Despite the growing role of Iran in the recent period in the Middle East, and its ability to extend its influence over the four capitals of the Arab states, and its success in reaching an agreement that Maintains its nuclear program, and lets to lift the economic embargo imposed on it, and the rush of some European countries to invest in it , there are harbingers and phenomena inside and outside of Iran indicate the possibility of weakening its next role regionally, with expected internal crises inside Iran, hotbeds of tension to haunt the Iranian authorities and its procession of development internally and hamper to some extent, as well as some failures to its regional arms, which drains money and men, noting that aches hit it from home and abroad.
We will discuss in this report one of the internal problems that are potentially explosive, a problem of Albloushstan region.
Iran is located in a vital location in West Asia, bordered to the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. Iran and overlooking the Caspian Sea, with both Kazakhstan and Russia, and bordered to the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to the west by Iraq, and the north-west Turkey, on the south by the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Eman. The Islamic religion is (a Shiite sect of Telvers) and it is the official religion of the Iranian Republic, and Farsi is the language official state(Persian language).
Iran is a country like other countries suffering from the great diversity of nationalities that inhabited in it ; In all parts of Iran various peoples settled in it that have different languages, customs and cultures and values as in the case of the Kurds, Baluchis and Arabs, in addition to various doctrines. The basic structure of the Iranian people according to nationalities come as follows: Azeri , “Turkish” nationalism by 24%, and Kurdish nationalism by 7%, and Arab nationalism by 3%, and Baluch nationalism 2%. Of the total citizens of the Iranian state. Most Baluchis embrace the Sunni Hanafi sect while a minority embrace Shiite doctrine (madhhab). The focus of the Baluch in Iran is in the south-east on the border of the states of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The western Iranian western Bloushstnan includes provinces of Sistan , “Zahedan” and Makran.
Today Baloch land (Balochistan) is distributed among the three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, and the Baloch are the people who inhabited this region, and they have other extensions in Pakistani Sindh and the Pashtun , also belongs to Baloch Alrahoiaon who speak Alrahoiah language, noting that they(Bloch) have migrated in large numbers to the areas of Arabian Gulf , Oman, UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and the estimated number of Baloch today by about ten million people. The area of Baluchistan, Iran (70 thousand square miles).
It has arisen for Bloch principalities and independent kingdoms (Khaniat headed by Khan), starting from the fourth century AD, and in the modern colonization , Balochistan became part of the British Embire in India, and a large section of the Baloch territory were annexed to Afghanistan, which became independent since 1747, and provinces of Makran and Sistan had become part of Iran since 1928, and the Khanate of Kalat, the Baloch (Quetta) was annexed to the state of Pakistan in 1948 and historically Baloch has been able of the founding of independent states in the sixteenth and seventeenth and eighteenth based on aristocratic and feudal leaders, and continued in existence until the British occupation for them in 1839. Which in turn has divided the states of Baloch among Afghanistan in 1787, and Iran in 1928, and Pakistan in 1948.
Bloch rejected the forcible annexation to the Iranian Pahlavi state , and fought a bitter struggle for their independence, or for self-rule and to preserve their identity and culture in contrast Pahlavi approach who pursued an iron policy consisted of suppress all manifestations of national sentiment emerging among Baloch in the thirties of the twentieth century to the fifties and harsh measures had been taken to suppress the Baloch and forced them on the merger, and the Balochi language, names and music were banned and followed a comprehensive Persian policies on Baluchi identity and culture, but the Iranian Balochi have continued to think of themselves as an independent nation from the cultural point of view. Because every action has its own reaction , the Baloch entered into a series of armed uprisings against Iran , the most violent uprising is that took place between 1973 / 1977 m.
And the Baloch sought for many years to achieve four things from basic demands, namely: economic development for the region neglected by the Iranian government, equality and justice in the distribution of wealth and revenue, to give the opportunity to build a Sunni mosques and schools in the country ,and to stop the Iranian authorities for prosecution of Albloushstan Sunni scholars and killed them . Iranian authorities have proceeded to obliterate the identity of the Baloch people by imposing Persian language in the important offices and government correspondence, and the imposition of Persian culture in all areas of the region. But these Iranian attempts were met with opposition of the Baluch and their determination to maintain their language and their habit, nevertheless as a result of this steadfastness of Balushi was the deprivation them from important positions in the Iranian state.
