Ardeshir Mehrdad: Let us begin by asking how do you define the “national question”? If such an issue exists in Iran, what form does it take?
A: From the broadest perspective the national question can be defined as the denial of the right to self determination to a nation. That one nation is dominated by another. What is known as its national identity is forcefully denied it. It becomes entangled in a hierarchy of political and social order that is based on cultural inequality; and ultimately, by not belonging to the ruling nationality it will be deprived of certain privileges at certain levels and spheres of social life.
By this definition the national question certainly exists in Iran. Iran is a multinational state where Kurds, Arabs, Turks, Azaris, Turkemens, and Baluchis also live with different linguistic, ethnic and cultural characteristics. This national diversity is, however, not reflected in the political system ruling the country. The foundation of the political order is based on the dominance of one nationality: the Fars while the right of self-determination has been denied non-Fars nationalities. They cannot set up their national government. Unfortunately in such conditions the “national question” in Iran has donned many of its unpleasant faces. No longer limited to cultural inequalities it has meant economic deprivation, political sidelining, negation of cultural identity and finally ethnic and national oppression and humiliation.
AM: There are clearly various levels to the national question in Iran. What does its cultural component mean to you as an Arab Iranian?
A: For Arab Iranians, as for other non-Fars nationalities, the cultural dimension of the national question surfaces in a number of forms. The most obvious is inequality and oppression caused by the imposition of the official language - Farsi. Once a system of mass education was instituted in the country, Farsi became the official language at all levels: primary, secondary and higher. The Arab Iranian, from the moment they enter this system aged 6-7 is forced to lay aside the only means of education and learning he or she possessed up to that time, their mother tongue, and learn a new language, one word of which they may not know.
They are doomed to be tortured by the nightmare of being labelled “dim-witted” and “uncomprehending” within this system and be schooled alongside Farsi speaking Iranians in conditions of inequality. The alternative is to accept to do without education and consent in advance to its social and economic consequences. An education programme in a single tongue in a multi-lingual and multinational country has one unambiguous outcome. Social and economic opportunities, where they relate to the education level, will be distributed to the detriment of non-dominant languages.
It is no coincidence that illiteracy among Arab Iranians is higher than the national average or that the relative share of educated Arabs falls the more you approach higher levels of education. The bitter truth is that the literacy rate, and the proportion of Arab Iranians who have undergone primary, secondary and tertiary education is lower than in Iraq, Syria and Jordan.
But this is not the only sphere where, as a consequence of the domination of the Farsi language, national inequality has become institutionalised. The state apparatus in its entirety fulfils that role. Farsi is not only the official language in the bureaucracy, judiciary and the military apparatus, but speaking in any other tongue in these settings are forbidden. Here a non-Fars Iranian is essentially a foreigner. Firstly because they will not be able to benefit, or at best face great difficulty benefiting, from the services offered by these organizations (ignoring for the present the quality of these services) if they are not totally conversant with Farsi.
To ask for social rights from a government apparatus, no matter how trivial, in a language to which you are unfamiliar, is an impossibility. Research will undoubtedly show how many thousands of Arabs in our country remained untreated because they were unable to explain their condition to their doctor. Or defend themselves in court, or even understand the nature of their accusation, and faced heavy prison sentences and might even have been executed. Or how many hundreds of thousands of our Arab citizens spent weeks and months wandering the corridors of our provincial governmental offices or municipal councils to get a simple building permit or open a tax account. This is not something a Fars experiences anywhere in the country, nor an Arab in, say, Syria or Egypt.
The supremacy of an official language in the administrative apparatus of a multilingual country will not only limit access but also employment in these institutions. Remember that in Iran the state is the largest employer and the state apparatus and its linked organs account for a large share of employment opportunities. To impose the rule of a single language in these apparatuses, and that on national level, undoubtedly holds back the employment of the non-Fars.
