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Monday, August 27, 2007
The following article was written by the Iranian journalist Amir Taheri and appeared in Arab News.
Is the Islamic Republic of Iran facing a growing revolt by its Arab minority?
Until a couple of years ago, the question would have sounded naive or provocative. In the 1980s, Arab-Iranians had fought bravely against Saddam Hussein's forces despite the fact that they were linked to the invading Iraqis by ethnic, tribal, linguistic and religious ties going back 1300 years.
According to data from the Foundation for the Martyrs, an organization supposed to look after war veterans and the families of the war dead, the number of Arab-Iranians who died for the fatherland was proportionally four times higher than Iranians from other ethnic backgrounds. And, yet, in the past two years evidence has mounted that Arab-Iranians, disenchanted by the Islamic republic and angry at Tehran's increasingly repressive policies under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are drawn toward dissidence and revolt.
Last year, rising tension in a number of Khuzestani towns and villages forced Ahamdinejad to cancel his much-publicized visit to the province. (Later, he managed a shortened version of the trip amid tight security.)
In the past few weeks, the authorities have executed 11 men in connection with the nascent Arab revolt. Hundreds more have been arrested and shipped to jails in unknown destinations. Earlier this month, bands of Arab youths ran riot in the streets of Ahvaz, capital of the southwestern province of Khuzestan, attacking government offices and banks and setting official cars on fire. According to eyewitnesses, the authorities had to bring in special Baseej (Mobilization) militia units to regain control. The pro-government militia later raided a number of neighborhoods, including Khazaalyiah and Kut-Abdallah, where ethnic Arabs form a majority, arresting dozens of people. Among them was Thamer Ahvazi, regarded as one of the province's top musical pop stars. His crime? Singing "defiant" rap-style songs in Arabic.
There are no accurate figures regarding the number of ethnic Arabs in Iran. The best estimates, however, put the number at around 2.2 million, or more than three percent of the total population. They are stretched over 600 kilometers of territory, from the borders of Iraq to the Straits of Hormuz on the Gulf of Oman. More than half, however, live in Khuzestan, Iran's oil-rich province that also produces a good part of the nation's food, including almost all of its sugarcane and 80 percent of its date crops.
Until the late 1940s, ethnic Arabs were in majority in Ahvaz, the provincial capital and Khorrmashahr, the nation's biggest port until its destruction by Saddam Hussein in 1981.
Now, however, ethnic Arabs account for less than 25 percent of the population in Ahvaz, and just some 40 percent in Khorramshahr. Nevertheless, ethnic Arabs still form a majority in smaller towns along the border with Iraq, including Shadegan, Howeyzeh, Karkheh, and Dasht-Mishan. The population of the Iranian portion of the Mesopotamian marshlands is also almost entirely Arab.
The province's mainly Arab feature changed for several reasons.
First, the discovery of oil in 1908 led to an economic boom that created new job opportunities that the locals could not fulfill. Hundreds of thousands of peoples from provinces in the Iranian heartland poured into Khuzestan, first as temporary laborers and then as permanent residents.
The second reason was a government policy, formulated in 1928, to "Persianize" Arab majority areas by bringing whole families of farmers from distant provinces, including Khorassan some 1000 miles away. The newcomers revived the province's moribund agriculture, introduced new crops and, as they prospered, multiplied faster than native Arabs who remained largely excluded from the new economy.
The introduction of the military draft also helped the change. Many ethnic Arabs decided to smuggle their male children to the Arab coast of the Gulf to avoid obligatory military service. Most never returned.
Sometimes whole families and clans emigrated to avoid the draft and taxation by an increasingly assertive central government in Tehran. At the same time, the better-educated ethnic Arabs moved north to settle in Tehran, the capital, and other major cities in the Iranian heartland where they gradually lost their Arab identity.
It is hard to identify the exact causes of the current tension in Khuzestan. One source of tension is the emergence in neighboring Iraq of a new government dominated by Arab Shiites. In the Islamic republic, however, not a single ethnic Arab is in any key government position. Many Arab Shiites try to live on both sides of the Iran-Iraq border without having lost their ancient bonds of blood and tradition. The Bani Kaab, the Bani Amer, the Bani Tamim and other smaller tribes have always moved and intermarried regardless of the border fixed in 1921 when the British crated the new Iraqi state out of three Ottoman provinces.
The dream of a unified Arab Shiite state, encompassing central and southern Iraq as well as the Iranian province of Khuzestan, which Arab nationalists call "Arabistan", appeals to many activists on both sides of the border. Not surprisingly, some local tribal chiefs and even Shiite mullahs are trying to use that dream to build a constituency for themselves.
