The impact of Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan situation on Pakistan

After anti-hijab protests erupted in Iran in September following Kurdish-Iranian Masha Amini’s death after custodial torture by Iran’s morality police, Tehran has intermittently closed border crossings with Pakistan. Likewise, the restive situation in Sistan-Balochistan province has affected the Baloch people on both sides of the Pakistan-Iran border. Even if the border crossings have (re)opened, the Baloch families whose relatives live on both sides of the border have not found it safe to travel. The ongoing anti-hijab protests which have spread to Iran’s 31 provinces pose the most formidable domestic challenge to the Iranian regime in four decades.

On September 30, the situation in Zahedan, Sistan-Balochistan’s capital, escalated further when Iranian security forces fired live ammunition, metal pellets and teargas at protesters who gathered around a police station against the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a local military commander. The protests started after Friday prayer from Zahedan’s Makki Mosque. According to Amnesty International, at least 82 people, including minors, were killed in what the Iranians in Sistan-Balochistan are calling “Bloody Friday” protests.

During the Zahedan tensions, five Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) personnel, including the provincial intelligence chief Ali Mousavi, and its volunteer Basiji force, were also killed. The Iranian Sunni-Baloch rebel group, Jaish Al-Adl claimed responsibility for Mousavi’s killing. In retaliation, IRGC chief General Hossein Salami vowed revenge, maintaining, “We consider revenge for the blood of the IRGC and Basiji martyrs and the people who were victims of the Black Friday crime in Zahedan to be on our agenda.”

The minority groups in Iran, including Sistan-Balochistan’s Baloch-Sunni community, see the nationwide protests as an opportunity to raise their voice against ethnic and sectarian discrimination. In addition to being an ethnic and cultural minority, Sunni-Balochs in Iran are also a religious minority, comprising 20-25 percent of the country’s total population. Despite being rich in minerals, Sistan-Balochistan has the lowest per capita income in Iran and 80 percent of Iranian-Balochs live below the poverty line.

Though the broader protest movement in Iran is about women’s rights, it has also given hope to cross-border Baloch communities to demand their rights.

Abdul Basit Khan

The Iranian regime, on the contrary, is using the nationwide protests as a pretext to further intensify its crackdown in Sistan-Balochistan, particularly against protesters demanding their political, economic and religious rights. For instance, in the last few weeks, Tehran has executed Baloch rebels convicted of “terrorism” charges, a move that could further escalate the tensions in Sistan-Balochistan.

Against this backdrop, Jaish Al-Adl published a video on October 20 captioned “Bloody Friday.” The group warned, “The blood that has been shed everywhere in Iran, including Zahedan, will not be wasted and it will turn into a storm that will uproot the foundation of Wilayat-e-Faqih.” The notion of Wilayat-e-Faqih refers to the conceptual underpinnings of the Iranian regime. Jaish Al-Adal’s leader Salahuddin Farouqi also appeared in the video terming the current unrest in Iran a “revolution for restoring social, economic and religious and human dignity” of the Iranian-Sunnis.

Jaish Al-Adl’s video is unprecedented not only for its warning content but optics as well. The video features a large number of Jaish Al-Adal militants roaming freely with at least 43 cars of the same military color, which is unusual for Iranian-Baloch rebel groups. The video showcases six militant units, of which three are wearing common military fatigues while the other two are donning same-color local outfits. Meanwhile the sixth unit wearing white uniforms seems to be the group’s suicide squad. It is a sign of Jaish Al-Adl’s growing organizational and operational strength. Using an appealing rhetoric steeped in ethnic and sectarian grievances, the video incites the Iranian-Balochs to revolt against the Iranian regime.

The protests in Iran are domestically-focused and have not impacted the situation in Balochistan in a direct manner. However, some knock-on effects are clearly visible. For instance, the intermittent border closures have impacted the illegal oil trade, a source of income for cross-border Baloch families. Despite US sanctions and the Iran-Pakistan border fencing, the illegal oil trade between Balochistan and Sistan-Balochistan has boomed in recent years. Likewise, it has affected Baloch families straddling the border whose closure has left them anxious and perturbed.

Another copycat effect of anti-hijab demonstrations in Iran that women spearheaded is visible in the ongoing protests in Gwadar. Taking a cue from the Iranian protests, a large number of women in Gwadar have also come out demanding their political, economic and social rights.

Though the broader protest movement in Iran is about women’s rights, it has also given hope to cross-border Baloch communities to demand their rights. In 1979, three important geopolitical developments in the Middle East, the Iranian Revolution, the four-decade-long Afghan war following the Russian military intervention and the of Zia era changed the very composition of Pakistani polity. In that regard, the year 2022 is equally significant: the Afghan war has ended with the US exit, the Middle East is emerging as an economical power and investing in the future. However, the voices of bottom-up social protests that are trying to bring a change in Iran and give more rights to women and minorities are being suppressed and ignored by the regime in Tehran. Pakistan should not only follow the wait and see policy, but should be ready to deal with changing socio-political dynamics and centers of power in Iran, seeing as these changes are happening not too far from its own troublesome province of Balochistan.

- The author is a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Twitter @basitresearcher.