Iranians who do not speak any Farsi, or only have a minimal command of the language, which are unfortunately more as you go down the social scale are obviously totally out of the equation. However, even for non-Fars Iranians who have mustered Farsi, and are even fluent in it, the problem of getting employment in all state organs and institutions for all posts and jobs remains. Even discounting the political barriers to employment (and we will deal with this separately) for all those posts in which proficiency in the Farsi language is essential the chances of non-Fars are undoubtedly less. And this is not confined to such jobs as radio and television announcers where accents may become important, but is also true for many others, particularly those that are at higher levels and prestigious.
AM: Do you want to expand on aspects culture which you consider particularly significant for the national question?
A: We said that in a multinational-multilingual country the official language renders the inequality between the nationalities official. It organises the hierarchy of power among the various nationalities along certain lines. But this alone is not necessarily the same as negating the different identities of these nationalities or even a concerted effort to homogenize their differing cultures.
Unfortunately, at lease since Reza Shah came to power (1926), in addition to enforcing an unequal national-ethnic order through the supremacy of an official language, there has also been a concerted effort to negate, and destroy, the distinct cultural identities of non-Fars nationalities (and in our view particularly the Arab Iranians). One example is the absolute ban on publication of books and journals in Arabic before the revolution and its severe limitation since. Set aside religious books and you will find it hard to discover a single journal, or book (be it investigative, prose or poetry) in Arabic which got publication permit, or if printed, its writer or publisher did not end up in prison.
After the revolution there were moments when political circumstances forced the regime to release the pressures on banning publications in Arabic, but even then the thaw did not extend to these kinds of publications. For example after Khatami’s presidential victory only two journals obtained permit to publish in Arabic. But firstly both are bilingual with Farsi – that is do not have a pure Arabic identity – and secondly reflect views totally in tune with those in power. In short the right of Arab Iranians to express themselves in their mother tongue, and to have their own literature, which is an important tool to protect national culture, has been equally denied by the Pahlavi monarchs and the Islamic Republic. It will therefore not come as a surprise to discover that the number of Arab Iranian writers, whether novelist, poet, investigator, historian, or critique in comparison say to the Fars Iranians is so small. Unfortunately in the absence of research or statistics we do not have absolute numbers.
Efforts to limit the expression of Arab cultural identity also extends to the right to national and ethnic dress and costume in official centres. Neither in Pahlavi times nor in the Islamic government were Arab men and women permitted to wear anything that suggested a separate identity in school, government offices or even official gatherings. Anything that suggested specifically their existence as an Arab was taboo.
A similar limitation exists over names, especially after the revolution. Arab Iranians were forbidden to name their offspring with Arabic names, outside the narrow circle of religious names, which emphasised their Arab identity. For such names as Mohnad, Dana, Nadia, Qosi, or Fowzi, they will not issue birth certificates. This limitation extends to place names, again on both sides of the revolution.
Anyone half familiar with Iranian history will know that until a few decades ago the province of Khuzistan was Arabistan; the cities of Khorramshahr, Abadan, Ahwaz, Susangerd, Azadegan, Mahshahr, and Shadgan were until a few decades ago respectively: Mohammareh, Abadan (different spelling), Al-Ahwaz, Khafajieh, Howeizeh, Ma’shur, and Fallahieh. It was the Fars chauvinism of Reza Shah and his son Mohammad Reza that, above the will of the people of the region, de-Arabised names of towns, villages and even rivers. The door swung on the same axis after the revolution. Thus while the city of Rezaieh in N West Iran returned to its old name of Urumieh and Bandar Pahlavi reverted to Anzeli, Ahwaz remained Ahwaz. Worse the Islamic Republic even extended name changing to villages and created a special department in the Khuzistan Governorship office.
The denial of the national-ethnic identity of Arab Iranians extends to destruction of those historical buildings that attest to the Arabic past of the South Western lands of Iran. You will have difficulty finding today a historic building that could have been a historic backing for Arab Iranians that has not been left to crumble or actually destroyed.
