Iran newspaper cockroach cartoon controversy

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The cockroach cartoon controversy of "Iran weekly magazine" arose over a cartoon, published in the Iranian holiday-magazine of Iran-e-jomee, drawn by the cartoonist Mana Neyestani, an ethnic Iranian Azeri^[1][2][3][4]. The cartoon, published in the children's section of the newspaper on May 12, 2006, allegedly insulted the Azerbaijani people by depicting a child speaking in Persian to a cockroach, which was replying in the Azerbaijani language, saying "namana?" ("what?"). However, namana is also a slang word used in Persian. In other sections of the cartoon, the cockroach also speaks in Persian

Contents of the article

The article which the cartoons are part of, is transliterated "How to stop cockroaches make us cockroach". It is a comedic article in a children's weekly newspaper. The text of the paragraph in image 1 is translated as follow:

Using the key words "dialogue" (گفتمان), and "violence" (خشونت ورزی) plus mentioning the problems in understanding their own conversation , is pointing to the reformist's nomenclature vs. conservatives in Iran .The famous reformist motto "dialogue between civilizations" that former president of Iran , Mohammad Khatami was insisting on it , was a source of criticism among intelligentsia , because they thought when it was not possible to have dialogue and mutual understanding between Iranians themselves (conservative-reformist) , how would that be possible to have such a conversation between Iran and the western civilizations?^{[citation needed]}

The part that some Azeris found insulting talks about giving a chance to dialogue with cockroaches before resorting to violence, "even so they don't understand human language". Then adds "in fact they don't understand their own language and its grammar, so much so that eighty percent of them prefer to speak in other languages". In the related cartoon, a child is speaking in "cockroach language" to a cockroach, but the cockroach replies "namana?" ("what?"). Namana can be both an Azerbaijani word or a slang word used in Persian. In other sections of the cartoon, the cockroach speaks in Persian.

Aftermath

The controversy resulted in massive riots throughout Iran in May 2006, most notably in the predominantly Azerbaijani-populated cities of Tabriz, Urmia, Zanjan and Naghadeh and number of smaller towns . The riots were violent in some cases, with protesters damaging public buildings and throwing stones, prompting the reaction of the Iranian police.^[5] Such riots have been occurred before in recent years in many Persian and non-Persian cities of Iran as well as Tehran, Mashhad, Arak, Shiraz, Qazvin, Isfahan, Sabzevar, Ahvaz, and Zahidan. In the current case, the violence clearly had ethnic components, but the far greater causes of the poverty and unemployment that vexes members of Azeri ethnic groups, are government corruption, inefficiency, and a general sense of lawlessness, which all Iranians, including Persians, must confront. Amnesty International claims that "hundreds, if not thousands, were arrested and scores reportedly killed by the security forces,"^[6] while the Iranian authorities say 330 people were arrested during the protests, and four demonstrators were killed.^[7]

The Iranian government promptly responded to the events by temporarily shutting down the Iran newspaper, arresting the cartoonist and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Mehrdad Ghasemfar. It further accused "outside forces in playing the nationalistic card".^[8]

 Possible foreign interference

See also: Iran's ethnic minorities and foreign interference

Iran's predominantly Azeri northwestern region is an area that is acknowledged as being ripe for covert operations.^[9] Emad Afrough, head of the Majlis Cultural Commission at the time, said that pan-Turkists were involved in creating the tensions.^[10] Other members of the Iranian government blamed it on the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom, suspecting the incitement of ethnic strife in Iran. The United States has itself confirmed that it is conducting covert operations in Iran and is allied with Iran's neighbor, the Republic of Azerbaijan.^[9]

Abbas Maleki, a senior research fellow at Harvard University, stated:^[9]

I think that when President Bush says all options are on the table, the destabilization of Iran's ethnic provinces is one of them. Don't forget, Mr Mahmudali Chehregani, one of the pan-Turkist leaders agitating for a separatist Azeri agenda, was in Washington last year by invitation of the Defense Department.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operative, had stated in the early 1990s:^[9]

Accessible through Turkey and ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, eyed already by nationalists in Baku, more westward-looking than most [of] Iran, and economically going nowhere, Iran's richest agricultural province was an ideal CIA [covert action] theater.

