Balochistan People’s Party

The Iranian four-track-parallel foreign policy has confused Saudi Arabia

First Published 2006-12-15, Last Updated 2006-12-15 09:14:08
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/

The vague foreign policy of Iran has been able to deceive and confuse nearly all leaders of the world specifically the Arab leaders, says Reza Hossein Borr.

The Iranian regime always had a four-track-parallel foreign policy to influence the most important groups in the Arab world and Saudi Arabia. Each track has its own approach and perception of the region and Iran. The objective of the Iranian multiple intentions-multiple targets and multiple outcomes policy is to confuse the decision-makers in the Arab world and stop them from formulating an effective approach towards Iran.

The Iranian regime communicates its multiple track confusing foreign policies through different channels. The supreme leader is the main communicator of the source of confusion. He gives multiple signals that appeal to a wide variety of audience. His messages intend to inspire pride in the Iranian people and prejudice against adversaries.

The Iranian President communicates directly with the Arab masses. He uses simple words that generate vigour and energy in simple people who cannot understand the complexity of the Iranian mind. He targets the most important beliefs and aspirations of Moslems. He uses Islamic ideology to infiltrate their belief system and uses military language to intrude into the heart and feelings of the people on the streets. He portrays Shia religion as the source of invincibility that campaigns for the realisation of goals of all Moslems. He injects a kind of feeling of righteousness in others about himself. He implies that his righteousness comes from his Shia religious beliefs. He implies that if everybody was a revolutionary Shia militia with strong faith in the power of Islam, eradication of Israel and the restoration of Islamic glory will be very easy.

The Moslems and Arabs and specifically the Saudi Arabian Arabs are craving for glory and pride. They are craving for somebody who speaks their suppressed feelings and untold aspirations. Ahmadinejad's rhetoric is in dire contrast with Saudi Arabian leaders who follow a quiet policy.

The journalists are affected in the same way. They have to reflect the public opinions in their reports. Thus, Ahmadinejad's opinions appear in Arab media. When the Arab masses see that their opinions have been reflected in the media they believe in their own opinions that somehow have been generated by Ahmadinejad. The Arab masses face unconsciously the choice between their own leaders and Ahmadinejad. It is evident that Ahmadinejad reflects their opinions and therefore, a feeling of affinity and admiration towards him is generated in them.

The next channel of communication is carried out by the Iranian foreign minister. He travels to different countries and draws a new version of Iranian foreign policy which partly confirms Ahmadinejad's messages and partly rejects them. He demonstrates the friendly version of confusing foreign policy that can positively affect the foreign ministers of Islamic and Arab world. He implies that Ahmadinejad's speeches are designed for the Iranian masses and have not to be taken seriously by the leaders of other countries. He portrays Ahmadinejad as a person who has no control over his feelings and ideas and therefore speaks without considering diplomatic protocols.

The Iranian foreign minister communicates a foreign policy version that manifests friendliness in mutual relationships. He tries to demonstrate Iranian good will in establishing and promoting cultural and commercial relationships.

He wants to build trust to cover the real objectives that are carried out by the Iranian security forces.

The next channel of communication of total deception is presented by two former presidents: Hashemi Rafsanjani and Khatami. These two are the masters of disguising the truth. They pretend to be the main sources of decision-making. They talk about Islamic brotherhood and dialogue of civilisations. They are the Rasputins of Islamic Republic of Iran. They target intellectuals, media, journalists, think tanks as well as politicians. They go to different universities and international organisations to portray the Iranian revolution as a just revolution that seeks justice and equality for all the people of the world. They want to prove that they have already implemented the principles and values of Islam in Iran and consequently, they have created a heaven on earth in the Iranian land. They are keen to give every assurance to people of the world and specifically to the Arabs that Iran is a peaceful country and seeks peace and justice for everyone.

While these channel of communications try to fool the Arabs the revolutionary guards and security forces are fully engaged in exporting revolution, reviving Shia nationalism and sponsoring terrorism.

The Iranian regime has been engaged in multiple track foreign policy behaviour. While the religious leaders have tried to secure the trust of the Arabs through promoting Islamic values and principles in the Arab lands, the Iranian intelligence services have formulated and implemented the real Iranian foreign policy which is influencing the Shias and those Sunnis who are frustrated from the present situation.

This vague foreign policy of Iran has been able to deceive and confuse nearly all leaders of the world specifically the Arab leaders. The Arab leaders are Sunnis and naturally believe in what they hear specifically if it comes from those people who look credible. The religious leaders in the eyes of the Sunnis are credible people that have to be believed and respected. The Iranian religious leaders have understood the honesty of the Arab people and Arab leaders and they have taken full advantage of it. The Iranian leaders have pledged to prevent terrorist activities against the Arab governments but have not honoured them. They believe that the Arab leaders are tyrants (zaalem) and therefore the pledge is not bounding. The Arabs have not been able to understand the complexity of the Iranian Shia mind. They have not been able to recognise the mask which covers the devil.

The present confusion among the Arab leaders and specifically Saudi Arabian leaders has created dangerous differences of opinion and even dispute among them. The Iranian government has succeeded in creating divisions among the Arab rulers which naturally would result in indecisiveness. Today some officials in Saudi Arabian government believe that Iran has good intentions and some others believe that the Iranian regime has created Shia crescent to assert Shia supremacy.

Making right decisions must come from clarity of understanding of accurate data. The data that the Arab governments receive from Iran are vague and confusing and therefore, they are not able to make decisions to prevent Iran from further intrusion. It was hard for many Arab leaders to believe that the Iranian officials have systematically misguided them through well-designed lies and deceptive strategies.

The Iranian government has always denied interfering in the affairs of the Arab world and yet everybody is convinced today that Iran is creating civil wars in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.

The most important Arab country is Saudi Arabia that has the resources to encounter the Iranian threat but the Iranian regime has been able to split the Saudi Arabian ruling family. Some of the members of ruling family have been confused so much that they cannot believe that Iran is behind all the explosive conditions in the Middle East. Some others are convinced that Iran is the main element of the destabilisation in the Arab world. The vagueness of Iranian foreign policy has created so much darkness that it is difficult to reach the clarity of understanding of relationship between Iran and the Arab world.

It took the United States about 25 years to understand that the Iranian leaders are deceptive. The European leaders are still confused but they are not the main targets of Iranian fundamentalism. The Arab countries are the main targets of Iranian extremism and fundamentalism. Iran has already generated sufficient violence in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.

Can the governments of the Arab world understand the real objectives of Iranian government and formulate new policies to encounter the dangerous threat that looms over their heads?

If the leaders of Saudi Arabia continue to be receptive to the confusion that has been imposed on them, the Iranian regime will move in the heart of the Arab world.

Reza Hossein Borr is a leadership consultant and the creator of 150 CDs. He is also the author of Manual Success, Manual of Coaching and Mentoring, Motivational Stories that Can Change Your Life, and a New Vision for the Islamic World. He can be contacted by email: sarawani@aol.com

© Copyright, 2006 London

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Iran worried by Saudi's pro-Sunni 'Iraq plans'

First Published 2006-12-15, Last Updated 2006-12-15 09:14:08
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/

Larijani expresses his amazement at attempt to create conditions for US to stay in region.

TEHRAN - Shiite Iran expressed concern on Friday about suggestions that Saudi Arabia might intervene on the side of Iraq's Sunnis if the United States swiftly pulls out of Iraq.
"Certain countries are sending inadequate signals that would get in the way of the United States taking the right decision (to leave Iraq)," the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, told reporters.
"There are even threats of intervention in Iraq. It is bizarre that there is an attempt to create the conditions for the United States to stay in the region," he added.
His comments were a clear reference to a controversy that has emerged in recent weeks over how Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia would behave if the United States rapidly pulled out of Shiite-majority Iraq.

