حزب مردم بلوچستان Balochistan People’s Party بلوچستانءِ اُستمانءِ گــَل
Political problems mount for Ahmadinejad
BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6396873.stm
Published: 2007/02/26
As world powers seek new ways to put pressure on Iran, Sadegh Zibakalam,
professor of politics at Tehran University, looks at how much popular
support President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has at home.
No-one had expected Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to face such a
strong barrage of criticism at home so soon after his impressive election
victory more than 18 months ago.
In the past few weeks, criticism has been coming from all political
quarters, the left, the reformists, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani,
influential conservative figures and even some of his hardline allies.
Ever since his election victory in July 2005, Mr Ahmadinejad has been on the
offensive.
Iranian officials responsible for handling the country's nuclear
negotiations with the International Atomic Agency and European countries
were lambasted for "acting weakly and being too docile to the wishes of the
decadent Western powers".
Praised
Imitating the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he sent a message to the
American people, advised US President George W Bush to reconsider his
policies, and suggested that one solution to the century-old Arab Israeli
conflict would be to carry out a referendum among Jews and Palestinians to
decide the future of Israel.
He also questioned the historical truth of the Holocaust and his officials
organised a controversial international conference on the subject.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, repeatedly gave his backing to
the president.
At a meeting during the holy month of Ramadan in October last year he warned
critics to observe "fairness and honesty" when expressing their views on a
president who was working so hard for the poor.
Criticism
As late as November, Mr Ahmadinejad's star was still on the rise. However,
things were not looking good on the economic front.
When he took office, Mr Ahmadinejad promised to raise the standard of living
for the huge number of Iranians living in poverty. Many of the 17 million
people who voted for him did so in the expectation that he would create
jobs, curb inflation and alleviate poverty.
Instead, inflation has risen, there has been no decline in unemployment and
there have been huge price rises in the housing sector. The gap between rich
and the poor has shown no sign of narrowing. The first doubts about his
performance came from within the president's own camp.
The head of the Majlis' (Iranian parliament) Research Office, an influential
body that advises deputies on important issues, criticised Mr Ahmadinejad
for drawing "unreservedly and without much consideration" from the country's
oil revenues special fund.
Ahmad Tavakoli, a leading hardliner and an economy expert, criticised the
government for almost emptying the reserves. Another influential deputy and
a leader of the government faction accused the government of "lacking any
direction".
Election defeat
Mr Ahmadinejad did not respond to these remarks and continued very much as
before. The turning point, however, came during the municipal elections in
early December. They were the first national elections since his victory.
At the beginning of the campaign, everyone assumed that the election would
be a battle between hardliners championed by the president on the one hand,
and reformists on the other.
It was widely assumed that the conservatives would either win or, at least,
take most of the seats. But, as the campaign unfolded, it became
increasingly apparent that there was a serious division among the
hardliners. The reason was clear. The overconfident president had refused to
agree on a compromised list of candidates with the other conservatives.
As a result, and to the astonishment of most Iranians, the hardliners
entered the elections with two different lists in many constituencies. The
election results were catastrophic for Mr Ahmadinejad, particularly in
critical seats such as Tehran and some other major cities.
The defeat, followed by the imposition of UN sanctions against Iran in
December 2006, unleashed a barrage of criticism against the president. His
handling of the economy and his foreign policy were the focus of the
strongest censure.
The supreme leader did not meet the president for nearly three months,
perhaps because of these criticisms.
For his part, Mr Ahmadinejad did not respond to his critics until the
two-month period that the UN Security Council had given Iran expired last
week.
In a huge gathering in Rasht, the northern province of Gilan the president
repeated his hard-line stand over the country's nuclear programme. Many had
expected that the president would soften his tone over the nuclear issue.
But he repeated his resolute stand that Iran would not give in to the US
pressure.
As long as the people stood behind the country's nuclear programme, he said,
his government would do everything at its disposal to advance it.
Whether or not the nuclear issue will strengthen the weakened president's
position remains to be seen. What is certain however, he is determined to
stand firm on the issue.
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Ethnic spat heats up Pakistan-Iran border
Balochistan rebels may damage
Iran's relations with neighboring Pakistan.
By David Montero | Correspondent of The
Christian Science Monitor
April 18, 2007 edition
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - While Tehran stares down Washington and deflects Arab
concerns over its nuclear ambitions, it is now also fighting a skirmish with
militants across its Western border with Pakistan, fanning concerns that an
area already mired in Taliban violence and an ethnic insurgency could be
further destabilized.
