Iran Elections 2009: If It Kicks Off Into Full-Blown Conflict, Who Will Fight?
We may have thought that Iraq was bad after the 'insurgency' went into full-blown mode, but it had taken them a while to get going because Saddam had not left any room, over the decades, for his opponents to become organised into solid groups. He had spent years crushing any opposition with strong-arm tactics, so people found it hard to organise themselves when he was in power. The same cannot be said for Iran. There has been an air of real democracy there for many years, and its people have many viewpoints, and affiliations. Ahmadinejad was voted in because the Iranian people thought his strong character & new ideas, coupled with his image as the modern-day face of Iran, would put them on a much better international footing, aswell as making their economy stronger. And for a while it looked like he was doing just that, but now that the tide has turned into a possible civil war, his opponents are already organised into groups and there are plenty of these mini-armies in different regions of Iran, some opposed to the current regime and others who would love independence. Not to mention the other countries looking to payback for Iran's perceived support of insurgents in Iraq. On paper this looks far more dangerous than Iraq.
June.17.2009 - George Valentine Corr, Blatant News Editor
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THOSE WITH A STAKE
There are a great many people that want to be part of a strong Iran, but there are also some others who have harboured wishes of independence in some regions of the country. These include the Arabs of Khuzestan, the Baluchis, the Kurds and the Iranian Azerbaijanis. It is often said that foreign governments - mostly the UK, US, Iraq and Russia - have been involved in attempting to grow independence groups in those regions. However, most Iranians (who generally describe themselves as both Persian and Iranian in everyday life) will tell you that they enjoy this mixture of local cultures, and that at this point in history they are now only considered regional Persian cultures. They will say that this mix of people is what brings the country together, and that the majority of Persian's/Iranian's are happy to be part of a greater Iran. This is true to some extent, but there are small groups of 'freedom fighters' in the background, and this election fiasco will have swelled their numbers greatly.
THE GREAT PERSIAN MIXTURE
Up until 1932 Iran was known as Persia, and this is where its official national language gets its name. It is thought that about half of the 70 million living in today's Iran are from so-called minority cultures, and the languages spoke in Iran reflects this. Asides from Persian, large groups of people also use Arabic, Armenian, Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Bandari, Kurdish, Mazandarani, Pashtu, Turkoman, Turkish and Urdu as their mother tongue, or second language. Some of these people claim human rights violations, as does the UN for them, but others say that it is a fair and just society for all. So the messages coming out of Iran in recent times have been very mixed. The UN could have possibly been used by the western governments to spread this message of disharmony due to the west's recent political to-ing and fro-ing with the Iranian presidency, so their claims are hard to take 100% seriously. One point of note is about the country's university's, who take in more women than men every year as students. They have now begun to introduce a long list of courses in these minority languages, particularly Azerbaijani, Kurdish and Arabic, the most widely-used Iranian languages after Persian, so, on some level it does seem like the country is embracing and solidifying the languages of its culture. But it really is hard to tell from the outside, most probably meaning it is a case of a mixture of the good and the bad.
IRAN'S EXTERNAL ENEMIES
The Russians have always been accused of meddling in Iran's internal politics. It is believed that they helped set-up and fund separatist groups in Iranian Kurdistan and Iranian Azerbaijan. They also supplied weaponry to Saddam for the Iraqi's to use against the Iranians in their long war which killed millions. The US and UK have both been working away in the background for decades, trying to topple the current system by supporting and funding rebel groups in both Iranian Kurdistan and Khuzestan. This area of the world is full of this kind of thing, and it is generally outside powers - global superpowers and bordering countries - that get the ball moving, so this time around if civil war does erupt it will probably be the same, even though we will not be meant to notice this.
RIGHT HERE, WAITING FOR YOU
If it kicks off, you can bet your bottom dollar that the CIA and SAS are already in there training these groups, getting them ready for battle. This will be payback on a large scale for the Iranian-backed militia's in Iraq, who are blamed on keeping the entire Iraqi insurgency going since 2003, killing thousands of US & UK troops, presumably to keep it's neighbour unstable. This will also be retribution for the ongoing nuclear threat that Iran has openly posed. Iraq will do whatever it can to throw some fire into the mix too, setting up separatist groups inside Iran, and funding others. Then of course you will have the Iranian-backed insurgents inside Iraq coming into Iran to throw their weight behind whatever side they support. And make no mistake about it, they will be split, because when we hear the term 'Iranian-backed militia in Iraq', what we don't realise is that these groups are not all associated with the Iranian government. Some have nothing to do with them and are supported solely by other interests in Iran. Finally there is the many thousands, or millions, of potential rebels active or training in nearby Afghanistan and Pakistan. This possible war could attract all sorts, and we havn't even mentioned the broad public opposition to Ahmadinejad, and his own local supporters.
THE BROAD PUBLIC
We all know that the majority of the public are split into 2 schools of thought. One want Ahmadinejad to go, the other believe in him and want him to stay. It seems that both sides have decent numbers, whatever the percentages, and this is where the killing fields will begin. This is where the 70 million Iranian's will take up arms against friends and neighbours, for what they see as a just cause, and all because the regime could not do the honest thing and let their people have the leader & government that they wanted. According to the perecieved result of the election - Mousavi winning comfortably - they have obviously had enough of Ahmadinejad. The 2005 vote which saw him win comfortably over Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, by 17 million votes to 10 million, is now completely wiped from memory. Those 2005 figures should also be looked at in context. That was the second round of voting, and only the top 2 candidates got through to it. In the first round Ahmadinejad got 5.7 million votes, second to Rafsanjani's 6.2 million votes. Karroubi got 5.1 million, Moeen got 4.1 million, and Ghalibaf got 4.1 million. The other 2 candidates got 1.7 and 1.3 million votes respectively. So that was no landslide of complete public support by any means. And with Iran holding an estimated 10% of the world's oil reserves and 15% of its gas reserves, outside influences might see it as profitable to utilise these differences at this pivotal moment. There is a heck of a lot at stake here.
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