Iran: Stifling the Azeri minority
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Karl Rahder, AMH, ISN
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Trouble is brewing in Iran's 'Southern Azerbaijan' as the government targets Azeri human rights activists and cracks down on what some view as the Azeri ethnic minority's struggle for more democracy and human rights, and what others call separatism.

Editor's Note: This is Part II of a two-part series on Iran's Azerbaijani minority. Part I was published on 19 April 2007.

By Karl Rahder for ISN Security Watch (26/04/07)

Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have been both tempestuous and guardedly cordial at least as far back as the Soviet period, when Moscow refused to withdraw its troops from Iran after World War II, one of the first incidents that defined the emerging Cold War. The Kremlin ultimately pulled out, abandoning its hope of exploiting Azeri-Persian tensions and enlarging the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic to encompass much of northern Iran.

Like much of the post-colonial world, the demographics in both Iran and Azerbaijan make little sense. The Araz River marks the border that was delimited after an 1828 treaty between Iran and imperial Russia, and separates Azerbaijan's eight million Azeris (along with small ethnic minorities of Russians, Lezgins and others) and the much larger Azeri population in Iran.

Despite at least some Iranian success in recruiting agents in Azerbaijan, a trip across the Araz River into northern Iran leads one to a region of simmering discontent - a place where hundreds of thousands of Azeri demonstrators have clashed with riot police in what began as a series of protests against Persian institutional racism but lately may have morphed into something much broader and more dangerous.

The cockroach conundrum
The catalyst for the riots that spread across northern Iran last year was the publication in late May of a children's cartoon in a newspaper controlled by the Iranian government. The cartoon, in color and taking up an entire page, depicts the travails of a child who attempts to communicate with a cockroach - a thinly veiled surrogate for an Azeri. The child queries the cockroach in a variety of languages, but the uncomprehending insect merely replies with the Azeri word for "pardon me?"

The parallels between an illiterate cockroach and Azeris were not lost on Iran's Azeri population, who responded with a wave of protests in Tabriz, Orumiyeh and other cities. Initial reports from Azeri sources indicated that at least four people were killed by Iranian riot police, but subsequent estimates have put the number of dead at up to 100.

As a result of the unrest, during which cars were torched and a bank set ablaze in Tabriz, the authorities took the opportunity to round up Azeri human rights activists such as Abbas Lisani, who was arrested in June of 2006 after the demonstration in Ardebil. Lisani was convicted for "spreading anti-government propaganda," and sentenced to a year and a half in prison and 50 lashes.

As of late January, Lisani had ended a month-long hunger strike and was reported to be weakened and in ill-health.

Lisani has been targeted frequently by Iranian prosecutors over the past several years. In 2004, he was reportedly severely beaten by Iranian police during an arrest in a mosque in Ardebil. According to recent press reports, Lisani's next trial date will be on 17 May in Tabriz.

Other Iranian Azeris, such as liberal cleric Hojjatoleslam Ezimi Qedimi, had been convicted of similar crimes prior to last year's cartoon controversy. Qedimi was released last August, but is forbidden to speak publicly on Azeri rights issues and to wear the clothes of a religious scholar.

After demonstrations in February this year, as many as 60 Azeris were arrested in the city of Orumiye, including journalist Esmail Javadi, who was jailed in an Intelligence Ministry facility and "severely beaten," according to Amnesty International.

Some 20 people were arrested in the city of Ardebil in late February, including human rights activist Ramin Sadeghi who reportedly was being held in Ardebil prison. Like Lisani, Sadeghi had gone on a hunger strike and "is believed to be in poor health and in urgent need of medical care," said Amnesty International in early March. Journalist Said Metinpour was arrested in Zenjan, and was said "to have blood on his lips" during his arrest. As of press time, all three men had been released on bail and were awaiting trial.

"Greater Azerbaijan"
One former political prisoner now lives in the US and leads the Southern Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement (SANAM), an organization that focuses on Azeri rights in Iran.

Mahmudali Chehregani, a former literature professor, enjoys considerable prestige among Azeri Iranians and has been consulted by officials in the Pentagon, the State Department and even the White House in recent years - talks that have fueled speculation that the US administration hopes to take advantage of ethnic unrest in Iran.