Speculation was triggered by an article by Nawaf Obeid, an advisor to the Saudi embassy in Washington, who spoke of "massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis" if Washington withdraws.
Some 30 Saudi clerics are also reported to have published a statement calling for Mideast-wide Sunni support for the Sunni community in Iraq.
"Some people have been talking about a Shiite-Sunni conflict - there has been a message in this sense - but we think that the best message for the United States is to set a calendar for their departure," said Larijani.
Asked about Tehran's ties with Riyadh, he replied: "We have very close and friendly relations with Saudi Arabia. If there are ambiguities they must be lifted," he said.
Relations between the two countries have not always been smooth, most notably when 402 people, the majority Iranians, were killed in July 1987 in clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi security forces during the hajj.

A top Iranian cleric on Friday condemned Saudi treatment of Iranian pilgrims travelling to the kingdom for the Muslim pilgrimage, and asked the Saudi monarch to intervene.
"We condemn the treatment of some of the Saudi forces of our pilgrims," Hojatoeslam Ahmad Khatami told Friday worshippers in Tehran ahead of the main pilgrimage over December and January.
"I am asking the rulers who call themselves the custodian of the holy mosques to end these insults," said Khatami, in a reference to the Saudi royal family of King Abdullah.

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LETTER FROM BALUCHISTAN
A Call to Resistance: The Khan of Kalat Gathers the Tribes

by Annie Nocenti
http://www.brooklynrail.org
16-12-2006

The Khan of Kalat, Mir Suleiman Daud, is speeding. He’s a fast driver, but so expert a wheelman there’s no fear in the wide black Hummer. “Who drives American cars?” he says, mocking himself. “But when I saw this one, I knew it was my toy.” Handsome and charismatic, Khan Suleiman enjoys hiding his eyes behind Gucci shades, and prefers a ball cap to a turban.

Khan Suleiman

Add in the traditional long baggy shirts and baggy pants of the region, what sounds like Pakistani hip-hop blasting, the carload of his men packing pistols and Kalashnikovs that rides behind us, and it feels like quite the posse. But considering Khan Suleiman once took four AK47 bullets in the gut and chest in the tribal equivalent of a drive-by and lived, the bullet-resistant Hummer makes practical sense. Khan Suleiman’s survival of that shooting was considered so miraculous that there is a university doctor who teaches a class in the incident. As for all the guns and ammunition, Baluchistan is one of the tribal provinces of Pakistan, and in tribal regions, one needs protection. Especially the Khan of Kalat, which literally means King of the Fort, the chief of chiefs. But it’s not his own people he needs protection from.

Khan of Kalat Suleiman’s country is rich in resources that everyone wants to take and he doesn’t have the power to stop them. “We sit on a mountain of gold,” he says, “and the devil sits on us.” His people, the Baluch Nation, are being indiscriminately bombed, arrested, and kidnapped, and he’s powerless to stop it. Journalist Selig S. Harrison has called it a slow-motion genocide and Human Rights groups have called it an ethnic cleansing. “We have 700 miles of coast and oil and gas and gold,” says Khan Suleiman. “We try to do something to have rights to it, we get spanked. We resist every ten years and get spanked every ten years.” For the past few years, he has been in the middle of an unseen war that few beyond the regional press are reporting.

But then something horrible happened and it radicalized his people. In August 2006 the chief of the Bugti tribe, 79-year-old Newab Akbar Bugti, was murdered by the Pakistan Army. “Bugti was buried with three locks on the coffin,” says Khan Suleiman. “They thought his soul might come back and make trouble. So the army put locks on it. None of his tribe was around to see his body. Still they’ve got a guard on his body.” The Baluch people were outraged by the murder, and Khan Suleiman had found his moment, the catalyst he needed. He called a national jirga, a meeting of the tribes, the first in 130 years. He wanted to find out if his sardars, his chiefs, the heads of tribes that have been, on and off, at war with each other for hundreds of years, could lay down personal disputes and unify for a common cause: an autonomous Baluchistan. Khan Suleiman’s allies would be his former enemies. In the way of tribes, his enemies are also his friends. He put out his call.

My first thought was: this man is a modern Sitting Bull. Which makes him a sitting duck. Which is why he travels in a Hummer and why his travel plans are never announced. What Khan Suleiman has just done is akin to Sitting Bull asking the Apache, the Cherokee, the Mohawks, all the major Native American warring tribes to smoke the peace pipe and unify against the migrating settlers that were stealing their land out from under them.

Khan Suleiman’s historic jirga was attended by 1,500, including 85 sardars and 300 tribal elders. The Baluch people have always protested the Punjabi-dominated military regime of Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf that has been made rich off the Baluch province but gives so little back in terms of resources and tax revenues that the entire region still lacks the basic services that most consider human rights. The province is rich in natural gas yet only 6% of the Baluch have gas connections, less than half the children get an education, and only 2% of the population have clean water.

The answer to Khan Suleiman’s call for unification and resistance against this state of affairs was a resounding yes. “When you make a call you get an answer,” says Khan Suleiman. “The answer means that Baluch is a nation. They have problems, but they have roots. I know them 700 years and they know me 700 years. I gave a call in the 21st century and 95% answered. Students and prime ministers agree. There are the rocket guys and the pen and paper guys, but we come together directly or indirectly.” The jirga was so inspirational that the Pashtuns, the Sindhi and the Afghans have all decided to hold their own jirgas to unify their tribes. Even General Musharraf called a jirga of his own, “But nobody went,” laughs Khan Suleiman.

Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is sparsely populated by people and overwhelmingly a land of rocks. Flatbed trucks pass carrying enormous marble hunks as big as cars. An old man sits by the side of the road, a mountain of rocks to his left, a pile of smaller rocks to his right, he in the middle with a hammer. A task for Sisyphus. But the more one looks at these majestic, dusty gray-brown mountains, the more one sees they are not at all dull, but coyly streaked in color. “Rubies, diamonds, lapis lazuli, gold, emeralds,” says Khan Suleiman. “We have it all. Oil and natural gas and minerals.” It is, of course, the enormous reserves of natural gas that have perked up the eyes and ears of those with a nose for such things. “All the ‘guys’ are around,” says Khan Suleiman with amusement, meaning the big powers. He lists the US, Iran, India, China, Russia.

We pass walls scrawled with graffiti, written in delicate Urdu script: “Azad Baluchistan, Baluchistan Zindebad”; Free Baluchistan, Long Live Baluchistan. We pull into a gas station, and the Khan is met by a group of men that somehow knew he’d be stopping here. They pay respect, ask him advice on property disputes. A day in the life of a Khan. One man asks Khan Suleiman if he thinks the Baluch people are unified. The Khan answers in Baluch, then translates for me. “I asked them, will they come out and protest on a certain day? Will they join the protest march this month? If they do, then that is my answer and that is their answer.”

Back out on the highway, my tinted window slides up automatically, and I look ahead to see an open black jeep coming the other way loaded with armed men staring at the Hummer. I wonder, has Khan Suleiman just closed my window to keep the dust out, or did he see that car coming and decide it best to not let them glance in and see the obviously foreign woman with the large video camera whose protective veil of her dupata (the headscarf worn by women in this mostly Muslim country), is constantly slipping off her head. As it is with many things a foreigner sees and hears when stepping fresh into a new culture, it’s hard to know.

