|
Jun 8, 2006
Iran's lurking enemy within
By Mahan Abedin
The recent upsurge of ethnic unrest in Iran highlights serious
vulnerabilities in the country's security system, and there is widespread
consensus among security circles in Tehran that the whole intelligence
apparatus needs to be radically restructured to combat this new generation
of threats.
Without such serious and wide-ranging intelligence reform, Iran risks
facing a generation of ethnic unrest on its periphery and possibly
disintegration further down the road.
This comes at the worst time possible, when Western intelligence services
are aggressively targeting the country in general and its civilian nuclear
establishment in particular.
While ethnic separatism is not - in the short term at least - a serious
threat to Iran's cohesion and territorial integrity, it is
widely feared that ethnic tensions could be exploited by Western powers,
some of which are already active in intelligence-gathering and sabotage
operations in some provinces.
This seriously weakens Iran's position in negotiations with Western powers
to head off the crisis over the country's controversial nuclear program.
Yet while the elites in Tehran recognize the urgent need for intelligence
reform, there is no agreement (as yet) on how to go about this.
Ethnic troubles
In Iran it is often taken
for granted that the country has no real ethnic problem. Iranians point
out their country's millennia-old history and are at pains to explain how
the concept of "Iran" acts as a super-narrative, thus effectively
suppressing any serious separatist impulse.
While this argument has many merits, it is ultimately a half-truth. By and
large Iran's various ethnic minorities (who together make up 40% of the
country's population) see themselves as part of the Iranian nation and are
relatively well integrated, especially in comparison with neighboring
countries' ethnic minorities. Significant ethnic unrest in Iran dates to
the emergence of the modern Iranian state and its irrepressible drive to
centralize, at the expense of local autonomy.
The center-periphery divide has been one of the most prominent (and
troublesome) features of the modern Iranian nation-state forged by Reza
Shah in the 1920s and 1930s. This divide usually comes to the fore when
the periphery senses the center's weakness.
The immediate aftermath of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 is the best case
in point as the collapse of the shah's regime temporarily weakened the
legal and administrative structures of the country. This in turn led to
serious ethnic unrest in Iranian Kurdistan, Khuzestan, the Torkaman areas
in the northeast, Balochistan, and to a lesser extent Azerbaijan.
The troubles were very short-lived (save for Kurdistan) as the Iranian
state quickly recovered from the shock of revolution. From 1980 onward
Iran was free from ethnic tensions (save for a very low-intensity conflict
with an assortment of small Kurdish organizations backed by Saddam
Hussein), leading some elites in Tehran to conclude that the Islamic
Republic (by virtue of promoting "authentic" Iranian culture, as opposed
to the Persian nationalism of the shah) had overcome the center-periphery
divide.
Events in the past two years have proved this to be a delusion.
Resurgence of ethnic unrest
The disturbances in
Iranian Azerbaijan (which comprises the four provinces of East and West
Azerbaijan, Zanjan and Ardebil) sparked by a provocative cartoon in one of
the Tehran dailies is indicative of the ethnic unrest that has surfaced
throughout the country's periphery over the past 24 months.
Iranian Azeris are by far the country's largest ethnic minority (making up
perhaps a quarter of the country's population). But Azeris have been the
traditional ruling classes in Iran since the Safavid period of the 16th
century. Even the Islamic Republic (which is significantly more "Persian"
than the shah's regime was) is dominated by ethnic Azeris.
The spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; the commander of the
powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Rahim Safavi; former
premier Mir Hossein Mousavi; and a host of other leading figures in the
regime are Azeris.
While there are no separatist movements in Iranian Azerbaijan, any
volatility in that strategic region unsettles the entire country. The
Islamic Republic is also mindful of Turkish intelligence activity in this
area. There are real fears that elements in Turkish intelligence (working
with pan-Turkist nationalists in the Republic of Azerbaijan) are actively
seeking to foment unrest among Iranian Azeris.
However, sources on the ground contend that these fears are mostly
"perceptual" in nature and Turkish intelligence lacks the sophistication
to operate effectively in Iran. Their job is made harder still by the fact
that the majority of Iranian Azeris live in the capital Tehran and have
very little interest in seeking greater autonomy for the Azeri-speaking
provinces.
Kurdish unrest
The Kurdish-speaking
regions present an altogether different problem. There have been robust
separatist groups in the region for decades. The main threats in the 1980s
were the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (DPIK) led by the
charismatic Abdulrahman Qasemlou and the communist "Komala".
The DPIK was fatally undermined in April 1989 with the assassination of
Qasemlou in Vienna. The coup de grace was delivered in September 1992 when
Iranian intelligence assassinated Sadegh Sharafkandi, Qasemlou's
successor, in Berlin. These assassinations were complemented with
aggressive counter-insurgency tactics and a determined effort to isolate
the extremist separatists from the mass of Iranian Kurds (who make up
about 5% of the country's population).