Cherhraganli is often referred to as a separatist, although in a recent interview with ISN Security Watch in Washington, DC, he was careful to distance himself from the concept of an independent southern Azerbaijani state or unification with the Azerbaijani Republic.

"We want only democracy and human rights. And we want a change in the Iranian regime to a democratic and secular government. We favor a federal Iran, the same as federalism in the US or Germany. We want self-determination. We want Tabriz to be the capital of south Azerbaijan, and we want a parliament and a government. But we are a part of Iran. We are not separatists," he said.

Even if a separatist uprising is remote, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a lot to be nervous about, some say.

"If you're an Iranian politician, you have a major problem with the Azeri minority," said Stephen Blank, "and you have a constant fear that that minority can be used by outside forces to stir up trouble within Iran […] Iranians today are very conscious of this fact. It's a big problem for them domestically."

Most western analysts and even many Azeris believe that the prospects for a "Greater Azerbaijan" are slim.

Etibar Mammadov is one of the skeptics. He points out that even if an opportunity for southern Azerbaijan to merge with the Azerbaijani Republic were to present itself, the cultural differences between secular Azerbaijan and the Azeri region of Iran would be too wide to resolve in a unified state, even though both groups share a common Shi'ite religious faith.

Iran's Azeris, more conservative and far more numerous than their kin north of the river, would be reluctant to accept rule from Baku, he says. "The Iranian Azeris would ask, 'We are 25 million and they are only eight million. Why should we follow Baku's rules? Why shouldn't they follow our rules?'"

Obali is convinced that the movement is undergoing a shift in emphasis from a protest against Persian racism to a wider anti-regime struggle, and once that happens, he says, "the whole character of the movement changes. And now the Iranian government has to take notice, so the problems for them have been multiplied in the past year or so."

For Obali, who sees Iran as an artificial state that is held together only by coercion from Tehran, the underlying issue is the centrifugal ethnic forces that could tear the country apart at the seams. An increasingly active Azeri rights movement, along with similar underground organizations in Baluchi, Kurdish and Arab regions of Iran, threaten the country's raison d'etre: a unified, multi-ethnic theocracy.

"The movement is so deep. And it's a popular, grass-roots movement. The government brought in close to 200,000 extra troops to handle it, and they couldn't do anything until it was too late […] We are the single most devastating news for the Iranian government!"

More trouble brewing
Further clashes between the clerical regime and Iran's ethnic minorities are very likely, given the history of ethnic grievances in northern Iran and elsewhere and rising tensions in the Persian Gulf, where a US naval task force was reinforced in late March.

Despite visits to northern Iran by President Ahmadinejad in recent months, ostensibly to rebuild support and reach out to the community, trouble with the Republic of Azerbaijan may also be brewing. An unknown number of Iranian military helicopters violated Azerbaijani airspace on 22 February, just a day after the demonstrations in northern Iran, causing widespread speculation in Azerbaijan that the incursion was an intentional message - although the Iranian government subsequently apologized and claimed the helicopters had strayed into Azerbaijan accidentally.

As of early April, Azerbaijan's Turan news agency reported that Iran had closed the border between the two countries, a report that the Iranian government denied.

Iran, then, is deeply concerned about the potential for instability inside its borders, and may be signaling neighboring Azerbaijan and its US ally that Tehran is firmly in control of its territory.

"The real question," Stephen Blank says, "is what is stronger - nationalism or Islamism? It's an open question and nobody has the answer."
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Karl Rahder has taught US foreign policy and international history at colleges and universities in the US and Azerbaijan. In 2004, he was a Visiting Faculty Fellow in Azerbaijan with the Civic Education Project, an academic program funded by the Soros Foundations and the US Department of State. He is currently based in Chicago.

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The 'Southern Azerbaijan' problem
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Karl Rahder, ISN- International Relations and Security Network
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Azeris make up roughly 24 percent of Iran's population and Tehran is worried about just whose side they are on as rumors of US infiltration are taken seriously, complicating Azerbaijan's own foreign policy outlook.