Drive sixty miles out of Karachi, Pakistan, and into Baluchistan, and you drive 600 years back in time. As the roadside mosques lit up at night like discos fade, there are more goats and donkeys; fewer buildings, more huts. Women spend all day walking deserts for one bucket of water. Our convoy of SUVs often pass caravans of camels loaded with sticks of firewood, men riding mule carts loaded with hay. “The poor shepherd’s barefoot son herds his sheep over mountains full of riches,” says Suleiman. Or as Suleiman’s uncle, Yahya Baloch, Prince of Kalat, said to me the day before, “The shepherd has his goats and makes his cheese and his butter. He sits in the mountains and is his own boss but belongs to a tribe. But every ordinary person has a small radio. And they may be listening to Air America, not the lies of Pakistan radio.” Prince Yahya, like most of the older men we’ve met, has survived many wars in Baluchistan. He shows me the bullet holes in his home to prove it, from the times his brother, the previous Khan of Kalat, was attacked. He then shows off his astounding collection of antique guns; from muskets to guns hidden in canes like something out of James Bond. He speaks in moderate tones but it is easy to feel how much he loves his country. “Asia is the belt,” he smiles, “Pakistan the buckle, but the pin is Baluch. The pin opens, your pants will fall.”

Meanwhile, General Musharraf has brought in Chinese engineers to develop a strategic port in Gwadar and build a road to the border, and gave a ten-year lease to China which has been over-mining the copper and gold in the Chaghi district. The Baluch resistance, angry at the lack of economic return to the Baluch for these developments, periodically responds by blowing up power lines, pipelines and other infrastructures. And there is widespread fear among locals that a major pipeline will be built that drains their main resource, natural gas, without any return. As one Baluchi Nationalist said to me, “The road is coming. The pipeline is coming. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming. The Americans are coming. One day they will just walk in. Under every mountain you’ll see a G.I. Write it down in your heart. You’ll see.”

Agha Aziz, one of Khan Suleiman’s men. All photos by Annie Nocenti.

Or, as the eternally unruffled Khan Suleiman puts it, with one of his sly smiles, “Where there is chaos, there is investment.”

While Islamabad fattens its coffers and others dream of wealth to come, the people of this resource-rich province are so impoverished and economically discriminated against that I’ve heard Baluchistan referred to as “the whore of everyone.” Pakistan has long controlled the area by playing the feuding tribes off one another in order to keep the Baluch resistance from unifying, which is why Khan Suleiman’s jirga is so important. Islamabad spins the actions of the freedom fighters into actions of “terrorists,” and disclaims any official power of the Khan of Kalat. General Musharraf charges that the feudal system of sardar rule is the problem, but to the Baluch this has long been their way of life. Islamabad also uses the presence of the Taliban as a cover for military actions against the Baluch.

A few nights back, we sat in Khan Suleiman’s home in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan. It is located on Syriab Street, street of chiefs, and we met in in a simple room with banks of low couches, over a spread of nuts, pomegranate seeds, overripe bananas and cardamom tea. “Have you seen any Taliban yet?” Khan Suleiman likes to tease. I had told him that there was nothing much in the mainstream press about Baluchistan other than claims that Quetta was now thick with Taliban. When we’d flown into Quetta the day before, as the pilot flew like a cowboy, taking dizzy dips over the red hills that surround Quetta, I looked down and saw what reminded me of an old Wild West American outpost. Sand rolls off the desert, rock dust off the mountains, giving the whole town a shimmering, ghostly air. At the airport, the first man to help with my bags said: “I am Baluch, not Taliban.” The presence of Taliban in Quetta seems to be some kind of inside joke that’s probably not that funny. It’s not that the Taliban aren’t here in Quetta, a town not far from the Afghanistan border, but they are not messing with Baluch business, I’m told. “They cross the border, and they are with us.”

But there is unquestionably an ominous feeling in Quetta. Leaving and entering our hotel, a mirror on wheels is rolled under the car chassis to look for bombs. The first day we go to the Russian bazaar, we are followed by Pakistan’s Military Intelligence and photographed. As we shop for headscarves, the MI follows us and Khan Suleiman’s men follow the MI. It feels more Graham Greene ironic than dangerous, yet the implication is there. Khan Suleiman’s men confront the MI. “You do your job, we’ll do ours,” they are told. The day after we leave Quetta, three missiles hit the Parliament building. No one takes responsibility for it.

Khan Suleiman’s Hummer

While in Quetta, Khan Suleiman has arranged some interviews with several tribal chiefs. It is important to the Khan that we understand this is not “his” call, but the call of all Baluch, and he wants us to hear it confirmed from other chiefs. The first is Chief of Sarawan Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani. We drive into a walled and gated courtyard, where tribesmen mill about with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders as casually as women sling their purses. As I get out of the car, I hear the Mission Impossible theme song. It’s Abdullah’s cell phone. Abdullah is one of Suleiman’s men assigned to this trip, and he’s also got another cell phone that rings with the theme to The Godfather. Inside we meet Nawab Raisani, a distinguished chief with a raspy voice that I imagine is the result of an old war wound. He is gracious, gentle, and gestures towards a large plastic mat on the floor covered in food. He confirms his support for the Khan and that the tribes have “set aside our conflicts and disputes so that we can raise a collective voice.” He stresses the importance of identity, “The Pakistan government wants to finish our national identity,” he says. I ask if the tribes will be able to stay unified, and he answers that pressure is being put on the heads of tribes to do so. I ask if he would compromise on the question of autonomy for Baluchistan. “We will not go for any type of compromise,” says Nawab Raisani. “We want total autonomy.”

There is a problem with autonomy for Baluchistan. As it was with the Native Americans, there are broken treaties involved. The current troubles in Baluchistan date back to the 1947 agreement between Britain and India that created Pakistan. Six million Baluch were forced to become part of the newly created country. But a 1948 treaty, in which the current Khan of Kalat (Khan Suleiman’s grandfather) acceded to Pakistan, delineates that accession in only four areas: defense, foreign affairs, currency and communications. Resource and autonomy rights were not given up, but there is an ambiguity to the language of the treaty that has been exploited by Islamabad. There is also an older controversy around the 1893 “Durand Line” agreement between British India and Afghanistan, which divided the Pashtun and Baluch tribes into Afghanistan, sections of Iran, and what was to become, in 1947, Pakistan—slicing up a nomadic culture with arbitrary lines in the sand. The Baluch, a culture that dates back over a thousand years, ended up living under colonialist-style rule by Pakistan, a nation that at the time was one year old.

Revered author and historian Agha Mir Naseer Khan Ahmadzai Baloch is the keeper of Baluch history. “We founded the Baluch Nation in 1410. We Baluch made a kingdom. And we told the superpower at the time that they should confirm our kingdom. We were told: ‘You Baluch are sheep herders and on this condition I accept your kingdom. You should agree that annually you should give me ten thousand sheep.’ And in this way,” laughs Naseer Baloch, “our Baluch Kingdom came into existence. From this time right up to Khan Suleiman, 35 Khans have passed. The British conquered Baluchistan and annexed us to India. When they formed Pakistan in 1947, we were told, if you don’t join Pakistan we will attack you.”

Khan Suleiman’s next step will be to appeal to the World Court in Hague, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming that Pakistan has violated the 1948 treaty as well as the 1973 Constitution that promised provincial autonomy. Violations include the plundering of resources, and the non-payment of royalties on fisheries, gas, minerals and overflights, and the building of cantonments. But the question is whether or not the ICJ can give fair hearing to Baluchistan, a tribal province without clear sovereign status, now that Pakistan has become a nation of international standing. Which is why it is imperative that such a move is backed in the press. The alternative, if an appeal to the ICJ fails, is likely to be armed struggle.

Khan Suleiman is slyly hopeful of U.S. help. Without U.S. or other foreign support, Baluchistan does not have the wealth nor military might to sustain a long insurgency. It is a hope that is touching, fragile, and ornery all at once. “We’ll see,” he says with a sideways grin, “if the Americans are as moral as they say they are. The elephant has different kinds of teeth. The ones the elephant shows, and ones he eats with. They are not the same teeth.”

We drive from Quetta to Kalat, where the Khan has his palace and his mosque, and Khan Suleiman casually tells us we are to meet Sardar Ataullah Mengal next, in a town called Wadh. I expect an interview similar to the one we had with Nawab Raisani, but that’s not the case.