Another source of the tension is the activities of a number of armed groups, some of which set up by Saddam Hussein in the 1970s as a means of exerting pressure on Tehran. These groups, often linked to armed smuggling networks operating in both Iran and Iraq, have been mainly responsible for attacks on border posts and police stations in a number of towns close to the border.
The main source of the tension, however, is the central government's policy of implicit discrimination against the Arab minority. This is especially manifest in state-owned corporations where non-Arabs have an automatic advantage in terms of job opportunities, grades and pay.
Arabs are also at a disadvantage when it comes to places in higher education. Entry into Iranian universities is through a tough set of examinations known as "konkour". Ethnic Arabs disadvantaged at the examination because they usually come from worst rated secondary schools, do not quite master the Persian, the language of the tests, and are unfamiliar with specific questions dealing with Persian culture and literature. As a result, an ethnic Arab's chance of getting into an Iranian university is 12 times lower than his compatriots from Tehran, Shiraz or Isfahan. Demands that at least 10 percent of places at local universities be reserved for ethic Arabs have been turned down by successive Islamic republic administrations in Tehran. Ahmadinejad regards positive discrimination as "un-Islamic".
One outlet for Arab-Iranian grievances is the so-called Khuzestan Welfare Party that calls for greater autonomy for the province within the Iranian state. Created in 1946, the party disappeared in the mid-1950s, to reappear in 2005. No one can gauge its strength. But it provides a moderate alternative to the radical Ahvaz Liberation Front (ALF) that has preached armed struggle since the 1970s.
The revolt of Arab-Iranians is in its early stages. There is, as yet, no evidence that it might degenerate into secessionism. Ahmadinejad's repressive policies, however, could help those who claim that ethnic Arabs would be better off in a secular democratic state with their Iraqi Shiite Arab brethren than remaining within an Islamic republic dominated by chauvinistic mullahs.
The outside world should pay attention to what is happening in Khuzestan if only because it produces almost 70 percent of the oil that Iran exports each day.
Friday, August 24, 2007
This article appeared on the Pajamas Media website
Are American taxpayers unwittingly funding the Iranian regime's own propaganda? Ali Ghaderi and Karim Abdian contend that US government-funded Voice of America Persia and Radio Farda are ultimately damaging to American interests. Not only do these broadcasting services have sympathy for the ruling theocracy, but their inherent Persian bias alienates Iranian ethnic and religious minorities.
Last month, Iran launched Press TV, an English-language television station to broadcast propaganda to the West, utilizing a network of loyal and well-paid correspondents across the world. But their task could have been made easier if they had simply translated broadcasts from the Voice of America Persian Service and Radio Farda, which are both funded by US taxpayers.
Millions of Congress-approved dollars are poured into the VOA-Persian Service and Radio Farda ostensibly to promote democracy and break the Iranian regime's overbearing censorship. However, they are facing increased scrutiny following damning reports by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the General Accountability Office (GAO), and the government's inter-agency Iran Steering Group. These reports condemned both VOA-Persian and Radio Farda for sympathy with sections of the Iranian regime and for often recycling the regime’s own propaganda. The situation is so bad that some Iranians in the US have begun to question whether the journalists employed by VOA-Persian and Radio Farda are agents for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence.
Some have also pointed to the inherent ethnic (Persian) chauvinism and cronyism in these broadcasts, which are alienating the non-Persian nationalities who are at least half, and by some estimates as high as two-thirds, of the total population in Iran. Activists representing a coalition of non-Persian parties campaigning for ethnic minority rights who monitor VOA Persian Service have released a study that shows that of the 132 people interviewed by VOA-Persian in May of 2007, just over two percent were from the ethnic minority groups of Kurds and Balochis. Thus, Ahwazi Arabs, Azeri-Turks, Turkmens, and others were completely excluded from these broadcasts despite the documented ongoing human rights violations against minorities by the Iranian regime.
These Farsi broadcasts (especially of VOA-Persian Service), claim Iranian minorities are controlled and managed by staunch supporters of the deposed Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi II, and share the regime's antipathy towards non-Persian ethnic groups. Reza Pahlavi and his senior advisors such as Shahriar Ahi and Draiush Homayoun are frequently—sometimes daily—featured on VOA-Persian TV.
The "guests" on these broadcasts are usually hand-picked Persian monarchists, ultra-nationalists or individuals with nationalist inclinations, who depict Iran as a Persian nation period, ignoring the claims of non-Persian Iranians who insist that Persians, despite their political dominance, are in a minority, and no more than a third of the total population. Most of the ultra-nationalists featured on VOA-Persian service believe and practice the ideology of Arian or Persian supremacy and don't believe that one can be Iranian and non-Persian at the same time.