The intellectual community in Iran, and even those groups who have a reputation for democratic, freedom loving, anti-racist, and internationalist tendencies, are surprisingly silent over the issue. When the Iranian Arab movements try to right these wrongs and revive their cultural heritage and for example use Arabic place names in their literature, these intellectuals are either silent or accuse them of separatist tendencies. We wonder what their reaction would have been if Isfahan, Shiraz or Kerman were to be given Turkish or Arabic names.
The anti-Arab hysteria among Iranian officials and the clique of historians and investigators surrounding them is however not satisfied with a cultural rejection. They will accept nothing less than the total ethnic-racial denial of Arab Iranians. This racial chauvinism claims that the Arabs living in Iran are not of Semitic origin, but are Arabic-speaking Arians. They believe that there is no historic room for Semites in the clean land of Ahura [the Zoroastrian god of goodness] and the Arians.
They cannot accept that for its entire 5000 years Iran has been a multi-national country. Before the Archaemenians 15 ethnic groups lived here alongside one another for two thousand years created the best opuses of civilisation. Even after the Arian tribes poured in from Russian lands and during the Archaemanians kings the land housed the Ilam, Arab and other races. There are numerous tablets and inscriptions using these languages in Kermanshah and other areas. The anti-Arab mentality means that even those who cannot ignore the ethnic diversity of the country deny the historic existence of Arabs in Iran with amazing obduracy.
The Arab, as an Iranian citizen, find themselves excluded from the scene in the mass media, in research and in cultural-artistic creations. Only a handful of the total creative, cultural and investigative programmes produced by the radio-television network since it began operating have had Arab Iranians as their central focus. Even setting aside the reason for making these, and to what extent they were unreal or even perverse, the entire oeuvre of official and semi official publications over the last 70 years on Arab Iranians and their issues would not fill a 50 page pamphlet. Among the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousand of pages of ethnic, anthropological and social science research published since the inception of the Pahlavi dynasty issues addressing Arab Iranians would scarcely exceed a few hundred pages.
Iranian films now number in their thousands. Many of these take place where Arab Iranians live. Images of date trees and sunset on the Karun river are plentiful, but the camera either does not see a human whose name is Arab, or only sees them as dumb and faceless boat men. The miniscule exceptions (the Bride of Fire, or Bashu the Little Stranger) prove the rule that the Arab Iranian is a forgotten creature in the history of Iranian cinema.
The same can be said of novels and story-writing. If we exclude a few works published in the last few years the number of works where the main characters were Arab Iranians, or there is any allusion to the national oppression, do not exceed 2 or 3. We will ignore the theatre, or photographic, painting or sculpture exhibitions. The most astonishing thing is that in the last 70 years which is the era of official modernisation, there has not been a single concert in any part of the country, whether where Arabs live or outside, in which Arabic music was performed. The few efforts in this field in the last few years did not go beyond eulogy and religious music. In the monarchist art festivals special attention was given to folklore and the music of various ethnic groups – excepting Arabs. Nor, despite the fact that a large number of musicians and singers from around the world attended, there was not a single Arab singer or musician among them.
The denial of the cultural and ethnic identity of Arab-Iranians is so deep rooted and hysteric that in the anthropology museum in Teheran you can find all ethnic and national groups, but Arabs. Thus the Arabs are more than an inferior people deprived of their rights. They are a people ignored and non-official. They really do not have an identity card.
AM: Let us turn to the political perspective. Does a form of ethnic apartheid operate in Iran? Are Arab Iranians denied equal political rights to other Iranian nationalities precisely because they are Arabs. Is it true that in the last 70 years a political system has been found based on ethnic hierarchy, and enjoyment of political rights are graded based on your ethnic group.
A: We do not believe that an official apartheid exists in the same way it functioned in, say, South Africa. We never saw this even in Pahlavi times. But if your question relates to the existence of an ethnic-racial supremacy theory in the official ideology of the governments and its impact on the functioning of the political systems that have ruled Iran over the last 70 years, the answer is unfortunately yes.
