Until a few years ago, the global map of Islamist suicide terrorism included a single tiny patch of territory: Israel.
Since then, the map has expanded to include first Iraq, where suicide attacks have claimed thousands of lives, and then Afghanistan, where the Taliban use it as a war tactic. Then Pakistan, where suicide attacks have become part of daily life.
Wednesday’s suicide attack in Chabahar, the principal Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman, has shown that Iran, too, is now part of that sinister map.
The double attack, which claimed at least 39 lives, wasn’t the first of its kind in Iran. In October 2009, a suicide bomber killed 31 members of the Revolutionary Guard at a public ceremony in Pishin, on the Pakistani border. Among those killed was Gen. Muhammad Shushtari, whom many regarded as the rising star of the Guard. This July, another suicide attack in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, killed 27.
Yet the Chabahar attacks are different for at least two reasons: 1) They specifically targeted a group performing mourning rites during one of the holiest months on the Shiite calendar. That is, the bombers wanted to underline their distaste for the core beliefs of Shiites. 2) They came just days after a visit by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during which he promised to restore “full security” to the restive province.
Sistan-Baluchistan is the poorest of Iran’s 31 provinces. Life expectancy there is 12 years below the national average; per-capita income is almost 50 percent lower. Add to that the fact that 80 percent of the population are Sunni Muslims and the province’s resentment of a militant Shiite government in Tehran becomes apparent.
Since the mullahs seized power in 1979, the province has experienced a cultural invasion by government missionaries sent to convert the Sunni population to Khomeinist Islam.
These efforts haven’t been confined to preaching and propagation. Tehran has also sent death squads to murder Sunni religious and cultural leaders. From 1997 to 2005, more than 80 Sunni clerics, students of theology and intellectuals were murdered by “unknown criminals.” In some cases, the victims’ bodies were found on roadsides.
Feeding on anti-government feelings, a number of militant Sunni groups, some linked to similar Pakistani outfits, have emerged in the province. The most notorious calls itself The Iran People’s Resistance Movement, but also goes by Jundallah or Allah’s Army.
Last February, the government announced that it had captured Abdul-Malik Rigi, the group’s leader. A man identified as Rigi was put on TV to confess to being an agent of America, Britain and Israel. In June, Tehran announced that Rigi and one of his brothers had been executed. It took the group several weeks to confirm Rigi’s death and his replacement by a new commander, Muhammad-Tahir Baluch.
The Rigis form one of the three largest Baluchi tribes with branches in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Oman. Until a few years ago, they observed peaceful coexistence with the authorities installed by Tehran, to the point that some fellow Baluchis taunted them as collaborators. That changed when President Mohammad Khatami stepped up the campaign to convert Sunnis to Shiism and endorsed a plan to change the province’s ethnic makeup by bringing Shiite settlers from other parts of Iran. Ahmadinejad has stopped the policy, but the resentment it created among Sunnis remains strong.
Iranian Sunnis, around 12 million in a total population of 73 million, point to the fact that although they’re Muslims they’re specifically denied the highest positions in government, such as the supreme guide or the Islamic Republic president. Today, no Sunni holds any of the top 500 posts in the Islamic Republic.
With a population of around 2.2 million, Sistan-Baluchistan is of great strategic value to Iran. Its 600 miles of coastline on the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea dominate the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, through which passes some 60 percent of the world oil trade. Iran’s largest aero-naval base is located at Konarak, a peninsula to the west of Chabahar.
The province is also rich in mineral deposits, including uranium, which Iran needs in pursuit of its nuclear ambitions.
The irony in all this is that, in a sense, the Khomeinist regime invented suicide attacks by recruiting volunteers for martyrdom and first using them in Lebanon in the ’80s. Those attacks claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, including 241 US Marines massacred in Beirut. The Islamic Republic has financed scores of suicide attacks against Western targets in Lebanon by Hezbollah and against Israel by Hamas.
The coming of suicide terrorism to Iran reminds one of an Arab proverb: A camel that kneels at a door sooner or later will also kneel at your door.