US Marines Probe Tensions Among Iran's Ethnic Minorities
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By Guy Dinmore
The Financial Times (UK)
Published February 24, 2006

The Intelligence wing of the US Marines has launched a probe into Iran's ethnic minorities at a time of heightened tensions along the border with Iraq and friction between capitals.

Iranian activists involved in a classified research project for the Marines told the FT the Pentagon was examining the depth and nature of grievances against the central Islamic government, and appeared to be studying whether Iran would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq.

The research effort comes at a critical moment between Iran and the U.S.
Last week the Bush administration asked Congress for $75 million to promote democratic change within Iran, having already mustered diplomatic support at the United Nations to counter Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme.

At the same time, Iran demanded that the UK withdraw its troops from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, which lies close to its border. Iran has repeatedly accused the US and UK of inciting explosions and sabotage in oil-rich frontier regions where Arab and Kurdish minorities predominate. The US and UK accuse Iran of meddling in Iraq and supplying weapons to Insurgents.

US Intelligence experts suggested the Marines' effort could be evidence of early stages of contingency plans for a ground assault on Iran. Or it could be an attempt to evaluate the implications of the unrest in Iranian border regions for Marines stationed in Iraq, as well as Iranian infiltration.

Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Long, a Marines spokesman, confirmed that the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity Production and Analysis Company had commissioned Hicks and Associates, a defence contractor, to conduct two research projects into Iraqi and Iranian ethnic groups.

The purpose was "so that we and our troops would have a better understanding of and respect for the various aspects of culture in those countries," he said. He would not provide details, saying the projects were for official use only.

The first study, on Iraq, was completed in late 2003, more than six months after the US Invasion. The Iran study was finished late last year.

Hicks and Associates is a wholly owned subsidiary of Science Applications International Corporation, one of the biggest US defence contractors and deeply involved in the prewar planning for Iraq.

While most analysts would agree that Iran has a far stronger sense of national identity than Iraq, its ethnic mix is even more complex than its neighbor.

Different in language and divided between followers of Sunni and Shia Islam, the ethnic minorities have little coherence. At times tensions among themselves are greater than with Tehran. Iran's strongly centralised government does not release statistics on the ethnic groups that mainly inhabit sensitive border regions with Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Farsi-speaking Persians who dominate the central government are believed to make up a slim majority, followed by Azeris and Kurds in the north and west, Arabs in the oil-rich south-west and Baluch in the south-east. A patchwork of Turkmen, Christian Armenians and Assyrians, Jews and Tribal Nomads are among many groups scattered across a country of 68 million people.

Diplomats in Washington expressed shock at the possible implications of the Marine research.

The FT interviewed several Iranians in the US who were invited to help. Some refused, seeing it as an effort to break up Iran. But several exiled politicians representing minority groups opposed to the Islamic regime did take part, although they said they wanted a peaceful transition to a democratic, federal Iran and were opposed to any US military action.

Manuri Esfandiari, US representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, which ended its armed struggle in 1997 and is based mostly in northern Iraq, said he believed the Pentagon was acting on its long-standing distrust of CIA and State Department analysis. He thought the Pentagon was looking to counter the prevailing administration view that US support for Iran's minorities would create a disastrous backlash.

"They want to study and see if the State Departments Chaos Theory is a valid hypothesis," he said. The US could not look to the Kurds to support an Invasion as they did in Iraq, he said.

"Iran will become democratic only if it is built by the Iranians. The democracy movement is strong enough to find its way without military struggle," he said.

Karim Abdian, head of the Ahvaz-Human Rights Organisation, which campaigns on behalf of the Iranian Arabs in the south-west, said he was told the report would be made public.

Mr Abdian, who says his organisation has no government funding, accused Iran of using the threat of Invasion as a pretext to suppress ethnic grievances rather than address what he called the root causes of land confiscation and discrimination.

Iran has experienced some of the worst unrest and violence among its Kurdish and Arab population in recent years. Although the root causes of unrest--economic and cultural grievances--are long standing, analysts in the US believe that events in Iraq--where the new constitution has embraced the concept of federalism and a Kurd has become president--are serving as a catalyst.

Last month two bombs exploded in Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan province close to Iraq. Eight people were killed on the same day that President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad had been due to visit. Six were killed in bombings in October.

Iran has accused the UK and US of being behind the violence. Using separatist Arab groups in southern Iraq to foment instability. London and Washington have denied the allegations.

US State Department officials met representatives of the London "Congress" in the first such talks between the Bush administration and a coalition claiming to represent Irans minorities, participants told the FT.

Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA specialist on the Middle East, says the State Department under Condoleezza Rice, and not the Pentagon, is running Iran policy. He said the department was "several steps removed" from discussing covert action and "nowhere near the point" of trying to use separatist tendencies among minorities as traction against the Tehran regime. No one knew whether that would work, he added.

Source:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/2f2ce346-a4db-11da-897c-0000779e2340.html