As soon as we are on the road to Wadh, the air is electric. The convoy of cars and guns is longer this time. There are tribals that have come out of the hills to see Khan Suleiman off. The closer we get to Wadh, the more men we see on the sides of the roads. They raise guns in salute, or join the convoy on motorbikes. Some carry the flag of Kalat. The convoy gets larger and larger, until, when we pull in for gas, there is a swarm of followers. Khan Suleiman gets out of the car and the reverence for the man from his people is stunning. Islamabad may think Khan Suleiman has no official power, but neither did many a charismatic leader throughout history.

We arrive at Sardar Mengal’s compound. A huge fluttering tent is set up, laid out with gorgeous Persian carpets, light streams in from above and the tent flutters, as if Allah is announcing his presence. As we enter, a sea of men turns and stands. As soon as Khan Suleiman and Sardar Mengal are seated, everyone else sits. They speak for a while, as Sardar Mengal confirms his support of the alliance of tribes. “We want to use the tribal way to unify,” says Mengal, “then move on to democracy and the modern ways.” Khan Suleiman has said that the example to think of is Britain, with its combination of Parliament-style democracy and monarchy. And as Khan Suleiman says about his role in this model, “I’d rather be Queen Elizabeth than Tony Blair.” The gathering itself, with its open invitation to the people to attend, its transparent nature in that the people can listen to their chiefs talk and ask direct questions, does have the feeling of a Parliament-style meeting.

Later, as we speak of current U.S. policy in Iraq and the Middle East, Ataullah Mengal asks me, with a certain belligerence, “Why are Americans so dumb?” As if to prove it, I have no satisfactory answer.

The next day, we meet with Prince Musa and his son Noroz, a gentle young man ready to step up for his tribe. Prince Musa speaks of his love of flowers and weapons, his soft spot against the killing of animals. He dresses in camouflage clothes and dark sunglasses, and as he takes a whiff of the narcissus he grows, he reminds us of Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now. He describes his support for Khan Suleiman. “We are a traditional people,” says Prince Musa. “Tradition is that the elder son become Khan. We have a saying in Baluch: If one person sits on a horse it looks nice. Two people sitting on a horse it doesn’t look nice. They will laugh at you. A horse is made for only one person.”

Prince Musa’s tongue is for peace, but the sense one gets is that he is very ready to fight for it. No one we interviewed was shy about their readiness to go to war for their rights. And they believe their inferior weaponry and manpower are more than made up for by their superior guerrilla tactics and knowledge of their own land. “You Americans are worthless on the ground,” I am told more than once. As Khan Suleiman puts it: “When you’re eyeball to eyeball the first one that blinks is gone. So you have to be strong and not blink.” Later he says, speaking both of Iraq and Afghanistan, “The U.S. gets in quicksand and turns the wheels and gets in deeper.”

The Baluch Liberation Front and the Baluch Liberation Army, along with the more official Baluch National Party are increasingly made up of not just moderate to extreme tribals or politicians, but intelligentsia, merchants, laborers, out-of-work engineers, lawyers, and the new Baluch middle class. The Baluch Student Organization actively stages demonstrations, roadblocks and rallies. Rumor has it the BLF and the BLA are paid in dollars, but others contend India or Russia finances the opposition. Wherever the backing comes from, because of the geographic position and potential resource wealth of Baluchistan, and this new bid for autonomy, many have an interest and a hand in keeping the region unstable. At the same time, it is US aid to Islamabad and US weaponry that is being used against the Baluch opposition. But perhaps that is politics in the desert, the sands ever-shifting.

As this story goes to press, there is a 13-day protest march in progress, despite the house arrests of key players and other governmental attempts to stop it. It seems that, as I’ve been told, “All Baluch want independence. Even the birds want independence.” It also seems that calls to resistance are most effective when written on the wind.

About the Author

Annie Nocenti is a journalist and screenwriter. She was in Baluchistan shooting a documentary on the Baluch with documentary partner Wendelin Johnson, author of the novel The Durand Line. Visit www.thebaluch.com for more info and to watch video clips of the interviews mentioned in this article. See also the www.mondediplo.com article by Selig S. Harrison for further reading. For more on the Durand Line visit www.afghanland.com. For up to date regional reporting visit www.balochvoice.com, www.dawn.com, irinnews.org, balochwarna.org or www.atimes.com.

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THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC HAS EXPOSED THE TURKMENS AS A DOMESTIC ENEMY AND THE REPUBLIC OF TURKMENISTAN AS AN IMAGINARY FOREIGN ENEMY DURING THE MILITARY EXERCISE

19-12-2006
http://www.azatlyk.net

In the period between 20-23 November 2006, the Basij Resistance Forces subordinate to the Iranian Republican Corps Guard (IRCG) carried out the Great Prophet-2 military exercise in the region that is located between the northern part of the town called Aq Qala where the Turkmens live and the Turkmenistan border. The exercise was carried out with the participation of 9 Ashura Brigades and 1 Al-Zahra Brigade.

The purpose of this exercise was announced as the suppression by the military forces of the domestic enemy and revolts. However, the Islamic Republic states that the Turkmenistan border is a border of friendship and brotherhood and denies the existence of any dispute. The Islamic Republic is also denying all kind of discrimination between the ethnic groups that are living in Iran. As a matter of fact, official authorities always claim that there is not any problem with the Turkmen people and that they recognize the rights of the Turkmens.

If, like the authorities of the Islamic Republic are stating, there is no opposition of the Turkmens against the Shiite government in Iran, why was it then necessary to carry out such a military exercise in Turkmensahra region and the Turkmen border? Why are the military demonstrations of the Islamic Republic staged in the north of Iran that is in Turkmensahra and the regions where the Turkmens are living as a community? Is this not a manifestation of the hostile mood and the suppressive attitude of the dictating Islamic Republic regime against the Turkmens? Is this situation not a manifestation of the fact that the Islamic Republic is just ostensibly accepting Turkmenistan as a friend and that actually it is making plans to attack its neighbor in the north?

Every year, the military forces of the Islamic Republic is carrying out military exercises in the population-concentrated regions of Turkmensahra on various pretexts employing actual equipment and these exercises are creating serious psychological disorders and material wounds among the Iranian Turkmens.

The Turkmens have always been the silent victims of the Islamic Republic that is crazy for power with its religious ideology. The Turkmens have been subject to pressure and cruelty during the 27-year Shiite mullah regime. In the early stage of the revolution, the Turkmen people have been massacred during the two wars that were staged against the unarmed and defenseless Turkmens. This has led to the fact that the Turkmens have recognized the domination of the Islamic Republic as their essential enemy.

The Islamic Republic has therefore transformed Turkmensahra region into a military region and does not allow any freedom of movement to the Turkmen people. Exercises have been carried out with a huge military force and equipment in Gonbed-e Kavoos, Aq Qala and Bandar-e Turkmen. This is a reflection of the hostile attitude and mood of the regime against the Turkmens. The government has started to display a more aggressive attitude against the region.

Security and intelligence chiefs are appointed to places where the Turkmens live which is preventing all kind of peaceful and humanitarian movement in Turkmensahra.

The Turkmens are concerned about the victims that have been killed by the oppressing Islamic Republic and are disturbed by the economic, cultural and political discriminations.

For the time being, Turkmensahra has flew into rage due to the fascist and inhuman conduct of the Islamic Republic regime and it is just a matter of time for these people to explode and revolt. This generates fear within the regime.

Due to the concerns of the Islamic Republic regime that the Turkmens might revolt, terror brigades have been set up three years ago in the Golestan region in order to oppress any movement of freedom. These terror brigades that are set up by the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Corps is conducting its activities directly under the control of Ali Khamanei, the religious leader of the Islamic Republic.

These terror brigades that are called Esteshadiun have received the necessary training to spread terror and fear in Turkmensahra and they are prepared to counteract the movements of the Turkmens against the regime.