For weeks, Jundallah, a militant group with operatives in Pakistan and Iran,
has launched a wave of attacks on Iranian policemen, security forces, and
even the vaunted Revolutionary Guards, Iran's elite fighting corps, leaving
dozens dead in escalating violence. The group, which claims to have 1,000
operatives at its disposal, says it fights for the rights of the Baloch
people, a Sunni ethnic minority clustered in Iran's Sistan-Balochistan
province, which borders Pakistan and the Southern tip of Afghanistan.
This week, in its largest measure to date to crack down on the group, Tehran
announced the arrest of 90 Jundallah members in a sweeping raid.
The crackdown has many observers worried. Sistan-Balochistan straddles areas
of Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Taliban's Sunni-extremist violence is
already raging and where Baloch separatists in Pakistan are fighting an
insurgency with the Pakistani government. What happens on the border could
have the most immediate consequences for Pakistan, given that more than 1
million Balochis are settled within Iran and have strong ties to more than 3
million Balochis across the border in Pakistan.
"If the Baloch in Iran are targeted by the state, obviously the Baloch in
Pakistan are going to feel sympathy," says Samina Ahmed, the South Asia
project director of the International Crisis Group (ICG). "We often say that
what happens to the Pashtun population in Afghanistan affects the Pashtuns
in Pakistan. Why shouldn't we use the same analogy?"
Like
Pakistan itself, Iran is a confederacy of ethnicities, each with its own
nationalist priorities. Although the central government champions the
Persian Shiite dimension of the state over other groups, Persians constitute
only half the country's 69 million people. Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, and
Balochis comprise the other half, and many of them are Sunni.
Observers note with alarm that the country's ethnic and sectarian cleavages,
although precarious for decades, have widened, particularly in the last two
years. Deadly explosions erupted in the Arab-minority enclaves of the
southwest in April 2005, and tensions flared in July 2005 in the
Kurdish-dominated northwest after security forces shot and killed a young
Kurdish boy.
By far the worse violence, however, has
erupted in the last year in Sistan-Balochistan. It is home to more than 1.4
million ethnic Balochis, who, like Balochis in Pakistan, live amid
conditions ripe for discontent and violence. Unemployment rates are
estimated at between 35 and 50 percent; guns, organized crime, and drugs mix
freely – elements of lucrative smuggling and heroin routes.
As in Pakistan, the Balochis of Iran have long accused the government of
neglect and abuse. Four years ago, those expressions of popular discontent
gave birth to Jundallah, a militant group which claims to have killed 400
Iranian soldiers and policemen. Last month, ABC News reported that
Washington, in collaboration with Pakistan, has secretly advised Jundallah's
activities in a bid to destabilize Tehran, claims that both Washington and
Islamabad have denied.
Whatever the case, Jundallah's campaign of violence peaked in February, when
its operatives killed 13 Revolutionary Guards, a highly publicized and
stinging blow. Iran struck back by publicly hanging a suspect held
responsible and arresting several more. Apparently unfazed, Jundallah
abducted four Iranian policemen, three of whom were later recovered in
Pakistan. Now, following Tehran's sweeping arrests, many wonder how
Jundallah is holding up.
Jundallah's organizers were incited by Iranian and Pakistani state policies
that do not extend equity to minority communities, some observers say. "The
lesson is for states to understand that you can't target whole communities
and expect not to see a response. This is exactly the Pakistani tactic as
well. This is going to lead to more alienation, more confrontation," says
Ms. Ahmed.
But some also see the fighting as a dimension of the growing divide between
Sunnis and Shiites that appears to have transcended national borders.
"This is sectarian," says Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a
political science professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences.
"Sunni organizations content on challenging Iranian influence in Pakistan
would like to open up another front in Iran, which has been untouched by the
sectarianism that is affecting Pakistan.
"The regional implications are going to be very serious for Pakistan," Mr.
Rais adds. "Pakistan-Iranian relations are likely to deteriorate. Iran is
likely to encourage the sectarian aspect in Pakistan."
It's an alarm bell that Islamabad denies hearing. "This cannot cause
tension. [Iran and Pakistan] are on the same page about it. We are working
together," says Tasneem Aslam, the Foreign Ministry's spokesperson. The
problems on the border are not due to clashes with militants based in
Pakistan, she says, but are an issue of armed gangs operating on the border.
Tehran certainly doesn't see it that way. After its Revolutionary Guards
were killed, Iran immediately pointed a finger across the border at
Pakistan.