Of course the possibility of political participation in a real sense, was only available to ordinary people for very short periods in contemporary Iranian history, and that in very limited forms. The ruling political systems vied with one another in blocking popular participation in the political life of the country and even in intruding into everyday life. Authority, rulership and control over political power was the right of the elite, who either through blood inheritance or religious position are superior to ordinary people. To rule was their monopolistic right. The masses, of whatever ethnic or national origin were in practice outside the circle of power. They were ruled, usually despotically.
Yet even here different nationalities did not lose sovereignty and the right to participate on a equal basis. We can confidently assert that this lack of civil rights was imposed on the non-Fars nationalities to a greater extent and the Arab people, particularly in Pahlavi times, were at the bottom of the heap.
The official state ideology under the Pahlavi kings was racist to the core. This ideology invented the “ethnic nation” in Iran and built the (new) nation state around it. The racist nationalism of the Pahlavis, not unlike their likes in other countries, was based on historic counterfeit and myth making. They concocted the ethnic-racial superiority from a superstitious mishmash of imperial greatness of ancient Iranian kings, superiority of Parsi civilisation and worship of the Farsi language.
What focussed and directed this quest for superiority on Arabs was the burgeoning rivalry with neighbouring Arab states. After the British left the Gulf the Shah openly bid to dominate the region. Thus the racist attitudes of the Pahlavi era was intertwined with issues of “national security”. In the organisation of the bureaucracy and the military an anti ethnic Arab filter was introduced.
These criteria for employment and appointment in the Pahlavi regime led to a system of apartheid where Arab Iranians, regardless of their political or ideological tendencies, or class position, were totally denied a presence in some structures. In others they were confined to certain lowly and unimportant posts. It is no accident that in 50 years of Pahlavi monarchy, among the countless prime ministers not one was an Arab Iranian nor were any of the hundreds of ministers and deputy ministers. Not one Arab made it to a provincial governor position. The number of Arabs who got into parliament was never more than one or two.
The insane hypersensitivity to admitting Arabs in the armed forces made the military forbidden territory for the Arab people. No Arab rose above a captain at a time when British and American military advisers had access to the most sensitive military, security and information systems of Iran. Yet this did not provoke the least sensitivity on the part of strategic planners of the country.
Doubtless among Arabs were many individuals who could serve the Shah as faithfully as Eghbal, Zahedi, Sharif Emami or Hoveida or Azhari. Nor can we have an illusion that if any of the Iranian prime ministers were Arab, the fate of the country would be any different, or even that the Arab peoples would have come out better. We merely wish to emphasise that the Pahlavi regime was racist. It was a kind of Nazism, in which anti-Arabism replaced the anti-Semitism of the German variety.
The racial nationalism of the Pahlavi regime was so deep rooted that even today, a quarter of a century since its overthrow, it forms the backbone of all the political groupings that want a return of the monarchy to Iran. The propaganda by most of the Los Angeles-based television stations during the world cup last year, especially when Iran met Bahrain, was the clearest demonstration of the hysterical anti-Arabism and the racist tendencies of these groups.
In the first years of the Islamic government the racialist elements of the encounter with non-Fars nationalities, especially towards Arab people, was somewhat moderated. But elements of racial nationalism has again been taken up, especially by the reformist tendencies and in particular the person of the president Khatami. It has even entered official discourse. All the same limitations on Arab Iranians is not as tight as during the monarchy, and a few have managed to reach relatively high levels of government – in particular if they have shown their allegiance to the Islamic government. The focus is now on ideology and religion rather than ethnic-racial filters practiced formerly. The general exclusion of the Arab people has given way to political marginalisation.
AM: Can you comment on participation from below? Do the Arab peoples have the same opportunity as other Iranian nationalities to partake in the political life of society, political struggles, protests, or join in class or trade union struggles etc?
No. when a nationality is placed in an inferior position it is difficult for it to place itself on an equal political footing with the ruling nationality. Many interdependent factors operate to block the way for equal participation by different ethnic groups in the political life of the country. The most obvious is the lack of equal opportunities in gaining information and political awareness which in the first instance is embodied in the inability to obtain equal opportunities in official education and public media. This is particularly true for the illiterate, whose numbers are unfortunately not small among the non-Fars nationalities.
