocracy as impermissable in Shia Islam.
Sheikh al-Khaqani is the son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taher al-Khaqani, a leading Ahwazi cleric who was imprisoned immediately after the Islamic Revolution in Iran for advocating the separation of religion and state. The Grand Ayatollah died in suspicious circumstances while under house arrest in Qom. Sheikh al-Khaqani has made it his mission to continue his father's mission to advocate an authentic understanding of Shia doctrine, with tolerance, human rights and secularism at the heart of his teachings. He has been invited to the UK by the British Ahwazi Friendship Society, which is organising lectures and media interviews with the Sheikh.
At the Palace of Westminster meeting, which was organised by the Henry Jackson Society, Sheikh Al-Khaqani stated that Islam was based on the love of God and the right to justice, with the right to life as the first and most important human right. He reminded the audience that terrorist acts, particularly those aimed at other states, cannot be considered Islamic. He said: "Justice and faith necessarily dictate that no one should snatch any right from others ... [T]errorists who don explosive belts that kill innocents ... have no connection with the three celestial faiths [Judaism, Christianity and Islam]."
He added: "It is one of the particular doctrines of the Shia that Jihad in the sense of conquering a country is not permitted - that it is not the right of Muslims, but on the contrary is utterly forbidden"
Repeating the Qu'ran's statement that "there is no compulsion in religion", Sheikh al-Khaqani said that people were free to choose whatever belief they wanted and had the right to abandon Islam if they wish. The Sheikh's insistance that Islam cannot be imposed by force contradicts the Iranian regime's policy of executing anyone considered heretical or an apostate. Moreover, justice should be applied equally to all, regardless of whether they are Muslim or non-Muslim.
Sheikh al-Khaqani stated that Shi'ites should not use the flag of religion to topple states or political systems, suggesting that Iran's Islamic revolution violated Shia tradition. The use of religion to topple states - as was the case in the Islamic Revolution in Iran - is "is an erroneous banner, allied with a tyranny worshipping principals inferior to God Almighty." Instead, "the choice of political systems follows the peoples' choice. Indeed God Almighty has given an indication of how Islamic Society should be when He said in the Qu'ran: 'He ordered them to take counsel among themselves', namely that Muslims should act by mutual consultation among themselves, in all matters relating to their social lives and their system of governance."
Absolute theocracy, as seen in Iran, cannot therefore be considered as Islamic. If the Prophet Mohammed was required to consult with the people at every point, so too must all systems of government in the Muslim world. Sheikh al-Khaqani added that "the man of faith must be only a guide and a spiritual father, who refrains from intervening in affairs of governance. So it is also incumbent on the state not to intervene in matters of the faith and its institutions."
The rule of Imam Ali, who is considered the first Islamic Caliph among Shia Muslims and the fourth among Sunni Muslims, should provide a lesson on the values of tolerance and justice to Muslims in the modern world. Sheikh al-Khaqani pointed to Ali's forgiveness for his political adversaries and even when he was victorious over them in war he did not confiscate their wealth. The Sheikh's comments are particularly relevant to Ahwazi Arabs, who have been subjected to large-scale land confiscation programmes after the Iranian monarch Reza Pahlavi ended centuries of Arab autonomy when he deposed the local ruler Sheikh Khazal in 1925.
Sheikh al-Khaqani concluded his speech by stating that social injustice and human rights violations in Muslim countries were "inconsistent with the humanitarian message of Islam or other faiths." However, he reminded the audience that "some of the despotism with which we live in Eastern countries and a generation tolerating the violence and terrorism that it brings forth" may have its roots in the "past and present errors by Western states." He called on Westerners to take responsibility for these errors and help put them right in order to combat despotism and terrorism.
Click here to download Sheikh al-Khaqani's speech
permalink
keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
.......................................................................................
In a speech to a conference on Shi'ism and democracy held at the Palace of Westminister on Tuesday, Ahwazi Arab Shia cleric Sheikh Mohammed Kazem al-Khaqani described jihadist suicide bombing and Iranian theocracy as impermissable in Shia Islam.
Sheikh al-Khaqani is the son of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taher al-Khaqani, a leading Ahwazi cleric who was imprisoned immediately after the Islamic Revolution in Iran for advocating the separation of religion and state. The Grand Ayatollah died in suspicious circumstances while under house arrest in Qom. Sheikh al-Khaqani has made it his mission to continue his father's mission to advocate an authentic understanding of Shia doctrine, with tolerance, human rights and secularism at the heart of his teachings. He has been invited to the UK by the British Ahwazi Friendship Society, which is organising lectures and media interviews with the Sheikh.
At the Palace of Westminster meeting, which was organised by the Henry Jackson Society, Sheikh Al-Khaqani stated that Islam was based on the love of God and the right to justice, with the right to life as the first and most important human right. He reminded the audience that terrorist acts, particularly those aimed at other states, cannot be considered Islamic. He said: "Justice and faith necessarily dictate that no one should snatch any right from others ... [T]errorists who don explosive belts that kill innocents ... have no connection with the three celestial faiths [Judaism, Christianity and Islam]."
He added: "It is one of the particular doctrines of the Shia that Jihad in the sense of conquering a country is not permitted - that it is not the right of Muslims, but on the contrary is utterly forbidden"
Repeating the Qu'ran's statement that "there is no compulsion in religion", Sheikh al-Khaqani said that people were free to choose whatever belief they wanted and had the right to abandon Islam if they wish. The Sheikh's insistance that Islam cannot be imposed by force contradicts the Iranian regime's policy of executing anyone considered heretical or an apostate. Moreover, justice should be applied equally to all, regardless of whether they are Muslim or non-Muslim.
Sheikh al-Khaqani stated that Shi'ites should not use the flag of religion to topple states or political systems, suggesting that Iran's Islamic revolution violated Shia tradition. The use of religion to topple states - as was the case in the Islamic Revolution in Iran - is "is an erroneous banner, allied with a tyranny worshipping principals inferior to God Almighty." Instead, "the choice of political systems follows the peoples' choice. Indeed God Almighty has given an indication of how Islamic Society should be when He said in the Qu'ran: 'He ordered them to take counsel among themselves', namely that Muslims should act by mutual consultation among themselves, in all matters relating to their social lives and their system of governance."
Absolute theocracy, as seen in Iran, cannot therefore be considered as Islamic. If the Prophet Mohammed was required to consult with the people at every point, so too must all systems of government in the Muslim world. Sheikh al-Khaqani added that "the man of faith must be only a guide and a spiritual father, who refrains from intervening in affairs of governance. So it is also incumbent on the state not to intervene in matters of the faith and its institutions."
The rule of Imam Ali, who is considered the first Islamic Caliph among Shia Muslims and the fourth among Sunni Muslims, should provide a lesson on the values of tolerance and justice to Muslims in the modern world. Sheikh al-Khaqani pointed to Ali's forgiveness for his political adversaries and even when he was victorious over them in war he did not confiscate their wealth. The Sheikh's comments are particularly relevant to Ahwazi Arabs, who have been subjected to large-scale land confiscation programmes after the Iranian monarch Reza Pahlavi ended centuries of Arab autonomy when he deposed the local ruler Sheikh Khazal in 1925.
Sheikh al-Khaqani concluded his speech by stating that social injustice and human rights violations in Muslim countries were "inconsistent with the humanitarian message of Islam or other faiths." However, he reminded the audience that "some of the despotism with which we live in Eastern countries and a generation tolerating the violence and terrorism that it brings forth" may have its roots in the "past and present errors by Western states." He called on Westerners to take responsibility for these errors and help put them right in order to combat despotism and terrorism.
Click here to download Sheikh al-Khaqani's speech
Labels: features, human rights
permalink
keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
.......................................................................................
20 March, 2007
Healthcare discrimination in Ahwaz
By Pooran Saki
Arab people in Khuzestan are suffering immensely from unnecessary deaths and subsequent bereavement as a result of the non-availability of basic health facilities. People in Khuzestan still do not have basic essential such as a sufficient number of doctors, if any at all, and medicines and hospitals.
In most of the cities in this province, like Bostan, Hovazeh and Dasht Azadegan, the local people do not have any hospitals or specialist Doctor. In these cities, sick people frequently die needlessly during emergencies such as accidents or in childbirth.
In Ahwaz, the capital city of Khouzestan province, there are two kind of hospitals some are private, and the others are state-supported, free for people on low incomes. The latter hospitals are unhygienic, without sufficient Doctors or medicines and the death rates, are unacceptably high.
In the Iran-Iraq war, numerous people contracted the HIV virus through being injected with infected blood which came from other countries. This category of patients are living in hospitals without any facilities or medicines and the government doesn't disclose the death rates, so no bady knows the exact figure of patients who have been attacked by this virus.
The area is still very contaminated by chemicals from wartime chemical gases and diseases increasing in this area.
In the area of Women's Health, many women go through childbirth without specialist doctors and unnecessary deaths occur far too frequently. Few women are allowed by religious law to be attended by a male Doctor, and there are not enough female doctors.
Children's Departments are empty of any specialists and lack many essential medicines so that child mortality is common.
Throughout the province, the e sewerage system is very old and not up to the required standard. All sewerage is dumped into the main River Karoon which supplies all the Ahwaz Citys water. This has polluted the water and many diseases are caught through the water.
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By Pooran Saki
Arab people in Khuzestan are suffering immensely from unnecessary deaths and subsequent bereavement as a result of the non-availability of basic health facilities. People in Khuzestan still do not have basic essential such as a sufficient number of doctors, if any at all, and medicines and hospitals.
In most of the cities in this province, like Bostan, Hovazeh and Dasht Azadegan, the local people do not have any hospitals or specialist Doctor. In these cities, sick people frequently die needlessly during emergencies such as accidents or in childbirth.
In Ahwaz, the capital city of Khouzestan province, there are two kind of hospitals some are private, and the others are state-supported, free for people on low incomes. The latter hospitals are unhygienic, without sufficient Doctors or medicines and the death rates, are unacceptably high.
In the Iran-Iraq war, numerous people contracted the HIV virus through being injected with infected blood which came from other countries. This category of patients are living in hospitals without any facilities or medicines and the government doesn't disclose the death rates, so no bady knows the exact figure of patients who have been attacked by this virus.
The area is still very contaminated by chemicals from wartime chemical gases and diseases increasing in this area.
In the area of Women's Health, many women go through childbirth without specialist doctors and unnecessary deaths occur far too frequently. Few women are allowed by religious law to be attended by a male Doctor, and there are not enough female doctors.
Children's Departments are empty of any specialists and lack many essential medicines so that child mortality is common.
Throughout the province, the e sewerage system is very old and not up to the required standard. All sewerage is dumped into the main River Karoon which supplies all the Ahwaz Citys water. This has polluted the water and many diseases are caught through the water.
Labels: environment, features, women
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25 February, 2007
Mobilise the dispossessed
The following is an article by Mehdi Kia, an editor of Iran Bulletin, which was published this week in the Weekly Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Click here to download the original.
Shanty town dwellers make up an ever increasing proportion of the population in the cities of the so-called third world. They have been used as the battering ram of counterrevolution, but this is not inevitable. They can be won by the left. Mehdi Kia looks at the situation in Iran.
In my opinion the left has largely ignored what is in essence a major section of the working class, without whom progressive change is impossible in a country like Iran. I am referring to the millions who live in shanty towns. If we claim to be the advanced representatives of the working class, then we must certainly relate to these people. If we do not do so, others will step in - indeed they are already doing so - in order to mobilise them for reactionary purposes.
