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Increased repression and
unrest affecting Iran's numerous ethnic and
religious minorities are providing new opportunities
for the US as it steps up efforts to destabilise and
if possible bring down the hardline Islamic
government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Kurdish sources say persecution of Iran's estimated
six million Kurds, who mostly live in western
provinces bordering Turkey and Iraq, has intensified
since Mr Ahmadinejad came to power. Weeks of turmoil
followed his election last July - and is continuing.
Ten Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed in the
latest clashes this week in Salmas and Kelares,
according to Iranian and Kurdish reports.
Although groups such as the Kurdistan People's
Democratic party have renounced violence, the
Kurdistan Free Life party, affiliated to the Turkish
separatist PKK, has carried on the fight. More than
120 members of the security forces are said to have
died in the past year.
"The Kurdish population has long been viewed with
suspicion by the Iranian authorities and has
experienced decades of official neglect," Amnesty
International reported in February.
"The months since Ahmadinejad came to power have
seen no improvement. On the contrary, there have
been signs ... of a further harshening of
repression.
"Despite constitutional guarantees of equality,
individuals belonging to minorities, believed to
number about half Iran's population, are subject to
an array of discriminatory laws and practices,
including restrictions on social, cultural,
linguistic and religious freedoms which often result
in human rights violations."
Ibrahim Dogus of Halkevi, a Kurdish and Turkish
community organisation, said Kurdish leaders wanted
international support to end human rights abuses.
But any regime change in Tehran should "come from
the bottom" rather than be imposed from outside, he
said.
Ethnically Arab Khuzestan province, in south-west
Iran, has witnessed several recent bomb attacks,
including a rumoured attempt to assassinate Mr
Ahmadinejad in Ahvaz in January. The attacks have
been attributed to separatists. But Iranian
officials blame Britain, whose troops occupy
adjacent areas of south-east Iraq, and its US ally
for instigating the violence.
Coincidentally or not, "British intelligence" was
also officially accused of colluding with "bandits"
in Sistan-Baluchestan this month after 21 government
officials were shot dead. Like separatists in
Khuzestan, the south-eastern province's large ethnic
Baluchi Sunni population has long protested about
discrimination by the Persian Shia majority.
Iran's leaders also face stirrings of discontent in
the north-east, home to two to three million ethnic
Turkmen. According to Muhammad Tahir of the
Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Turkmen say
the Persian language, dress codes and customs are
being forced on them. "Sunni Muslims in a theocratic
Shia state, they feel disadvantaged for both ethnic
and religious reasons."
Government fears about the "enemy within" may have
been reflected in a recent move to further pressure
Iran's Baha'i community, which is not allowed to
practice its faith and has often been subject to
persecution at times of national strain. The UN
condemned the move as "impermissible and
unacceptable interference with the rights of
religious minorities". A renewed crackdown on
student groups has also been launched.
External pressure from non-Persian and mostly non-Shia
minorities is being applied via the exiled Congress
of Iranian Nationalities, which issued a manifesto
in London last year. The congress demanded a federal
Iran, separation of religion and state, and an end
to all forms of discrimination.
President George Bush's national security strategy,
published this month, again urged Iranians to rise
up against their "oppressors". But whether the US
can or should try to exploit Iran's ethnic and
religious fault-lines is a matter of debate in
Washington. Officialdom is split between those who
fear triggering an uncontrollable, Iraq-style
disintegration; and those, notably in the Pentagon,
who think they see a way of dishing the mullahs
where snail-paced UN diplomacy and high-risk
military threats have so far failed.
Iranian officials say western attempts to divide the
Iranian nation, forged in revolution and a bloody
war with Saddam Hussein, are bound to fail. They are
especially scornful of regional Arab and Iranian
diaspora hopes of encouraging change from without.
But nerves are jangling all the same.
Today will see the beginning of Noble Prophet, a
large-scale Iranian military exercise along the
length of the Gulf, the area where any future
military attacks might be expected.
Rear-Admiral Morteza Saffari said the wargames would
start with the firing of a Shahab-2 medium-range
missile. The launch of this formidable weapon, he
told an Iranian news agency, was intended as "a
message of peace and friendship" to all Iran's
neighbours. The admiral's grimly ambiguous greeting
conveyed a blunter warning: Keep Out.
www.guardian.co.uk
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