Moreover, the simple taking part in some political acts requires literacy and some knowledge of the official language. When Arab Iranians cannot even read the names of parliamentary candidates on the billboard what does their vote mean? Even supposing that political conditions are such that people can have a relative opportunity to take part in elections, not too common in the recent history of Iran. Arab Iranians have had even less chance than the Fars to use the ballot for their own interests. Thus although the majority of Arab Iranians have probably voted more than once in their lifetime, it has had one of two outcomes: either it benefits candidates chosen by their Sheikhs and tribal chiefs, or they it gave them a stamp on their ID card getting them their share of, say, state sugar subsidy.
Moreover proper participation and intervention in political activity requires awareness of social and political rights. If members of an ethnic or national group do not have a clear definition of themselves as an equal citizen, and do not see themselves as members of a civil nation, they cannot not have, for example, an active and conscious involvement in a trade union or political party. Nor participate in a meaningful way in social and political movements. The Arab people are deprived of this precondition even more than others.
Here it is important to emphasise that other parameters than the political set-up in Iran have also contributed to the marginalisation of the Arab community in Iran. One of these is the survival of the tribal relations among a section of Arab Iranians. This has inhibited the development of Arab Iranians into independent persons with a vote, meaning citizens with equal citizen rights. The central governments have had a major role in perpetuating this situation. They not only did not support the internal struggle of these societies to escape their condition, but strongly encouraged the survival of tribal relationships.
In the last 70 years support for the tribal chiefs and underpinning their weight and position in Arab societies was the most important means by which the central government prevented the break up of tribal relationships. During these years many a tribal chief and Arab sheikh obtained considerable privileges and powers in return for submission to the administration. Using these they were able to impose their control over their tribes. They gained control over agricultural land and the right to install water pumps, or by being party to state contracts, they could also rely on support by local courts, police and the Gendarmerie.
Bank loans and support by state institutions were specifically open to them. Even where they did not have monopolistic control over these, it was through the Sheikh’s good offices that these services filtered down to ordinary tribal members. This encouraged tribal members to accede to tribal ties through fear, or hope for support from their chiefs, and to submit to relations that turned them into semi slaves. Thus ordinary tribal members, even if superficially they appear to have equal rights, cannot benefit form these rights as a true citizen and act as a socio-political agent in the political arena. This policy which effectively limited the individual participation of Arabs in the political life of the country and in mass and social movements was officially initiated at the time of Reza Shah and became a dominant policy in his son’s reign. It was resurrected in a different, and Islamised form, after the establishment of the Islamic Republic.
The Islamic Republic indeed institutionalised its efforts by creating the Tribal Headquarters 7 years ago whose main duty was to encourage the tribal identity of the Arab peoples at the expense of their ethnic identity. On the initiative of the Headquarters all disputes within Arab tribal communities are settled by tribal chiefs and sheikhs. Thus Arab Iranian has been excluded from the modern judicial system – disregarding for the moment how reactionary or cruel the latter are.
Moreover it encourages internal conflicts and enmities within the Arab dispossessed masses. In reality the legal solutions offered by tribal chiefs, based as they are on traditional methods, have no relation to the people’s understanding of their individual and social rights or with the cultural developments within the Arab nation. This contradiction, therefore, increases the inner conflicts within tribe, family and the individual and results in a spiralling vicious circle of conflict.
Before going further we must emphasise that among tribal chiefs and sheikhs there are, and were, those who were forward thinking and fought alongside the Arab people for their national rights. Some paid a heavy price including their life. Our analysis of the Arab tribal chiefs is targeted at their social position not their individual character.
