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The intelligence wing of
the US marines has launched a probe into Iran’s
ethnic minorities at a time of heightened tensions
along the border with Iraq and friction between
capitals.
Iranian activists involved in a classified research
project for the marines told the FT the Pentagon was
examining the depth and nature of grievances against
the Islamic government, and appeared to be studying
whether Iran would be prone to a violent
fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines
that are splitting Iraq.
The research effort comes at a critical moment
between Iran and the US. Last week the Bush
administration asked Congress for $75m to promote
democratic change within Iran, having already
mustered diplomatic support at the UN to counter
Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme.
At the same time, Iran has demanded that the UK
withdraw its troops from the southern Iraqi city of
Basra which lies close to its border. Iran has
repeatedly accused both the US and UK of inciting
explosions and sabotage in oil-rich frontier regions
where Arab and Kurdish minorities predominate. The
US and UK accuse Iran of meddling in Iraq and
supplying weapons to insurgents.
US intelligence experts suggested the marines’
effort could indicate early stages of contingency
plans for a ground assault on Iran. Or it could be
an attempt to evaluate the implications of the
unrest in Iranian border regions for marines
stationed in Iraq, as well as Iranian infiltration.
Other experts affiliated to the Pentagon suggest the
investigation merely underlines that diverse
intelligence wings of the US military were seeking
to justify their existence at a time of plentiful
funding.
Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Long, a marines spokesman,
confirmed that the marines had commissioned Hicks
and Associates, a defence contractor, to conduct two
research projects into Iraqi and Iranian ethnic
groups.
The purpose was “so that we and our troops would
have a better understanding of and respect for the
various aspects of culture in those countries”, he
said. He would not provide details, saying the
projects were for official use only.
Marine Corps Intelligence defines its role as
focusing “on crises and predeployment support to
expeditionary warfare”. It also provides threat and
technical intelligence assessments for the Marines.
The first study, on Iraq, was completed in late
2003, more than six months after marines spearheaded
the US invasion. About 23,000 marines are still in
Iraq. The Iran study was finished late last year.
Hicks and Associates is a wholly owned subsidiary of
Science Applications International Corp, one of the
biggest US defence contractors and deeply involved
in the prewar planning for Iraq.
The Strategic Assessment Center of Hicks and
Associates advertises one of its current projects as
the “Impact of Foreign Cultures on Military
Operations”. SAIC confirmed it completed the
confidential studies for the Marine Corps.
While most analysts would agree that Iran has a far
stronger sense of national identity than Iraq, its
ethnic mix is even more complex than its neighbour.
Different in language and divided between followers
of Sunni and Shia Islam, the ethnic minorities have
little coherence. At times tensions among themselves
are greater than with Tehran. Iran’s strongly
centralised government does not release statistics
on the ethnic groups that mainly inhabit sensitive
border regions with Iraq, Turkey, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Farsi-speaking Persians who dominate the central
government are generally believed to make up a slim
majority, followed by Azeris and Kurds in the north
and west, Arabs in the oil-rich southwest and Baluch
in the southeast.
A patchwork of Turkmen, Christian Armenians and
Assyrians, Jews and tribal nomads are among many
groups scattered across a country of some 68m
people.
Diplomats in Washington expressed shock at the
possible implications of the Marine Corps research.
The Financial Times interviewed several Iranians in
the US who were invited to help. Some refused,
seeing it as part of an effort to break up Iran.
However several exiled politicians representing
minority groups opposed to the Islamic regime did
agree to take part, although they said they wanted a
peaceful transition to a democratic, federal Iran
and were opposed to any US military action.
Mauri Esfandiari, US representative of the
Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan which ended
its armed struggle in 1997 and is based mostly in
northern Iraq, said he believed the Pentagon was
acting on its long-standing distrust of CIA and
State Department analysis. He thought the Pentagon
was looking to counter the prevailing administration
view that US support for Iran’s minorities would
create a disastrous backlash.
“They want to study and see if the State
Department’s chaos theory is a valid hypothesis,” he
told the FT. The US could not look to the Kurds to
support an invasion as they did in Iraq, he said.