I want to look in particular at the situation in Khuzestan, the Arab province of Iran. Khuzestan has a population of 4.35 million, of which about a million are shanty town-dwellers - one third of the urban population. Khuzestan is the richest province in Iran, where all the oil is located, yet one third of its urban population lives illegally in appalling conditions.
The official unemployment rate for the whole of Iran is said to be around 12% and increasing, but the actual figure is way above that. In Khuzestan over the last 10 years official unemployment has risen from 16% to 18%. So in this, the richest province, already high unemployment is rising. It is here that the largest movement of the workforce from the official to the unofficial economy takes place.
The essence of my thesis is that this marginalisation into shanty towns is the geographic expression, if you like, of a deep, structural change within capitalism in Iran and more generally. It is a new phenomenon that has occurred over the last quarter of the 20th century. It did not happen in Marx's time, which is why he had nothing to say about it. The left must learn to understand what this structural change means.
It combines class inequality with ethnic inequality, so that they intermingle and feed on one another. Why is this happening?
Two interlinked processes are involved. One is the dispossession of people from the land and their proletarianisation. After the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1997, the entire reconstruction process speeded up this development.
There was a large-scale movement out of the war zones and a major shift of refugees. Those forced out of their home territories by the Iraqis were not allowed to go back. They were indeed dispossessed of their land. This was a conscious policy decision made by the government after the war. "Security" was the excuse given to justify it.
This move was designed to take the labourers off the land and drive them into the towns. The combination of ethnic repression, the language barrier and the unskilled nature of their work meant they had to compete unequally in the labour market. So within the proletariat minorities ended up at the bottom of the pile. The role of the state was and remains central in this - not only because it used the security argument to bring about their dispossession, but because it is also the biggest single employer.
Part of working class
How should we define shanty-dwellers? They live outside the official demarcation of the city and consequently are excluded from all the services that any urban conglomeration provides: welfare, roads, water, electricity, sewage, etc. They are not just defined by their poverty - they are not the same as the poor who live officially within the cities, since their geographical separation and removal from access to all conventional services puts them in a special and quite different situation.
The Iranian government has recognised the situation of the shanty-dwellers as a real issue, because these were the very people who were, if you like, the battering ram of the islamic revolution during its early period, and the government needed to mobilise them. They provided the main fodder for the war and for all the most repressive aspects of the regime - but now they have become a thorn in the side of the government, representing as they do the most rebellious forces.
The regime has come up with various policies to deal with this, but none has had any real impact. Improving village facilities, in an attempt both to prevent further migration into the cities and to rid the shanty areas of their existing populations by pushing them out back into the villages. The money that has been allocated to this task in the latest budget amounts to about $200 per person, but it has not worked.
So what significance does this population have for socialists? What potential does it have for its own self-liberation? Is there any objective criterion one can use to say that it can actually act in its own liberation and that of others? Have they got any incentive to change and are the conditions right?
Unequivocally, let me make clear that in my understanding shanty-dwellers - whether they live in Iran, Calcutta, Port au Prince or wherever - are members of the working class, of the proletariat, of that very class which we strive to represent. However, their struggle is different from the struggle of the employed working class. Essentially it occurs in the realm of consumption rather than production - although a section does have a role in production, even if it is often intermittent.
Housing
This structural change that has led to the growth and development of such marginalised conditions over the last 25 years needs to be linked to the commodification of housing. In the old village the house was not a commodity, but a use-value. There was no housing shortage. You just built a house with bricks wherever you wanted.
That is no longer the case and these people have no place at all in the commodified housing market. In a way the existence of shanty towns is a phenomenon at the core of which is the extension of capitalism into housing, which is what makes it predominantly an issue in the so-called developing world.
When housing is removed from the "basket of consumption", that actually makes it easier to survive in the competitive capitalist labour market, since many other commodities are also removed at the same time. It is, in a sense, a way of easing the crisis of reproduction in the labour force by going outside commodity relations and reducing the cost of living.
If we accept this, then logically we have to accept that shanty-dwellers, through the removal of their housing from the control of the state, have been removed from its political control to some degree. Already within the shanties a form of self-government operates in these areas of Iran, just as it does in a parallel situation in Brazil, for example.
What are the elements that can provoke rebellion in this group? Shanty towns are often situated around rivers, canals, railways, major road arteries, oil pipelines, places where the shanty-dwellers can "decommodify": ie, steal resources. So, importantly, shanties are not just defined by their poverty, but by their geography. They totally lack basic amenities and are threatened both by the natural elements and by the effects of the social infrastructure - road accidents, flooding, collapsing power lines and so forth.
But they also have some specific freedoms: in particular, freedom from the state's control, which in one sense makes it possible to survive. So shanty-dwellers are in a continuous state of war with the authorities - it is part of their daily life.
However, they need to consolidate their position by retaining what they have gained through struggle. For example, once the attempt to bulldoze them out of existence has been defeated, their next struggle is to extend and improve upon those gains: getting electricity and water supplied; creating shops and schools; winning official recognition for the dwellings they have built and establishing their right of ownership over them.
Resistance
Their resistance often takes the form of riots, taking to the streets. Because they are only on the margins in terms of production, they are hampered from fighting for an increase in their earnings, so what they need to do is fight in order to reduce the cost of consumption. Hence such phenomena as protests against price increases, which manifest themselves in things like bread riots. This means that in Iran the price of bread is in effect fixed - raise the price of bread and you get rioting in the streets.
We should not, however, forget that there is a struggle in the sphere of production as well as in other areas. For example in Ahvaz, one of the main cities in Khuzestan, and in a whole series of other cities in the south of Iran, this took the form of the street vendors' battle to resist efforts by the government to close them down.
In the Arab zone, obviously the issue of language is also important because the combination of shanty dwelling and ethnic discrimination makes language a critical issue. Arab boys who do go to school are at a great disadvantage, because schooling is carried out in Farsi. Language is not just an emotional issue, but a material one in terms of conditions and access to the labour market. In a multilingual society like Iran, where ethnic discrimination is so prevalent, the right to be educated in your own language becomes one of the fundamental democratic demands - not only for the various national movements, but also for the left.
Acts of rebellion are the main weapon is all such struggles. For example, road closures. This is actually an economic act, because it clearly blocks economic activity and is the equivalent of strike action in a factory and can have a similar impact. Revolts tend to take the form of protesting against something rather than demanding concrete improvements. For the shanty-dweller, rebellion is a continuous process, a way of life.
What is perhaps not understood is that rebellion is virtually always successful - perhaps not immediately or in full, but almost always the rebels will get something of what they ask for. Although the street vendors' protests were initially broken up and repressed, the government subsequently agreed to allow them space to trade. Remember that the Iranian revolution was itself triggered by rebellions in many areas over a number of years.
In addition shanty-dwellers do have a degree of bargaining power, in that, although they are outside the official structures, they are legally entitled to vote. This can create pressure for concessions. Of course, this has a downside we are all familiar with - the islamic movement is sometimes able to mobilise the shanty-dwellers for its own purposes - into military or paramilitary organisations, for example.
The neoliberals have also used them as a means of reducing the cost of production - indeed their lack of access to normal provision of services means a reduction in costs to the state. But the left as a whole has ignored the slums and shanty towns, despite the fact that in Iran there are around 10 million people (one sixth of the population) who occupy them and that figure is likely to double in the next decade.
Role of the left
We need to understand the forms of struggle that this section of the working class is engaged in and intervene within them in an effort to deepen and expand them. Initially we need to be aware that their needs are particularly in the sphere of welfare. The islamists have seen this and responded to it, but the left has not. Why don't left doctors, lawyers and teachers go in there and get involved?
We need to help them maintain their relative freedom from central control. The more we can expand those aspects that are outside the sphere of commodity production, the more we can weaken capitalism. Instead we should aid the process of creating use-value - in other words, the establishment of cooperatives and so forth, thereby reducing the private ownership of the means of production.
We need to be able to create equal relations in terms of tackling ethnic and gender inequalities - especially the latter, because it is women who are very often the prime movers in these forms of struggle. They are the ones at the forefront of demonstrations and blocking streets.
Given that these struggles are currently geographically isolated, we need to try to unite them across the country. This also means linking up the struggle of the shanty town-dwellers with those of other sections of the working class. It was sad to see the oil workers not intervening when the street vendors throughout Khuzestan were fighting for their rights. Unity between those working in the industrial sector and the people in the shanty towns becomes a critical factor and it is our job to help link these struggles together. This population is very vulnerable and fragile in terms of the attraction of populism - something which has been exploited by the islamists.
So addressing these people's welfare interests is primary at this stage. And we need to link their struggles for such things as work and housing with the democratic demands for freedom and equality. The left really needs to understand that these people are in a struggle for survival and they need help to achieve self-organisation. We should have done what the damned mullahs have done, but done it better.
The shanty-dwellers are not just part of the reserve army of the proletariat. In some areas they are the proletariat. For instance, in one industrial region near Tehran some 90% work in factories.
Their struggle is also intrinsically connected to the national question. Being the underdogs of the proletariat is a reflection of their status as members of minority ethnic groups. There has been increasing class polarisation within the national movements between the bourgeoisie and the working class. Undoubtedly the slogan of self-determination is important, but we do not want to simply transfer power from one bourgeoisie to another, allowing them to remain exploited in the same way.
As the lowest level of labour, these people require a different kind of organisation from what we have traditionally had. The way to do this is to focus on their struggles - organisation will develop through the struggle itself, rather than on the basis of an organisation set up to create struggle.
If the leadership of the struggle is not in the hands of the left - and so far we have largely ignored it - then reactionary forces will be there to exploit the shanty dwellers as part of their aim to crush the urban working class.
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.......................................................................................
The following is an article by Mehdi Kia, an editor of Iran Bulletin, which was published this week in the Weekly Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Click here to download the original.
Shanty town dwellers make up an ever increasing proportion of the population in the cities of the so-called third world. They have been used as the battering ram of counterrevolution, but this is not inevitable. They can be won by the left. Mehdi Kia looks at the situation in Iran.
In my opinion the left has largely ignored what is in essence a major section of the working class, without whom progressive change is impossible in a country like Iran. I am referring to the millions who live in shanty towns. If we claim to be the advanced representatives of the working class, then we must certainly relate to these people. If we do not do so, others will step in - indeed they are already doing so - in order to mobilise them for reactionary purposes.
I want to look in particular at the situation in Khuzestan, the Arab province of Iran. Khuzestan has a population of 4.35 million, of which about a million are shanty town-dwellers - one third of the urban population. Khuzestan is the richest province in Iran, where all the oil is located, yet one third of its urban population lives illegally in appalling conditions.
The official unemployment rate for the whole of Iran is said to be around 12% and increasing, but the actual figure is way above that. In Khuzestan over the last 10 years official unemployment has risen from 16% to 18%. So in this, the richest province, already high unemployment is rising. It is here that the largest movement of the workforce from the official to the unofficial economy takes place.
The essence of my thesis is that this marginalisation into shanty towns is the geographic expression, if you like, of a deep, structural change within capitalism in Iran and more generally. It is a new phenomenon that has occurred over the last quarter of the 20th century. It did not happen in Marx's time, which is why he had nothing to say about it. The left must learn to understand what this structural change means.
It combines class inequality with ethnic inequality, so that they intermingle and feed on one another. Why is this happening?
Two interlinked processes are involved. One is the dispossession of people from the land and their proletarianisation. After the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1997, the entire reconstruction process speeded up this development.
There was a large-scale movement out of the war zones and a major shift of refugees. Those forced out of their home territories by the Iraqis were not allowed to go back. They were indeed dispossessed of their land. This was a conscious policy decision made by the government after the war. "Security" was the excuse given to justify it.