According to Touraj Atabaki, well-known expert on Iran's Azerbaijani minority, there might be some truth behind the Iranian government's allegations of a foreign plot, yet the responsibility for the unrest lies first and foremost with the central government.^[11]

Iran: Azeri Turks protest against discrimination

Mirza Khazar 30 May 2006

Iranian Azeris: A Giant Minority

Recently in Iran, tens of thousands of Iranian Azeris took to the streets for several days of demonstrations touched off by the May 12 publication of a racist cartoon in the state-run Iran newspaper. (The cartoon depicted an Azeri-speaking cockroach.) Iranian security forces cracked down violently on the demonstrators, killing at least four people (Azeri nationalists claim twenty dead), injuring forty-three, and detaining hundreds of others. These developments indicate brewing discontent among Iran’s Azeri population and should be studied for their implications for U.S. and Western policy toward Tehran.

Deeper Issues at Play

The Iranian regime’s effort to put out this ethnic brushfire by closing the Tehran-based Iran newspaper and arresting its editor as well as the ethnic Azeri cartoonist quickly escalated to the usual strongarm response as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ anti-riot units and Basij militias attacked the Azeri protesters. Iranian security forces cracked down on tens thousands of offended Azeris, who took to the streets in Tehran and in the major northwestern Iranian cities such as Tabriz, Urumieh, Ardebil, Maragheh, and Zenjan. The intelligence service launched a massive detention campaign, rounding up relatives of Azeri Turks previously jailed for Turkish nationalism.

The Iranian deputy interior minister for security affairs, Ali Asghar Ahmadi, admitted that the demonstrations in Tabriz were far more than a mere protest against a newspaper insult. In fact, there is much resentment in Iranian Azerbaijan about the region’s economic and social difficulties. That resentment is fed by the attitudes of ethnic Persians toward ethnic Azeris—an attitude well captured in the phrase “Torki khar” (Turkish donkey), used by Persians in reference to Azeris, whom they regard as the “muscle” of the Iranian economy to be dominated by Persian “brains”.

Azeri Turks, concentrated mainly in the oil-poor northwest of Iran (along the border with Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan), make up an estimated one-fourth of Iran’s population of 70 million. Azeris often claim a population share close to 40 percent, a number that includes ethnic brethren such as the Turkmen, Qashgais, and other Turkic-speaking groups. Unlike other ethnic groups in Iran such as Sunni Kurds and Arabs, the Azeri Turks are Shiites like the Persians. Divided from their kin in Azerbaijan by the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchai, which gave northern Azerbaijan to Russia (that part of Azerbaijan gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991) and southern Azerbaijan to Iran, the Azeris’ role in the Persian government was significantly weakened when the Pahlavi dynasty came into power in 1925. Contact between the Azeri areas of Iran and the Soviet Union were limited until Soviet forces occupied northern Iran during World War II. In 1945, at Soviet instigation, an Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was proclaimed in Iranian Azerbaijan. It lasted only until Soviet forces withdrew a year later; in the aftermath, some thousands of Iranian Azeris were killed.

Much as did imperial Iran, the Islamic regime has downplayed the ethnic differences between Persians and Azeris. Despite the fact that influential figures in the establishment, such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are of Azeri descent, the mullahs did not hesitate to crack down hard on Azeri Turkish nationalism, using heavy weapons to put down a 1981 uprising in Tabriz and summarily executing hundreds of Azeris.

Azeris have had mixed relationships with other Iranian minorities. Kurds, who make up around 14 percent of Iran’s population, do not have particularly good relations with ethnic Azeris; several cities in western Iran, such as Urumieh and Mako, are inhabited by both Kurds and by Azeri Turks. In the last decade, the ethnic majority of the Azeri Turks in some areas close to the border with Turkey has been diluted by immigration of Kurds. The attitudes of the Turkic-speaking ethnic Turkmens, who live in the part of Iran near the independent republic of Turkmenistan, are unclear.

Growing Azeri Nationalism

The last fifteen years has seen a boom in nationalist publications for Iranian Azeris and growing interest in both Turkey and the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. A considerable number of Iranian Azeris watch Turkish television broadcasts now available via satellite; this has increased their knowledge of Turkey as well as the Anatolian dialect of Turkish.