“Iran will become democratic only if it is built by
the Iranians. The democracy movement is strong
enough to find its way without military struggle,”
he said.
Karim Abdian, head of the Ahvaz Human Rights
Organisation which campaigns on behalf of Iranian
Arabs in the south-west, said his meeting with SAIC
was video-taped. He was told the report would be
made public.
Questions put to him were wide-ranging -- on the
ethnic breakdown of Khuzestan province on the Iraq
border, populations in cities, the level of
discontent, the percentage of Arabs working in the
oil industry, how they were represented in the
central government, and their relations and kinship
with Iraqi Arabs next door.
Mr Abdian said he did not know the motives behind
the survey, whether the Marines were seeking a
better understanding of the region that directly
affects them, or were forming a contingency plan in
case they had to “enter” Iran. They were learning
from the lessons of Iraq where they had not
understood the ethnic dynamics, he suggested.
Mr Abdian, who says his organisation has no
government funding, accused Iran of using the threat
of a US invasion as a pretext to suppress ethnic
grievances rather than address what he called the
root causes of land confiscation and discrimination.
Exiled Iranians from various ethnic groups held a
“Congress” of nationalities in London a year ago.
They issued a “manifesto” for a federal, democratic
Iran with separation of mosque and state. Seven
organizations included Baluch, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs
and Turkmen.
Iran has recently experienced some of the worst
unrest and violence among its Kurdish and Arab
populations in recent years.
Although the root causes of the unrest -- economic
and cultural grievances -- are long standing,
analysts in the US believe that events in Iraq –
where the new constitution has embraced the concept
of federalism and a Kurd has become president -- are
serving as a catalyst.
Last month two bombs exploded in Ahvaz, the capital
of Khuzestan province close to Iraq. Eight people
were killed on the same day that President Mahmoud
Ahmadi-Nejad had been due to visit. Six people were
killed in bombings last October. Oil installations
have been attacked. Iran has repeatedly accused the
UK and US of being behind the violence, using
separatist Arab groups in southern Iraq to foment
instability inside Iran.
“We are very suspicious of British forces’
involvement in terrorist activities,” Mr
Ahmadi-Nejad was quoted as saying last October. He
accused British troops in Iraq of “hiring terrorists
for sabotage”.
London and Washington have strongly denied Iran’s
allegations.
Tehran cannot afford to dismiss minority grievances
out of hand and seeks to blame the violence on
outside forces, says Bill Samii, an Iran analyst
with Radio Free Europe.
“The regime can crush dissent when it is localised
and relatively small,” he commented.”But if sporadic
incidents of ethnic unrest occurred across the
country simultaneously, or if such troubles
coincided with labour troubles and student
demonstrations then the regime would have its hands
full.” Given these developments, the question of
Iran’s minorities has aroused interest across
Washington.
State Department officials met representatives of
the London “Congress” in the first such talks
between the Bush administration and a coalition
claiming to represent Iran’s minorities,
participants told the FT.
Last October, the conservative American Enterprise
Institute (AEI) held a conference chaired by Michael
Ledeen, a proponent of regime change in Iran. It
triggered uproar among exiled opposition groups,
especially Persian nationalists. Mr Ledeen called
the conference “Another case for Federalism?” and
denied that AEI was seeking to foment separatism.
Reuel Gerecht, also with AEI and a former CIA
specialist on the Middle East, says the State
Department under Condoleezza Rice, and not the
Pentagon, is running Iran policy. He said State was
“several steps removed” from discussing covert
action and “nowhere near the point” of trying to use
separatist tendencies among minorities as traction
against the Tehran regime. No one knew whether that
would work, he added.
However, he complimented the Pentagon for “looking
down the road”.
A former intelligence officer said the Marines’
probe reflected the “contingency planning” mindset
of the US military. Nonetheless, he said, it was
important to note that the ultimate purpose of the
intelligence wing was “to support effective ground
military operations by the Marine Corps”.
Financial Times
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