This move was designed to take the labourers off the land and drive them into the towns. The combination of ethnic repression, the language barrier and the unskilled nature of their work meant they had to compete unequally in the labour market. So within the proletariat minorities ended up at the bottom of the pile. The role of the state was and remains central in this - not only because it used the security argument to bring about their dispossession, but because it is also the biggest single employer.
Part of working class
How should we define shanty-dwellers? They live outside the official demarcation of the city and consequently are excluded from all the services that any urban conglomeration provides: welfare, roads, water, electricity, sewage, etc. They are not just defined by their poverty - they are not the same as the poor who live officially within the cities, since their geographical separation and removal from access to all conventional services puts them in a special and quite different situation.
The Iranian government has recognised the situation of the shanty-dwellers as a real issue, because these were the very people who were, if you like, the battering ram of the islamic revolution during its early period, and the government needed to mobilise them. They provided the main fodder for the war and for all the most repressive aspects of the regime - but now they have become a thorn in the side of the government, representing as they do the most rebellious forces.
The regime has come up with various policies to deal with this, but none has had any real impact. Improving village facilities, in an attempt both to prevent further migration into the cities and to rid the shanty areas of their existing populations by pushing them out back into the villages. The money that has been allocated to this task in the latest budget amounts to about $200 per person, but it has not worked.
So what significance does this population have for socialists? What potential does it have for its own self-liberation? Is there any objective criterion one can use to say that it can actually act in its own liberation and that of others? Have they got any incentive to change and are the conditions right?
Unequivocally, let me make clear that in my understanding shanty-dwellers - whether they live in Iran, Calcutta, Port au Prince or wherever - are members of the working class, of the proletariat, of that very class which we strive to represent. However, their struggle is different from the struggle of the employed working class. Essentially it occurs in the realm of consumption rather than production - although a section does have a role in production, even if it is often intermittent.
Housing
This structural change that has led to the growth and development of such marginalised conditions over the last 25 years needs to be linked to the commodification of housing. In the old village the house was not a commodity, but a use-value. There was no housing shortage. You just built a house with bricks wherever you wanted.
That is no longer the case and these people have no place at all in the commodified housing market. In a way the existence of shanty towns is a phenomenon at the core of which is the extension of capitalism into housing, which is what makes it predominantly an issue in the so-called developing world.
When housing is removed from the "basket of consumption", that actually makes it easier to survive in the competitive capitalist labour market, since many other commodities are also removed at the same time. It is, in a sense, a way of easing the crisis of reproduction in the labour force by going outside commodity relations and reducing the cost of living.
If we accept this, then logically we have to accept that shanty-dwellers, through the removal of their housing from the control of the state, have been removed from its political control to some degree. Already within the shanties a form of self-government operates in these areas of Iran, just as it does in a parallel situation in Brazil, for example.
What are the elements that can provoke rebellion in this group? Shanty towns are often situated around rivers, canals, railways, major road arteries, oil pipelines, places where the shanty-dwellers can "decommodify": ie, steal resources. So, importantly, shanties are not just defined by their poverty, but by their geography. They totally lack basic amenities and are threatened both by the natural elements and by the effects of the social infrastructure - road accidents, flooding, collapsing power lines and so forth.
But they also have some specific freedoms: in particular, freedom from the state's control, which in one sense makes it possible to survive. So shanty-dwellers are in a continuous state of war with the authorities - it is part of their daily life.
However, they need to consolidate their position by retaining what they have gained through struggle. For example, once the attempt to bulldoze them out of existence has been defeated, their next struggle is to extend and improve upon those gains: getting electricity and water supplied; creating shops and schools; winning official recognition for the dwellings they have built and establishing their right of ownership over them.
Resistance
Their resistance often takes the form of riots, taking to the streets. Because they are only on the margins in terms of production, they are hampered from fighting for an increase in their earnings, so what they need to do is fight in order to reduce the cost of consumption. Hence such phenomena as protests against price increases, which manifest themselves in things like bread riots. This means that in Iran the price of bread is in effect fixed - raise the price of bread and you get rioting in the streets.
We should not, however, forget that there is a struggle in the sphere of production as well as in other areas. For example in Ahvaz, one of the main cities in Khuzestan, and in a whole series of other cities in the south of Iran, this took the form of the street vendors' battle to resist efforts by the government to close them down.
In the Arab zone, obviously the issue of language is also important because the combination of shanty dwelling and ethnic discrimination makes language a critical issue. Arab boys who do go to school are at a great disadvantage, because schooling is carried out in Farsi. Language is not just an emotional issue, but a material one in terms of conditions and access to the labour market. In a multilingual society like Iran, where ethnic discrimination is so prevalent, the right to be educated in your own language becomes one of the fundamental democratic demands - not only for the various national movements, but also for the left.
Acts of rebellion are the main weapon is all such struggles. For example, road closures. This is actually an economic act, because it clearly blocks economic activity and is the equivalent of strike action in a factory and can have a similar impact. Revolts tend to take the form of protesting against something rather than demanding concrete improvements. For the shanty-dweller, rebellion is a continuous process, a way of life.
What is perhaps not understood is that rebellion is virtually always successful - perhaps not immediately or in full, but almost always the rebels will get something of what they ask for. Although the street vendors' protests were initially broken up and repressed, the government subsequently agreed to allow them space to trade. Remember that the Iranian revolution was itself triggered by rebellions in many areas over a number of years.
In addition shanty-dwellers do have a degree of bargaining power, in that, although they are outside the official structures, they are legally entitled to vote. This can create pressure for concessions. Of course, this has a downside we are all familiar with - the islamic movement is sometimes able to mobilise the shanty-dwellers for its own purposes - into military or paramilitary organisations, for example.
The neoliberals have also used them as a means of reducing the cost of production - indeed their lack of access to normal provision of services means a reduction in costs to the state. But the left as a whole has ignored the slums and shanty towns, despite the fact that in Iran there are around 10 million people (one sixth of the population) who occupy them and that figure is likely to double in the next decade.
Role of the left
We need to understand the forms of struggle that this section of the working class is engaged in and intervene within them in an effort to deepen and expand them. Initially we need to be aware that their needs are particularly in the sphere of welfare. The islamists have seen this and responded to it, but the left has not. Why don't left doctors, lawyers and teachers go in there and get involved?
We need to help them maintain their relative freedom from central control. The more we can expand those aspects that are outside the sphere of commodity production, the more we can weaken capitalism. Instead we should aid the process of creating use-value - in other words, the establishment of cooperatives and so forth, thereby reducing the private ownership of the means of production.
We need to be able to create equal relations in terms of tackling ethnic and gender inequalities - especially the latter, because it is women who are very often the prime movers in these forms of struggle. They are the ones at the forefront of demonstrations and blocking streets.
Given that these struggles are currently geographically isolated, we need to try to unite them across the country. This also means linking up the struggle of the shanty town-dwellers with those of other sections of the working class. It was sad to see the oil workers not intervening when the street vendors throughout Khuzestan were fighting for their rights. Unity between those working in the industrial sector and the people in the shanty towns becomes a critical factor and it is our job to help link these struggles together. This population is very vulnerable and fragile in terms of the attraction of populism - something which has been exploited by the islamists.
So addressing these people's welfare interests is primary at this stage. And we need to link their struggles for such things as work and housing with the democratic demands for freedom and equality. The left really needs to understand that these people are in a struggle for survival and they need help to achieve self-organisation. We should have done what the damned mullahs have done, but done it better.
The shanty-dwellers are not just part of the reserve army of the proletariat. In some areas they are the proletariat. For instance, in one industrial region near Tehran some 90% work in factories.
Their struggle is also intrinsically connected to the national question. Being the underdogs of the proletariat is a reflection of their status as members of minority ethnic groups. There has been increasing class polarisation within the national movements between the bourgeoisie and the working class. Undoubtedly the slogan of self-determination is important, but we do not want to simply transfer power from one bourgeoisie to another, allowing them to remain exploited in the same way.
As the lowest level of labour, these people require a different kind of organisation from what we have traditionally had. The way to do this is to focus on their struggles - organisation will develop through the struggle itself, rather than on the basis of an organisation set up to create struggle.
If the leadership of the struggle is not in the hands of the left - and so far we have largely ignored it - then reactionary forces will be there to exploit the shanty dwellers as part of their aim to crush the urban working class.
Labels: features
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
.......................................................................................
19 February, 2007
Misappropriation and theft of ethnic Arab lands in South Iran
By Mrs Pooran Saki
Major General Mohsen Rezai, ex-Commander of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has declared that the government is going to take over land in Dashte Azadagan (Bani Torof) in order to use it as a War Museum.
Dashte Azadagan is in the South of Iran and is populated by ethnic Arabs, who lived here before Iran was formed as a state. During the Iran-Iraq war, this area suffered very heavily - the warfare caused massive damage which destroyed most of the city's buildings, and contaminating the air and water with chemical pollution. The region is still shockingly deficient in educational levels and facilities, in health provision and farming resources, but the Iranian government deliberately ignores the problems.
Now a new deception is to be perpetrated on this region - the government state that they want to seize the land in order to control the area, thereby forcing the ethnic Arab citizens to move from their local region to other parts of Iran.
The government carried out this fraud in 1990, when they demanded that all Arab farmers sell their land, compulsorily and at an unjustly low price. The government stated that they were going to grow sucrose in this area. Of course what they really want is to have a monopoly on oil production, which is also known to be there.
Eventually all the farmers left, without their jobs or livelihoods, and without sufficient funds to purchase new lands. Later, the government changed the traditional system of irrigation and polluted the water. This had a catastrophic effect, for many diseases spread around the region, and this led to many ethnic Arabs moving away from their local area.
I, as an Arab from Ahwaz, protest against this underhand exploitation and misappropriation of ethnic Arab, which is impoverishing and driving out the people, and amounts to no less than theft. Why is Mr Razaiye considering a new War Museum? The local population, who have been victims of the war have a greater need to have the region cleared of mines and chemical pollution, and they need to be safe and secure.
Why do we continue to hear about children being killed by mines or dying slowly from mysterious diseases? This is unacceptable. Are these people being made to suffer because of their minority ethnic Arab status?
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
.......................................................................................
By Mrs Pooran Saki
Major General Mohsen Rezai, ex-Commander of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has declared that the government is going to take over land in Dashte Azadagan (Bani Torof) in order to use it as a War Museum.
Dashte Azadagan is in the South of Iran and is populated by ethnic Arabs, who lived here before Iran was formed as a state. During the Iran-Iraq war, this area suffered very heavily - the warfare caused massive damage which destroyed most of the city's buildings, and contaminating the air and water with chemical pollution. The region is still shockingly deficient in educational levels and facilities, in health provision and farming resources, but the Iranian government deliberately ignores the problems.
Now a new deception is to be perpetrated on this region - the government state that they want to seize the land in order to control the area, thereby forcing the ethnic Arab citizens to move from their local region to other parts of Iran.
The government carried out this fraud in 1990, when they demanded that all Arab farmers sell their land, compulsorily and at an unjustly low price. The government stated that they were going to grow sucrose in this area. Of course what they really want is to have a monopoly on oil production, which is also known to be there.
Eventually all the farmers left, without their jobs or livelihoods, and without sufficient funds to purchase new lands. Later, the government changed the traditional system of irrigation and polluted the water. This had a catastrophic effect, for many diseases spread around the region, and this led to many ethnic Arabs moving away from their local area.
I, as an Arab from Ahwaz, protest against this underhand exploitation and misappropriation of ethnic Arab, which is impoverishing and driving out the people, and amounts to no less than theft. Why is Mr Razaiye considering a new War Museum? The local population, who have been victims of the war have a greater need to have the region cleared of mines and chemical pollution, and they need to be safe and secure.