"Though Pakistan is our neighbor, little by little it is losing its
neighborly manners. Pakistan has become a haven of terrorists who kill
people in Zahedan," influential Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Ahmed Khatami
said on Iranian state radio, referring to the province where the attack took
place.
Finger-pointing across the border is nothing new. Tehran has long held
Pakistan responsible for the incubation of the Taliban, which killed nine
Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan in 1998. Tehran has also blamed Washington
for the violence, drawing upon ABC and other media reports that have
suggested secret US backing. Whether the reports are true or not, American
analysts have long advised that Baloch separatists are a viable option to be
used for exerting diplomatic pressure on Tehran.
But the long-term regional implications of such a strategy, critics argue,
are likely to outweigh short-term benefits.
"It could unleash much darker forces of nationalism and religious zealotry
that could plunge the entire region into years if not decades of bloody
crises," wrote Amir Taheri, an Iranian-born journalist, in a January
editorial in the Arab News.
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How serious is
Baluch insurgency?
G. S. BHARGAVA
April 16, 2007
http://www.bso-na.org/
American scholars critical, rightly, of General Pervez Musharraf’s
half-hearted efforts to put down the al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the
Waziristan area of north-west Pakistan, attribute the unabated tribal
insurgency in Baluchistan for it. According to U.S. Intelligence sources as
many as six Pakistan army brigades or a quarter million regular troops plus
paramilitary forces are deployed in Baluchistan. The ‘Baluch Liberation
Army’ waging guerrilla warfare in the Kohlu Mountains and the surrounding
areas is said to be giving the Pakistan army a good run for its money.
The Pakistan Human Rights Commission, bearing
the stamp of its doughty leader, Asma Jehangir, has alleged
that Islamabad has been using US supplied Cobra helicopter gunships as well
as US F-16 fighter planes against
Baluchi civilians in its indiscriminate attacks on the guerrillas. It also
put fatal casualties at over 200 non-
combatants in recent weeks.
If the human rights activists expected the U.S. Government to be outraged by
the ‘excesses’ of the Pakistan
army against Baluch insurgents they should have been disappointed,
expectedly. Their appeals to the US
President had drawn a blank. Under-Secretary of State, Nicholas Burns, on a
visit to Islamabad has washed
Washington’s hands of it, saying that it was Pakistan’s ‘internal matter.’
One is reminded of the caustic comment of another Pakistan military leader,
Field Marshal Ayub Khan, in the
1960s that the US- gifted military hardware was not meant to be ‘kept in
cotton wool’ when Pakistan’s security was at stake. Ayub was reacting to
Indian objections to Pakistan’s use of Patton tanks and Sabre jets in the
1965 border conflict with India.
American and other supporters of Baluch struggle for autonomy argue that the
US has a “major strategic
stake in a peaceful accommodation between Islamabad and Baluch leaders.” But
it does not seem that
Washington is inclined to heed such advice. Even when cross-border terrorism
fuelled from Pakistan and
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was raging in India the U.S. administration stood
by General Musharraf as a crucial
ally in the war against the Taliban.
Both the earlier Democratic and the present Republican administrations in
Washington have been so taken in by
General Musharraf’s volte face after 9/11 that they would not doubt the
genuineness of the General’s ‘change of heart.’
US might be thinking that it was tactically more useful to keep General
Musharraf in the American camp rather than provoke him to return to his
earlier Taliban company. Not that he would do it, especially after the blunt
American warning that whoever was not with the US in the fight against
terrorism would be taken to be on the other side. Meanwhile, the Baluch
leaders seem to have read the writing on the wall, that in a situation of
virtual isolation they should opt for autonomy within a multi-ethnic
Pakistan rather than harp on secession which had always been a pipe dream
even when the Bugti tribesmen battling the Ayub regime harboured the idea.
It no doubt provided India with a brownie point in the war of words against
Pakistan! The Baluch area is rich in oil and other mineral resources,
including natural gas, uranium and copper .So the Pakistan Government is
rather
cagey about allowing greater autonomy to the State.
In the last forty odd years, the strategic importance of Baluchistan has
grown perceptibly. China has built a
state- of- the- art port at Gwadar, close to the Strait of Hormuz, with a
projected 27 berths. At the same time, ethnic Baluch sentiment has been on
the rise with Baluchis living in eastern Iran making common cause with their
fellow tribesmen across the Pakistan-Iran border.
There is also a nascent Baluch rebellion of sorts against the Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad regime in Teheran.