In the military exercises of the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards training is given to counteract the revolts of the Turkmen people and to attack foreign forces. In the Great Prophet-2 exercise that has been carried out in the region between the north of Aq Qala and the Iranian-Turkmenistan border, the Turkmens were announced as the domestic enemy and the imaginary foreign enemy was announced as the Republic of Turkmenistan. The military forces and the deployed militia were trained in this exercise to kill the domestic and foreign enemies of the Islamic Republic.

This exercise was carried out in spite of the fact that the Republic of Turkmenistan did not show any reaction and that the Turkmenistan President has repeatedly named Iran as a friend of Turkmenistan.

Moreover, the Republic of Turkmenistan has never carried out a military exercise close to the Iranian border. So, why have the military forces of the Islamic Republic chosen Turkmenistan as an enemy in its exercises. Could it be that the Islamic Republic is planning attacks against the Republic of Turkmenistan?

A couple of months ago the Islamic Republic regime had arrested 6 Iranian citizens for being Turkmenistan spies and now it has chosen the Republic of Turkmenistan as the imaginary foreign enemy. This cannot be an indication of good intention. This situation indicates that in a certain period of time the Islamic Republic is going to attack Turkmenistan.

In addition, these exercises are carried out to threaten the Iranian Turkmens. The Turkmen people are fiercely reacting against these exercises, because these exercises are disturbing the psychological condition of the Turkmen people, they are spoiling the ecologic balance of the region and they are causing the death of many young people. The most recent example of this is the killing/wounding of 6 people in the Chapar Ghoyma village close to Gonbad-e Kavoos. The villagers of Chapar Ghoyma, Aghri Boghaz and Qara Maher oppose against the military exercise of the Revolutionary Guards in the north of Gonbad-e Kavoos. They fiercely reacted against the conduct of the Islamic Republic regime. They ask: “Where on the world has it been seen that a heavy military exercise involving artillery, tanks and military equipment has been carried out 500 meters far from a village?” and say: “What have we done wrong, why do we have to see that the bodies of our beloved are broken into pieces?”.

Less than two months have passed over the military exercise of the Revolutionary Guards and the Islamic Republic Army in the Chapar Ghoyma village and 3 young people have died in the operations; however, this time another military maneuver was carried out in the north of Aq Qala.

Is it ever possible that this conduct of the Islamic Republic can lead to any other result than the wrath of the Turkmen people? We all know that this people has lived for many years under a huge pressure of the dictating Islamic Republic. Any objection of this people has been heavily punished.

This exercise has been carried out at the border of the Turkistan Republic and is it not a warning of a possible attack of the Islamic Republic against the Republic of Turkmenistan? Is it not contradicting the rhetoric of friendship with foreign countries pronounced in the foreign press by the authorities of the Islamic Republic?

These unseemly plans of the Islamic Republic against the Turkmen people are extremely dangerous and any act of this regime against the Turkmen people should be avoided.

The Turkmens have proven that they are against violence. But if the regime wants to massacre them, they have no other choice than to protect their lives, properties and territories. The government of the Islamic Republic shall be responsible for this. This is such a government that it can massacre everyone opposing the ideology of the regime on the pretext of religion. It has brainwashed the people to adopt the views of the regime and has put forth the theory of toughness and terrorism.

The sly plans of the Islamic Republic to massacre the Turkmens are extremely serious and these dangerous plans of the regime should be prevented.

سازمان آزادیبخش ترکمن صحرا – تورکمن صحرا آزادلیق قوراماسی

TURKMENSAHRA AZADLYK GURAMASY

TURKMENSAHRA LIBERATION ORGANIZATION
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Mon. 18 Dec 2006
The Washington Times

By Sharon Behn

Iran has effectively created a Shi'ite "state within a state" in neighboring Iraq, defying both Iraqi Sunnis and neighboring Sunni nations, according to a Saudi security report.
Iranian military forces are providing Shi'ite militias with weapons and training, Iranian charities are pouring funds into schools and hospitals, and Tehran is actively supporting pro-Iranian Iraqi politicians, the report said.

"Where the Americans have failed, the Iranians have stepped in," said the report by the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, a Riyadh-based consultancy commissioned by the Saudi government to provide security and intelligence assessments.
The report, submitted to the Saudi government in March, has not been publicly distributed.
Citing interviews with intelligence and military officials in Iraq and surrounding region, the report states that the Sunni insurgency numbers about 77,000, while the Shi'ite militia forces total about 35,000.

According to the report, Iran also is infiltrating Iraq through its al Quds forces -- the special command division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) -- which specialize in intelligence operations in unconventional warfare.
RAND Corp. senior defense analyst Ed O'Connell said the Iranian intelligence was trying to counter Saddam Hussein's former formidable spy network, Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS), or the Mukhabarat. Under Saddam's regime, he said, roughly one of every six Iraqi adults was a paid or unpaid informant -- a network that did not disappear with the arrival of the U.S.-led coalition.
"The real story in Iraq is this below-the-surface 'unconventional war' between the old IIS, which could become a more overt Saudi proxy -- and the al Quds special directorate intelligence-counterintelligence," Mr. O'Connell said.

The Saudi security report was directed by Nawaf Obaid -- who recently was fired for writing an article in The Washington Post warning that Saudi Arabia would not stand idly by and allow Iraq's Shi'ites to destroy its Sunni population.
Washington diplomats and analysts say Mr. Obaid's dismissal was more window-dressing than a real punitive action.
The report states that the Iranian levers of influence in Iraq include a broad network of informants, military and logistical support of armed groups, and social welfare campaigns.
It adds that Tehran has "sought to influence Iraq's political process by giving support to new various parties, in particular, to the SCIRI," or Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the leading Shi'ite party.
Analysts say some Saudi citizens are raising funds for Sunni insurgents.
"I have heard them say it is not hard to line up a couple hundred thousand dollars and send it to the insurgents across the border," said Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations.
Despite claims by SCIRI leader that the party's private militia, the Iran-backed Badr Organization, formerly known as the Badr Brigade, has surrendered its weapons, gun-toting Badr members are still visible on the streets of Baghdad.

The Saudi study says the Badr Organization is still about 25,000-strong, and the party has roughly 3 million supporters. Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, is thought to number just under 10,000, while his party has the support of about 1.5 million Shi'ites.
"Each of these groups is beholden in some way to Iran and has ties to its intelligence and security services," the report says.
It adds: "Recent intelligence indicates that IRGC officers are currently operating in Iraq certain Shi'ite militias and actual army and police units."
U.S. officials have acknowledged that Shi'ite militias have infiltrated the police, but stopped short of saying that there is direct Iranian involvement in the security forces.
Mrs. Coleman cautions that the report, while not necessarily inaccurate, is not impartial.
"It is alarmist about the Iranians, and Mr. Obaid comes with a bias. Not that it is wrong, but it is not unbiased," she said.

The Saudi study was the result of five months of cooperation with Iraq and neighboring countries and dozens of interviews with current military and intelligence officials in the region, Mr. Obaid wrote in the preface to the 40-page report.
"Ordinary police and military officers now have a stronger allegiance to the Badr Organization or the Mahdi Army than to their own units," the report says, adding that the Badr Organization is the "key vehicle Iran is using to achieve its military, security and intelligence aims."
The study also provides details on the Sunni insurgency. It cites Iraqi tribal leaders as saying that the insurgency is run mainly by former commanders and high-level military officers of the Ba'athist regime. Only a smaller group is religiously inspired and includes foreign fighters.
Of the 77,000 active members of the insurgency, the "jihadis" number about 17,000, of which some 5,000 are from North Africa, Sudan, Yemen, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The remaining 60,000 are members of the former military or Saddam's paramilitary Fedayeen forces. The officer corps of the insurgency has "command and control facilities in Syria as well as bases in strategic locations, where Sunnis constitute the majority of the urban population."
Given the centuries-old tribal, familial and religious ties between Iraq's Sunnis and Saudi Arabia, the assessment concludes that "Saudi Arabia has a special responsibility to ensure the continued welfare and security of Sunnis in Iraq."