Why do we continue to hear about children being killed by mines or dying slowly from mysterious diseases? This is unacceptable. Are these people being made to suffer because of their minority ethnic Arab status?
permalink
keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
.......................................................................................
02 January, 2007
Ahmadinejad's Ahwaz sermon - no answers for local problems
By Abu Mousa Zafrani, British Ahwazi Friendship Society
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's tour of the Arab majority province of Khuzestan was portrayed by the official media as an opportunity to listen to local people's concerns and problems. But he used his speech to a crowd of Bassij loyalists in the restive Ahwaz City as an opportunity to grandstand Iran's foreign policies amid the country's growing international isolation.
During Ahmadinejad's speech in Ahwaz, one brave demonstrator held up a placard which read: "Inflation, unemployment, insecurity, drug addiction have desiccated the tree of the revolution." The protestor was reminding the President that the monarchist regime was overthrown on the issue of social justice, suggesting that his conflict with the UN Security Council has little relationship with the desire of the population to rid itself of poverty.
Ahmadinejad's Ahwaz lecture on Tuesday showed that the Iranian regime believes that it can convince the masses to forget their suffering and rally in to its defence in the face of supposed Western aggression. His strategy is to use the nuclear issue as a bargaining chip in international affairs while instilling fear in the Iranian population of foreign aggression to quash internal dissent.
Ahmadinejad told his followers: "The Iranian nation is wise and will stick to its nuclear work and is ready to defend it completely." Whether or not the nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, the Ahwazi Arabs are convinced that they will be denied any benefits of the nuclear programme, just as the regime denies them a share in the revenues generated by the oil extracted from land that was confiscated from them.
No Ahwazi is prepared to defend the nuclear programme, which is not going to provide them with any material benefits. Many see the construction of nuclear plants on their land as just another industry that excludes them from employment. Some fear that the government's reckless attitude towards safety - Khuzestan's oil pipelines are notoriously unsafe while industrial pollution in the province is causing birth defects and contributing to low life expectancy - puts them at immediate risk of a Chernobyl-style disaster.
The nuclear programme involves the construction of Russian-designed nuclear power plants on their homeland - a region that experiences frequent earthquakes, with tremours measuring 3.7 on the Richter scale reported just days ago.
Most Ahwazis question the need for expensive nuclear power stations when their homeland's oil resources are more than enough to cater for power needs. Rather than spend oil revenue on social development in Khuzestan, the Iranian regime is sinking it into an unnecessary nuclear programme that is leading to international isolation that benefits no-one.
Ahmadinejad's speech made no reference to growing unrest among local Ahwazi Arabs who face an aggressive campaign of land confiscation that many human rights observers have termed "ethnic cleansing". Nor did it address endemic poverty among Arabs, whose homeland contains more oil reserves than Kuwait and the UAE combined - over 100 billion barrels. The response of the Ahmadinejad administration to those who have highlighted the suffering of Ahwazi Arabs is to ignore, silence, intimidate, arrest, torture and execute them.
In his Ahwaz lecture, Ahmadinejad insists that his priority is the humiliation of the West and that the British and Americans are responsible for all of humanity's problems. Are the British responsible for the 80 per cent child malnutrition rate in Khuzestan's Arab populated district of Dasht-e-Azadegan? Are the British driving Ahwazi Arabs off their farms into city slums and a life of unemployment and poverty and drug addiction? Are the British diverting Khuzestan's rivers, causing ecological devastation in the marshlands along the Shatt Al-Arab? Are the British jailing the young children of Ahwazi Arab opposition leaders to pressure them into confessing to crimes they did not commit? The suffering of the Ahwazi Arabs and other minorities in Iran has nothing to do with the British - it is the responsibility of the regime itself.
The subtext of Ahmadinejad's Ahwaz speech was a demand that Ahwazi Arabs abandon all opposition activism for the sake of the nuclear programme. Or they will face serious consequences. It is no coincidence that three Ahwazi activists were sentenced to death on the eve of the President's visit to the provincial capital. He was sending a message - put up and shut up, or you and your families will suffer.
The Lejnat Al-Wefaq - a reformist Arab group that sought constitutional means to advance Arab minority rights - was banned after its candidates won all but one seat on Ahwaz City Council in 2003. Its members were rounded up and imprisoned and last month a leading founding member, Ali Matouri Zadeh, was executed in Karoun Prison - just a day after pro-Ahmadinejad candidates faced a severe drubbing in the local elections. His wife Fahima and baby daughter Salma, who was born in prison in March 2006, remain in prison. A further three Ahwazis were sentenced to death on Monday as a prelude to Ahmadinejad's visit.
Ahmadinejad has not even listened to calls from Khuzestan's elected representatives. The conservative-dominated Majlis (parliament) has voted down on three occasions proposals by Khuzestan's MPs for a modest 1.5 per cent of oil revenues to be redirected to assist poverty alleviation and employment generation in the province.
Ahmadinejad portrays Iran as a model for the Muslim world, but Ahwazi Arabs are comparing themselves to the lifestyles enjoyed by their Arab brothers on the other side of the Gulf. And they are thinking to themselves, is the loss of their dignity a price worth paying for Tehran's confrontation with the international community?
In his speech, Ahmadinejad said without any sense of irony that "rulers who stand against their nation ... will face similar fate" as Saddam Hussein. Last month, students staged demonstrations at Amir Kabir University of Technology while Ahmadinejad was lecturing to them. They chanted their verdict on his rule: "Death to the Dictator." And the whole of Iran was behind them, delivering an astounding defeat for Ahmadinejad at the recent elections to the Assembly of Experts. If Ahmadinejad continues down the path of international isolation, economic austerity and political authoritarianism, he will indeed meet the same fate as Saddam Hussein.
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By Abu Mousa Zafrani, British Ahwazi Friendship Society
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's tour of the Arab majority province of Khuzestan was portrayed by the official media as an opportunity to listen to local people's concerns and problems. But he used his speech to a crowd of Bassij loyalists in the restive Ahwaz City as an opportunity to grandstand Iran's foreign policies amid the country's growing international isolation.
During Ahmadinejad's speech in Ahwaz, one brave demonstrator held up a placard which read: "Inflation, unemployment, insecurity, drug addiction have desiccated the tree of the revolution." The protestor was reminding the President that the monarchist regime was overthrown on the issue of social justice, suggesting that his conflict with the UN Security Council has little relationship with the desire of the population to rid itself of poverty.
Ahmadinejad's Ahwaz lecture on Tuesday showed that the Iranian regime believes that it can convince the masses to forget their suffering and rally in to its defence in the face of supposed Western aggression. His strategy is to use the nuclear issue as a bargaining chip in international affairs while instilling fear in the Iranian population of foreign aggression to quash internal dissent.
Ahmadinejad told his followers: "The Iranian nation is wise and will stick to its nuclear work and is ready to defend it completely." Whether or not the nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, the Ahwazi Arabs are convinced that they will be denied any benefits of the nuclear programme, just as the regime denies them a share in the revenues generated by the oil extracted from land that was confiscated from them.
No Ahwazi is prepared to defend the nuclear programme, which is not going to provide them with any material benefits. Many see the construction of nuclear plants on their land as just another industry that excludes them from employment. Some fear that the government's reckless attitude towards safety - Khuzestan's oil pipelines are notoriously unsafe while industrial pollution in the province is causing birth defects and contributing to low life expectancy - puts them at immediate risk of a Chernobyl-style disaster.
The nuclear programme involves the construction of Russian-designed nuclear power plants on their homeland - a region that experiences frequent earthquakes, with tremours measuring 3.7 on the Richter scale reported just days ago.
Most Ahwazis question the need for expensive nuclear power stations when their homeland's oil resources are more than enough to cater for power needs. Rather than spend oil revenue on social development in Khuzestan, the Iranian regime is sinking it into an unnecessary nuclear programme that is leading to international isolation that benefits no-one.
Ahmadinejad's speech made no reference to growing unrest among local Ahwazi Arabs who face an aggressive campaign of land confiscation that many human rights observers have termed "ethnic cleansing". Nor did it address endemic poverty among Arabs, whose homeland contains more oil reserves than Kuwait and the UAE combined - over 100 billion barrels. The response of the Ahmadinejad administration to those who have highlighted the suffering of Ahwazi Arabs is to ignore, silence, intimidate, arrest, torture and execute them.
In his Ahwaz lecture, Ahmadinejad insists that his priority is the humiliation of the West and that the British and Americans are responsible for all of humanity's problems. Are the British responsible for the 80 per cent child malnutrition rate in Khuzestan's Arab populated district of Dasht-e-Azadegan? Are the British driving Ahwazi Arabs off their farms into city slums and a life of unemployment and poverty and drug addiction? Are the British diverting Khuzestan's rivers, causing ecological devastation in the marshlands along the Shatt Al-Arab? Are the British jailing the young children of Ahwazi Arab opposition leaders to pressure them into confessing to crimes they did not commit? The suffering of the Ahwazi Arabs and other minorities in Iran has nothing to do with the British - it is the responsibility of the regime itself.
The subtext of Ahmadinejad's Ahwaz speech was a demand that Ahwazi Arabs abandon all opposition activism for the sake of the nuclear programme. Or they will face serious consequences. It is no coincidence that three Ahwazi activists were sentenced to death on the eve of the President's visit to the provincial capital. He was sending a message - put up and shut up, or you and your families will suffer.
The Lejnat Al-Wefaq - a reformist Arab group that sought constitutional means to advance Arab minority rights - was banned after its candidates won all but one seat on Ahwaz City Council in 2003. Its members were rounded up and imprisoned and last month a leading founding member, Ali Matouri Zadeh, was executed in Karoun Prison - just a day after pro-Ahmadinejad candidates faced a severe drubbing in the local elections. His wife Fahima and baby daughter Salma, who was born in prison in March 2006, remain in prison. A further three Ahwazis were sentenced to death on Monday as a prelude to Ahmadinejad's visit.
Ahmadinejad has not even listened to calls from Khuzestan's elected representatives. The conservative-dominated Majlis (parliament) has voted down on three occasions proposals by Khuzestan's MPs for a modest 1.5 per cent of oil revenues to be redirected to assist poverty alleviation and employment generation in the province.
Ahmadinejad portrays Iran as a model for the Muslim world, but Ahwazi Arabs are comparing themselves to the lifestyles enjoyed by their Arab brothers on the other side of the Gulf. And they are thinking to themselves, is the loss of their dignity a price worth paying for Tehran's confrontation with the international community?
In his speech, Ahmadinejad said without any sense of irony that "rulers who stand against their nation ... will face similar fate" as Saddam Hussein. Last month, students staged demonstrations at Amir Kabir University of Technology while Ahmadinejad was lecturing to them. They chanted their verdict on his rule: "Death to the Dictator." And the whole of Iran was behind them, delivering an astounding defeat for Ahmadinejad at the recent elections to the Assembly of Experts. If Ahmadinejad continues down the path of international isolation, economic austerity and political authoritarianism, he will indeed meet the same fate as Saddam Hussein.
Labels: features, human rights, nuclear
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16 December, 2006
Turkmen-Iran Free Trade Zone Withers
This article has been submitted for publication on the BAFS website by Muhammad Tahir based in Aq Qala, northern Iran. He is a Prague-based journalist specializing in Afghan, Iranian and Central Asian affairs and is author of "Illegal Dating-a journey into the private life of Iran".
Amangeldi sits cross-legged in his shop, surrounded by heavy silver jewelry and handmade carpets, sipping green tea pondering the future of his failing business.
