Thursday 24 July 2014

Iraq violence stirs Iranians’ bitter memories of 1980s war

The three sisters in Tehran’s Behesht-Zahra cemetery sit by the graves of their brothers, Ahmad and Abolghasem, killed in the 1980s war with Iraq, and wonder whether their own sons could soon face the same fate.

Around the women, a sea of black-and-white marble headstones with pictures of young fighters has helped keep memories of the deadly war with Iraq – which cost half a million lives – fresh in Iranians’ minds.

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With Baghdad facing a Sunni insurgency that shows no sign of ending, many Iranians fear they could be drawn back into a conflict with their neighbour.

“I have only one son and don’t want to go through what my mother went through when my five brothers joined the war and two of them were martyred,” said Fatemeh, who regularly goes to Behesht-Zahra to visit the graves of her brothers and brother-in-law.

“I’m dreading that history may repeat itself. These days I feel very nervous when I hear the news about Iraq and worry that Iran could be dragged into another war.”

The lingering trauma of the war with Iraq is one of the reasons why the Islamic regime has been pursuing an unspoken policy of fighting with its “enemies” farther afield, in countries such as Lebanon and Syria.

“Fighting in Syria is far away from our own borders,” said a regime insider. “But Iraq is a different matter and what is happening in Iraq now is not going to calm down any time soon. It’s a long war, unfortunately.”

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Iran is already involved in the conflict next door. Not only is Tehran supporting Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister whom many accuse of fuelling sectarian tensions, but it is reported to be providing men and military training to Iraqi Shia militias.

Iraqi officials and western diplomats say that Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s secretive Quds force, helped to organise the defence of Baghdad as well as the city of Samarra, home to an important Shia shrine complex.

At least two Iranian military personnel have reportedly been killed in Iraq with official Iranian media describing their deaths as taking place while defending “holy shrines”.

Iraq’s new volunteer force, formed as a support unit for regular troops, closely resembles the National Defence Force in Syria, a network of ideologically motivated militias loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, which is also said to have been organised with Iranian help.

Over the years, Iran has trained thousands of Iraqi Shia militiamen in Iraq, including fighters for the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and an offshoot, Asaheb Ahl al-Haq, or AAH, which has been accused of taking part in sectarian massacres of Sunni Arabs. Many of AAH’s members consider Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, their spiritual guide.

“In the previous period, when Americans were here, Iran used to support us,” said Ahmed Kanaani, a spokesman for AAH. “They would give us weapons. They used to give us money.”

Despite the operations in Iraq, ordinary Iranians worry about the security threat posed by the rise of Sunni militants there. Rumours are sweeping the country that fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – also known as Isis – have crossed into Iran and are kidnapping girls and raping women.

Zahra, another sister at the cemetery, said she no longer let her daughter go to school on her own. “I have a nightmare every night that Isis has invaded Iran,” she said.

The regime insider said: “These rumours are being spread by Isis’s affiliates to create horror so that no one resists when they invade anywhere. We will fight Isis inside Iraq, not at our own borders, because we experienced war on our land and are still paying for its massive destruction.”

Iran’s government portrays the conflict in Iraq as a fight against terrorism, rather than a sectarian war, and has been linking the emergence of Isis to an Israeli conspiracy to weaken the big regional countries and divide them into smaller states.

The suspicion is fuelled by Israeli support for the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq. Iraqi Kurdish leaders publicly discuss political independence and plan to hold a referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iran fears any partition will embolden its own Iranian Kurdish separatist movements and could have a similar effect in other ethnic areas, such as the restive province of Sistan-Baluchestan in the southeast, bordering Pakistan.

However, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser on foreign affairs to Iran’s supreme leader, denied on Wednesday that Iran was worried about any spillover of the tensions in Iraq.

“After the war with Iraq was imposed on us, no other country would dare to attack us, because they know that we are the region’s top power and are capable of defending our borders,” he said at a press conference.

In Behesht-Zahra cemetery, Fatemeh recalls playing with her brothers when they returned on leave from the front of the war with Iraq. Now she worries that her 22-year-old son will join up to fight Sunni insurgents there.

“I won’t be able to stop him if Iran’s leaders call for jihad,” she said, adding: “I can’t help remembering when Ahmad’s body – only three small pieces of his bones – arrived after he had been missing in action for a decade. My parents woke up every night for 10 years thinking they heard a doorbell until his death was announced.”

FT.com




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