We would like to comment here on the intellectual and cultural community in Iran and their role in increasing the ethnic-racial pressures on Arab Iranians. Sadly even the progressive and pro-democratic section of this community not only failed to stand up to the ethnic-racial ideologies of the governments, as one would have expected, but to differing degrees compromised with its anti-Arab mentality, particularly in Pahlavi times. The anti-Arab ethnic-racial tendencies in Iran were by no means confined to the grandeur-seeking nationalism of Reza Shah or his son, but tainted the major part of historical, linguistic, cultural and artistic research. In some respects the anti-Arab tendencies and beliefs was, and is, stronger and more obdurate among the various Iranian intellectual currents of than these same beliefs among the rulers. They base the foundation of their beliefs on two historical viewpoints.
One, tainted with chauvinism, explains the backwardness of Iranian society and the decline of ancient greatness and civilization by the Arab conquest and the fall of the Sassanian dynasty. It seeks a de-Arabisation of Iranian culture and language as the route to growth and progress.
The second is a discourse in the context of the modernist movement. In this viewpoint the persistence of backwardness lies in the continued dominance of traditional structures, including religious beliefs. The solution, the prosperity and happiness of the people, lies in anti-Islamism. Their views take on an ethnic-racial hue when an equal sign is placed between “Islam” and “Arab”. Eminent writers such as Sadegh Hedayat succumb to ethnic and even racial enmity to Arabs, and others either agree with it, bypass it or at best try to explain it away but have never been seen to oppose it.
Could the political regimes in Iran have downloaded their nation building project with complete brutality against non-Fars nationalities in the absence of the appropriate political atmosphere shaped by these intellectuals? Could they impose the “ethnic-nation” on a multi-national and multi-ethnic society? Our literature needs a major anti-racist and anti-ethnic critique. We cannot ignore, or even encourage, the nationalism of the dominant nation in a multi ethnic society and expect the dominated nationalities to keep quite. Or expect that they will not take up the struggle even by hoisting the flag of ethnic nationalism. Without insisting on true equality and accepting the cultural, ethnic, religious, and sexual differences, to talk of solidarity, national unity, inviolability of national borders, etc in a multi-ethnic multi-religious and multi-cultural society is nothing less than nonsense.
AM: Let us turn to the economy. Did the inequalities imposed on the different Iranian nationalities also have an economic dimension? If so, tell us how far and how deep? Specifically has the economic inequalities imposed on the Arab people of such depth and breadth as to express itself in structural terms and be reflected in the class divide? Have the economic deprivations of the Arab people been deep enough to transform the ethnic-national divide into a class divide?
A: The answer here too has to be yes. If we use as a comparator the share of the people from the various nationalities in resources or amenities, either through ordinary market exchange or through the mechanisms of state redistribution, we believe that the distribution has always been unequal among the various peoples of Iran. For this reason the Arab peoples have never been able to escape the bottom ranks of the ladder and the smallest share of the national resources. And in the years since the revolution it has progressively seen greater deprivation.
Let us start with the Arab Iranian as a worker. On entering the labour market they have less chance of rising above the level of unskilled labourer or a low level employee compared to the Fars worker, or perhaps even workers from some of the other nationalities. The lower you go down the hierarchy of the labour force the more, relatively speaking, the presence of Arabs. And the greater likelihood of being outside the official economy, the one covered by the Labour Code. They are also more likely to be unemployed, unwaged-workers, or engaged in part-time or seasonal work. Unfortunately these facts are hidden in the official statistics. Nor, as far as we know, have any independent studies been published.
We base our supposition on the following: First personal observation and some limited field work based on which one can say with confidence that (a) over the last decades the level of unemployment in towns with sizeable Arab populations is at least 5% higher than the national average. (b) The ethic ratio favours Arabs in such work as porter, driver, guard, unskilled construction labourer, and the like. (c) The percentage of Arabs employed in governmental institutions and organisations have absolutely no relation to their share in the national population. (d) The Arabs that manage to penetrate these institutions or organisations rarely manage to reach even the middle layers and usually simply stagnate as plain teacher or low level bureaucrat.