He was one of the first merchants to set up shop when Iran launched a special economic zone here in Inche Borun, a town in northeast Iran right on the border with Turkmenistan. He was drawn by the prospect of easy access to traditional handicrafts from Turkmenistan, and thought he would find a ready market in what was promised as a flourishing duty-free zone visited by people on both sides of the border.
It should have worked. The people in this part of Iran are mostly ethnic Turkmen, who would welcome contact with their kin across the border, which was hermetically sealed until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Inche Borun lies on the main route into Turkmenistan from Gunbad-e-Kavus, the major town in this part of Iran.
"We had very good contacts with our Turkmen brothers over the border. They used to come to this bazaar to sell their handicrafts and buy staple goods," said Amangeldi, 32. "It was beneficial to both communities - on one side [Iran] it helped reduce unemployment, while for the people on the other side, it was the nearest place to come and get basic goods, as the major towns in Turkmenistan are a long way away."
The idea was driven by Iranian officials in a bid to boost border trade and create employment. Initial success after the special zone was launched in 1997 led them to expand the number of shops to around 250, although local Iranian officials say Turkmenistan never delivered on its promises to invest in the project.
Nearly ten years on, the plan has failed due to lack of support from both governments, neither of which has proved keen on freedom of movement in a sensitive border area. Turkmenistan has enforced strict border controls, most directed at its own citizens, which have effectively strangled trade.
Iranian statistics show that fewer than 1,800 people crossed the border at Inche Borun in the first eight months of 2006.
Seven out of ten businesses in the Inche Borun's duty-free market have closed, so that just 40 of the 137 original shops in the bazaar are still functioning. The market opens only on Fridays instead of daily, and the only customers are Iranian nationals, plus the occasional long-distance truck driver heading north into Turkmenistan.
Amangeldi thinks he will be joining the exodus of traders soon.
"I don't know what went wrong on the Turkmen side - they started implementing such strict policies on crossing the border," he said.
Oraz Muhammad, who has just closed the shop he had in the bazaar, explained that ethnic Turkmen from Iran are allowed to travel into Turkmenistan within a 45-kilometre radius of the Inche Borun crossing point. But he said this was not enough, since they would need to travel further to be able to visit major commercial centres. Nor do Turkmenistan's border officials allow the traders to bring bulk consignments of goods out of the country.
Other merchants complained that their own government had failed to sustain the duty-free zone, and water and electricity supplies remained erratic.
A more serious gripe voiced by many was that the Iranian government had failed to pressure Turkmenistan to ease the border controls.
Many see political factors behind the failure of Tehran and Ashgabat to support the scheme over the longer term.
Politically, Iran and Turkmenistan are a world apart - one a Shia theocracy, the other a secular post-Soviet state dominated by the personality cult surrounding idiosynchratic president Saparmurat Niazov. But both governments have made great efforts to get on since Turkmenistan emerged as an independent country.
Their cooperation is pragmatic and focuses on economic links across their long border. In addition, both countries have cool relationships with other neighbours and the wider international community, so they have an interest in remaining on good terms. Because of this, the election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as Iran's president in place of the reformer Mohammad Khatami has not substantially affected the relationship with Turkmenistan.
One local analyst in Gunbad-e-Kavus, who did not want to be named, attributed the decline in official support for the Inche Borun market to a change in personalities at the top in Iran the year the project was launched.
"This was an entirely political project rather than a social or economic one, because the Iranian president at that time [Ayatollah Akbar] Hashemi Rafsanjani was a close friend of President Niazov," he said. "So after Rafsanjani lost the presidential election [to Khatami] in August 1997, the Iranian-Turkmenistan relationship never regained its former warmth."
Other analysts, such as Aziz Ismailzade, an Iranian Turkmen who now lives abroad, say both governments are paranoid about letting any of their citizens travel freely.
"Their reluctance stems from the same reason - the fear factor. Neither [government] wishes to allow its people unfiltered access to outsiders," he said,
Thus, restricting border traffic may have less to do with bilateral relations than with the external pressures both governments are facing over human rights and other concerns.
"Just as pressure on Niazov's regime has increased in recent years, international pressure on Iran is also at a high level because of its nuclear ambitions," said Ismailzade. "This has led both countries to impose unprecedented restrictions on population movement."
Tehran keeps a close eye on its own ethnic Turkmen community, as it does with other minorities on its periphery such as the Azeris and Kurds, for any sign of separatist ambitions. Niazov's nation-building exercise is all about Turkmen identity - but he has taken care not to irritate Tehran by stirring up nationalist sentiment among the Iranian Turkmen.
Burhan Karadaghi, an Iranian historian based in Germany, believes both governments may have concluded that keeping these border communities at a distance from each other may be best for everyone.
"Neither Niazov nor Ahmedinejad is in favour of letting these [Turkmen] people stay in touch. Niazov would feel insecure if the border was wide open, while the Iranian regime would be unhappy if its own own ethnic minority was in contact with kinsmen outside the country," he said.
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This article has been submitted for publication on the BAFS website by Muhammad Tahir based in Aq Qala, northern Iran. He is a Prague-based journalist specializing in Afghan, Iranian and Central Asian affairs and is author of "Illegal Dating-a journey into the private life of Iran".
Amangeldi sits cross-legged in his shop, surrounded by heavy silver jewelry and handmade carpets, sipping green tea pondering the future of his failing business.
He was one of the first merchants to set up shop when Iran launched a special economic zone here in Inche Borun, a town in northeast Iran right on the border with Turkmenistan. He was drawn by the prospect of easy access to traditional handicrafts from Turkmenistan, and thought he would find a ready market in what was promised as a flourishing duty-free zone visited by people on both sides of the border.
It should have worked. The people in this part of Iran are mostly ethnic Turkmen, who would welcome contact with their kin across the border, which was hermetically sealed until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Inche Borun lies on the main route into Turkmenistan from Gunbad-e-Kavus, the major town in this part of Iran.
"We had very good contacts with our Turkmen brothers over the border. They used to come to this bazaar to sell their handicrafts and buy staple goods," said Amangeldi, 32. "It was beneficial to both communities - on one side [Iran] it helped reduce unemployment, while for the people on the other side, it was the nearest place to come and get basic goods, as the major towns in Turkmenistan are a long way away."
The idea was driven by Iranian officials in a bid to boost border trade and create employment. Initial success after the special zone was launched in 1997 led them to expand the number of shops to around 250, although local Iranian officials say Turkmenistan never delivered on its promises to invest in the project.
Nearly ten years on, the plan has failed due to lack of support from both governments, neither of which has proved keen on freedom of movement in a sensitive border area. Turkmenistan has enforced strict border controls, most directed at its own citizens, which have effectively strangled trade.
Iranian statistics show that fewer than 1,800 people crossed the border at Inche Borun in the first eight months of 2006.
Seven out of ten businesses in the Inche Borun's duty-free market have closed, so that just 40 of the 137 original shops in the bazaar are still functioning. The market opens only on Fridays instead of daily, and the only customers are Iranian nationals, plus the occasional long-distance truck driver heading north into Turkmenistan.
Amangeldi thinks he will be joining the exodus of traders soon.
"I don't know what went wrong on the Turkmen side - they started implementing such strict policies on crossing the border," he said.
Oraz Muhammad, who has just closed the shop he had in the bazaar, explained that ethnic Turkmen from Iran are allowed to travel into Turkmenistan within a 45-kilometre radius of the Inche Borun crossing point. But he said this was not enough, since they would need to travel further to be able to visit major commercial centres. Nor do Turkmenistan's border officials allow the traders to bring bulk consignments of goods out of the country.
Other merchants complained that their own government had failed to sustain the duty-free zone, and water and electricity supplies remained erratic.
A more serious gripe voiced by many was that the Iranian government had failed to pressure Turkmenistan to ease the border controls.
Many see political factors behind the failure of Tehran and Ashgabat to support the scheme over the longer term.
Politically, Iran and Turkmenistan are a world apart - one a Shia theocracy, the other a secular post-Soviet state dominated by the personality cult surrounding idiosynchratic president Saparmurat Niazov. But both governments have made great efforts to get on since Turkmenistan emerged as an independent country.
Their cooperation is pragmatic and focuses on economic links across their long border. In addition, both countries have cool relationships with other neighbours and the wider international community, so they have an interest in remaining on good terms. Because of this, the election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad as Iran's president in place of the reformer Mohammad Khatami has not substantially affected the relationship with Turkmenistan.
One local analyst in Gunbad-e-Kavus, who did not want to be named, attributed the decline in official support for the Inche Borun market to a change in personalities at the top in Iran the year the project was launched.
"This was an entirely political project rather than a social or economic one, because the Iranian president at that time [Ayatollah Akbar] Hashemi Rafsanjani was a close friend of President Niazov," he said. "So after Rafsanjani lost the presidential election [to Khatami] in August 1997, the Iranian-Turkmenistan relationship never regained its former warmth."
Other analysts, such as Aziz Ismailzade, an Iranian Turkmen who now lives abroad, say both governments are paranoid about letting any of their citizens travel freely.
"Their reluctance stems from the same reason - the fear factor. Neither [government] wishes to allow its people unfiltered access to outsiders," he said,
Thus, restricting border traffic may have less to do with bilateral relations than with the external pressures both governments are facing over human rights and other concerns.
"Just as pressure on Niazov's regime has increased in recent years, international pressure on Iran is also at a high level because of its nuclear ambitions," said Ismailzade. "This has led both countries to impose unprecedented restrictions on population movement."
Tehran keeps a close eye on its own ethnic Turkmen community, as it does with other minorities on its periphery such as the Azeris and Kurds, for any sign of separatist ambitions. Niazov's nation-building exercise is all about Turkmen identity - but he has taken care not to irritate Tehran by stirring up nationalist sentiment among the Iranian Turkmen.
Burhan Karadaghi, an Iranian historian based in Germany, believes both governments may have concluded that keeping these border communities at a distance from each other may be best for everyone.
"Neither Niazov nor Ahmedinejad is in favour of letting these [Turkmen] people stay in touch. Niazov would feel insecure if the border was wide open, while the Iranian regime would be unhappy if its own own ethnic minority was in contact with kinsmen outside the country," he said.
Labels: features, minorities
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16 November, 2006
"The barbaric deaths meant to spread fear" - Daily Mail
The following is an article from the Daily Mail, one of the UK's most popular newspapers, on Iran's planned execution of 11 innocent Ahwazi Arabs for "waging war on God" - click here to download the original
As Tony Blair warms to Iran, Tehran's hard-line Islamic regime is preparing to hoist 11 Iranian Arabs from cranes and slowly strangle them to death in public.
The men were convicted of involvement in a bombing spree after secret trials. But activists insist they are innocent and paying the price for merely hailing from the country's downtrodden Arab minority.
It is feared they could be hanged as early as today because their 'confessions' were broadcast on Iranian television on Monday night.
Two other ethnic Arabs were publicly hanged from a crane in March just two days after their heavily-edited 'confessions' were televised.
Public executions are not uncommon in the Islamic Republic. It carries out more every year than any country but China. Some are particularly gruesome.
The 11 were convicted for their alleged role in explosions that killed more than 20 people in Iran's oil-rich province of Khuzestan last year.
The slow strangulation method to be used on them is designed to maximise suffering. It prolongs the agony and 'intimidates the public', said Dr Karim Abdian, executive director of the Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation in Washington.
The 11 were due to be hanged in the city of Ahwaz, capital of Khuzestan, where ethnic Arabs are a majority.
Now it is believed the hangings will take place in several cities with largely Arab populations to spread the fear, said Dr Abdian.