Its recommendations to the Saudi government included a comprehensive strategy that would include overt and covert components to deal with the worst-case scenario of full-blown civil war.
It also calls on the government to communicate the assessment to the United States; make it clear to Iran that if its covert activities did not stop the Saudi leadership would counter them; and extend an invitation to the highest Iraqi Shi'ite leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to reassure the Shi'ite community.
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QUETTA: Sardar Attaullah Mengal, veteran nationalist leader and former chief minister of Balochistan, on Thursday predicted that the insurgency in Balochistan could soon turn into a US and India-sponsored war for an independent Balochistan.

Mengal said the insurgency in Balochistan had greatly intensified and the government should “give up its claim on Balochistan”. “Islamabad has to declare the independence of Balochistan without delay. It is very likely that the US and India will move forward in the near future to give the present battle the shape of a full-fledged war for Balochistan’s independence,” he told reporters at his residence in Khuzdar district. He claimed that the government was refusing to negotiate with Baloch leaders to end the insurgency. He said recent conferences about the Balochistan issue held at the international level were an embarrassment to Islamabad.

“Even the UK now regrets imposing a ban on the BLA [Balochistan Liberation Army]. It is a welcome move from the Baloch people to plan to move the ICJ [International Court of Justice]. We are constantly heading in the right direction,” the veteran Baloch leader added. Mengal said a conflict between China and the United States over Gwadar Port was imminent. “China is planning to move its Navy to Gwadar. This will go totally against the interests of the US, so a conflict is inevitable between the major powers,” he said.

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Every human being as a citizen of a country has an equal right of participation in political process. The person may be a Shia, a Sunni, a Christian, a Jew or the follower of any other religion. As the Declaration of Human Rights has stated all human beings are equal and must be treated equally and must have equal opportunities in their countries. If we accept this article of the Declaration of Human Rights we must also accept that the Shias must have equal rights with the Sunnis wherever they live and the Sunnis must have equal rights with the Shias wherever they live. If we consider equality of rights as the most important value that governs the relationships between different people we campaign for something which is just, acceptable and supportable.

If we campaign for the supremacy of one religion, we act in contrast of the value of equal rights and therefore, our campaign is not just, is not acceptable and must not be supported. It is true that many Shias in the Islamic world have no equal rights in many areas of life but it is also true that the Sunnis of Iran have less rights than any Shia in any Islamic country. Iran has taken the role of championing the rights of the Shia people. It is fighting relentlessly in all countries to secure their rights but Iran which is dominated by the Shias, have deliberately denied the most basic rights of the Sunnis in the last 28 years.

Discriminations against the Sunnis

Discrimination against the Sunnis covers every part of life from education, to politics, business, religion and business. These are some examples:

1. Educational discrimination against the Sunnis of Iran

There are 44,000 students in Iranian Baluchistan universities. Even 4, 000 of them are not Sunni Baluch. The Iranian government deliberately does not allow the Sunni Baluch of Iran to enter universities freely. This is while, according to one United Nations research, the Baluch children are the most talented children in Iran. This policy is pursued in all other Sunni dominated areas. Only in one county of Baluchistan, there are 500 schools which are built with cardboards and tents.

2. Political discrimination against the Sunnis of Iran

Since the beginning of the revolution, the Shia regime of Iran has not allowed even one Sunni to become prime minister, president, minister, an army general, and an ambassador. There is not even one single Sunni in Iranian Foreign Ministry. There is not even one Sunni chief executive in the whole country. All the officials in the Sunnis provinces and cities are the Shias who have been appointed by the Shia government.

3. Religious discrimination against the Sunnis of Iran

The Iranian media and leaders cite every day dozens of insulting remarks about the principles of Sunni religion. They have published hundreds of books which discredit the most important values of Islam. Even the Iranian government has built recently a huge temple to promote Abu Lo Lo, the killer of Omar, the second Caliph, as a great Islamic figure. The regime celebrates every year the murder of Omar by staging some ceremonies in which his effigy is burnt in public.
There are about one million Sunnis in Tehran, the capital of Iran, but the Iranian authorities do not allow them to build even one mosque. They are not allowed to perform their prayers in other Shia mosques. When they try to perform Friday prayers in parks, the security forces attacked them.

4. Economic discrimination against the Sunnis of Iran

99% of the Iranian businesses are under the control of the Shia population of Iran while 30% of Iranian population is Sunni. The government creates every barrier for the Sunnis to stop them from starting or developing their businesses. The major import and export licences are allocated to the Shia business. Even in the main cities of Sunnis, all the facilities of business are given to the Shias to deliberately impoverish the Sunni population of Iran. 70% to 80% of Sunnis are unemployed.

Shia inclusions in political and economics sources in Sunni dominated countries

While Iran is applying all kinds of discriminations against the Sunnis, the Sunni governments are quite generous towards their Shia population. It is a paradox that a regime that is fighting for the rights of the Shias in different countries discriminates more than any other country against the Sunnis in Iran. The Sunni governments are usually inclined to include the Shias in political and economic powers. These are some examples:

1. Pakistan

Everybody knows Bhtto family in Pakistan. They are a Shia family but they have governed Pakistan three times. There have been other Shia presidents and prime ministers in Pakistan. The Shias in Pakistan enjoy complete equality in a Sunni dominated country. There have been many Shia ministers in all governments of Pakistan from the beginning of Pakistan up to now. There are Shia army generals, there are Shia ambassadors and diplomats and there are big Shia businessmen. They have their own mosques. There are Shias in different levels of civil service too.

2. Afghanistan

There are several Shia ministers in Afghan government. There have been always Shia ministers in various Afghan regimes. There are Shia governors in Afghanistan. There are Shia army generals in Afghanistan. There are very rich Shia businessmen in Afghanistan too.

3. Kuwait

There are two Shia ministers in Kuwait. There are many Shia generals in Kuwait army. There are many Shia diplomats in the Foreign Ministry. There are many Shia businessmen in Kuwait. They have their mosques and they are free to perform their prayers.

4. The state of Qatar

There are dozens of Shia ministers, army generals, ambassadors, businessmen and high officials in Qatar and other Arab countries.

While we see that there are so many Shia high officials in Islamic and Arab world, why there is not even one single high official from the Sunnis in Iran? Why there is so much discrimination against the Sunnis in a regime that claims to embody Islamic justice, Islamic equality and brotherhood? And why there is so much silence about the exclusions of Sunnis from all sources of power in Iran? If the Shia government of Iran is fighting for the rights of Shias everywhere, why the Sunni governments of the world are not fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran?

Practically the Shias have had secured their supremacy in Iran at the cost of 30% of its Sunni population. Now they are seeking supremacy in other countries. For them the idea of equal rights is not a value of considerable importance when it comes to getting their own supremacy but when they do not have equal rights in other countries, they make a great issue of it.

What is disturbing everybody is not the quest of the Shias for their equal rights but their desire for supremacy. That has generated considerable resistance everywhere. Iran as the main Shia country must accept the value of equal rights for all its citizens inside Iran and then make its case for the equality of rights of the Shias in other countries. Nobody believes in Iranian campaign for the equal rights of the Shias in the Islamic countries if the Iranian regime does not believe in the equal rights of Sunnis in Iran. The Iranian regime must make itself first a believable example and must establish a model system which is a model of equality.

Iran has challenged other Islamic countries that they were not following the Islamic principles of brotherhood, equality and justice. If the government believes in these principles it must implement them fully and completely in Iran first. Once Iran is the embodiment of equality and justice, many other people and governments would follow it voluntarily. The Iranian regime can bring more credibility to its own system and to its own religion if it carries out what it preaches.

