On Oct 16, 12:22 pm, excalliber stevens
<excalibur.stevens.bis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Iraqi Militants Encourage People of Khuzestan to Launch Jihad against
> Iran
> Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 9 Issue: 37
> October 14, 2011 05:07 PM
>
> Influenced by the upheaval that has stricken many Arab countries in
> the Middle East and North Africa, the people of southwest Iran's
> Khuzestan Province have tried to start their own protest movement.
> Khuzestan is inhabited by a majority of Arabs and is home to more than
> 80% of Iran's oil reserves. In the Arabic literature of the political
> and cultural organizations of the province, the area is called al-
> Ahwaz. [1]
>
> The calls for an uprising in the province earlier this year tried to
> emulate the April 2005 protests in Khuzestan, which were quelled by
> the use of violence by Iranian authorities. The Iranian state media
> reported no news from the province during the current protests but
> opposition sources claimed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards
> opened fire on the protesters and killed three people. It was also
> reported that dozens were arrested (Alarab.net, April 18).
>
> Although the movement did not develop into anything like the uprising
> of 2005, it attracted the attention of Iraqi Islamist insurgent
> groups. The Salafi-Jihadi Ansar al-Islam (AI) group released a
> communiqu named "Message of solidarity with our brothers in Ahwaz,"
> calling on them to unify their efforts and launch a jihad against Iran
> (alboraq.info, May 11).Cooperation between the Iraqi insurgents and
> Ahwazi groups reportedly started soon after the invasion of Iraq in
> 2003. During the 2005 uprising in Khuzestan, the first agreement
> between activists from the province and Iraqi insurgents became known
> and a series of bombs struck Iranian government buildings and targets
> the following years (Islammemo.cc, June 12, 2005).
>
> Arabs in the province accuse successive Iranian governments of
> pursuing a policy aimed at changing the demographic nature of the
> region by encouraging non-Arab Iranians to migrate to the province in
> large numbers. They are also critical of changes in the province's
> borders that have seen southern areas with a majority Arab population
> detached and areas with Arab minority populations added in the north.
>
> In an interview with the Jamestown Foundation, the leader of the
> disbanded Hizb al-Nahda al-Arabi al-Ahwazi (Ahwazi Arab Renaissance
> Party), Sabah al-Mossawi, revealed that there were Ahwazi fighters who
> had joined the Iraqi insurgency: "They went to fight the occupation
> [i.e. Coalition forces] but also to fight the Iranian-backed parties.
> They mainly joined the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Ba'ath party."
>
> Throughout centuries of conflict between Iran and the Ottoman Empire,
> the Khuzestan region managed to maintain a degree of relative
> independence, being ruled by a series of local tribal leaders. The
> last of these was toppled by the Iranian authorities in 1925 and the
> area came under the direct control of Tehran. After the Islamic
> revolution of 1979, the community's demands for more rights and
> recognition of their distinct identity were not accepted by the new
> government. Subsequently a large-scale uprising broke out in the
> province. The Iranian authorities in turn repressed the protest
> movement ruthlessly and the area came under military rule. Iraqi-
> backed organizations launched a series of attacks on military and
> civilian targets during the uprising. The Ahwazi issue attracted
> international attention when a group of Ahwazi gunmen belonging to the
> Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan (DRFLA)
> occupied the Iranian embassy in London in 1980 and took hostages.
> After a six-day siege of the embassy by police, the gunmen killed one
> hostage, leading to a successful raid to release the hostages in the
> embassy by the British Special Air Service (SAS), a Special Forces
> Regiment.
>
> There are various opposition groups which claim to represent the Arab
> population of Khuzestan. All of them are banned in Iran but operate in
> exile while claiming to have an active presence in the province.
> However the most prominent group that claims to be militarily active
> is the Ba'athist Arab Struggle Movement to Liberate Ahwaz (ASMLA) and
> its armed wing, the Martyr Mohye al-Din al-Nasir Brigade (MMDNB). The
> latter's strategy is to target oil production facilities in the
> province as a means of weakening the Iranian economy, which depends
> heavily on the oil of Khuzestan Province. In 2007 the MMDNB recognized
> Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri as the new leader of the Iraqi Ba'ath party
> (Albasrah.net, June 24, 2007)
>
> The majority of the people of Khuzestan are Sh'ia Muslims but there
> has been a growing movement among them to convert to Sunni Islam. This
> trend has escalated significantly over the last few years, driven
> mainly by a local identity problem. Resentment of Iran by some Shi'a
> Ahwazis is reflected in a number or ways, including a rejection of the
> Shi'a faith. None of the prominent Shi'a clerics in Iran or Iraq have
> clearly supported the Ahwazi cause. The most senior Ahwazi cleric and
> the most influential community leader, Shaykh Muhammad Tahir al-
> Khaqani, was forced to leave Khuzestan after the uprising of 1979 and
> put under house arrest in Qom until his death in 1986. No other local
> cleric emerged to preserve the Shi'a-Arab nationalist identity of the
> population.
>
> Salafi-Jihadi groups from Iraq regard the conversions to Sunni Islam
> in Khuzestan-Ahwaz as genuine and are encouraging the integration of
> Ahwazi converts in the international jihadi movement. According to the
> AI communiqu : "The origin of the people of Ahwaz is that they are a
> Sunni nation. The Iranian occupation has imposed Persian and Shi'a
> culture on them. The policy of Persianization is based on the Rafidah
> faith (i.e. Shi'a Islam). Therefore there should be a clear
> distinction of the right faith (i.e. Sunni Islam). This distinction
> should be the foundation to be relied on for achieving political and
> geographical independence for the state of Ahwaz." The AI message went
> on to set a strategy for the confrontation in Khuzestan, calling for
> its people to build a Sunni religious and political leadership: "There
> should be a unified Sunni-Jihadi movement in Ahwaz and it should join
> the global jihad" (Alboraq.info, May11).
>
> The AI communiqu is very important. It is picking up on a growing
> trend and trying to direct it towards a jihadi goal. So far the
> revolutionary movements in Khuzestan have been based on the
> community's Arab identity within a Persian and Shi'a Iran. With the
> increase of conversions to Sunni Islam among the population, it is not
> possible to rule out that a base for a Salafi-Jihadi organization
> could be established in the province. Such a development might well
> change the relationship between Salafi-Jihadi groups and Iran. The
> former have avoided a direct confrontation with Tehran so far, despite
> the often severe confrontations between the Shi'a and Sunni
> communities in the Middle East. Iraqi Sunni Islamists will be heavily
> involved in such a struggle, putting the Salafi-Jihadists at the
> centre of one of the most significant geo-political conflicts in the
> region.
>
> Notes:
>
> 1. Khuzestan was historically named Arabistan (the land of the Arabs).
> In 1935 the Iranian government of Shah Reza Pahlavi renamed it
> Khuzestan i.e. "the Land of the Khuzis," referring to the ancient name
> used for sugar cane farmers in the ancient kingdom of Susa.
>
> Local Arab people call the province al-Ahwaz and emphasize its history
> of independence under Arab rulers since the Arab invasion of 639 C.E.
> Ahwaz is also the name of the Khuzestan capital.http://www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/single/?tx_ttnewswww.realindianews.blogspot.com
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