This revival led to the creation of a new organization, the South Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement (Gamoh), by literature professor Mahmudali Chohraganli. After winning election to the Iranian parliament in 1995, Chohraganli, whose own father was once tortured by the Shah’s secret police for Turkish nationalism, was not allowed to take his seat. Gamoh opposes what it calls “Persian chauvinism,” demanding more cultural rights for Azeris, and a future Iranian government with a federal structure resembling the United States in which Azeris can have their own flag and parliament. Gamoh’s proclaimed support for self-determination, secular government and a pro-Western orientation does not sit well with Tehran. Its apparent popularity has put Gamoh squarely on Tehran’s radar screen.

Gamoh is run as a secret organization inside Iran. Its members, including Chohraganli, who was jailed for two years and released in 1999 after falling seriously ill, are often jailed or harassed by Iranian security forces. Denied visas by both the Turkish and Azerbaijani governments, Chohraganli was allowed to travel to the United States in 2002. In April 2005, bodies of two Gamoh members were found floating in the Aras River, the boundary between Iran and Azerbaijan. In September 2005, the Iranian government blamed Gamoh for the shooting of a government official in Urumieh; Gamoh denied involvement. In March 2006, several Gamoh members attended the Second World Azerbaijanis Congress in Baku. Following that congress, several Gamoh members were arrested in Tabriz, and in April the Iranian Azeri newspaper Navid Azerbaijan was banned.

The plight of Iranian Azeris is followed closely by their kin in Azerbaijan and Turkey. But both the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments take care not to damage their sensitive relations with the Iranian government. Turkey recently stopped allowing a Chicago-based Azeri television broadcaster, Gunaz, from using its satellite link. Gunaz is known for its virulent opposition to Iran’s Islamic regime and its separatist attitude since it went on the air in 2005. On the other hand, Ankara has given Chohraganli permission to visit Turkey soon, and Gamoh has an open presence there.

Azerbaijan is also walking a fine line between sympathy for the Iranian Azeris and its economic and political interests with the Islamic regime. Tehran recently consented to the opening of an Azerbaijani consulate general in Tabriz, Iran’s largest Azeri-majority city. With annual bilateral trade volume of $600 million, Iran is a major trading partner of and an investor in Azerbaijan; Tehran also offers humanitarian aid to the almost one million Azerbaijanis internally displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh after Armenia occupied that part of Azerbaijan in 1993. Yet the Azerbaijani public is largely sympathetic to the plight of Iranian Azeris. “Baku, Tabriz, Ankara. Where are the Persians? Here we are!” chanted the Azeri Turks in Baku this week as they protested the brutal treatment of their ethnic kin by Iranian security forces. Many Azeri nationalists are interested in uniting “North” Azerbaijan (the former Soviet republic) with “South” Azerbaijan (the Iranian provinces).

Ethnic tensions in Iran have been on the rise with unpredictable results, involving not just Azeris but also Kurds, Arabs, and Baluchs. The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad has only made these problems worse.

Ali M. Koknar is the owner of AMK Risk Management, a private security consultancy with offices in Washington, DC, and Turkey specializing in counterterrorism and international organized crime.

Ethnic Opposition on the rise in Iran

By David Eshel

Two bombings in mid February near Zahedan in southeastern Iran are the latest in a series of high profile incidents involving armed opposition groups based among the country’s ethnic minorities. The most recent attacks again raise questions about the activities of Iranian clandestine groups, seeking a regime change, with, or without US assistance. Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan and is home to Iran’s estimated 1-2 million ethnic Sunni Baluchis. The first blast killed at least 11 members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were travelling in a bus from their housing compound to a nearby military base. A further bombing, followed by sustained clashes between police and an armed group, named Jundallah, a Sunni extremist organisation based among Iran’s Baluch minority. Sistan va Baluchistan straddles the main drug-trafficking route from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Europe and is among the poorest and the most lawless provinces in the country. Many locals resort to drug trafficking and smuggling in order to survive.

The Provincial police commander Brigadier General Mohammad Ghafari said a total of 65 suspects had been detained over the Zahedan attack, including three who were believed to have actually carried it out. He renewed Iranian accusations that Jundullah was receiving support from British and US forces in neighboring Afghanistan for its campaign of violence in Sistan-Baluchestan. A man identified as Nasrollah Shanbe Zehi was executed at the site of the attack in Zahedan, after having confessed on Iranian state TV to be involved in the bomb attack.