Nobody is ready to accept the supremacy of the Shias. It is a delusion that may initially grab some points but finally as the quest for supremacy is conducted recklessly, as it is done by the present regime of Iran, it will backfire and would result in the suppression of Shias in different countries.

30% of Iranian population is Sunni. Eight of its provinces are dominated by the Sunnis. Yet there has not been even single minister, army general, ambassador or a top official in the last 28 years in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The situation is clear. There is no the idea of equal rights in the minds of the Shia population of Iran and specifically the rulers of Iran. The other amazing thing is the complete silence of the ordinary Shia people over the suppression of the Sunnis. Even more amazing is the complete silence of the Iranian politicians, intellectuals, journalists and political activists over the total exclusion of Sunnis from all sources of power. The systematic discrimination that has been carried out against the Sunnis of Iran has not been criticised by any Iranian Shia politician. It seems that there is a total consensus among all Shia groups of Iran about the exclusion of Sunnis from all sources and centres of political and economic powers while all of them collectively protest strongly against the discrimination carried out against the Shias in Sunni dominated countries.

The Shia groups of different political tendencies have differences but these differences are all about who has the power and who must have it. All governments of Iran have taken over the power with great promises of equality of rights and equality of opportunity but as soon as they got established, they adapted the same old policies of oppression and suppression of different classes and groups and specifically the Sunnis.

Discrimination by Iranian media and journalists against the Sunnis

The Iranian media of the Shia opposition groups follow the same policy of discrimination against Sunnis. They publish everyday hundreds of articles and news on every aspect of life in Iran but they refuse to publish the news of hanging of the Sunnis of Baluchistan by Iranian regime. If a Shia journalist gets arrested, they follow every movement of his family and report every thing about him to maintain his presence in the media. If ten Sunnis get killed in Baluchistan, the opposition media of Iran refuse to publish the news that even have been published by the Iranian regime. The Iranian media publish hundreds of articles about the Shia political prisoners in other countries and refuse to publish any article on the political prisoners of Sunni community of Iran.

Even those security forces of Iran who have defected to the West reveal the secrets of serial killings of the Shia intellectuals and journalists but they refuse to disclose the serial killings of the Sunni leaders and intellectuals. All the Shia politicians and journalists of Iran seem to agree with the present government in its policies of genocide and complete exclusion of the Sunnis.

The same media that applied discrimination against the Sunnis publish widely any news about the persecution of the Shias in the Sunni countries. They report widely the news of Hezbollah and the Shia demonstration in Bahrain. They portray the Hezbollah as the hero of the Arab world and the Shias of Bahrain as the oppressed people who have been persecuted by Bahrain authorities but they refuse to publish the news of executions and persecutions of the Sunnis in Iran.

These are not only the Shias of Iran who have dominated other religions; the Shias of Iraq are perusing the same path. If the Shias in Iraq are not seeking supremacy why did they dissolve the Iraqi army, civil service and Iraqi secret services? If those establishments were allowed to function, today the situation would have been much better. Cleansing the Sunnis from the sensitive cities and areas in Iraq is seeking Shias supremacy. The same could be true about Lebanon. If the Hezbollah is not looking for supremacy why it is seeking the toppling of an elected government which has been elected democratically and freely according to the Lebanese constitution?

It is right for the Hezbollah to have its appropriate share in Lebanese government but it is also the right for the Sunnis in Iran to fight for their fair share of power. The Sunnis of Iraq have the same rights that the Shias have in Iran and Lebanon.

As evidence demonstrates it seems that wherever the Shias are in power the Sunnis are completely excluded. Is there a deep-rooted discriminatory belief in Shia mind?

Reza Hossein Borr is a leadership consultant and the creator of 150 CDs.
He is also the author of Manual Success, Manual of Coaching and Mentoring, Motivational Stories that Can Change Your Life, and a New Vision for the Islamic World. He can be contacted by email: balochfront@aol.com

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Ahmadinejad was elected to restore the credibility of the disgraced Iranian clerics and he has succeeded in doing so. The recent elections proved that.

An old Baluch master told his students that strategy is about saying something, doing something else, meaning something else to confuse and disorientate your opponent. This master advised his students that never allow your opponent to understand your true intentions. To completely conceal your true intentions you need to create at least four layers of disguise at beliefs level, interests level, needs level and news level. He added that you will be only defeated when your opponent clearly understands what you think, what you do, what you say, and what you intend. For the right decision always comes from the clarity of understanding of an issue, therefore, never allow clarity of understanding of your intentions to reach the opponents. This strategy has worked for ages and it is working now for the Iranian regime.

The Iranian regime concealed its main mission under the tree layers of internal beliefs, regional needs and international interests.

The concealed intention of bringing Ahmadinejad to power was to restore the lost credibility of the disgraced clerics. The Iranian clerics lost their complete popularity after 26 years of mismanaging the country and misleading the people. They impoverished the country, sponsored terrorism and brought disappointment. The Iranian clerics were completely hated by the Iranian people by the time Ahmadinejad became the president. They were internationally recognised as terrorists and criminals who had supported terrorist activities. The conviction of the supreme leader and Rafsanjani in Mikonos case (the assignation of KURDISH Leaders in Germany), Argentinean case (Bomb blast in the Jewish Centre) and the recent judgments of an American court regarding Khobar Towers of Saudi Arabia clearly prove their criminal background. These cases explicitly blamed the Iranian leaders who were clerics at the times of these terrorist activities.

The clerics who faced internal and international isolation had to do something to restore their credibility. Helping Ahmadinejad to win the fraudulent election was to bring somebody on the scene of Iran who was known in Iran as a butcher and ideologically an extremist. He had strong views that he expressed with a rude language. He had the stupidity to say the kind of things that no politician had said in the history of Iran before. He was encouraged to say what he said in order to scare the Iranians inside and the international community outside. Nobody expected a person of Ahmadinejad's nature to become the president of Iran if it was not for saving the old rulers.

The Western culture divides people in bad guys and good guys. The Iranian Ayatollahs were bad guys before Ahmadinejad. Somebody should have appeared in Iran to make the Ayatollahs appear good guys. That was Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad never knew why he was chosen as the president. When he was elected he expressed his views. That made him appear the bad guy while in fact he is better than many Ayatollahs. He was made so bad that the previous clerics who were convicted criminals looked good.

In the recent elections Ahmadinejad's supporters did not win. They were not meant to win. They were meant to scare. The people were so much scared of them that they voted for the less scary ones. How elections were conducted, how the votes were cast and counted indicated a lot of fraud and negotiations behind the scenes to decide who must win and who must lose. Obviously the supreme leader and few other clerics who had devised the strategy of restoring their capabilities through demonising Ahmadinejad wanted to test the pulse of Iranian people and international community. The results of elections were not of any significant importance. The local councils in Iran are powerless institutions which have no any authority to make major decisions. The Council of the Experts which is responsible for appointing a leader and supervising his work does not have anything to do with managing and leading the country. These elections therefore did not have any significance. But they did serve a purpose. They demonstrated that the strategy of restoring the credibility of the disgraced clerics had been effective.

These elections showed that Ahmadinejad has been so bad that international community expressed happiness about the elections of the previous clerics like Rafsanjani. The Iranian people also showed some satisfaction. Ahmadinejad has been used quite effectively to restore some credibility to some clerics. He had to do the kind of things that made the Iranian people and international community aspire for the old days of Khatami and Rafsanjani although ALL serial killings in Iran and all terrorist activities of the Iranian regime have happened under these two clerics. In fact since Ahmadinejad has come to power, less terrorist activities have happened. Ahmadinejad who is very remote from wisdom and knowledge said the kind of things that scared everybody but in fact he did not do anything worse than the clerics had done before. In fact no major terrorist activity has happened during Ahmadinejad's presidency but his talks were so rude and rough that made Rafsanjani and Khatami look like good guys.

