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Anxious to cultivate his
populist image, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
has promised to hold the monthly sessions of his
cabinet in provincial capitals rather than Tehran.
Now it seems as if for reasons of security, he may
not be able to take his roadshow to all of Iran's 30
provinces. A session scheduled to take place in the
province of Kurdistan last month had to be
rescheduled at the last minute, supposedly because
the relevant documents were not ready in time.
And last week the president was forced to cancel
another session scheduled to take place in Ahvaz,
capital of the Khuzistan province, ostensibly due to
bad weather. In both cases, however, factors other
than bureaucratic delay and bad weather may have
been at work.
The province of Kurdistan has been a scene of
sporadic anti-government demonstrations since last
June.
Ahvaz, for its part, has witnessed a series of bomb
attacks and terrorist operations during the past
four months with several clandestine organisations
calling on the province's ethnic Arabs to revolt
against Ahmadinejad's "repressive policies".
It is not yet clear whether or not the current
unrest in Kurdistan and Khuzistan might have a major
ethnic ingredient.
Iranian Kurds number around six million, or some
nine per cent of the population. The last time that
Iranian Kurds were seduced by ethnic policies was in
the mid-1940s when, with help from the Soviet Union,
they set up a "republic" of their own in the city of
Mahabad. The "republic" folded after one year and
nine of its 12 leaders were hanged in public.
No secessionist history
As for ethnic Arabs, they number some three million
or over four per cent of the total population. At
least half of them live in Khuzistan with others
scattered in four provinces stretched along the
Gulf. Unlike the Kurds, Iran's Arabs do not have any
secessionist history.
In the past two to three years, Iran's
Kurdish-majority areas have witnessed an upsurge of
political activity.
One reason is the liberation of Iraq and the leading
role that Iraqi Kurds have assumed in the new Iraqi
system. Another reason is Ahmadinejad's avowed
devotion to the cult of the "Hidden Imam" and his
claim of legitimacy on that score. The Kurds,
however, do not believe in the concept of the
"Hidden Imam" which they regard as "un-Islamic".
Ahmadinejad would be wrong to dismiss or minimise
the threat of ethnic dissent in the Islamic
Republic. Iran's ethnic minorities, including the
Kurds, the Arabs, the Turkmen and the Baluch,
account for at least 12 per cent of the population.
Located along the country's long and porous borders,
these communities could be open to manipulation by
anyone who wishes to weaken Iran or pay back in the
same currency the Islamic Republic for its
machinations in neighbouring countries.
In the meantime a word of warning is called for to
all those who might think that playing the ethnic
and sectarian cards against Ahmadinejad's new
militancy might help knock some sense into Tehran.
Any attempt at encouraging secessionism in the
Iranian periphery could only mobilise the mainstream
nationalism of Iranians in support of a regime that,
its feigned defiance notwithstanding, has lost much
of its original support base.
Ahmadinejad's so-called "second revolution" may have
little in the way of positive creativity to offer
inside or outside Iran. But it still has large
reserves of negative energy that could be deployed
in the service of a destructive policy in the region
as a whole.
A Yugoslav-style scenario for Iran may help speed up
the demise of the Islamic Republic. But it could
unleash much darker forces of nationalism and
religious zealotry that could plunge the entire
region into years if not decades of bloody crises.
The current fever provoked in Iran by Ahmadinejad
and his pseudo-messianic message is little more than
an epiphenomenon which, given patience and wisdom,
could be contained and neutralised. Here is a
monster that feeds and grows on crisis and conflict.
The answer is not to lead it to a banquet table but
to starve it.
Iranian author Amir Taheri is a member of Benador
Associates.
www.tmcnet.com
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