The imminent executions are raising a storm of protest from British MPs. Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, backed by Labour MP Chris Bryant and Tory MP Michael Gove, is urging the Government to petition Iran to commute the executions. 'The men were tortured into giving false confessions,' said Mr Tatchell.
The sentences were imposed after trials behind closed doors which human rights groups say did not meet international standards. One of the condemned men was even in jail at the time of the bombings.
Iranian and foreign activists say the trials of the 11 were flawed, the charges baseless and the sentencing based on a spurious interpretation of the law.
'We've challenged the regime if they have any evidence whatsoever of any crime to show it and they haven't been able to show a shred of evidence,' said Dr Abdian.
The condemned men come from three groups, he added. Most are from a reformist ethnic Arab party whose goal is to win rights for Ahwazi Arabs through legal and constitutional means.
The peaceful group was banned last week after the Iranian judiciary accused it of inciting unrest and opposing the Islamic system.
Some are human rights activists and others 'are just professionals like engineers and doctors who have been picked just because they are smart people of the Arabs'.
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The following is an article from the Daily Mail, one of the UK's most popular newspapers, on Iran's planned execution of 11 innocent Ahwazi Arabs for "waging war on God" - click here to download the originalAs Tony Blair warms to Iran, Tehran's hard-line Islamic regime is preparing to hoist 11 Iranian Arabs from cranes and slowly strangle them to death in public.
The men were convicted of involvement in a bombing spree after secret trials. But activists insist they are innocent and paying the price for merely hailing from the country's downtrodden Arab minority.
It is feared they could be hanged as early as today because their 'confessions' were broadcast on Iranian television on Monday night.
Two other ethnic Arabs were publicly hanged from a crane in March just two days after their heavily-edited 'confessions' were televised.
Public executions are not uncommon in the Islamic Republic. It carries out more every year than any country but China. Some are particularly gruesome.
The 11 were convicted for their alleged role in explosions that killed more than 20 people in Iran's oil-rich province of Khuzestan last year.
The slow strangulation method to be used on them is designed to maximise suffering. It prolongs the agony and 'intimidates the public', said Dr Karim Abdian, executive director of the Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation in Washington.
The 11 were due to be hanged in the city of Ahwaz, capital of Khuzestan, where ethnic Arabs are a majority.
Now it is believed the hangings will take place in several cities with largely Arab populations to spread the fear, said Dr Abdian.
The imminent executions are raising a storm of protest from British MPs. Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, backed by Labour MP Chris Bryant and Tory MP Michael Gove, is urging the Government to petition Iran to commute the executions. 'The men were tortured into giving false confessions,' said Mr Tatchell.
The sentences were imposed after trials behind closed doors which human rights groups say did not meet international standards. One of the condemned men was even in jail at the time of the bombings.
Iranian and foreign activists say the trials of the 11 were flawed, the charges baseless and the sentencing based on a spurious interpretation of the law.
'We've challenged the regime if they have any evidence whatsoever of any crime to show it and they haven't been able to show a shred of evidence,' said Dr Abdian.
The condemned men come from three groups, he added. Most are from a reformist ethnic Arab party whose goal is to win rights for Ahwazi Arabs through legal and constitutional means.
The peaceful group was banned last week after the Iranian judiciary accused it of inciting unrest and opposing the Islamic system.
Some are human rights activists and others 'are just professionals like engineers and doctors who have been picked just because they are smart people of the Arabs'.
Labels: death penalty, features
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15 November, 2006
Iran: Flawed trials and injustice
The following is an article by Peter Tatchell, which appeared on the Guardian's website today - click here to download the original and participate in the on-line debate.
The planned hanging of 11 activists in Iran look like a deliberate attempt by Tehran to intimidate and silence Ahwazi Arab protests.
This week, 11 Ahwazi Arab rights activists are scheduled to be hanged in Iran. They will by strung up by cranes in public squares, using the slow strangulation method, which is deliberately designed to maximise and prolong their suffering. This is "justice" in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Instead of pressing President Ahmadinejad to commute these death sentences, Tony Blair seems more interested in enlisting Iran's help to get him and George Bush out of the mess in Iraq. Mr Blair's speech at the Guildhall on Monday night implored Tehran to stop supporting terrorism in Iraq and abide by its international obligations on nuclear non-proliferation. Not a word about Iran's duty to uphold international human rights laws.
Mr Blair may not care about human rights in Iran, but the international campaign against the execution of the 11 Arab activists is backed by Labour MP Chris Bryant, Conservative MP Michael Gove and Green MEPs Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert.
The condemned men were found guilty of bombing oil installations in 2005. But no material evidence of their guilt was offered at their trial. In fact, all the evidence points to their innocence. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly expressed serious concern about the fairness of trials involving Ahwazi Arabs and the safety of their convictions.
The men's lawyers were not allowed to see them prior to their trial and they were given the prosecution case only hours before the start of the court proceedings. The trials were held in secret. Witnesses for the defence were refused permission to testify. The lawyers for the condemned men were recently arrested for complaining about the illegal and unjust nature of the trials. They face charges of threatening national security.
Family members say the men sentenced to death were tortured into making false confessions, which were broadcast on Iranian television on Monday night. In a recent letter to the chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, one of Iran's leading human rights advocates, Emadeddin Baghi, said that the trials of Ahwazi Arabs were flawed, the charges baseless, and that the sentencing was based on a spurious interpretation of the law.
According to the Ahwazi Human Rights Organisation and the British-Ahwazi Friendship Society, these men have been framed as part of Tehran's on-going persecution of its Ahwazi Arab ethnic minority population in the south-west Iranian province of Khuzestan.
Ahwazi Arabs accuse Tehran of Persian chauvinism, racism and ethnic cleansing, as I recently exposed in Tribune. The response from Islamists and their far left apologists was to accuse me of being racist and anti-Muslim. How can it be Islamophobic or racist to defend Arab Muslims against Tehran's persecution?
Anyway, don't take my word for it. Amnesty International has also expressed concern about the victimisation of the Arab minority in Iran. The planned hangings look like a deliberate attempt by Tehran to intimidate and silence Ahwazi Arab protests against ethnic subjugation and mass impoverishment.
The Ahwazi Arab homeland produces 90% of Iran's oil output and 10% of Opec's global production. Tehran expropriates all the oil revenues, leaving the region as the third poorest in the country, with near-African levels of poverty.
Tehran treats Arabs similarly, in some respects, to the way the South African apartheid regime treated black people. Under apartheid, black pupils were compelled to take school lessons in the oppressor language of Afrikaans. Likewise, Tehran has banned Arabic in Ahwazi schools and made instruction in Farsi (Persian) compulsory. The result is a 30% Arab drop-out rate at primary level and a 50% drop-out rate at secondary level. Illiteracy rates among Arabs are at least four times those of non-Arabs.
This ethnic persecution is one aspect of Tehran's systemic human rights abuses. Iran also executes Muslims who turn away from their faith, unchaste women and gay people. According to Amnesty International, its prisons are full of political prisoners: Sunni Muslims, Bahais, Kurds, trade unionists, students, journalists, lawyers, communists and human rights advocates.
On land confiscated from Ahwazi Arabs, Iran is training, financing and arming Islamist death squads in Iraq. With Tehran's approval, these killers are murdering Sunni Muslims, men wearing jeans and shorts, unveiled women, barbers, sellers of alcohol and videos, and people who listen to western music or who have a stylish haircut.
Contrary to Tehran's misinformation campaign, the vast majority of Ahwazi Arabs reject separatism. They want regional self-government, not independence. Nor do they support a US invasion. This would, they argue, strengthen the position of the hardliners in Tehran, allowing President Ahmadinejad to use the pretext of defence and security to play the nationalist card and to further crack down on dissent. Many Ahwazis believe the route to reform - for the benefit of all the people of Iran - is an internal alliance of Iranian democrats, leftists, trade unionists, minority nationalities and local civic organisations.
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST EXECUTIONS AND ETHNIC CLEANSING OF AHWAZI ARABS:
DATE: SATURDAY 18 NOVEMBER
TIME: 1PM-3PM
PLACE:
IRANIAN EMBASSY
PRINCE'S GATE
LONDON
NEAREST TUBE: SOUTH KENSINGTON
CLICK HERE FOR DIRECTIONS
Related stories::
Ahwazi men "confess" to belonging to obscure militant group - 15 November
UNPO Call to Stop Public Executions of Ahwazi Arabs in Iran - 14 November
Senior European Parliamentarian condemns Iran's ethnic cleansing - 14 November
Eleventh Ahwazi added to the list of those facing execution - 14 November
"Iran is guilty of ethnic cleansing" - Green MEPs - 14 November
Iran regime shows forced "confessions" on Khuzestan TV - 13 November
Mass executions of Ahwazis threaten Middle East security - 12 November
Ten Ahwazi Arabs to hang in public - 11 November
Psychologist sentenced to 20 years imprisonment - 18 October
"27 Ahwazi dissidents in custody" - Emadeddin Baghi - 9 September
Death sentence for Ahwazis confirmed by Supreme Court - 31 July
Son of Ahwazi sentenced to death appeals to Kofi Annan - 27 July
Urgent Appeal to EU Foreign Affairs Chief over Iran Executions - 11 July
Iran: Retry Ethnic Arabs Condemned to Death - 24 June
UNPO Urgent Appeal Concerning Ahwazi Executions
Ahwazis face arrest, deportation and execution - 1 June
Amnesty International: Eleven Ahwazis Face Execution - 17 May
Iran prepares for new round of executions in Ahwaz - 13 May
Executed: Young Men Hung by Iranian Tyrants - 2 March
Iran prepares to execute tribal family - 19 February
Iran sentences seven over Ahwaz bombings - 15 February
Iran increases repression in Ahwaz - 8 February
Ahwaz Bombings Come After Weeks of Unrest - 24 January
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
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The following is an article by Peter Tatchell, which appeared on the Guardian's website today - click here to download the original and participate in the on-line debate.The planned hanging of 11 activists in Iran look like a deliberate attempt by Tehran to intimidate and silence Ahwazi Arab protests.
This week, 11 Ahwazi Arab rights activists are scheduled to be hanged in Iran. They will by strung up by cranes in public squares, using the slow strangulation method, which is deliberately designed to maximise and prolong their suffering. This is "justice" in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Instead of pressing President Ahmadinejad to commute these death sentences, Tony Blair seems more interested in enlisting Iran's help to get him and George Bush out of the mess in Iraq. Mr Blair's speech at the Guildhall on Monday night implored Tehran to stop supporting terrorism in Iraq and abide by its international obligations on nuclear non-proliferation. Not a word about Iran's duty to uphold international human rights laws.
Mr Blair may not care about human rights in Iran, but the international campaign against the execution of the 11 Arab activists is backed by Labour MP Chris Bryant, Conservative MP Michael Gove and Green MEPs Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert.
The condemned men were found guilty of bombing oil installations in 2005. But no material evidence of their guilt was offered at their trial. In fact, all the evidence points to their innocence. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly expressed serious concern about the fairness of trials involving Ahwazi Arabs and the safety of their convictions.
The men's lawyers were not allowed to see them prior to their trial and they were given the prosecution case only hours before the start of the court proceedings. The trials were held in secret. Witnesses for the defence were refused permission to testify. The lawyers for the condemned men were recently arrested for complaining about the illegal and unjust nature of the trials. They face charges of threatening national security.
Family members say the men sentenced to death were tortured into making false confessions, which were broadcast on Iranian television on Monday night. In a recent letter to the chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, one of Iran's leading human rights advocates, Emadeddin Baghi, said that the trials of Ahwazi Arabs were flawed, the charges baseless, and that the sentencing was based on a spurious interpretation of the law.