Editor's Note: This is Part I of a two-part series on Iran's Azerbaijani minority. Part II will appear on Thursday, 26 April 2007.

By Karl Rahder for ISN Security Watch (19/04/07)
Karl Rahder has taught US foreign policy and international history at colleges and universities in the US and Azerbaijan. In 2004, he was a Visiting Faculty Fellow in Azerbaijan with the Civic Education Project, an academic program funded by the Soros Foundations and the US Department of State. He is currently based in Chicago.


In cities across northern Iran in mid-February, tens of thousands of ethnic Azeris marched in observance of International Mother Language Day, although the subtext was a protest against what they perceive to be the systematic, state-sponsored suppression of their heritage and language.

Hundreds were arrested in what became riots in cities such as Tabriz and Ardebil, the violence instigated by Iranian special forces and Revolutionary Guards, according to witnesses. Others have been held in various detention facilities since violent disturbances in May 2006, including Iran's notorious Evin prison, a favorite dumping ground for journalists and human rights activists.

Unreported by most of the world's media, as many as 100 demonstrators were killed during the 2006 demonstrations, and scores of injuries and an unknown number of fatalities occurred during this year's February demonstrations.

Azeris make up roughly 24 percent of Iran's 69 million inhabitants, according to the CIA, which would put their population at about 17 million and make it the largest ethnic minority group in Iran. Azeri sources in North America and Azerbaijan often put the figure much higher at 20-30 million.

Dangerous rumors
The Azeri demonstrations come at an inopportune moment for The Islamic Republic. Reports out of Washington claim that the Pentagon may be planning to use Iran's ethnic minority groups in the Kurdish, Baluchi and Azeri regions as force multipliers if conflict breaks out between the US and Iran.

Moreover, the region has buzzed with rumors since last year that US special forces are operating surreptitiously in Azeri and other minority regions of Iran, which - true or not - has made life difficult for many of Iran's human rights activists.

Last year, journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in the 17 April edition of The New Yorker that "American combat troops [are] now operating in Iran" and are "working with minority groups," including Azeris in the north of the country. Hersh's source - a "government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon" - claimed that the Americans "are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds […]"

The accuracy of Hersh's allegations is difficult to gauge. During the last several months, ISN Security Watch has talked to a number of analysts at think tanks, inside the US government and intelligence communities, and in the "Southern Azerbaijan" movement.

One analyst with ties to the US government expressed skepticism and contended that Hersh "has no way of knowing." However, Hersh's claim has been taken very seriously by the Iranian government, which has tied what they see as subversion by the US and Israel in Iranian internal affairs to minority unrest in Azeri regions of Iran and elsewhere.

Ahmed Obali is an Azeri-Iranian who was born in Tabriz and now operates Gunaz TV in Chicago, a well-known dissident news and commentary channel beamed into Iran and Europe via satellite. Interviewed just after the recent February demonstrations, Obali thought it "would be stupid if the Americans weren't doing this sort of thing," he told ISN Security Watch.

Obali, a naturalized US citizen whose TV station has been on the air since early 2005, spends each day anchoring his broadcasts from a makeshift studio crammed with cameras and recording equipment above the restaurant he owns on Chicago's north side.

"I believe Seymour Hersh because it makes sense. Have I seen any of these American commandos? No. But as we now know, prior to the war in Iraq, there were American special forces operating in northern and southern Iraq."

Obali speculated that US forces could slip inside Iran with relative ease from Kurdish areas in neighboring Iraq. But northern Iran - which is what Azeris often refer to as "Southern Azerbaijan," populated mostly by ethnic Azeris - is a different matter.

Because Azerbaijan proper was once a Soviet Republic, "the Russians know every inch of this land, and they would have a good idea of any American operations in the area." The Russians would surely pass any intelligence of US operations on to the Iranians, said Obali, because Russia has a vital stake in the current Iranian regime and "cannot afford to lose Iran."