Victory over the DPIK and Komala has not eradicated separatist instincts,
as evidenced by the rise of PEJAK - the Party of Free Life in Kurdistan.
There is very little information about this organization in the public
domain. It has emerged over the past three years, partly inspired by the
"liberation" of Iraqi Kurds as a result of the collapse of the Iraqi
state.
Informed sources in Tehran contend that the group maintains two large
mobile camps in Iraqi Kurdistan and is supported by elements in the local
Kurdish administration. Apparently, support for PEJAK straddles the divide
between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic
Party (KDP) in Iraqi Kurdistan - lending credence to Iranian allegations
that PEJAK is ultimately sustained by US support. The Iranians argue (with
some justification) that only the United States has the clout to bring the
KDP and PUK together.
Possible US support notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to ignore the
local roots of PEJAK. According to informed sources in Tehran, the
organization is made up of about 450 amateurish fighters and support
staff. A sizable minority are graduates of Tehran and other leading
Iranian universities. The average age in the organization's leadership
council is 28; the average age in the organization as a whole is 24. This
makes PEJAK markedly different from the DPIK and the previous generation
of Iranian Kurdish separatists, which were composed of much older fighters
and political activists.
While the Iranian government is scrambling to collect intelligence on
PEJAK (with sources on the ground adamant that the organization's camps in
Iraq have been lightly penetrated), there is little appreciation of the
local, national and international factors that are driving the emergence
and consolidation of the new generation of Kurdish separatists.
The political elites in Tehran pin most of the blame on the US
intervention in Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent unprecedented empowerment
of Iraqi Kurds (to the extent that they now wield decisive influence in
the national government). While this is undeniably a major inspirational
factor, it ignores more complex and intractable variables.
At the grassroots level, the splintering of the Turkish PKK (Kurdistan
Workers Party) has massively boosted Iranian separatist Kurds, as many
former PKK fighters have transferred their skills, experience and in some
cases their direct services.
Moreover the steady erosion of Iranian military and intelligence activity
in the extremity of the Kurdish regions in the 1990s has inevitably made
it easier for such groups as PEJAK to operate. That said, PEJAK is now
almost entirely based in Iraq and occasionally stages cross-border
attacks.
The threat it poses is minimal, but the new generation of Kurdish
separatists in Iran (who are far more educated and worldly than their
predecessors) are bound to create larger and more effective organizations
in the foreseeable future.
Separate ideas in Balochistan
There is a similar
situation in Balochistan. Although Balochistan is markedly different from
Kurdistan insofar as it has never produced serious separatist movements, a
new generation of Baloch separatists is changing that.
They are aided by serious instability (bordering on low-intensity civil
war) in Pakistani Balochistan and the general rise in Sunni Islamic
militancy in that region. Indeed, separatist Iranian Balochis are wholly
distinct (in the Iranian context) insofar as they employ Islamist
rhetoric.
The emergence of Jundallah (like the emergence of PEJAK) took the Iranian
security establishment by surprise. Jundallah took responsibility for an
attack on a government motorcade in March that killed 20 people. Later
that month, the nascent organization seized a number of hostages, later
executing one of them, who it claimed was a member of the IRGC.
Jundallah killed another 12 people in an attack in May, thus marking its
emergence with an orgy of violence that has seriously unsettled the local
administration in impoverished Balochistan, which is home to about 1.4
million Balochis.
Jundallah is led by Abdulmalak Rigi, a 23-year-old Iranian Baloch.
Jundallah is believed to be overwhelmingly dominated by young men from the
eastern fringes of Balochistan, mostly ranging in age from 16 to 30. The
average age in the organization is 22, thus conforming to other patterns
of nascent separatisms in Iran.
Jundallah also operates under different names. For instance, the attack
last month was claimed in the name of "Fadayeean-e-Eslam" and strongly
condemned by Jundallah itself. But according to a report in Baztab (a
website close to the IRGC), the public messages of both entities hail from
the same spot in Pakistan - thus lending credence to suspicions that
Fadayeean-e-Eslam is a front for Jundallah.
The Iranian government does not seem to have a coherent strategy for
dealing with Jundallah. This is partly rooted in a lack of intelligence,
but also because of a fundamental refusal on the part of the political
elites in Tehran to accept that the country now faces credible new
security threats.
Instead, the political elites dismiss such organizations as Jundallah as
foreign-funded mercenaries with no roots in local communities. In
Balochistan, this is a gross mischaracterization as (unlike in Kurdistan
and the southwestern province of Khuzestan) there is no evidence of
Western backing for the militants.
Even in the strategic province of Khuzestan (where Arabs and Persians each
make up 50% of the population), strong local factors drive the
instability. While there is undoubtedly US and British covert activity in
Khuzestan, these are not (yet) directly related to the ethnic unrest.
