Friday, March 16, 2007

Perspective: War is a way of life all over the Middle East. It always has been.

Iran’s Wages of Fanaticism
Alex Alexiev
23 February 2007
... And so, today we have Baluchis in the southeast, Ahvaz Arabs in Khuzestan, Kurds in the west and Azeris in the north, as well as a number of tribes, seething with resentment or already in armed rebellion against the regime. As the existential crisis gripping Iran deepens, it will only get worse and as violence and repression grow so will the fault lines that could ultimately render the Iranian state asunder.
It is fairly obvious what needs to be done to prevent such an unfortunate denouement. A democratic federation with wide-ranging political and cultural autonomy for the major ethnic regions installed in place of the current Islamofascist regime would certainly arrest these destructive trends. But time is short.
History has not been kind to nations that have submitted to fanatics for long...
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Trouble brewing in Iranian Balochistan
Dr. Abdulla Al-Madani*
25 February 2007
Unlike Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan, which has been receiving extensive media coverage as a result of its uprising against the central government in recent years, Iran’s vast but sparsely populated southeastern province of Sistan-Balochistan has long been out of media glare. This, however, seems to be changing now with an escalating insurgency led by an obscure Baloch militant organization called Jundollah (Soldiers of God).
Observers, like independent analyst and consultant Chris Zambelis, argue that Iran’s emphasis on the alleged role of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the Baloch uprising is only aimed at showing itself as one of terrorism’s victims. And by brutally striking against Jundollah and its followers, it may be wishing to curry favour with the United States amidst pressure to concede on its nuclear ambitions and meddling in Iraq and Lebanon...

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