In addition to these paid and unpaid guests who are consultants and senior advisers to Reza Pahlavi, former cabinet ministers and former diplomats of the Shah are also frequently featured on VOA-Persian TV. One was interviewed 15 times, and the rest multiple times in the single month of May alone. Aside from one Kurd and one Baloch, no members of the remaining non-Persian minorities were heard. US-funded radio and TV stations are targeting Persian monarchists, who represent an extreme minority in Iran.
Be it imperial or republican, Iran is clearly an ethnically diverse society, and ethnic dynamics have always been present throughout its history. Non-Persian ethnic groups are a major part, and play a dominant role in the current socio-political struggle for democratic transformation. The VOA broadcast should reflect this diversity. Under an ideal situation US government sponsored broadcasts should dare to be a platform for oppressed minorities and not a propaganda tool for the regime that portrays Iran as a Persian nation with no minority discontent.
Incredibly, VOA and Radio Farda refuse to broadcast news of human rights violations against ethnic and linguistic minorities, according to Iranian minority rights activists. Yet, according to Amnesty International, "Minorities are subject to discriminatory laws and practices," including restrictions on housing, the confiscation of land and property, denial of employment, and restrictions on cultural expression. This discrimination, AI adds, often results in "other human rights violations such as the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience, grossly unfair trials of political prisoners before Revolutionary Courts, corporal punishment and use of the death penalty, as well as restrictions on movement and denial of other civil rights." Amnesty International's Iran desk has campaigned intensively for the release of prisoners of conscience campaigning for minority rights as well as an end to policies amounting to discrimination and persecution.
In November 2006, the European Parliament and the UN General Assembly also joined in the chorus of condemnation of the Iranian regime's discriminatory practices. In a rare display of unanimity, all the political groups in the European Parliament - from Conservatives to Communists — backed a resolution that condemned "the current disrespect of minority rights and demands that minorities be allowed to exercise all rights granted by the Iranian Constitution and international law." Further, the UN General Assembly voiced concern over "increasing discrimination and other human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities," and called on Iran to eliminate ethnic discrimination.
But a listener to VOA-Persian or Radio Farada would not hear a word against the regime's practices against minorities — especially against Arabs and Balochis - who have been subjected to ethnic cleansing, subject to population transfer, land confiscation and occasional aerial bombardment.
The State Department has oversight responsibility over VOA, but in this case they are clearly not exercising any influence to manage the overall message of the broadcasts. Undersecretary Karen Hughes, on behest of Secretary Rice, occupies a seat on the Broadcast Board of Governors (BBG), the main controlling body with oversight responsibility for all US Government non-military broadcasts. It is not clear if this body is aware that the overall message implied by VOA Persian language broadcast is that the US supports a strategy of re-establishing monarchy and favors keeping intact the rule of Persian minority dominance in Iran.
In a letter to VOA Director Dan Austin, representatives of Iranian Kurds, Arabs, Azerbaijanis, Baloch, Lors and Turkmen argue that "on the rare occasions when someone from a minority group is invited to express an opinion on VOA-Persian TV, they have been subjected to an inquisition, on-and off-air, in which they are required to state their allegiance to the Iranian or Persian nation over their own ethnic group." Those who dare to describe themselves as Kurdish, Arab, Baloch, or simply refer to themselves as even Arab-Iranian, Balochi-Iranian, Kurdish-Iranian, etc, are not welcomed or deprived of further appearances. The existence of this discriminatory vetting process in a US government sponsored broadcast service is incredibly disturbing. One can only assume that it was allowed to continue because neither the VOA director nor the BBG were aware of what was and is going on.
Representatives of Iranian ethnic and religious minorities living in the US claim that VOA is violating its charter by its practical discrimination against non-Persian groups and has called for the dismissal of the Persian Service Director and key managers who are responsible for executing the current editorial policy. According to these representatives, VOA-Persian Service management argue that only a restored monarchy in Iran, or the current Persian-dominated theocratic regime are necessary to ensure Iran's territorial, cultural, and linguistic integrity.
Unless there is a radical shake-up in these US-funded TV and radio stations, they risk becoming a greater threat to US interests than Iran's Press TV will ever be. The millions of dollars spent on VOA and Radio Farda could be better spent on the dozens of financially poor grassroots radio and television stations run by genuine Iranian opposition groups that enjoy high ratings in their target ethnic audiences and beyond.
Ali Ghaderi is U.S. Representative of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan. Karim Abdian, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Ahwaz Human Rights Organization, is U.S. Representative of the Ahwazi-Arab Ethnic Minority in Iran. |
