FT.com / World / Middle East & Africa - Sunni group regrets Tehran jobs 'bias': "Sunni group regrets Tehran jobs 'bias'
By Gareth Smyth in Tehran
Published: November 30 2005 02:00 | Last updated: November 30 2005 02:00
Zahedan Mohammad-Reza Bakhshi-Mohebbi has twice climbed mount Taftan, at 4,042m the highest peak in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province. "Taftan is volcanic - like much of this region - but it emits only steam," says the geology professor. "We can say it's half active."
The same can be said for politics in a province bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sistan-Baluchestan is known for lawlessness, born partly of smuggling of drugs (in) and petrol (out).
But more important for Iran's Shia Islamic regime is that Baluchis, like the Kurds of western Iran, are among the Sunni Muslims who make up 10 to 15 per cent of the country's 68m, overwhelmingly Shia, population. In Zahedan, the provincial capital of 600,000, men wearing shalwar kameez readily assert the identity of the Baluchi, a people divided between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. "The Baluchis, who are mainly Sunni, speak a language close to ancient Persian," says Mohsen Dianat, dean of Zahedan's Payam-e Nour University. "To the north are the mainly Shia Sistanis, who speak a dialect of modern Persian rich in nouns."
In June's presidential election, over half the province's electors voted for Mostafa Moein - candidate of Mosharekat, the main reformist party - who came fourth across Iran.
Dr Moein's appeal in Sistan-Baluchestan was based on a stress on rights for Iran's ethnic minorities - half its population - and its Sunnis. But it resulted also from Sunni voters heeding a call to back him from Mullah Abdul-Hamid, the province's senior cleric and Iran's most prominent Sunni. For unlike in Kurdistan, religious identity seems stronger in this area than ethnic identity.
Abdul-Hamid Esmaeel-Zehi, 58, weighs his words in articulating Sunni grievances with Iran's Shia regime. Sitting at his home near the large seminary he heads in Zahedan, he says: "We support the Islamic republic and are active politically. Baluchis love Iran, there is no separatist movement."
The problem facing Sunni, he says, is job discrimination in Iran's state-run economy. "We welcomed Dr Moein's promise of Sunnis in the cabinet, although of course Mr [Mohammad] Khatami [the former president] made the same commitment." Abdul-Hamid attributes Mr Khatami's failure to appoint Sunni to senior positions to "some ulema [clerics] in Qom who influence the government from prejudice and bias".
Another gripe is the lack of a Sunni mosque in Tehran, a capital with churches, synagogues and Zoroastrian temples.
In Zahedan, Baluchis complain of poverty, unemployment and a lack of government factories. In the countryside, seven years of drought ended last year after devastating cattle-rearing and cutting the supply of sheep's wool for carpet weaving. Proximity to Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Sunni preponderance have raised concern over militant jihadis.
In July, the al-Arabiyya satellite television was sent a video from militants claiming to show the beheading of an Iranian official in Baluchestan, and two weeks ago in Pakistan a Baluchi group claimed responsibility for a Karachi bombing that killed three people in a KFC restaurant. Abdul-Hamid insists Baluchis from Iran who went to fight the Russians in Afghanistan subsequently returned to a quiet life.
"People come and go from Pakistan, but there is no spill-over of militancy," he says. "Some Taliban passed through after the [US-led] war in Afghanistan, but Iran's system was against them and the ulema spoke out. We said there was no justification to bring war here, and we explained terrorism is against Islam."
Mr Bakhshi-Mohebbi says fear of jihadis is exaggerated by officials in Tehran arguing people here are Wahabis, the militant Islamic tradition that originated in Saudi Arabia.
He says: "No one can say there is no inclination to Talibanism or Wahabism among Sunnis. But the Taliban way of thinking is also found among Shia, Christians and Jews. This is no excuse for discrimination against Sunnis.""
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