According to the Ahwazi Human Rights Organisation and the British-Ahwazi Friendship Society, these men have been framed as part of Tehran's on-going persecution of its Ahwazi Arab ethnic minority population in the south-west Iranian province of Khuzestan.
Ahwazi Arabs accuse Tehran of Persian chauvinism, racism and ethnic cleansing, as I recently exposed in Tribune. The response from Islamists and their far left apologists was to accuse me of being racist and anti-Muslim. How can it be Islamophobic or racist to defend Arab Muslims against Tehran's persecution?
Anyway, don't take my word for it. Amnesty International has also expressed concern about the victimisation of the Arab minority in Iran. The planned hangings look like a deliberate attempt by Tehran to intimidate and silence Ahwazi Arab protests against ethnic subjugation and mass impoverishment.
The Ahwazi Arab homeland produces 90% of Iran's oil output and 10% of Opec's global production. Tehran expropriates all the oil revenues, leaving the region as the third poorest in the country, with near-African levels of poverty.
Tehran treats Arabs similarly, in some respects, to the way the South African apartheid regime treated black people. Under apartheid, black pupils were compelled to take school lessons in the oppressor language of Afrikaans. Likewise, Tehran has banned Arabic in Ahwazi schools and made instruction in Farsi (Persian) compulsory. The result is a 30% Arab drop-out rate at primary level and a 50% drop-out rate at secondary level. Illiteracy rates among Arabs are at least four times those of non-Arabs.
This ethnic persecution is one aspect of Tehran's systemic human rights abuses. Iran also executes Muslims who turn away from their faith, unchaste women and gay people. According to Amnesty International, its prisons are full of political prisoners: Sunni Muslims, Bahais, Kurds, trade unionists, students, journalists, lawyers, communists and human rights advocates.
On land confiscated from Ahwazi Arabs, Iran is training, financing and arming Islamist death squads in Iraq. With Tehran's approval, these killers are murdering Sunni Muslims, men wearing jeans and shorts, unveiled women, barbers, sellers of alcohol and videos, and people who listen to western music or who have a stylish haircut.
Contrary to Tehran's misinformation campaign, the vast majority of Ahwazi Arabs reject separatism. They want regional self-government, not independence. Nor do they support a US invasion. This would, they argue, strengthen the position of the hardliners in Tehran, allowing President Ahmadinejad to use the pretext of defence and security to play the nationalist card and to further crack down on dissent. Many Ahwazis believe the route to reform - for the benefit of all the people of Iran - is an internal alliance of Iranian democrats, leftists, trade unionists, minority nationalities and local civic organisations.
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST EXECUTIONS AND ETHNIC CLEANSING OF AHWAZI ARABS:
DATE: SATURDAY 18 NOVEMBER
TIME: 1PM-3PM
PLACE:
IRANIAN EMBASSY
PRINCE'S GATE
LONDON
NEAREST TUBE: SOUTH KENSINGTON
CLICK HERE FOR DIRECTIONS
Related stories::
Ahwazi men "confess" to belonging to obscure militant group - 15 November
UNPO Call to Stop Public Executions of Ahwazi Arabs in Iran - 14 November
Senior European Parliamentarian condemns Iran's ethnic cleansing - 14 November
Eleventh Ahwazi added to the list of those facing execution - 14 November
"Iran is guilty of ethnic cleansing" - Green MEPs - 14 November
Iran regime shows forced "confessions" on Khuzestan TV - 13 November
Mass executions of Ahwazis threaten Middle East security - 12 November
Ten Ahwazi Arabs to hang in public - 11 November
Psychologist sentenced to 20 years imprisonment - 18 October
"27 Ahwazi dissidents in custody" - Emadeddin Baghi - 9 September
Death sentence for Ahwazis confirmed by Supreme Court - 31 July
Son of Ahwazi sentenced to death appeals to Kofi Annan - 27 July
Urgent Appeal to EU Foreign Affairs Chief over Iran Executions - 11 July
Iran: Retry Ethnic Arabs Condemned to Death - 24 June
UNPO Urgent Appeal Concerning Ahwazi Executions
Ahwazis face arrest, deportation and execution - 1 June
Amnesty International: Eleven Ahwazis Face Execution - 17 May
Iran prepares for new round of executions in Ahwaz - 13 May
Executed: Young Men Hung by Iranian Tyrants - 2 March
Iran prepares to execute tribal family - 19 February
Iran sentences seven over Ahwaz bombings - 15 February
Iran increases repression in Ahwaz - 8 February
Ahwaz Bombings Come After Weeks of Unrest - 24 January
Labels: death penalty, features
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
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09 October, 2006
"Tehran's secret war against its own people" - Peter Tatchell
The following article is written by British human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and appears in today's edition of The Times
"NEVER AGAIN" is, I fear, a phrase that we may hear again all too soon - but too late to warn people, let alone save lives. Under the cover of secrecy the fundamentalist regime in Tehran is waging a sustained, bloody campaign of intimidation and persecution against its Arab minority. These Arabs believe that they are victims of "ethnic cleansing" by Iran's Persian majority.
Sixteen Arab rights activists have been sentenced to death, according to reports in the Iranian media. They were found guilty of insurgency in secret trials before revolutionary courts. But most of the defendants were convicted solely on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. Ten are expected to be hanged in a couple of weeks, after the end of Ramadan. Amnesty International says that two of those sentenced to die, Abdolreza Nawaseri and Nazem Bureihi, were in prison when they were alleged to have been involved in bomb attacks. Three others - Hamza Sawari, Jafar Sawari and Reisan Sawari - say that they were nowhere near the Zergan oilfield the day it was bombed.
The death sentences seem designed to silence protests by Iran's persecuted ethnic Arabs. They comprise 70 per cent of the population of the south-west province of Khuzestan, known locally as Ahwaz. Many Ahwazis believe that the 16 were framed and that their real "crime" was campaigning against Tehran's repression and exploitation of their oil-rich homeland.
Further show trials are planned - 50 Ahwazi Arab activists have been charged with insurgency since last year. They are accused of being mohareb or enemies of God, which is a capital crime. Other allegations include sabotage and possession of home-made bombs. No material evidence has been offered to support the charges. All face possible execution.
Securing information about the impending hangings has been difficult. The authorities are notoriously secretive, often withholding information about charges, evidence and sentences. Foreign journalists are severely restricted and local reporters are intimidated with threats of imprisonment. Despite this official obfuscation, human rights groups confirm a new wave of repression against Ahwazi Arabs who accuse Tehran of "ethnic cleansing" and racism. Ali Afrawi, 17, and Mehdi Nawaseri, 20, were publicly hanged in March for allegedly participating in insurgency. Amnesty International condemned their trial as "unfair". They were denied access to lawyers. The Ahwazi Human Rights Organisation (AHRO) says that seven other Arab political prisoners were secretly executed at around the same time.
Tehran's latest tactic is to hold Ahwazi children as hostages. According to Amnesty International, children as young as 2 have been jailed with their mothers to force their fugitive, political-activist fathers to surrender to the police. Protests against these abuses are brutally suppressed. Ahwazi political parties, trade unions and student groups are illegal. In the past year, 25,000 Ahwazis have been arrested, 131 executed and 150 have disappeared, reports AHRO. The bodies of many of those executed have been dumped in a place that the Government calls lanat abad, the place of the damned. They are buried in shallow graves; dogs dig up and eat the bodies.
Nearly 250,000 Arabs have been displaced from their villages after the Iranian Government's confiscation of more than 200,000 hectares of farmland for a huge sugar-cane project. Dozens more towns and villages will be erased, making a possible further 400,000 Ahwazis homeless, by the creation of a military-industrial security zone, covering more than 3,000 sq km, along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which borders Iraq.
Ironically, the Hezbollah in Lebanon - the supposed embodiment of Arab resistance in the Middle East - is complicit in the displacement of Ahwazi Arabs. On confiscated Arab land Tehran has set up training camps for Hezbollah and for the Badr Brigades, the Iraqi fundamentalist militia. Badr death squads in Iraq are murdering Sunnis, unveiled women, gay people, men wearing shorts, barbers, sellers of alcohol and people listening to Western music.
Tehran has a grand plan to make the Ahwazi a minority in their own land through "ethnic restructuring". Financial incentives, such as zero- interest loans, are given to ethnic Persians to settle in Ahwaz. New townships are planned, which will house 500,000 non-Arabs. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of displaced Ahwazis eke out a subsistence existence in shanty towns on the outskirts of Ahwaz city. Others have been forcibly relocated to poverty-stricken, far-flung northern regions of Iran.
Ahwaz produces 90 per cent of Iran's oil and Tehran expropriates all the revenues. An attempt by Ahwaz MPs to secure the repatriation of 1.5 per cent of these earnings back to the region for welfare projects was rejected this year. Yet it is the third poorest region of Iran: 80 per cent of the children suffer from malnutrition, and the unemployment rate of Arabs is more than five times that of Persians.
Arab language newspapers and textbooks have been banned to crush Arab identity further. In Ahwaz schools, all instruction is in Farsi (Persian), resulting in a 30 per cent drop-out rate at primary level and 50 per cent at secondary level. Illiteracy rates among Arabs are at least four times those of non-Arabs.
Contrary to Tehran's nationalist propaganda most Ahwazi Arabs just want a measure of self-government; they are not hellbent on independence or in league with the CIA or plotting for an American invasion. Quite the contrary, they fear that Western sabre-rattling will be used as a pretext by Tehran's hardliners to crack down savagely on dissent. Which makes it all the more disturbing that one of the few bodies with diplomatic muscle - the Arab League, which professes pan-Arab solidarity - is so silent in the face of Iran's persecution of Arabs.
Click here to go to Peter Tatchell's article in The Times
Links
Tehran is a Racist State, as well as a Homophobic one - Peter Tatchell, 3 August 2006
The threat of Tehran - Peter Tatchell, The Guardian, 24 April 2006
Rights Activist Peter Tatchell Joins Ahwazi Protest in London - BAFS, 22 April
Solidarity with the Ahwazi Arab freedom struggle - Peter Tatchell, 15 April 2006
Messages of Solidarity for Ahwazis for Intifada Anniversary - BAFS, 14 April 2006
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
.......................................................................................
The following article is written by British human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and appears in today's edition of The Times"NEVER AGAIN" is, I fear, a phrase that we may hear again all too soon - but too late to warn people, let alone save lives. Under the cover of secrecy the fundamentalist regime in Tehran is waging a sustained, bloody campaign of intimidation and persecution against its Arab minority. These Arabs believe that they are victims of "ethnic cleansing" by Iran's Persian majority.
Sixteen Arab rights activists have been sentenced to death, according to reports in the Iranian media. They were found guilty of insurgency in secret trials before revolutionary courts. But most of the defendants were convicted solely on the basis of confessions extracted under torture. Ten are expected to be hanged in a couple of weeks, after the end of Ramadan. Amnesty International says that two of those sentenced to die, Abdolreza Nawaseri and Nazem Bureihi, were in prison when they were alleged to have been involved in bomb attacks. Three others - Hamza Sawari, Jafar Sawari and Reisan Sawari - say that they were nowhere near the Zergan oilfield the day it was bombed.
The death sentences seem designed to silence protests by Iran's persecuted ethnic Arabs. They comprise 70 per cent of the population of the south-west province of Khuzestan, known locally as Ahwaz. Many Ahwazis believe that the 16 were framed and that their real "crime" was campaigning against Tehran's repression and exploitation of their oil-rich homeland.