The second basis for our assertion is the logical deduction from the qualities of the Arab labour force on its ability to compete in the labour market. These include acquaintance with the official language, ability to communicate, education, skills, familiarity with the laws and standards in the workplace, having an official address, a credible referee…. Using such parameters we can safely conclude that the majority of the Arab workforce in the labour market will either join the pole where unofficial, impermanent, unsupported work with low pay is on offer. Or are thrown out of the labour market and lose the honour even of paid slavery.
The obstacles facing Arab workers in accessing equal job opportunities in the market are not merely caused by cultural and political structures forcing inequality. The role of the state is no less than that of the market, and the political factor is no less important than the economic in encouraging ethnic inequality in the labour market.
One of the most important barriers to the entry of the Arab worker into the official sector, even for “black” work and as an unskilled labourer, is the official policy of changing the ethnic makeup and reducing the proportion of Arabs in areas populated by Arab Iranians. This policy uses employment in government offices, institutions affiliated to the state and in various state run enterprises to increase the non-Arab population of these areas. In consequence of this policy the weight of Arabs employed in such state run industries as oil, gas, steel, sugar cane, and the Navard industrial complex has fallen in recent years.
Even in units situated at the heart of Arab regions the share of Arab workers is between 10 and 30%. For example in the extension to the sugar cane project in Haft Tappeh, whose workforce is predominantly unskilled, the proportion of Arab workers do not exceed 30%. The higher the level, the more stringent is this policy pursued. For example in the Steel Industry there is not one Arab in the 25-man managing committee. Yet, despite the deprivations in education and acquisition of skills outlined above, there are no shortages of Arab Iranians qualified to occupy such posts. The number that have completed a university education, especially in the last few years, is enough to occupy every management and leadership post in the province, with many to spare.
Another political element making conditions for Arab workers worse by the day is the speed, or lack of, investment in Arabistan (Khuzistan). This slowing down of official investment is primarily, in our belief, a consequence of the ascendancy of an anti-Arab viewpoint over financial policies, development projects and priorities. Many job-creating projects, such as free trade zones or industrial towns, were set up at great insistence in parts of Iran where their failure was foreseeable. Yet instead of these badly chosen out of way places without facilities, these planners refused to place at least some of them in Khuzistan with undeniable facilities and potentials for economic expansion.
Even worse is not allocating any resources to infrastructural and service development. These would in a short while have increased demand in the commodity markets and in the longer term perhaps attracted investment and development leading to more jobs. The central government’s budget allocation to the war-ravished province of Khuzistan, was not only insufficient to rebuild the damages caused by war, but even to prevent the normal wear and tear of the infrastructure.
The road network in the province are in ruin. The railway lines are graveyards where old locomotives and rusted wagons thrown out by other networks are buried. The hulks of sunken ships in the Shat-al-Arab have not been removed 14 years after the end of the war and the country’s only important navigable waterway has been left to silt and sludge. The urban water and sewage network, electricity, hospitals, clinics, and schools are in a truly appalling state. The ageing and rotten water and swage pipes makes interruptions to water supply a daily affair in most towns.
Of course the issue of clean water to towns and even villages has far deeper roots. The diversion of the waters of the Karun river to other provinces on the one hand, and a mercantile outlook on the use of natural resources, on the other, caused: firstly the water level in Karun to fall dramatically. Secondly its salt content to greatly increase. Thirdly sewage has polluted it to an undrinkable state. Add these to the damages caused by an 8-year war and you have a major ecological disaster.
Setting aside the long term consequences of this disaster at the national level, its immediate negative impact on the people of the region, and especially the Arabs, is catastrophic. The changes in the ecology of South and West Khuzistan, which are predominantly Arab dwelling areas, has more than anything hit Arab peasants. They have targeted two fundamental aspects of farming: water and land. The war burnt down thousands of hectares of the most green date plantations in Arabistan (Khuzistan). Bombs ploughed hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertile land and by abandoning them for years turned them into barren salt marshes. According to official reports mines have been cleared from a mere 600,000 hectares years since the end of the war.
