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Iran's ethnic minorities stew
WORLD BRIEFINGS
July 19 2006,
The Washington Times
EDITOR'S NOTE: The writer's name is
withheld because his visit to the northeastern region of Iran was not
authorized by the Tehran government.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
ORUMIEH, Iran -- At Orumieh's graveyard, serried ranks of graves
containing the bodies of those killed during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war
cover an entire hillside over- looking the town.
In the section for new arrivals, the family of a Revolutionary Guard
soldier killed three days earlier during fighting with Kurdish smugglers
coming from Iraq sob over his freshly dug grave.
But there is no immediate evidence of the bodies of those reportedly
killed during recent anti-regime rioting in this city famed for the
adjoining medicinal mineral lake.
"I want us to become joined with Azerbaijan even though I feel that
Iranian-Azeri culture is superior to Azerbaijani one," said Ali, a taxi
driver taking a rest in the graveyard. "This regime does not respect us."
Ali, like most other locals interviewed for this article, declined to
reveal his full name.
More than a month after widespread riots rocked this mixed Kurdish-Azeri
city, Iran's ethnic Azeri and Kurdish minorities remain angry at perceived
government neglect with some demanding secession from Iran.
Meanwhile, Tehran had flooded the already tense town — a major drug- and
arms-smuggling center — with members of the security services and the
Revolutionary Guard ahead of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first
visit there last week.
Offensive cartoon
The heightened tensions
that have been racking the adjacent Kurdish-majority Kordestan province
for the past two years spilled over into usually peaceful Eastern
Azerbaijan province in May after a government-controlled newspaper printed
an offensive cartoon portraying Iran's large ethnic Azeri minority as a
cockroach.
Several days of
anti-government protests led to an official toll of four deaths, arson on
government buildings or affiliated entities, and hundreds of arrests.
But ethnic Azeri-Iranians interviewed in Orumieh last week put the death
toll far higher, accused the government of a cover-up, and openly stated
that they desired union with Azerbaijan, Iran's northern neighbor.
"We're sick of being the butt of jokes of the [Persians]," said Mr.
Mostafa, a driver for a private enterprise in Orumieh. "The Turk is always
the clown, the idiot, the fool in every TV serial or anecdote. Enough."
People involved in the protests — all insisting on anonymity for fear of
government reprisals — said at least 15 persons were killed. Some put the
death toll closer to 100.
The local offices of the newspaper Iran that printed the offensive cartoon
were burned, as was the Orumieh branch of Islamic Republic of Iran
Broadcasting, state-owned television. More than a month after the
protests, the building remains empty and charred.
"The secret services have traditionally been very strong here because this
area borders three sensitive countries for Iran: Turkey, Iraq and
Azerbaijan," said Farrokh, an Azeri director of a factory in Orumieh who
insisted that a reporter stay the night with him instead of going to one
of the city's hotels that are monitored by the local security services.
"They're just looking for an excuse to find a foreigner and blame him for
the recent troubles," Farrokh said.
As many as 330 persons have been arrested so far, said Najaf Aghazadeh,
the head of the judiciary in East Azerbaijan. He said among those arrested
were members of the repressed Baha'i ethnic minority group, the communist
Tudeh Party and two detainees with ties to Israel.
'Enemies' blamed
Supreme leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei blamed Iran's "enemies" — a term usually employed in
reference to the United States, Israel and Britain.
"Provoking ethnic differences is the last resort by the enemies against
the Iranian people and the Islamic Republic," he said in a meeting with
Iranian lawmakers. "There is no doubt that this plot will be defeated."
Hojatoleslam Ebrahim Raeesi, the deputy head of the judiciary, also said
that "insulting the Azeris was an unwise mercenary move to provoke
unrest."
"Today the enemies are seeking to break the unity in the country," he
said. "On one side they want to create a conflict between Arabs and
Iranians, and on the other side they resort to Shi'ite-Sunni differences."
Eager to reassure the rebellious East Azerbaijan province — one of the few
he had yet to visit — Mr. Ahmadinejad took members of his Cabinet there
last week, a marathon 19-city tour aimed at redressing the perceived
neglect it has suffered in recent years.
Stressing that his government will take measures to develop the province,
Mr. Ahmadinejad said Azerbaijan is an "endless treasure" of the Iranian
nation and that "development of Azerbaijan province is tantamount to
development of the country," the official Islamic Republic News Agency
reported.
Azeri influence
Azeris are
well-incorporated into Iran's power structure, occupying high-level
positions in central and provincial government, financial institutions and
the army. For this reason, Tehran is taking last month's riots more
seriously than ethnic trouble in the other sensitive border areas of
Khuzestan, Kordestan, Sistan and Balochestan.
Such is Tehran's concern that Ayatollah Khamenei, himself an Azeri, paid
public tribute to the role played by his ethnic group in the 1979
revolution that brought Islamic clerics to power and deposed the shah.
Iran's Azeri region was "the axis of the revolution," and trying to
provoke unrest there showed "the folly of the enemies," the ayatollah
said, according to the Iranian Labor News Agency.
Given the growing suspicion of covert U.S.-funded operations in Iran over
the past year, mostly targeting the country's ethnic Arab and Kurdish
minorities on the Iraq border, Iranian security officials have seized upon
reports that the Kurds and the Azeris formed a common front in the ethnic
riots in Eastern Azerbaijan.
Relations between the two groups traditionally have been laced with
tension. It is common for Azeri soldiers to be dispatched to restive
Kordestan province to fight Kurdish guerrillas and smugglers. Kurdish
supplies of firearms to the protesters would mark a new escalation.
Gen. Hassan Karami, commander of security forces in Iran's West Azerbaijan
province, confirmed the Kurdish-Azeri collusion when he told the Iranian
Student News Agency that "two armed members of the [Kurdistan Workers
Party, or PKK] were spotted in the crowd during the protests in the town
of Naqadeh and are being hunted."
The PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish government for the creation
of a Kurdish state, has been listed as a terrorist organization by the
United States.
As long as a decade ago, former CIA field operative Reuel Marc Gerecht,
under the pseudonym Edward Shirley, wrote in his book "Know Thine Enemy: A
Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran" that "Iranian Azerbaijan was rich
in possibilities."
"Accessible through Turkey and ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, eyed already by
nationalists in [the Azerbaijani capital] Baku, more Westward-looking than
most Iran, and economically going nowhere, Iran's richest agricultural
province was an ideal covert operations theater," Mr. Gerecht wrote.
"Those who have studied a little history know that Azerbaijan has always
been a significant center of revolutionary activity," said William O.
Beeman, an Iran specialist and professor of anthropology at Brown
University. "But Azeris are everywhere and have positions of power
throughout the government, so the idea that they would act against their
own interests is doubtful."
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