Further show trials are planned - 50 Ahwazi Arab activists have been charged with insurgency since last year. They are accused of being mohareb or enemies of God, which is a capital crime. Other allegations include sabotage and possession of home-made bombs. No material evidence has been offered to support the charges. All face possible execution.
Securing information about the impending hangings has been difficult. The authorities are notoriously secretive, often withholding information about charges, evidence and sentences. Foreign journalists are severely restricted and local reporters are intimidated with threats of imprisonment. Despite this official obfuscation, human rights groups confirm a new wave of repression against Ahwazi Arabs who accuse Tehran of "ethnic cleansing" and racism. Ali Afrawi, 17, and Mehdi Nawaseri, 20, were publicly hanged in March for allegedly participating in insurgency. Amnesty International condemned their trial as "unfair". They were denied access to lawyers. The Ahwazi Human Rights Organisation (AHRO) says that seven other Arab political prisoners were secretly executed at around the same time.
Tehran's latest tactic is to hold Ahwazi children as hostages. According to Amnesty International, children as young as 2 have been jailed with their mothers to force their fugitive, political-activist fathers to surrender to the police. Protests against these abuses are brutally suppressed. Ahwazi political parties, trade unions and student groups are illegal. In the past year, 25,000 Ahwazis have been arrested, 131 executed and 150 have disappeared, reports AHRO. The bodies of many of those executed have been dumped in a place that the Government calls lanat abad, the place of the damned. They are buried in shallow graves; dogs dig up and eat the bodies.
Nearly 250,000 Arabs have been displaced from their villages after the Iranian Government's confiscation of more than 200,000 hectares of farmland for a huge sugar-cane project. Dozens more towns and villages will be erased, making a possible further 400,000 Ahwazis homeless, by the creation of a military-industrial security zone, covering more than 3,000 sq km, along the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which borders Iraq.
Ironically, the Hezbollah in Lebanon - the supposed embodiment of Arab resistance in the Middle East - is complicit in the displacement of Ahwazi Arabs. On confiscated Arab land Tehran has set up training camps for Hezbollah and for the Badr Brigades, the Iraqi fundamentalist militia. Badr death squads in Iraq are murdering Sunnis, unveiled women, gay people, men wearing shorts, barbers, sellers of alcohol and people listening to Western music.
Tehran has a grand plan to make the Ahwazi a minority in their own land through "ethnic restructuring". Financial incentives, such as zero- interest loans, are given to ethnic Persians to settle in Ahwaz. New townships are planned, which will house 500,000 non-Arabs. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of displaced Ahwazis eke out a subsistence existence in shanty towns on the outskirts of Ahwaz city. Others have been forcibly relocated to poverty-stricken, far-flung northern regions of Iran.
Ahwaz produces 90 per cent of Iran's oil and Tehran expropriates all the revenues. An attempt by Ahwaz MPs to secure the repatriation of 1.5 per cent of these earnings back to the region for welfare projects was rejected this year. Yet it is the third poorest region of Iran: 80 per cent of the children suffer from malnutrition, and the unemployment rate of Arabs is more than five times that of Persians.
Arab language newspapers and textbooks have been banned to crush Arab identity further. In Ahwaz schools, all instruction is in Farsi (Persian), resulting in a 30 per cent drop-out rate at primary level and 50 per cent at secondary level. Illiteracy rates among Arabs are at least four times those of non-Arabs.
Contrary to Tehran's nationalist propaganda most Ahwazi Arabs just want a measure of self-government; they are not hellbent on independence or in league with the CIA or plotting for an American invasion. Quite the contrary, they fear that Western sabre-rattling will be used as a pretext by Tehran's hardliners to crack down savagely on dissent. Which makes it all the more disturbing that one of the few bodies with diplomatic muscle - the Arab League, which professes pan-Arab solidarity - is so silent in the face of Iran's persecution of Arabs.
Click here to go to Peter Tatchell's article in The Times
Links
Tehran is a Racist State, as well as a Homophobic one - Peter Tatchell, 3 August 2006
The threat of Tehran - Peter Tatchell, The Guardian, 24 April 2006
Rights Activist Peter Tatchell Joins Ahwazi Protest in London - BAFS, 22 April
Solidarity with the Ahwazi Arab freedom struggle - Peter Tatchell, 15 April 2006
Messages of Solidarity for Ahwazis for Intifada Anniversary - BAFS, 14 April 2006
Labels: features
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
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24 April, 2006
The threat of Tehran in Ahwaz
Leading human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell writes for The Guardian website on the persecution of the Ahwazi people by the Iranian regime, calling it a crime against humanity. Click here for the original article.
One year ago this month, the streets of the Ahwaz region of south-western Iran flowed with the blood of the country's persecuted Ahwazi Arab minority.
Faced with mass protests against Tehran's policy of ethnic cleansing, the Iranian security forces responded with savage brutality, killing over 160 civilians, wounding at least 500 more, and arresting 450-plus people.
Since the first days of the Ahwazi intifada in April 2005, many hundreds, possibly thousands, more Ahwazis have been arrested and detained without trial (the exact numbers are unknown because Tehran refuses to say how many are being held). A high proportion of detainees show signs of torture. Several Ahwazi pro-democracy activists have been framed and executed after show trials.
Tehran's latest evil ploy is to arrest the children and wives of Ahwazi political dissidents and hold them hostage. Kids as young as two years old are being held in prison as pawns, to force their fathers to surrender to the Iranian authorities.
The crushing of democracy and human rights in al-Ahwaz includes the suppression of political parties, newspapers and student groups. The arrest, jailing and torture of Ahwazi Arab activists is the norm.
What has been the response of the international community? Silence.
The west is preoccupied with Iran's nuclear programme, to the neglect of its persecuted people. There is no concern about the fate of the Ahwazis or the many other victims of Tehran's clerical fascist regime: Sunni Muslims, Kurds, trade unionists, socialists, women, gay people and many more.
George Bush and Tony Blair care only about whether Iran might eventually manufacture nuclear weapons and potentially threaten Israel or the west. They care not a jot about Tehran's ethnic, political and sexual repression of its own people.
The anti-war movement is not much better. It, too, ignores the suffering of the Ahwazis and all the other victims of Iran's theocratic dictatorship. Like many appeasers of tyranny throughout history, it puts peace before justice, even though peace and justice are not mutually exclusive. Some of us find no difficulty in opposing both a US attack on Iran and supporting the just struggles of the Ahwazis and other oppressed peoples of Iran.
Sadly, this is not the way much of the left sees it. There is no leftwing solidarity campaign to support the Iranian movements for democracy, human rights and social justice; even though the brutalities of the ayatollahs rival the worst excesses of Pinochet's Chile and South African apartheid.
What is happening to the Ahwazi Arabs is an indictment of the international community. Where is the concern of the UK, EU, US and UN about the wholesale forced removal of Ahwazis from their own lands, and their involuntary dispersal and relocation in distant, often barren regions of Iran?
Tehran is pursuing a policy that is tantamount to the "ethnic cleansing" of the Ahwazi Arab nation. This is a crime against humanity under international law.
The "ethnic cleansing" of the Ahwazis should come as no surprise. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a racist state. It is ruled by Persian chauvinists and neo-imperialists who brutally suppress their own minority nationalities, denying them the right to self-determination. The Ahwazis are not the only victims. Iran is also persecuting its Kurdish, Turkmen and Balochi minorities.
Despite living in the region of Iran richest in oil, the Ahwazi Arab people are victims of a cruel, deliberate impoverishment by the Iranian regime. All the wealth is being squeezed out. Little is spent in the region. The result? Standards of housing, education and healthcare in the south-west are way, way below the Iranian average.
For the oppressed people of Iran, the solution is clear. The Islamist dictatorship in Tehran must be overthrown; not by western invasion, but through a "people power" democratic revolution from below.
The Ahwazi people seek a democratic, secular state, with self-government for themselves and for all the other suppressed ethnic minorities of Iran. They deserve our support and solidarity, as do all Iranians struggling for human rights and social justice.
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keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
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Leading human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell writes for The Guardian website on the persecution of the Ahwazi people by the Iranian regime, calling it a crime against humanity. Click here for the original article.
One year ago this month, the streets of the Ahwaz region of south-western Iran flowed with the blood of the country's persecuted Ahwazi Arab minority.
Faced with mass protests against Tehran's policy of ethnic cleansing, the Iranian security forces responded with savage brutality, killing over 160 civilians, wounding at least 500 more, and arresting 450-plus people.
Since the first days of the Ahwazi intifada in April 2005, many hundreds, possibly thousands, more Ahwazis have been arrested and detained without trial (the exact numbers are unknown because Tehran refuses to say how many are being held). A high proportion of detainees show signs of torture. Several Ahwazi pro-democracy activists have been framed and executed after show trials.
Tehran's latest evil ploy is to arrest the children and wives of Ahwazi political dissidents and hold them hostage. Kids as young as two years old are being held in prison as pawns, to force their fathers to surrender to the Iranian authorities.
The crushing of democracy and human rights in al-Ahwaz includes the suppression of political parties, newspapers and student groups. The arrest, jailing and torture of Ahwazi Arab activists is the norm.
What has been the response of the international community? Silence.
The west is preoccupied with Iran's nuclear programme, to the neglect of its persecuted people. There is no concern about the fate of the Ahwazis or the many other victims of Tehran's clerical fascist regime: Sunni Muslims, Kurds, trade unionists, socialists, women, gay people and many more.
George Bush and Tony Blair care only about whether Iran might eventually manufacture nuclear weapons and potentially threaten Israel or the west. They care not a jot about Tehran's ethnic, political and sexual repression of its own people.
The anti-war movement is not much better. It, too, ignores the suffering of the Ahwazis and all the other victims of Iran's theocratic dictatorship. Like many appeasers of tyranny throughout history, it puts peace before justice, even though peace and justice are not mutually exclusive. Some of us find no difficulty in opposing both a US attack on Iran and supporting the just struggles of the Ahwazis and other oppressed peoples of Iran.
Sadly, this is not the way much of the left sees it. There is no leftwing solidarity campaign to support the Iranian movements for democracy, human rights and social justice; even though the brutalities of the ayatollahs rival the worst excesses of Pinochet's Chile and South African apartheid.
What is happening to the Ahwazi Arabs is an indictment of the international community. Where is the concern of the UK, EU, US and UN about the wholesale forced removal of Ahwazis from their own lands, and their involuntary dispersal and relocation in distant, often barren regions of Iran?
Tehran is pursuing a policy that is tantamount to the "ethnic cleansing" of the Ahwazi Arab nation. This is a crime against humanity under international law.
The "ethnic cleansing" of the Ahwazis should come as no surprise. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a racist state. It is ruled by Persian chauvinists and neo-imperialists who brutally suppress their own minority nationalities, denying them the right to self-determination. The Ahwazis are not the only victims. Iran is also persecuting its Kurdish, Turkmen and Balochi minorities.
Despite living in the region of Iran richest in oil, the Ahwazi Arab people are victims of a cruel, deliberate impoverishment by the Iranian regime. All the wealth is being squeezed out. Little is spent in the region. The result? Standards of housing, education and healthcare in the south-west are way, way below the Iranian average.
For the oppressed people of Iran, the solution is clear. The Islamist dictatorship in Tehran must be overthrown; not by western invasion, but through a "people power" democratic revolution from below.
The Ahwazi people seek a democratic, secular state, with self-government for themselves and for all the other suppressed ethnic minorities of Iran. They deserve our support and solidarity, as do all Iranians struggling for human rights and social justice.
permalink
keywords: ahvaz ahwaz ahwazi arabistan khuzestan khuzistan khuzestani arab arabistan iran iranian human rights security oil news ahmadinejad ethnic cleansing
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