In addition to the falling water level in the Karun river, the destruction of traditional watering systems by both war and neglect has caused great deprivation in Arab – sitting areas. These called for a huge investments, beyond the capacity of the local population. The reason d’etre of the state, even on the most liberal definition, is in intervening in such circumstances. Yet the state preferred to praise the valour and “martyr-seeking” behaviour of the people and drag its feet in initiating any practical step at reconstruction. It would appear that the war brought another blessing for the Islamic regime: help for its policy of changing the ethnic-racial mix of Arab-dwelling areas. Reconstruction was subordinated to efforts to break up the ethnic structure of Arabistan (Khuzistan).
Since the war ended the government has taken no steps in re-establishing work or living conditions. Whatever has taken place has been synchronized with the process of altering the ethnic-cultural face of the population. Arab peasants have been deprived of land and water. Wherever possible, the state confiscated peasants lands and gave it over to their trusted agents under such ruses as sugar cane plantation, building military bases or troop quarters. Or they imposed, where possible, tight and discriminatory agricultural loans and credit.
The sum total of these policies has driven large numbers of peasants to a marginalized existence in town as reserve labour. The mass migration of Arab farmers from burnt-down farms to ruined towns, at a time when the labour market faces reduced demand because of an investment freeze, has one consequence. Mass unemployment. In a under two decades Arabistan (Khuzistan) has been transformed from a province with labour shortage (especially skilled) into one with an official unemployment rate of 22-23% (ignoring seasonal or hidden unemployment), the third highest in the country. Both structural elements and official policy impose higher unemployment rates on the Arab population.
Now that even the meagre help to the vulnerable layers has stopped, being unemployed is the same as absolute poverty. Today more than 50% of the population in Arab areas suffer from absolute poverty –they are denied the resources necessary to reproduce their physical selves. Defining relative poverty as that which deprives the individual from the generally accepted bare minimal means and resources, then the Arab people, except for a small percentage, has sunk into relative poverty.
The Arab urban destitute have the same destiny as the urban destitute anywhere. An endless battle for a roof over their heads, and for bread. We saw above that the Arab peoples, in order to bring bread to their table, had to enter the unofficial labour market tolerating additional exploitation, humiliation and oppression in order to survive. To get a roof over their heads – the expenses of the land and housing placing these totally out of their reach - they must enter a marginalized existence. The dominance of speculators, rentiers, in the land and housing market and the bureaucratic rules governing house construction has thrown the destitute to outside the official city limits.
Their only choice is to occupy illegal land, build illegally on it and ignore the building and municipal laws. The majority of such people in Arabistan (Khuzistan) are undoubtedly Arabs. It is rare to find non-Arabs in these townships. In Ahwaz, for example, marginalized communities such as Shekarabad, Shilingabad, Akhar Asfalt, Zargan, Piche Khazami, Ameri, Kut Abdollah, and Hasirabad present a picture of ethnic inequality which also has taken on a clear class hue.
In Ahwaz we have a city divided into two. One half, official and legitimate, with such municipal facilities as water, electricity, telephone, paved and lighted streets, public transport, refuse collection, endowed with services, schools, clinics and hospitals, shops, parks, places of leisure, and with a population predominantly belonging to the middle and upper income layers and mainly non-Arab. Then there is the unofficial half, covered by a maze of huts, hovels, tin shacks, or mud hut; deprived of many civic amenities and general services, with inhabitants who are predominantly from middle to low income, and almost exclusively Arab.
This is the logical conclusion of the cultural-ethnic inequalities in a unbridled capitalist society. Anti-Arab policies, ethnic cleansing, the shifting the ethnic balance of the province, have certainly been unable to solve the national question in Iran. But they have easily accentuated its class dimension. To fade out its old peasant features, and give it an urban face. We have no doubt that the Pahlavi and Islamic administrations have side stepped the national question. They have allowed this issue to grow from a cultural inequality into a total social rupture and take on explosive dimensions.
* This is an interview carried out by mail and first published in Rahe Kargar (Farsi) with a number of activists and authorities from the Iranian Arab Peoples. Part 2 will appear in the next issue.