The following is an article by Daniel Brett, Chairman of the British Ahwazi Friendship Society (BAFS), which was published by the Henry Jackson Society . The HJS is a non-partisan British think-tank promoting democratic geopolitics. The organisation held its launch party at the House of Commons last week, which was attended by Ahwazi Arab democracy and human rights campaigners. The HJS has the backing of some of the country's leading politicians - including Nobel Peace Prize Winner David Trimble and former foreign office minister Denis McShane - as well as Colonel Tim Collins (Commander, First Battalion Royal Irish Regiment, Iraq 2003), Jamie Shea (Deputy Assistant Secretary General for External Relations, NATO) and Gerard Baker (Assistant Editor, The Times).
A democratic revolution in Iran will depend on the country's ethnic minorities. Yet, the importance of minorities is often ignored in the West, where ethnically Persian-led opposition groups, ranging from the ultra-nationalist supporters of the self-proclaimed monarch-in-exile Reza Shah Pahlavi II, to the populists of the Iranian Mujahideen, wield enormous lobbying power - even though there is little evidence to show they have significant support in Iran.
With at least 50 per cent of the population comprised of non-Persian ethnic groups - Arabs, Azeris, Balochis, Kurds, Turkmen and others - Iran is one of the world's most diverse multi-ethnic societies. However, under both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic, power has been concentrated in the hands of predominantly ethnically Persian elites, who have sought to retain their political dominance through the repression and subjugation of non-Persian peoples.
Ethnicity is, therefore, an important area of democratic mobilisation in Iran. The groups leading mass pro-democracy protests in Iran have not been Tehran-based intellectuals, or the vainglorious reformists who duped voters into entrusting them with clipping the powers of the clergy. With Islamist hooligans now in control of university campuses and the reformist movement struggling to justify its existence, new social movements are organising around the question of ethnic oppression. The regime is increasingly being challenged from Iran's peripheries - Kurdistan, Balochistan and the Arab-majority province Khuzestan - where the non-Persian population is the majority.
Much of the civil unrest seen in Iran over the past few months has occurred in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, which was once an autonomous Arab emirate protected by the British and known as Arabistan or Al-Ahwaz, until it was over-run by Reza Pahlavi's forces in 1925. There, Arabs have reacted to state terrorism with mass protests, which go largely unreported in the Western media. For a short period in April 2005, the Iranian government lost control over large parts of Khuzestan in an Arab uprising. The unrest was sparked by the leaking of a top secret memo written by former Vice-President Ali Abtahi which outlined a 10-year plan for the 'ethnic restructuring' of Khuzestan to reduce the Arab population from 70 per cent of the total population to less than a third. Abtahi claimed the letter was a forgery, but the Arab population saw this as proof of what they already knew: they are being starved and beaten out of their homeland. During the uprising, security forces killed at least 160 Arabs, including children and a pregnant woman, and rounded up and imprisoned thousands of Ahwazi Arabs. Many remain imprisoned to this day, while some have been executed summarily and their bodies have been dumped in the Karun River.
The April intifada and subsequent mass demonstrations have been accompanied by a succession of bomb attacks in Ahwaz City. The regime has accused 'separatists' backed by foreign governments - including the British, Canadians and Saudis - of responsibility for the attacks. However, in an interview with The Guardian newspaper in June, reformist presidential candidate, Mustafa Moin, suggested that the attacks may be the work of those seeking the election of a military candidate for the presidency. Certainly, separatist groups, once backed by Saddam Hussein, but now in exile in Europe and North America, no longer have the military capacity, or organisational strength to stage attacks using high-grade plastic explosives. Moreover, the leading Ahwazi political parties have advocated a policy of non-violent civil disobedience and opposed terrorist activities. Many in the opposition believe elements within the regime are seeking to portray the grass-roots, Arab democracy movement in Khuzestan as a dangerous separatist faction backed by foreign governments seeking to destabilise Iran. The regime has repeated accusations of British imperial designs over the Ahwazi homeland in order to inflame nationalist sentiment and age-old prejudices, but has never published any proof beyond confessions extracted through torture. In fact, the truth is that the unrest is the result of decades of economic and political marginalisation.