Observers in Pakistan expect the US to involve itself in the Baluch
imbroglio in the larger interests of
safeguarding American interests in the region, especially Iran.
For the record India has been ambivalent towards the Baluch aspirations for
greater autonomy within Pakistan.
The days of vocal support to Baluch tribal revolt of the 1960’s are over.
Still, Islamabad lodged a formal protest to New Delhi recently alleging
“moral and material” support to Baluch insurgents. India, for its part,
denied the charge.
Interestingly, General Musharraf had readily allowed a jatha lead by former
external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh (of the BJP) to undertake a tour of
Sindhi and Rajasthani pilgrim places deep inside Baluchistan in the last
week of January. Jaswant Singh and his companions visited the temple of
their family deity of Hinglaj Devi at Hinglaj in southern Baluchistan. In
the course of their pilgrimage, conducted without slogans and flags, they
passed through Khokrapar, Chor, Mirpur Khas, Hyderabad (Sindh), etc. The
famous Kalander Dargah, which figures in the popular Sindhi prayer song, was
also in their itinerary.
The ‘national’ newspapers in our country being so inward looking that they
did not devote enough attention to the visit of Jaswant Singh to a south
Baluch shrine and the interest it evoked in Sindh and Baluchistan, not to
mention the border areas of Rajasthan.
The media is so obsessed with BJP baiting, while eulogising Sonia Gandhi’s
‘sacrifice, ‘that they have no eyes for
a grass-root level non-political event which stirred the peoples of our two
countries deeply. To many of them it was more interesting that Jaswant Singh
did not pay obeisance at the Jinnah mausoleum in Karachi like his senio
colleague L.K. Advani a few months earlier. Even the Government’s
willingness to extend up to Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti’s Dargah in Ajmer the
revived Khokrapar-Munabao (Sindh- Rajasthan) rail link did not sink in their
minds.
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By Sanjay Godbole
http://www.balochacademy.blogfa.com
Godbole holds B.Com., LLB., M.A. in History, Anthropology,
and
The death of Shah Alam 1
Aurangazeb’s son in 1712 led to a war of succession amongst his sons. Later
Muhammad Shah tried to pull the empire together. But the Mughal Empire had
already started to break. In 1739 Nadir Shah of
The experts have
difference of opinion about the term Baluch. Some say it means Nomad. While
others claim that it is an Old Persian word meaning the cock’s crest. Some
have traced their origins to Nimrod, son of
The Iranian Baluchis
spread throughout
The Baluchi, here should
be especially noted for the fact that they have retained their nomadic
tradition and culture in
The Pune Baluchis are
inhabitant of south – eastern
In
The Baluchis in Pune are basically self sufficient, relying on their own skill to build tent houses. Their economy is based on small shops. They also raise chickens, ducks and pigeons. Some young men are moving in the cities for work. Before independence Pune Baluchis were also doing business of money exchange i.e. giving coins in exchange of notes on commission basis.
Baluch society is male dominated. Male elders are the heads of the families. Their desire is always important for the family. Baluchi marriages are arranged between the bride’s father and the groom. Once a woman is married, she passes from the authority of her father to that of her husband. Marriages are life long and marrying non-Baluchis is strictly forbidden. These Iranian Baluchis have honor code. This code includes hospitality, mercy, dealing with each other honestly and offering refuge to strangers.
Nomadic women the world over love jewellery but Baluch women have a special fondness for it. In many ways their trends differ. Their jewellery is just as much an expression of their personality as their dresses. The traditional Iranian motifs never really go away. Their ethnic jewellery includes stones, beads, metals and woven fibers. Baluchi garments are colorful. The women wear nose rings, earrings, marriage string, anklets and bangles.
Pune’s Baluchis have
preserved their tradition through their songs. These songs cover many
special themes. Their songs are also indicative of
The Baluchi women sing the
songs when they cook or bake Roti or
As regards to my subject
Romani studies I visited Baluchis and studied their way of life. I have
produced Persian documentary on the life of Baluchis with Miss Roya Vaziri
of
In the documentary
“Baluchis of Pune”, Roya Vaziri has taken interviews of Baluchi chieftains,
men, women and children. This film also carries special interview of Zinat,
a Baluchi girl who is the first graduate and speaks English fluently. Also
Molana Fiaz Balochi religious teacher has expressed his views. The Baluchis
who migrated to
Name of the study: Iranian Baluch of Pune
Country:
State:
Their Language: Kurbati – Persian
Population Appro: 7000
Religion: Shia - Islam