After the fall of the Shah’s regime in 1979 , Baloch started to take immediate action to express their distinctive identity, but Baloch found themselves once again in the face of an Islamic political system practiced against them racist and sectarian policies at different levels. At the level of education , the Iranian revolution’s refused to allow the teaching of Baluchi language in the schools of region , and declining of ratios of education in the region due to the decline in the services that must be provided in this area, and at the level of university education, there was a policy of tightening the noose on the acceptance of Baluchis in the universities, you can imagine the depth of the racist and sectarian policy in this area, if we know that the number of students does not exceed 2,000 students out of 3.3 million Iranian students in universities. At the administrative level, the state workers, police officers, all from outside the province of Balochistan. In an attempt of formal opening on Baluchi issue in Iran, it has appointed , in the presidential term of President Mohammad Khatami, only one governor for the Bloushstnan region . At the local level, it was not there even one position for the Baluchis sons and the Sunnis.
In the era of former President Ahmadinejad, it has been introduced – for the first time- governor of the province of Sistan and five governors and director general that theywere chosen from among the Baloch nationalism and Sunni sect . And it can be understood from these appointments as part of an attempt to show that the former president who is fanatic to the Persian nationalism as if he was open to the rights of non-Persian nationalities , and also an attempt by him to contain the anger of the people of Balochistan from the racist policies of the Iranian state towards them.
On the economic and social side, despite Balochistan having large amounts of oil and gas, gold, copper and uranium, but it is more deteriorated regions in Iran in economic terms, where the low economic growth rate and deprivation and extreme poverty, high unemployment rate and the spread of the phenomenon of smuggling and drug trading are the most important achievements of the Iranian Islamic revolution in Balochistan region .
and socially , the national, cultural and social figures of Baloch nationality are exposed to insults and scorn by ordinary soldiers without being reprimanded , but these soldiers are encouraging and inciting to continue such degrading acts against them. Finally For security aspect , the province of Balochistan is the most dangerous regions in Iran for its lack of the elements of security and stability, due to the absence of security and the spread of drugs widespread around which turned the province to be unsafe . it Was formed in that region criminal and terrorist groups and mafia gangs specializing in smuggling, noting that the main financial source of the groups that are secured through the drug trade.
And on the level of language, the Iranian regime has spared no effort to eliminate the Baluchi language, it is forbidden for Baluch poets in Iran to sing in Balochi, writers and thinkers does not allow them to publish books in Balochi and Baloch singers can not register their music in Balochistan also prohibits the use of the Baluchi language in their schools. And on the sectarian side, that over the past thirty years, the regime closed all schools that teach the Muslim Sunni sect in Iran’s Baluchistan province with the exception of four schools only. Many were expelled from the clergy Baloch, who are known as Moloyen ( Molloy) from the region, and murdered more than twenty of them in the end in mysterious circumstances. And the ruling regime also dominated on the half Baloch mosques at least and Shiite mullahs ere appointed as imams of mosques in Friday sermons in some villages and towns inhabited by the Sunni majority. Over the past thirty years, Baloch people were forced to embrace the Khomeinite picture of Shiism as a consistent policy of the ruling regime. This campaign has become more acute since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in 2005.
As the continuity of Iranian regime for its oppressed ,discriminatory and exclusionary policies against the Baloch, a conflict arose between the Baloch resistance of the popular resistance movement or the movement of the “Soldiers of God” and the Government of the Iranian regime in each of Sistan and Baluchistan. It is an armed Islamist movement founded by Abdulmalik Rigi, and it’s a movement that most of its elements are from the Sunni Baluch nationalism . The main objectives are to defend the rights of the Sunnis in general and Baluchis in private, forcing the Iranian regime to deal with it as an official party, also called for the division of wealth in afair division , and that called for the Sunnis to have freedom in the construction of mosques and schools, where the movement has accused the Tehran government of persecuting the Sunnis, and the killing of their scientists, the demolition mosques and schools are closed. One of the most important operations of the movement of the “Soldiers of God” was the attempt of assassination of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit in Balochistan in 2005, and the attempt led to kill one of his bodyguards and wounding another. The bombings were carried out in Zahedan in 2005, 2009 and 2010, and in Besheen in 2009 . There were several clashes between them and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, as happened in March 2006, and the movement executed “Shahab Mansouri,” the Iranian intelligence officer who had been captured with nine others at Iran’s border with Pakistan in early 2006. In April 2006, the same group announced the killing of 12 Iranian Guards at “Bam, Kerman” road .