The political elites in Tehran have a short-term vested interest in
conflating the two, at the expense of the country's long-term stability.
Intelligence reform
The inability of the
country's large and hitherto impressive intelligence/security
establishment to predict the emergence of a new generation of separatists
has come under sharp scrutiny.
The best-informed critique was provided by Foad Sadeghi of Baztab (which
is owned and managed by Mohsen Rezai, the former commander of the IRGC),
who lamented the lack of "strategic unity" inside Iran's vast intelligence
apparatus.
Referring to the disturbances in Balochistan (which Sadeghi blames on a
bunch of amateur young terrorists), the author concludes that Iranian
intelligence is now ill-prepared to meet the impending challenge of
Western intelligence organizations.
One reason for this state of affairs (the author argues) is that Iranian
intelligence has not faced any serious threats since the mid-1980s.
Indeed, the only organization it has had to contend with on a consistent
basis is the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a largely defunct organization that is
widely dismissed as an extremist cult.
The thrust of Sadeghi's (and other Baztab authors') argument seems to be
that a proliferation of "parallel" intelligence organizations is
undermining the efficacy and professional integrity of the Ministry of
Intelligence (which is considered the "mother" organization of the Iranian
intelligence establishment).
There is very little discussion on the need for upgrading training and
improving recruitment in this new intelligence discourse. Another serious
flaw is a lack of discussion on the historical and constitutional context
of intelligence reform.
When the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security was formed in
1984, it marked a revolution in the constitutional arrangement of
intelligence organization in Iran. During the shah's era, the SAVAK
(Security and Intelligence Service) operated as an organization outside
the orbit of conventional government scrutiny.
From 1979-84, the new intelligence organizations (mostly tied to the IRGC)
operated in the same fashion. However, the desire of Iranian
revolutionaries to prevent SAVAK-style abuses and fully subordinate the
intelligence establishment to proper oversight by the government and the
majlis (parliament) led to the creation of a "ministry" of intelligence
that in effect positioned the bulk of the intelligence apparatus inside
the civil service.
This state of affairs worked well in the first decade of the ministry's
existence, but began to unravel from the mid-1990s onward. As the
Intelligence Ministry grew, its professional and ideological zeal steadily
eroded. Moreover, the very abuses that were never supposed to happen
occurred in the late 1990s, as rogue elements within the ministry murdered
more than half a dozen dissident activists and writers inside Iran.
Although the ministry owned up to the abuses, its reputation never
recovered from the shock of January 1999.
It was at this point that a proliferation of so-called "parallel"
intelligence organizations is supposed to have taken root. No writer or
analyst in Iran (or elsewhere) has looked at the evidence pointing to
so-called parallel intelligence organizations critically enough to form
credible conclusions.
For instance, Foad Sadeghi of Baztab claims that 10 such "parallel"
organizations are in existence, without explaining who controls these
organizations and what motivates them.
Evidence on the ground suggests that the judiciary operates a small number
of intelligence outfits, but these are neither large nor sophisticated
enough to be considered intelligence organizations. They are mostly
composed of elements purged from the Intelligence Ministry and are
specialists in surveillance, kidnappings and tough interrogations. While
they operate under the remit of the judiciary, they have access to the
technical resources of the Intelligence Ministry.
While these small security outfits are a nuisance to student activists and
other forms of dissent in the Persian heartlands of Iran, they have
neither the resources nor the expertise to fight ethnic unrest on the
country's periphery.
Responsibility for these highly specialized tasks is invested on the
Intelligence Ministry (and to a lesser extent IRGC intelligence, which has
a good working relationship with the Intelligence Ministry).
There is now mounting evidence that the Intelligence Ministry is failing
to meet the new security challenges, thus strengthening the position of
those who call for its dissolution.
According to informed sources in Tehran, pressure to dissolve the
Intelligence Ministry is coming from inside the ministry itself. The
recent ethnic setbacks coupled with the ministry's inability to combat
British and US intelligence-gathering and sabotage operations in Khuzestan
have led to a collapse in morale.
There is now broad consensus at the upper echelons of the ministry that
four different intelligence organizations could emerge from the carcass of
the ministry; a foreign-intelligence organization (similar to the United
Kingdom's MI6, or Secret Intelligence Service as it is now officially
known), a domestic security service (tasked with fighting ethnic
separatisms and other forms of serious dissent), a counter-intelligence
service (tasked with combating the activities of foreign intelligence
services on Iranian soil), and a financial-crimes intelligence unit.
It is highly unlikely that a division and reconfiguration of this kind
will ensue, but pressure for the dissolution of the Intelligence Ministry
can only grow in the foreseeable future. Without intelligence reform, Iran
could face growing ethnic unrest and even possible disintegration.
Mahan Abedin is director of research at the Center for the Study of
Terrorism, a London-based organization that studies Islamization,
democratization and extremism in the Muslim world.
Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HF08Ak03.html
|