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US encouraged by Tehran's enemy within
Simon Tisdall
Friday March 31, 2006
The Guardian
Increased repression and unrest affecting Iran's numerous ethnic and
religious minorities are providing new opportunities for the US as it
steps up efforts to destabilise and if possible bring down the hardline
Islamic government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Kurdish sources say persecution of Iran's estimated six million Kurds, who
mostly live in western provinces bordering Turkey and Iraq, has
intensified since Mr Ahmadinejad came to power. Weeks of turmoil followed
his election last July - and is continuing. Ten Iranian Revolutionary
Guards were killed in the latest clashes this week in Salmas and Kelares,
according to Iranian and Kurdish reports.
Although groups such as the Kurdistan People's Democratic party have
renounced violence, the Kurdistan Free Life party, affiliated to the
Turkish separatist PKK, has carried on the fight. More than 120 members of
the security forces are said to have died in the past year.
"The Kurdish population has long been viewed with suspicion by the Iranian
authorities and has experienced decades of official neglect," Amnesty
International reported in February.
"The months since Ahmadinejad came to power have seen no improvement. On
the contrary, there have been signs ... of a further harshening of
repression.
"Despite constitutional guarantees of equality, individuals belonging to
minorities, believed to number about half Iran's population, are subject
to an array of discriminatory laws and practices, including restrictions
on social, cultural, linguistic and religious freedoms which often result
in human rights violations."
Ibrahim Dogus of Halkevi, a Kurdish and Turkish community organisation,
said Kurdish leaders wanted international support to end human rights
abuses. But any regime change in Tehran should "come from the bottom"
rather than be imposed from outside, he said.
Ethnically Arab Khuzestan province, in south-west Iran, has witnessed
several recent bomb attacks, including a rumoured attempt to assassinate
Mr Ahmadinejad in Ahvaz in January. The attacks have been attributed to
separatists. But Iranian officials blame Britain, whose troops occupy
adjacent areas of south-east Iraq, and its US ally for instigating the
violence.
Coincidentally or not, "British intelligence" was also officially accused
of colluding with "bandits" in Sistan-Baluchestan this month after 21
government officials were shot dead. Like separatists in Khuzestan, the
south-eastern province's large ethnic Baluchi Sunni population has long
protested about discrimination by the Persian Shia majority.
Iran's leaders also face stirrings of discontent in the north-east, home
to two to three million ethnic Turkmen. According to Muhammad Tahir of the
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Turkmen say the Persian language,
dress codes and customs are being forced on them. "Sunni Muslims in a
theocratic Shia state, they feel disadvantaged for both ethnic and
religious reasons."
Government fears about the "enemy within" may have been reflected in a
recent move to further pressure Iran's Baha'i community, which is not
allowed to practice its faith and has often been subject to persecution at
times of national strain. The UN condemned the move as "impermissible and
unacceptable interference with the rights of religious minorities". A
renewed crackdown on student groups has also been launched.
External pressure from non-Persian and mostly non-Shia minorities is being
applied via the exiled Congress of Iranian Nationalities, which issued a
manifesto in London last year. The congress demanded a federal Iran,
separation of religion and state, and an end to all forms of
discrimination.
President George Bush's national security strategy, published this month,
again urged Iranians to rise up against their "oppressors". But whether
the US can or should try to exploit Iran's ethnic and religious
fault-lines is a matter of debate in Washington. Officialdom is split
between those who fear triggering an uncontrollable, Iraq-style
disintegration; and those, notably in the Pentagon, who think they see a
way of dishing the mullahs where snail-paced UN diplomacy and high-risk
military threats have so far failed.
Iranian officials say western attempts to divide the Iranian nation,
forged in revolution and a bloody war with Saddam Hussein, are bound to
fail. They are especially scornful of regional Arab and Iranian diaspora
hopes of encouraging change from without. But nerves are jangling all the
same.
Today will see the beginning of Noble Prophet, a large-scale Iranian
military exercise along the length of the Gulf, the area where any future
military attacks might be expected.
Rear-Admiral Morteza Saffari said the wargames would start with the firing
of a Shahab-2 medium-range missile. The launch of this formidable weapon,
he told an Iranian news agency, was intended as "a message of peace and
friendship" to all Iran's neighbours. The admiral's grimly ambiguous
greeting conveyed a blunter warning: Keep Out.
Source: The Guardian
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