If it was not for Ahmadinejad, Khatami and Rafsanjani would never look good.

As the recent elections generated some satisfaction internally and internationally, Ahmadinejad will be persuaded even more to escalate war of words against the world until he demonises himself so much that everybody would be happy for Rafsanjani or Khatami or somebody like them to be elected in the next presidential elections. His rude talks will expand until he makes the old disgraced clerics quite electable in the coming elections of Parliament and presidency. The Iranian people as well as the international community will be pleased to see Ahmadinejad disappear and the old guard return with a new spirit and revitalised character.

The regime would be safe. The clerics will be safe. Amadinejad will get another big job. The Iranian people will continue to suffer. The international community will be happy for few months to be fooled again to hear nice talks while the regime will continue the policy of harbouring terrorism and exporting revolution in the Middle East.

It seems that international community has no in-depth understanding of the Iranian regime. Yet just another master piece of propaganda. The mind of Iranian clerics is more complicated than the capability of ordinary political figures to comprehend.

One of the Iranian leaders has recently said the West never understood the Iranian people or the Iranian regime. He was right. When I hear the Western experts talk about Iran I conclude that they would never understand the complexity of strategies the Iranian regime has used to confuse them for over 28 years. Even the most well-known thinkers of the West have very superficial understanding of the Iranian situation. When the Iranian regime applies strategies that the West does not understand, formulating credible policies for encountering Iran would be very difficult. For 28 years the West thought they did understand the Iranian mind and therefore, took different measures to either change the Iranian regime or contain it. They failed in both. None of their policies worked. The Iranian regime moved from strength to strength and used all the resources of the Western world to make itself No 1 power in the Middle East.

The West not only failed to limit the power of the Iranian government but whatever they did was used by the Iranian government to make itself stronger and more powerful in the Middle East. From not having any influence in any part of the Middle East, the Iranian regime has become the most powerful government in the region. Whatever the West did was somehow in the favour of Iranian regime. Whether the Western countries formulated and implemented these policies deliberately to turn Iran into the major Middle East power or they were confused so much that their policies unwittingly helped the Iranian regime to become the most important power in the region.

The regime said something, did something else and meant something different. It created the right conditions for the governments of the region and the international community to believe its lies as truth. It will be a long time before confusion ends and clarity of thoughts emerges.

Reza Hossein Borr is a leadership consultant and the creator of 150 CDs.
He is also the author of Manual Success, Manual of Coaching and Mentoring, Motivational Stories that Can Change Your Life, and a New Vision for the Islamic World. He can be contacted by email: balochfront@aol.com

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By Hugh Fitzgerald
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm?blog_id=4298
Sunday, 24 December 2006

The propaganda campaign by Iran against the secularists (made secular, of course, by the Russians, and by all those Azeris who studied in Moscow and accepted, quite rightly, not only the gift of Russian but the gift of the modern, rational world) needs to be reversed. It is Azerbaijan's secularists who must whip up sentiment against the cruel Islamic Republic of Iran, for suppressing the Azeris under their rule, and pointing out that those Azeris deserve to be reunited, and the lands under them as well, with Azerbaijan. That appeal to an Azeri identity, if done right, can be offered up as an alternative, possibly superior, to that of the Muslim identity that the Iranians stress.

Why should this have a chance of success?

Two reasons. One, the Islamic Republic of Iran is 50% Persian, and contains four identifiable minorities: Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis. There has long been trouble for successive Iranian governments with the Kurds, and were an independent Kurdistan were to come into existence, there would be even more, and the Americans have the ability not only to protect Kurdistan, but to supply it with weaponry some of which might find its way to Kurds in Iran.

In Khuzistan, Arabs have intermittently agitated and two were sentenced to die just the other day. The Islamic Republic of Iran will have to be fiercest in crushing any revolt there, for most of its oil comes from that area, and without that, Iran is no longer a threat, or even a middle-sized power, but is reduced to what it was before the oil came along. And while speculation goes on about the Shi'a Arabs of Iraq turning to Iran, the effect of the ethnic Arabs within Iran openly attempting to leave Iran, which might be seen as the remnant of the Persian Empire, and what's more, taking with them the source of great wealth, it is understandable that a debilitated Iranian army (that can also suffer attacks from the sky by all kinds of outsiders, including Sunni Arabs determined to crush Iran in the easiest way possible -- ending its possession of oil wealth) would have to concentrate most of its efforts in Khuzistan.

One assumes, however, that the Arabs would refrain in this case of re-naming themselves, or being renamed by other Arabs, as the "Khuzistanian people," lest that other re-named group of Arabs be seen, by the West, for what they are.

Then there are the Baluchis, which for most Westerners is a name that confuses, for two reasons: one, it evokes an oriental rug gallery ("over here are the Baluchis") and two, there is a Baluchistan in Pakistan, and few Westerners are sure about whether the Baluchis in Iran are the same, or different, from the Baluchis in Pakistan, and so the usual voluble commentators tend to shut up at this point. They really needn’t. The Baluchis are in southeastern Iran, and they are the same Baluchis as live, equally mistreated and in equal poverty, in Pakistan (which is where the admirable and colorful Baluchi tribal leader was recently murdered by the Pakistanis), with some Baluchis also in Afghanistan. They are not only Sunnis in Shi’a-run Iran, but also are, and have been, the poorest people in Iran, but were for a long time left largely alone. But under the Shah, and even his father, an attempt was made to centralize authority and, while the Shah used the carrot of some improvements in living standards, the Islamic Republic has simply used force to suppress any Baluchi unrest, and unrest there has been, underreported or not reported at all, by a Western press that doesn’t know how to cover so many things, and chooses what is important (ten thousand articles on the “Palestinians” and their “legitimate rights” for every one article devoted to the Baluchis, the Azeris, the Kurds, and even the Arabs of Iran) and what it deems unimportant.

There’s a lot that could be done by the Azeris to turn the tables on the Iranians. They could be conducting a campaign against the troglodytes of Iran, they could be running articles on the medievalness of Iran, and on the mistreatment of Azeris by Iranians, and they could not only let those two journalists out of jail, but accept and repeat their argument, which happens to be true, that links Muslim backwardness, Muslim failures in political and economic and social development, to Islam itself.

And whether or not the secularists in Azerbaijan do this sufficiently (or for that matter if the beneficiaries of Kemalism in Turkey do this sufficiently to beat back Erdogan and to make sure that the Islamic parties are blamed for Turkey’s being kept out of the E.U.) may depend on the intelligence of the American government in figuring out that it has to weaken, to soften up Iran by encouraging all of these minority peoples within that state, in order that it will be easier to deal with its nuclear project.

Why would it be easier to deal with – i.e., destroy or damage it sufficiently to put it out of commission for a long time – that nuclear project, if local revolts were taking place? For many reasons. First, there may even be people of Azeri, or possibly (more unlikely) Kurdish descent, who have some useful knowledge about that project, or the placement of the facilities, and who might now have better reason to weaken the central authority if they see a chance for their own minority to gain its independence. Second, any large-scale uprisings, especially if they were to take place simultaneously, from several different peoples, all over Iran, would preoccupy the regime and force it to divert resources and attention. And in that diversion, it is possible that the regime will have to stop putting so much effort into its nuclear project or, alternatively, that it will be easier for the West to attack that project in an atmosphere of local mayhem and revolt.

Does the Pentagon have an office devoted to helping increase the sense of identity, and the sense of resentment, of Azeris, Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs in Iran? If it doesn’t, that is one more telling failure. If it does, I will be glad to stand in the corner, dunce cap on my head, happily corrected.

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LETTER FROM BALUCHISTAN A Call to Resistance: The Khan of Kalat Gathers the Tribes

LETTER FROM BALUCHISTAN
A Call to Resistance: The Khan of Kalat Gathers the Tribes