The Sunni militant group Jundullah (army of god), operating in Baluchistan seems to be an offshoot of a terrorist network based in Pakistan and is allegedly fighting to establish a unified, independent Baluchistan. Formed in 2003 it is led by Abdul Malik Rigi, who in his mid-twenties, goes by the title 'Emir Abdul Malik Baluch. In March 2006 members of the group dressed in police uniforms attacked the motorcade of the governor of Zahedan, killing 22 members of his entourage on the spot and abducting 12 more. The governor himself was badly wounded but survived.

While no definite proof has surfaced over any direct, or indirect involvement of American intelligence agencies in the latest bombing in Zahedan, the US should certainly be interested inflaming ethnic and political opposition inside Iran.

Analiysts estimate that sectors of the Baluch elite who, like their counterparts among Iran’s Azeri, Kurdish, Arab and other minorities, are considered having potential benefits of aligning themselves with Washington in a future military conflict with Iran. US support for such layers could create an even greater catastrophe than in neighbouring Iraq, where the American-led invasion has triggered an escalating sectarian civil war.

In fact by his own undoing, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is building up the growing ethnic opposition camp against the centralist cleric Shiite rule in Tehran. According to James Woolsey, former director of CIA, a bare majority of Persians rule restive minorities of Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Baluch, and others. Just as is needed to exploit the resistance to the regime among the younger people, reformers, and women, Washington should also need to pay attention to its geographic and ethnic fissures - for example, a large share of Iran's oil is located in the restive Arab-populated regions in Iran's south.

Although Iran’s state religion is Shiite Islam and the majority of its population is ethnically Persian, millions of minorities from various ethnic, religious, and linguistic backgrounds also reside in Iran. Among these groups are ethnic Kurds, Baluchis, and Azeris. Many of them face discrimination and live in underdeveloped regions. Though they have held protests in the past, they mostly agitate for greater rights, not greater autonomy. But this could change, if a US sponsored regime change is forseen.

Roughly one out of every four Iranians is Azeri, making it Iran’s largest ethnic minority at over eighteen million. The Turkic-speaking Azeri community is Shiite and resides mainly in northwest Iran along the border with Azerbaijan.

The Azeri minority is based predominately in the country's northwest, what is called the Northern Tier of the Middle East, where Iran shares borders with Turkey and with the South Caucasus states of Azerbaijan and Armenia. The ethnic links between the Azeri of northern Iran and Azerbaijan were long exploited by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and this vehicle for internal manipulation has been seized upon by CIA paramilitary operatives and US Special Operations units who are training with Azerbaijan forces to form special units capable of operating inside Iran for the purpose of intelligence gathering, direct action, and mobilising indigenous opposition to the Mullahs in Tehran.

But there are more foreboding signals already in store. Last May, rioting started in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz allegedly sparked off by a state-run newspaper publishing a cartoon depicting a cockroach speaking Azeri. Despite official efforts to stem discontent by punishing the newspaper editors, fighting quickly escalated following the usual strongarm response by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ anti-riot units and Basij militias against the Azeri protesters. Soon after, Iranian security forces cracked down on tens thousands of offended Azeris, taking to the streets in Tehran and in the major northwestern Iranian cities such as Tabriz, Urumieh, Ardebil, Maragheh, and Zenjan. A massive detention campaign followed, but failed to calm the outrage, which spread like bushfire, with nearly 100 Azeris beeing killed in the town of Sulduz. The Tehran central government, was quick to accuse foreign elements stirring up the unrest, in effort to undermine Tehran's nuclear program.

In spite of this and other incidents, leading analysts estimate, that while Iranian Azeris may seek greater cultural rights, few Iranian Azeris sofar display serious separatist tendencies, or serious aspirations toward an all out uprising against the Tehranj Mullah rule. Still, the central government is extremely sensitive over possible changes of attitudes among the Azeris. Last June an attempt to hold rally at Bazz (Babek) Castle in northwestern Iran to commemorate the birthday of the Azeri national hero, Babek, who organized resistance against Arab invaders in the 9th century, prompted an unprecedented wave of arrests among Azeris in a number of Iranian cities.