Ahwazi Arabs are among the world's most disadvantaged and persecuted ethnic groups. Ahwazis have traditionally farmed Khuzestan's fertile plains, but their way of life is being destroyed by an aggressive policy of land confiscation, forced migration and a long-term programme of permanently eliminating Arab influences from Khuzestan. The regime's very existence depends on ethnic cleansing in Khuzestan. The presence of Arabs, who have farmed the land for centuries, if not millennia, represents a major challenge to the regime's access to oil; historical Arab tribal lands contain up to 90 per cent of Iran's oil reserves and produce 10 per cent of OPEC's total output. The Iranian government has consistently refused to allocate just 1.5 per cent of oil revenues to Khuzestan, as demanded by the province's representatives in the Majlis (parliament). Arab demands for the redistribution of land and oil revenue have been met with a violent policy of Persianisation, resembling Milosevic's attempts to create a Greater Serbia. Persianisation entails government confiscation of Arab-owned land and 'ethnic restructuring', which typically involves the forced migration of Arabs out of Khuzestan and their replacement with 'loyal' ethnic groups, particularly ethnic Persians. Ahwazi Arabs are denied equal access to education and healthcare, while Khuzestan's provincial authorities are overwhelmingly dominated by non-Arab Iranians - despite the fact that Ahwazi Arabs are the largest ethnic group in the province. The Ahwazi Arab population endures hardship, poverty, illiteracy and unemployment at higher rates than the national average, despite being indigenous to a province that forms the foundations of the Iranian economy.
The situation in Khuzestan can even be compared to apartheid, with the Ahwazis denied social mobility and cultural expression. In urban areas, Ahwazi Arabs live in shanty towns which resemble the townships of apartheid South Africa. In Ahwaz City, slums lack most of the everyday necessities, such as plumbing, electricity, telephone, pavements, street lighting, public transport, sewerage systems, schools, clinics, hospitals, shops and parks. The conditions in the slums stand in stark contrast to the non-Arab areas of Ahwaz City.
Such shanty towns and slums, moreover, are the deliberate creation of the Iranian government, which has, since 1979, pursued a massive programme of land confiscation and forced displacement of the Ahwazi Arabs. The government has provided economic incentives and enticements, such as zero-interest loans, which are not available to Arabs, to re-settle non-Arab people onto expropriated Arab farmlands.
Having been forced from their land, however it would now seem that Arabs are, increasingly, also no longer welcome in their own cities as the government moves to Persianise Ahwazi cities. Thus, in September 2004, the homes of 4,000 Arab residents of Sepidar district, many of whom fought for Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, were destroyed and bulldozed - an action almost universally ignored in the West (in contrast to the furore that rightly surrounded Mugabe's adoption of a similar policy in Zimbabwe). Simultaneously, the Iranian regime began a large housing project in Khuzestan to resettle ethnic Persians from northeastern provinces to Khuzestan, while continuing to force ethnic Arabs to migrate to other provinces - furthering their efforts to achieve the 'ethnic restructuring' of Khuzestan.
As a result of the Iranian government's policies, it is these deprived Ahwazi Arab areas that serve as flashpoints for democratic revolutionary politics. Most rioting in Khuzestan occurs in these areas that suffer growing oppression and extreme poverty. Faced with unemployment levels that dwarf those in Persian-Iran, deep-seated economic disadvantage, rampant discrimination and healthcare standards resemble the least developed nations of Africa, it is no surprise that Ahwazi Arabs are fighting the police with rocks and burning down government buildings in the rioting that has erupted in Khuzestan over the past year.
Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians have more rights than the Ahwazis, with Arabic language media, an elected administration, a police force and even Arabic universities. The Ahwazis have none of this, while their plight goes unaddressed in the West and their voice is silenced. No Ahwazi is calling for a foreign invasion, but they do have a right to the same kind of solidarity extended to the Palestinians. The failure of British politicians to take up the Ahwazi cause, with the same fervour shown towards the Palestinian cause, is a sign of moral and political weakness that can only strengthen the hand of the opponents of democracy and progress in the Middle East. If the Iranian regime is to be prevented from driving the Ahwazi people literally off the map, then it is vital that their predicament be placed firmly on the 'political map' here in the West.
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