One of the more prominent Azeri politicians involved in the Southern Azerbaijan movement is Etibar Mammadov, who unsuccessfully ran for president in Azerbaijan's 2003 election, which was internationally recognized as flawed. Interviewed last year in Baku by ISN Security Watch, Mammadov also thought that US teams operating in the Azeri regions of Iran would be compromised very quickly. He also emphasized a growing problem due to rumors of US money and aid devoted to destabilizing non-Persian regions of Iran: Iranian police arresting Azeri dissidents and accusing them during interrogation of working with the Americans. "In some cases, the Iranian government has arrested people involved in demonstrations, and they have said, 'You are a member of a secret group funded by America!'"

Certainly, the timing of the Hersh article could not have been worse, with the May riots coming only a month after publication, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's request to Congress for a US$75 million fund to undermine the Iranian regime being made in February.

When the May demonstrations swept across Azerbaijani Iran, the government was thus handed a convenient scapegoat, with President Ahmadinejad and Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamene'i - Iran's most powerful man and ironically an ethnic Azeri-alleging that the US, along with Israel, was responsible for instigating the crisis.

Complicating foreign policy
The increased tension complicates Azerbaijan's foreign policy enormously due to a history of testy relations between the two countries over Southern Azerbaijan, as well as Iran's close economic ties to Azerbaijan's adversary Armenia - a continuing source of resentment in Baku.

In March last year, some 600 delegates convened in Baku for the World Congress of Azerbaijanis. During the Congress, a number of participants addressed both the concept of a unified Azerbaijan and human rights abuses against Azeris in Iran. A diplomatic controversy erupted when Iran's ambassador to Azerbaijan, Afshar Suleymani, expressed indignation concerning the views of some speakers who advocated the union of southern and northern Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani government must also tread carefully because Iran has represented a nascent threat ever since Azerbaijan's independence from the Soviet Union in 1992. Most analysts agree that the Iranian government has attempted to infiltrate Azerbaijan with agents and fifth column sleeper cells to weaken Azerbaijan from within for many years.

The choreography of arrests and imprisonment of alleged Iranian agents is almost routine in Azerbaijan. One example came last summer when three Iranians were arrested while videotaping the French embassy in downtown Baku. In 2001, six Azeri clerics based in the southern district of Jalalibad were detained on charges of spying for Iran. The arrests came less than a month after an Iranian warship allegedly sailed into Azerbaijani waters on the Caspian Sea. The opposition newspaper Azadlig reported that the clerics in Jalalibad were working with Hizbollah, and that according to Western diplomatic sources, Iran had organized a number of Hizbollah cells in Azerbaijan.

Stephen Blank, an instructor at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania, has written extensively on the strategic picture in the Caspian region, and said in a recent telephone interview that there was "a lot of evidence that the Iranians do maintain connections with underground organizations" in Azerbaijan.

In a paper for the Johns Hopkins University’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute earlier this year, Blank wrote that Iran "is building up networks" among regional terror groups in the South Caucasus and elsewhere "that could be activated in the future to threaten those governments or American interests or bases there."

It is widely believed in the region that Iran will bomb the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, Azerbaijan's economic lifeline, if it perceives that Azerbaijan has aided the US in a future attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Persistent discussion that the US is seeking a military base of some kind in Azerbaijan only fuels these expectations.

Although President Ilham Aliyev has steadfastly denied that the US would be allowed to station military personnel in Azerbaijan, US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried hinted to an audience in late 2005 that the US would like to establish just such a base.

Azerbaijan's foreign policy calculations must therefore include the consequences of a war between its ally across the Atlantic and its southern Shi'ite neighbor.

In what may be a conciliatory gesture to Iran, the Azerbaijani government announced on 12 April that Hadi Sid Javad Musavi, an Iranian citizen affiliated with the Southern Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement, was deported to Tehran. Musavi's lawyer in Baku told the press that his client had been arrested and tortured after participating in protests in 2004 and that his expulsion from Azerbaijan, where he had sought political asylum, was a violation of international norms.

Musavi may face trial in Iran, and if past experience is any guide, he will certainly be sentenced to a prison term, as have many of Iran's Azeri human rights activists.
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Karl Rahder has taught US foreign policy and international history at colleges and universities in the US and Azerbaijan. In 2004, he was a Visiting Faculty Fellow in Azerbaijan with the Civic Education Project, an academic program funded by the Soros Foundations and the US Department of State. He is currently based in Chicago.

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