Unlike other ethnic groups in Iran such as Sunni Kurds and Khuzestan Arabs, the Azeri Turks are Shiites like the ruling Persians. Having been separated from their kin in Azerbaijan by the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchai, which gave northern Azerbaijan to Russia, it is interesting to note, that in spite of influential figures in the establishment, even such as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, being of Azeri descent, the Tehran mullahs do not hesitate to crack down hard on Azeri- Turkish nationalism. An Azeri secret organisation named Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement (Gamoh), is regarded officially as a subversive element, its leaders often arrested and sometimes even executed without trial.

The plight of Iranian Azeris is followed closely by their neighboring kin in Azerbaijan and Turkey. However, officially, the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments are extremely cautious not to damage their sensitive relations with the Iranian government. eBut to the north, to the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, strange things are happening already. Unofficial reports indicate the US military preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that could foretell a major land-based campaign designed to infiltrate into Iranian territory when the time is ripe for action. While Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's interest in Azerbaijan may have escaped the Western media, Russia and the Caucasus nations understand only too well that the die has been cast regarding Azerbaijan's role in the upcoming war with Iran.

Meanwhile, another source of ethnic unrest in Iran is building up among the Kurds. Persisting reports, by news networks, indicate that US intelligence teams, operating with Kurdish groups are training infiltrators to gather information on potential targets inside Iran and encourage armed opposition among the Kurdish minority. A little-known clandestine organization based in the mountains of Iraq's Kurdish north is already emerging as a serious threat to the Iranian government, allegedly staging cross-border attacks and claiming tens of thousands of supporters among Iran's 4 million Kurds. Identified as Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê ("Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan"), but better known by the local acronym PEJAK or PJAK, is considered to be a splinter group of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party. The group claimed to have killed 24 Iranian soldiers from Iran's elite Republican Guard in three raids against army bases last year, all staged in retaliation for the killing of 10 Iranian Kurds during a peaceful demonstration in the city of Maku. The present leader of the organisation is Haji Ahmadi. According to intelligence reports, over half the members of PJAK are women, many of them still in their teens. One of the female members of the leadership council goes by the name of Gulistan Dugan, a psychology graduate from the University of Tehran. Analysts claim, that the greater threat to the Tehran regime may come from the group's underground effort to promote a sense of identity among Iranian Kurds, who make up 7 percent of that country's population. PEJAK leaders predict that their effort is already spreading quickly among students, intellectuals and businessmen. It is interesting to note that unlike most other rebel groups in the Middle East, PEJAK is secular and Western-oriented. However, the group's leaders insist that while they have had sofar no contact with the United States, they would be willing to work with Europe or America against the Tehran government.

Another source of unrest seems to be flaring up in a remote area of Iran, where central official control is faltering. Last month and armed revolt instigated by Bakhtiari, Lor and Ghashghai tribes comprising over three million, against the Islamic Regime was reported by clandestine news networks. There were claims of freedom seeking tribal fighters in the Isfahan and surrounding provinces which began fighting local Islamic Regime forces in an attempt to free their villages from the Islamic Regime's control. According to these reports, the Semirom area, some 590km from Tehran, which is on the Ghashghai tribal migrations route, apparently saw heavy fighting occurred in between Isfahan Province and Yassooj further south, which is the center of the Boyer-Ahmadi tribal territory. Local fighters from the various tribes, confronted Islamic Regime paramilitary forces – the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the Bassij . The heaviest fighting took place apparently at a point around Yassooj and in the Province of Fars which was labeled the Red Line which was not to be crossed by the central Regime forces.
Much of the unrest is said to stem from the Islamic Regime's on-going efforts to disarm the tribes and put religious leaders in charge of them instead of their traditional Khans. The rough and difficult mountainous terrain, which severely limits mobile forces and the stiff resistance put up by the tribes, have prevented government militias from penetrating into Bakhtiari and Ghashghai tribal areas The tribe leaders hope, perhaps somewhat premature, that their uprising will spread south to Shiraz and Masjid Soleiman in the Khuzestan oil province ( link to our story) and even become a national uprising across the country.

AZERBAIJANI PUBLIC OUTRAGED BY SLAUGHTER OF AZERIS IN IRAN

By Fariz Ismailzade

Friday, May 26, 2006

www.solgunaz.com