By Amir Taheri, Special to Gulf News
Published: May 07, 2008, 00:36
Already facing ethnic revolts by Kurds and Turkmen in three provinces, Iran appears to be facing an even greater rebellion by Baluch tribesmen in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan.
The Baluch have been in a state of low intensity rebellion against the Islamic Republic ever since the mullahs seized power in 1979. However, the rebellion has gained greater intensity in the past two years, provoking major armed clashes between tribal fighters and Iranian security forces.
The latest clashes came on April 25 when a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) raided what was reported to be a hideout of the rebels in the remote village of Javanabad.
The immediate aim of the IRGC was to liberate an ayatollah abducted by unidentified gunmen a week earlier in Fahraj, in the neighbouring province of Kerman. The size of the force set from Tehran, and its heavy equipment including helicopter gunships, showed that this was no run-of-the-mill ayatollah.
For the captive is Ayatollah Sayyed Javad Tahiri, the special representative of the supreme guide for southeastern Iran, an area the size of France.
According to Iranian media reports dozens of rebels as well as IRGC men were killed in the clashes and many more injured. One hospital in Zahedan, the capital of the province, reported more than 200 wounded.
Spokesmen for Baluch rebels claim that the ayatollah was abducted in retaliation for the execution of two Baluch religious leaders last months.
The official media in Tehran claims that the ayatollah was taken by a group of drug smugglers with roots in neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan. Baluch sources, however, insist that the motive was political.
According to them two groups are involved the so-called Jundallah (Army of God), an armed group that has been fighting the IRGC since 2006, and the Society of the Combatants of Sistan and Baluchistan (SCSB), a more broadly based political group opposed to the Khomeinist regime in Tehran.
The Baluch number some 1.8 million in Iran but are spread in a vast area from the Gulf of Oman to Central Asia. They are part of a greater Baluch community that is also present in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Gulf states, numbering almost 20 million.
According to the Baluch opposition, the abducted ayatollah is currently on trial for allegedly giving orders to government forces to arrest, try and execute Sunni militants.
Tehran accuses Jundallah and the SCSB of having a secessionist agenda, and working with Baluch tribal leaders in Pakistan who promote the dream of a Greater Baluchistan encompassing areas in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Another theory is that the Baluch rebels in Iran are manipulated by Islamabad's secret services in retaliation for Iran's support of rebels operating in the Mirpur area of Pakistani Baluchistan.
Jundallah and SCSB spokesmen, however, deny the charges and insist that both organisations are committed to Iran's territorial integrity.
Rebel activity
One thing is certain: rebel activity has managed to render vast chunks of southeastern Iran unsafe for travel. Since last March all visits by foreign tourists have been cancelled and government officials' movements take place under heavy armed escort.
Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have had to cancel their planned visits to the province. SCSB spokesmen claim that neither man would be able to travel to the area in the foreseeable future.
Baluch grievances in Iran are not limited to religious issues, although this is important. The central authorities do not allow the building of Sunni mosques in many parts of the province.
Seminaries training Sunni clerics have been shut in most cities while a well-financed campaign to convert more people to Shiism is led by mullahs sent from Tehran.
Iranian Baluch religious scholars who have trained abroad, including at the Al Azhar Islamic University in Cairo, are barred from returning home to Iran. The Baluch are allocated very few places in the Iranian quota for the Haj pilgrimage to Makkah.
Baluch spokesmen claim that Tehran is using monetary and other "worldly inducements" to persuade the natives to change their religious faith.
Religion, however, is not the only source of discontent in Baluchistan. The Baluch claim that they are excluded from the best government posts. There is not a single Baluch in any high position in central government or local administration.
Life expectancy in the Sistan and Baluchistan province is a full 10 years lower than the average for the rest of Iran. Illiteracy is estimated at over 80 per cent, compared to 37 per cent nationally. Annual income per head in the province is less than a quarter of the national average.
At the same time, Baluch spokesmen claim that Tehran has tried to alter the ethnic character of their land by encouraging large numbers of non-Baluch to settle in the province's main cities. In the 1990s many Iraqi Shiite refugees were settled in the province, along with Shiites fleeing the war in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Repeated promises to invest in new projects to revive the province's moribund economy have not materialised. And pre-revolution hydroelectric projects on the rivers Sarbaz, Jakegovar and Mashkid have been abandoned, killing all hope of an agricultural revolution in the region.
The coastal area of the province, known as Makran, has been transformed into a restricted zone as the IRGC has built a string of bases on the Gulf of Oman as part of a grander scheme to control navigation in and out of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
The situation has become more complicated by the presence of well-organised and heavily armed smuggling gangs that have set up bases and safe havens in some of the region's remotest villages.
The rugged nature of the terrain, a dry high plateau dotted with volcanoes, makes effective control by the central authorities difficult. For at least a decade the region has been dubbed "The Wild East", a lawless land where the gun is the ultimate authority.
The contraband network pumps an estimated $12 billion in smuggled goods and drugs into urban Iran via Sistan and Baluchistan each year.
As the second largest source of employment in the province, after the government, the network has every interest in perpetuating tension and uncertainty, thus preventing the central government from imposing its authority.
The mullahs' political mistakes, and their blindness to local religious and cultural sensitivities, have played into the hands of the contraband network.
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