Despite the large number of Jundallah movement and diversity of operations, the authorities of the Iranian regime are able to arrest its leader, Abdul Malik Rigi, in 2010, and executed him and this led to the decline of the organization. Not long time to pass until to appear an army of Justice(al-aadil), after nearly two years, and some considered it as the nascent of the movement “Soldiers of God,” they proved for that the media spokesman for the Army of Justice Abdul Raouf Rigi,whi is one of a Jundallah movement leaders. In turn, Justice army continued what it was started by Jundullah movement, and has multiple operations between the bombing, murder, and kidnapping of prisoners and exchange them with the Iranian authorities. In August 23, 2014, Justice Army issued a statement in which it has given the Iranian government appointed time until the end of the year, (about six months) to withdraw from the province of Balochistan. Although the capabilities of resistance movements in the province of Balochistan are still limited, but it is going on, noting if a movement fade , the other one appear to complete what it was started by its predecessor , making its case a source of continuing concern to the Iranian authorities.
The charge of “enmity against God” and “corruption on earth”, the Iranian regime continues the execution of scholars and clerics and activists of Baloch to get rid of them as opposition demanding the ethnic and religious rights in Iran. The government prevented the relatives of the one executed to know the date of execution , and reveal it by days and weeks of implementation of the sentence of death , and also prevents them from receiving the bodies of their sons, but often the government hide even the place of their burial. Thus, the series of executions in Iran continue sometimes for political reasons and sectarian reasons in other times. On 27 December 2012 Iran executed preacher of the Sunnis, Asghar Rahimi, in a prison of ghazal hisar, Rahimi ,who suffers with most types of torture, was accused to fight and acting against national security, and he was executed along with six men, including his brother Behnam, noting that it did not allow to those who were executed to see their families before their death, their bodies were not handed to their families. Rahimi preacher was arrested at the age of eighteen, and he was arrested by the Iranian authorities, and remained throughout the period of his detention being tortured in Sanandaj prison, and then also tortured in prison of Rjaaa, and remained so until executed with a number of his friends.
In November 2014 the Iranian government executed two brothers Bakhsh when Iran ,under the pretext of “fighting and acting against the country’s security”; executed two of the Baluchi minority in the central prison of Zahedan, these two prisoners are two brothers Waheed Shah Bakhsh, 22, and Mahmoud Shah Bakhsh (23 years). “Bakhsh” were active to criticize the Iranian regime, they were devoted to talk about the suffering of the Baluchi Sunnis minority in Iran, so detained by Iranian authorities and practiced against them all kinds of psychological and physical torture to get false confessions, and to be executed at a later time.
In the same year the Iranian government have executed the Balusho Activist Yassin Kurds, who had been detained in the central prison of Zahedan, accused of “enmity against God and His Messenger,” Yassin as a mere activist wanted to talk about the suffering of the Sunni province of Balochistan of Iran’s persecution, so he was arrested by the Iranian intelligence service, this service is in charge of tracing Baloch activists who demand the civil, political and religious rights in Balochistan. This is the tip of the iceberg of executions and torture against scores of activists and clergy of the Sunnis in the various provinces, the most important of it is Baluchistan and hundreds of them are still staying in prison because of the call to their faith, and many of them are threatened with the execution at any moment.
Till now , the Iranian government does not stop the practice of persecution policy against Baloch nationality , and this is emphasized by Munira Soleimani in Iranian minority conference, which was held in Geneva in March 2015, and under the auspices of the United Nations, saying, “This people- Bloshstani – are exposed to the compound persecution , where they did not enjoy with their national rights and religious rights, where their children are not entitled to run for senior positions because they were Sunnis, because the Iranian constitution considers the Shiite Islam is the official religion of the state and therefore the exclusion and marginalization of the Sunnis. ”
The attempt by the Iranian regime of nationalist and sectarian discrimination against Baloch nationality at all levels indicates to the economic , religious and moral decline in Iran today under the regime of the velayat-e faqih . How’s a regime based on Islamic law as a Marja for its judgment and exercise those discriminatory policies against its own people? There is no doubt that these policies will have a negative impact on the mid and long term on the Iranian state and society as it deepens the state of social anxiety and social resentment and discontent which could put the cohesion of the Iranian nation at stake.
Rawabet Center for Research and Strategic Studies